Yes, it’s been a while! For the longest time now we’ve had no bugs to fix (how many software developers can say that?), but we’ve recently received a couple of reports and have taken care of them in the 1.4.0 Update.
Poly-Ana‘s more affordable but just as sound-capable little sister, L’il Poly-Ana, has also received the same fixes. If you haven’t taken Poly-Ana for a spin yet you owe it to yourself to try the most convincing analog synthesizer emulation going! She sports a huge, super-capable voice architecture in an intuitive, all-in-one-panel interface. You will immediately be reminded of the best features from the most famous synths of the classic analog era, plus a few you’ve likely never seen or heard before! And like all our products, Poly-Ana is free to try, no demo time limits, you can even save and recall your work – so download her and get going right now!
Expect this to be the first of several coming updates, the next will likely add a few new convenience features as well. And remember, our Upgrade Protection Policy means that your license will not only work with Poly-Ana 1.x, but with the entire 2.x series as well! View the Changelog history and you’ll see that we are serious about supporting our products and our customers in the long term.
Emanuele Ballasina, One Synth Challenge entry, 100% Poly-Ana – even the drums!
Next up from the Admiralty, The Stunning Phaser 1.0 release is finished and ready for packaging! Grab it fast to catch the final days of the 60% OFF deal while still in Beta. (Note that the current 0.5.2 Beta version is version 1.0 and is fully functional and sounds AMAZING, it’s just lacking the presets that will be included in the upcoming 1.0 release.) Or check out our Make Me One With Everything bundle offer and save $20 while having it all!
Poly-Ana Custom Skins – choose your favorite or even make your own!
Maestro Mistheria demos the Poly-Ana virtual-analog VST/AU plugin softsynth. She’s even more capable now than she was back then!
As always, we welcome inquiries by email, so let us know if you have any questions or requests, and the Admiral himself will get right back to you!
Please note: All of our products are still available in VST and AU formats for OSX and are verified working on all versions. They should continue to work until Apple makes a change that breaks them. (If you’re using a recent OSX version you will likely need to use this method to enable them: https://www.osirisguitar.com/how-to-make-unsigned-vsts-work-in-macos-catalina/As always, we recommend you download, install and thoroughly test our products before purchasing them. All of our products run in a free demo mode with no time limits, you can even save and recall your work!)
We regret to have to announce that Admiral Quality will no longer be producing OSX versions of our #VST/AU #plugin products in the long-term, folks. Sorry, but we can no longer afford to do business with Apple, neither financially nor morally. This has been a long time coming and GOOD RIDDANCE!
We will continue to make the existing downloads available for our customers as long as they continue to work on all Apple platforms, but once they abandon the current format we can no longer afford to keep up. Sorry, we’re a small company and Apple’s constant intentional and needless changes create far too much unnecessary work and cost for us. They did this to you, not us. We were wrong to support their platform in the first place and we apologize. (Your existing license key-files will work on Windows too. Contact us if you need them sent to you again.)
Update: If you’d like to know more about what we’re so unhappy about, please review this article. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/house-antitrust-subcommittee-apple-has-monopoly-power.html This is only half of it though, the other part is the constant breaking of applications with unnecessary operating system updates designed to force users to pay again for products they already bought. A game we refuse to play along with. (We’ve been doing this since 2007 and have yet to ask our customers to buy the same products again. And we have an Update Protection Policy that means it will be a long time before we ever do!)
Stunning Phaser Beta 0.5.2 is released, adding one final new feature — an adjustable soft-clipper for the Resonance signal. Many users were finding settings with Resonance set near maximum to be producing excessive and hard to manage peak levels. The new Resonance Clip control defaults to applying a non-linear distortion that clips at +24 dB to the Resonance signal, keeping its level in the range of sanity. This is done at the expense of some distortion applied to the resonance, but that’s perfectly typical of the behavior of analog phasers that allow Resonance to be set to full oscillation levels as well. Clip point can be adjusted anywhere between 0 dB and +24 dB (the lower you set it the more distortion will necessarily be applied to the Resonance). If you want the unclipped Resonance behavior of previous versions, just turn that knob fully counterclockwise to disable the new feature.
Stunning Phaser is now feature-complete. All controls, behaviors, and sound are now locked-down, allowing us to re-visit the graphics for a ground-up complete re-do (very clearly needed at this point, we had no idea just how big this product would grow when we started!) in preparation for the release of version 1.0. We’ll also be adding some preset patches and a user manual, but as far as sound and behavior goes, this is the final product. (Just like our other products, we do expect to continue to grow it and add more features, but we never break existing behaviors or sound once version 1.0 has been released so you never need to fear a future update changing the sound of one of your music projects.) Those tasks are already mostly complete and we don’t expect it will be much longer before 1.0 is released, so try it now while the big 60% Off Buy-it-in-Beta deal’s still on!
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and suggestions during the Beta period, you’ve helped make this a very stand-out and unique product! Now back to work on the new graphics…
Oops! Seems we had a crash bug in 0.5.0 caused by reporting the wrong number of parameters to the host. That’s fixed now in Stunning Phaser 0.5.1. Ableton users, give it another try now please.
Stunning Phaser Beta 0.5.0 is released, thus ending the Beta series. With it will also go the big 60% Off Buy-it-in-Beta offer, so now’s the time to try it. We don’t expect it to be available for a better price than this for quite some time.
Beta 0.5.0 adds MIDI Control Change support for the Center Frequency and LFO Rate controls. MIDI CC numbers are set globally in the Options Dialog (click the product name at the bottom) and depth of MIDI control is set on the front panel, per-patch/project. You can now use an expression pedal or any other MIDI controller to modulate the phaser like a wah-wah, and/or control the LFO Rate like the classic Univibe phaser’s pedal.
Stunning Phaser is now feature-complete. All controls, behaviors, and sound are now locked-down, allowing us to re-visit the graphics for a ground-up complete re-do (very clearly needed at this point, we had no idea just how big this product would grow when we started!) in preparation for the release of version 1.0. We’ll also be adding some preset patches and a user manual, but as far as sound and behavior goes, this is the final product. (Just like our other products, we do expect to continue to grow it and add more features, but we never break existing behaviors or sound once version 1.0 has been released so you never need to fear a future update changing the sound of one of your music projects.) Those tasks are already mostly complete and we don’t expect it will be much longer before 1.0 is released, so try it now while the big deal’s still on!
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and suggestions during the Beta period, you’ve helped make this a very stand-out and unique product!
Version 1.3.4 of Poly-Ana and L’il Poly-Ana adds the ability to set the initially loaded program bank to one of your choosing, and fixes a minor bug in Linear Knob Mode.
Time for a minor maintenance update for SCAMP. We finally found some bugs to fix and, now that they are, our bug tracking list is back to zero items. That’s how we roll!
New in Poly-Ana 1.3.2, improved MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) support!
Version 1.3.2 of Poly-Ana and L’il Poly-Ana AU/VST adds improved support for MPE, the newest addition to the MIDI specification. Multi-channel control allows for the synth’s voices to have separate, unique and independent pitch-bend and other MIDI CC controller messages sent per note/channel rather than shared across all voices on a single MIDI channel as with a typical keyboard controller. Poly-Ana’s multi-channel MIDI-Guitar mode has already supported most of MPE before this update. (In fact, most of MPE was supported by Poly-Ana long before the MPE specification was even proposed! We’ve been proud to have been mentioned on several pages listing MPE compatible synth products right from the very start of MPE!)
We’ve now added a few new features, most of them automatic with one new setting in the Options Dialog, to improve MPE compliance. To keep the classic multi-channel MIDI-Guitar behavior, leave the new MPE (ON)/GUITAR MULTI-CHANNEL MODE switch in the Options Dialog set to Off. To enable improved MPE compatibility, turn it On. Usually that’s all you’ll need to think about, just set the option to match the kind of multi-channel MIDI controller you’re using. (Note that for Guitar mode you will typically want to use a patch set to Poly Mode: UNIson with either 1 or 2 voice Polyphony, but this isn’t strictly necessary so we don’t force or require the setting.)
Poly-Ana 1.3.2, new MPE mode
The main difference is in how events on the MPE Master Channel are interpreted. With MPE mode activated, changes to MIDI CC modulation sources on MIDI Channel 1 are shared to all voices sounding on all other MIDI channels as well. Additionally, the WHEEL modulation source (mod wheel) is made unique per voice/channel when “MPE (ON)…” is activated, where it was shared between all voice/channels in the older Guitar Mode. The other modulation sources that can be unique per-channel are IN-1, IN-2, EXPR and PRESS (channel aftertouch only, polyphonic aftertouch only applies to channel 1 which will be your MPE Master Channel for Zone 1 when in MPE mode). These other four modulation sources, plus pitch-bend, all work with multi-channel input in either MPE or Guitar modes, only the Mod WHEEL behavior is different between the two modes (unique Mod Wheel control only being offered in MPE mode). This distinction is necessary for backward compatibility due to how Poly-Ana traditionally mapped the Mod WHEEL MIDI CC (control-change) message to the Wheel front panel parameter/control where the other four common modulators were assigned CC number sources in the Options Dialog with no corresponding front panel “depth” controls. (Though you can always make a depth control by using Poly-Ana’s Mod Mixers! Usually by multiplying one of the other Mod Sources by the WHEEL source.) As Poly-Ana is a mono-timbral instrument (poly-timbrality is easily achieved by adding additional plug-in instances to your project) MPE Zones are not currently supported so only MPE streams containing Zone 1 should be sent to Poly-Ana. As well, Poly-Ana has a maximum of 12 voices, so your MPE controller should be set to send a maximum of 12 channels (or fewer, generally you’ll want to set your MPE controller’s number of channels to match the Polyphony setting of the Poly-Ana program you’re controlling).
100% Poly-Ana, even the drums!
Poly-Ana also doesn’t currently respond to MPE messages defining Pitch Bend range or Mono/Poly Modes, preferring instead to adhere to the front-panel program settings. While this can be somewhat less automated to set up, it’s ultimately the choice we prefer as it puts control completely in the user’s hands and avoids any automatic behavior making changes to the patch/program that the user might not be immediately aware of. If you’re not using either type of multi-channel MIDI control you can safely ignore this new setting as your MIDI will typically be input all on Channel 1 and all MIDI pitch bend and CC controllers will be shared across all voices triggered on the single MIDI channel. (In fact, if you’re not using multi-channel Guitar or MPE at all, you can safely skip this update.)
Poly-Ana backgrounds can be easily replaced with anything you’d like. This capability of Poly-Ana has been largely superseded by the recent addition of full skinning capability, but if you like the way the built-in controls look and are laid out and just want to change the background image, this is the simplest way to go.
You can download pre-made backgrounds from here, along with a Photoshop template for designing your own.
To activate a custom background on Windows, make sure the file is named Poly-AnaBG.png (or LilPoly-AnaBG.png for L’il Poly-Ana) and create the folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\Admiral Quality\Poly-Ana\” and place it there. (On 32 bit versions of Windows use the “Program Files” folder instead of “Program Files (x86)”. Both the 32 and the 64 bit versions of Poly-Ana will reference this same location.)
To activate a custom background on OS X, make sure the file is named Poly-AnaBG.png (or LilPoly-AnaBG.png for L’il Poly-Ana), create these folders under your user folder, “/Users/(your_user name)/Library/Application Support/Admiral Quality/Poly-Ana/” and place the file there. Note that some newer versions of OS X hide this folder from you by default. You can reveal it by…
In Finder, chose the Go | Go To Folder menu option.
Here are some completed examples to get you started. Remember that you need to rename them to “Poly-AnaBG.png”, place them in the correct folder as described above, and restart Poly-Ana to see your new background. Send us your background image and if we like it we’ll post it here!
