Cagire/docs/engine/sources.md

Sources

The audio engine provides a variety of sound sources. Use the sound word (or snd for short) to select one.

Basic Oscillators

Name	Description
sine	Pure sinusoid, smooth and mellow
tri	Triangle wave, warmer than sine, naturally band-limited
saw	Bright sawtooth with anti-aliasing, rich in harmonics
zaw	Raw sawtooth without anti-aliasing, lo-fi character
pulse, square	Variable-width pulse wave with anti-aliasing
pulze, zquare	Raw pulse without anti-aliasing, 8-bit feel

pulse and pulze respond to the pw parameter (0.0-1.0) for pulse width. At 0.5 you get a square wave.

Phase Shaping

All oscillators support phase shaping for timbral variation:

Parameter	Range	Effect
size	0-256	Phase quantization (lo-fi, chiptune).
mult	0.25-16	Phase multiplier (harmonic overtones).
warp	-1 to 1	Power curve asymmetry.
mirror	0-1	Phase reflection point.

These are super useful to get the most out of your oscillators.

Sub Oscillator

Add a sub oscillator layer to any basic oscillator:

Parameter	Range	Effect
sub	0-1	Mix level
suboct	1-3	Octaves below main.
subwave	tri/sine/square	Sub waveform.

Noise

Name	Description
white	Equal energy across all frequencies, bright and hissy.
pink	-3dB/octave rolloff, equal energy per octave, natural.
brown	-6dB/octave rolloff, deep rumbling, random walk.

Noise sources ignore pitch. Use filters to shape the spectrum.

Live Input

Name	Description
live, livein, mic	Live audio input from microphone or line-in

All filter and effect parameters apply to the input signal.

Plaits Engines

The Plaits engines come from Mutable Instruments and provide a range of synthesis methods. Beware, these sources can be quite CPU hungry. All share three control parameters (0.0-1.0):

Parameter	Controls
harmonics	Harmonic content, structure, detuning.
timbre	Brightness, tonal color.
morph	Smooth transitions between variations.

Pitched

Name	Description
modal	Struck/plucked resonant bodies (strings, plates, tubes).
va, analog	Virtual analog with waveform sync and crossfading.
ws, waveshape	Waveshaper and wavefolder.
fm2	Two-operator FM synthesis with feedback.
grain	Granular formant oscillator (vowel-like).
additive	Harmonic additive synthesis.
wavetable	Built-in Plaits wavetables (four 8x8 banks).
chord	Four-note chord generator.
swarm	Granular cloud of enveloped sawtooths.
pnoise	Clocked noise through multimode filter.

Percussion

Name	Description
kick, bass	808-style bass drum.
snare	Analog snare drum with tone/noise balance.
hihat, hat	Metallic 808-style hi-hat.

Percussions are super hard to use correctly, because you need to tweak their envelope correctly.