These three audio files demonstrate various elements of the Modulator-based synth pad sound-design process that I describe in the main SOS April 2025 Cubase workshop article.
www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cubase-14-banish-boring-pads
Listen to the MP3 SoundCloud files below or download the hi-res WAV audio and audition in your own DAW.
The content of each file is described below.
Cubase 14 Banish Boring Pads Audio Example 01.WAV
This audio clip follows the first example in the article. A simple four-bar, sustained chord progression is heard four times. In the first instance, a static Retrologue pad sound is heard, with no modulation. In the second pass, the two LFO Modulators have been used to add some movement to Retrologue’s filter cutoff and resonance parameters, as well as a small amount of pitch-shifting for oscillators 2 and 3.
In the third pass, Cubase’s Destroyer and Chopper plug-ins are inserted on the Retrologue channel, and a Shaper Modulator modulates their parameters. It’s the settings at this stage that are shown in the first screenshot of the article. If you increase the Depth for the pitch parameters, you can easily get into ‘seasick’ territory, but there are some interesting things you can do with the ‘natural analogue pitch drift’ if you switch the time base to Hz mode rather than Note mode, which makes it easier to get the respective pitch drifts out of sync.
In the final pass, an instance of Auto Filter replaces Destroyer and Chopper, and a different Shaper configuration has been used to create a more obvious rhythmic pulse in the final sound. There are plenty of alternative ways of adding a pulse to the underlying pad, of course, but both Shaper and the Step Modulator are good, straightforward starting points.
Cubase 14 Banish Boring Pads Audio Example 02.WAV
This example starts with the same static Retrologue pad sound, but as the clip plays the Modulator configuration shown in the article’s second screen comes into play, as the Macro Knob is gradually rotated to increase the ‘intensity’ of the applied modulation, effectively giving you hands-on control over the degree of modulation applied in real-time.
For the second pass, the Step Modulator was swapped out for an LFO using a Sine wave with a 1/8 note timing. As well as Retrologue’s filter, the Modscripter has been set to target the LFO’s Shape parameter for additional sound variability.
Cubase 14 Banish Boring Pads Audio Example 03.WAV
This example explores one option for modulating blends between layered pad sounds using the new Modulator system. As described in the main text of the article, two pad presets have been loaded into slots 1 and 2 of HALion Sonic. As shown in the third screenshot in the article, LFO Modulators have been used to add a little extra sonic movement to each layer, while a Macro Knob has been configured to adjust the relative volumes of each layer (there are a number of points in HALion Sonic’s signal flow that you can target for this).
The audio plays in fours sections. The first two sections provide short examples of each of the pad layers individually including their modulation. The third section then contains the blended sound with the blend balance controls via the Macro Knob. a fourth section demonstrates one of many ways this process could be taken further by adding a pulse-like volume automation onto each layer (a different pulse patten is applied to each) using instances of Step Modulator. The Macro Knob layer blending is then superimposed upon this.