Audio Modeling has announced the imminent arrival of a polyphonic version of its SWAM (Synchronous Waves Acoustic Modeling) expressive plugin.
SWAM, developed by the company, has always deliberately been monophonic, preferring realism and expressive control over attempting polyphony.
PolySWAM is a completely rebuilt instrument — SWAM has not been changed — designed to find the right balance between expressiveness, performance, and polyphony.
It was developed with Latin GRAMMY award-winning producer, arranger and music tech expert Emanuele Ruffinengo, and offers a new approach to expressive polyphony.
While SWAM was incredible at producing realistic, believable violin, saxophone and woodwind, PolySWAM brings this to full ensembles.
PolySWAM is not a traditional sampler, triggering static recordings. It calculates physical behaviour in real time and dynamically assigns voices to individual virtual players. It’s designed to do away with complex configuration, but is “plug and play” — select preset, play, and feel the different acoustic articulations.
The algorithms naturally react to touch, converting to legato, staccato, and smooth portamentos. Interestingly, polyphonic aftertouch and MPE are not yet supported (hopefully these will be in the future — yes, there’d be potentially a lot more performance data coming in but also even more possibilities for sound shaping).
The intelligent MIDI processing engine uses three fundamental algorithms: Multi Poly which analyses playing and determines expression and instrument splitting based on melodies or chords; Complete Voices which manages available instruments and fills in gaps with ‘intelligent thickening’; and Multi Mono, operating in real time with zero latency, which layers across instruments and creates huge textures.
Although PolySWAM is compatible with any MIDI controller, it’s recommended to use one with physical continuous controls such as faders and knobs, expression pedals or breath controllers. Channel aftertouch is currently supported.
It’s not designed to be a replacement for solo SWAM instruments, does not separate MIDI tracks or individual audio output per instrument, and isn’t a sample player or layering tool. Unsurprisingly it also requires a high-performance processor to work smoothly without audio dropouts.
Composers have always had to juggle note playing with articulation particularly when building ensemble and orchestral parts which need to sound as realistic as possible. A tool like PolySWAM may well offer an easier route into natural-sounding compositions, with the tradeoff of not complete manual control over every nuance. That said, I know which I’d prefer, particularly for live work and rapid ideas sketching.
Sadly there doesn’t appear to be any decent demonstrations of the product online yet, but hopefully that will come.
PolySWAM will be available for $399/€399, with preorders at the exclusive launch price of $279/€279.
