The Deluge is aimed at anyone who wants a complete production environment in a battery-powered, mobile hardware package. And then bring that on stage for real-time performance.
There’s nothing quite like it, certainly not in quality of execution.
1 Like
The speaker is a non-issue. Until you’ve actually tried one, you won’t really understand how the grid itself is the visual aid. It wasn’t until I actually played with one before I immediately understood how intuitive & clear the design already is without the need for an additional screen.
4 Likes
Totally agree. A screen would defeat part of the brilliance that is the Deluge.
2 Likes
Stupid companies and their ‘toy’ synths thinking music should be fun! 
This is serious business only! Arranger pianos for everyone!
1 Like
it must be difficult editing the sound engine without a display?
There’s a pretty clever quick menu system where you hold shift, and trigger one of its many buttons to immediately bring you to any parameter. It sounds daunting at first, but with a little muscle memory, it’s incredibly fast.
For bar synced sampling: create a synth track and assign the input to osc 1, make the track as long as you want to sample, create a note that is held for the track length, record + play to start the sequencer and start recording at the same time, then record + play before it gets to the end of the track to stop recording exactly at the end of the current bar.
2 Likes
Yeah sounds great… but somehow I do not get it…
The procedure is
a) create a new track and on this track
b) a new synth and in this synth I
c) change the type to inputL (that is where my external audio source is)
d) I create the 16 step note
e) press record and play… done…
And now things get complicated - for me -
I have a new synth, type is InputL and from my understanding to make the sample playback permanent with the new sampled sound I have to change the TYPE to sample and assign the newly sampled sound…
And if I do this I loose the possibility to create a 16 step sound and now I cannot assign sidechain to it.
Only one step or multiple steps can be enabled, but not - like on a regular synth track a 16 step long note…
What is my misunderstanding here?
have a nice day
f.
Once you’ve assigned a voice to be a sample, you can change its behaviour within the sample settings section. I no longer own a Deluge so don’t remember the details, but the idea was that if you wanted to treat a sample more like a loop, for the purpose of time stretching and stuff, then you set it to behave like so and as a consequence, it wasn’t subject to the default behaviour of setting length per note across the grid.
But if you wanted to treat the sample like a traditional wavetable voice, for example, you could turn this behaviour off and then it behaved like one of the oscillators.
Dig into the very left section of the Deluge grid for sample settings. I believe it was somewhere in the lower end of the grid, where you could tweak things such as if the sample was subject to looping, time stretch and stuff.
3 Likes
thank you
this was very helpful!
2 Likes
Happy to help😊
Sometimes I’m OK with the limitations argument. In this case, I have to say no - a better screen would make this world-class instead of just very good.
I hated trying to decipher 7 segment display codes back in the day (JL Cooper patchbays, MAQ 16/3, Mirage, Oberheim Cyclone/Drummer) and I hate trying to remember than a lower case ‘n’ looking thing with a bar over it is really an ‘M’.
When you’re first learning the Deluge, it’s a huge timesink to have a manual (with no page number BTW) trying to look up what a particular display means as you press and turn and dive into the sub menus.
The grid shortcuts may be great, but: a) I haven’t learned the machine well enough to use them, and b) with a bunch of pads lit up, I find it hard to read the screenprinted legending around the pads in my normal studio lighting.
3 Likes
I am playing around with the deluge…
Try different things in small sessions that last 30 Minutes…
Every time I notice that some stuff is easier than before.
I agree the shortcuts take a while until I can remember them, but it helps to remember the region they were, makes it easier to locate them…
The Display is unnecessary… I would focus too much on it…
Every day an hour or so… And I think I will have gotten into it within a week or two…
^ This ^
I find these kind of LCD displays to be a total pain. Even if you do eventually learn what all the abbreviations mean, you 'll likely forget them if you don’t use the machine for a while. When it comes to a sequencer there’s no doubt in my mind that a decent screen makes the thing a viable alternative to using a computer.
PS holy crap I still have an Oberheim Drummer here! Anyone want it?!
[off topic] Well some people may find it fun to tweak knobs that are no thicker than a pencil, and play melodies with tiny touch keys (volcas) on extremely limited devices that tend to sound bland, but it all depends on what kind of music you’re trying to make. If you’re making chiptunes or lo-fi chic, toys is what you need.
I am still having a lot of fun with the Deluge, its a next level groovebox!
3 Likes
I prefer actually trying things before forming strong opinions about them, and acting like I know everything them. That’s how I operate. I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling people how something is without knowing anything about it.
If they ever bring out an editor it will be much more popular I think.
In fact there’s an editor under development in the Synthstrom community that works via the Toshiba FlashAir card - it’s an SD card with wifi, that can be used to wirelessly transfer and edit files.
There’s a user named Jamie Fenton who came up with the idea and has developed some tools that are placed on the SD card, called Downrush, that allows file browsing and upload/ download, renaming and organizing samples, and XML editing (the songs/ projects + synth presets and sample kits of the Deluge are in XML format).
Currently, Downrush’s editing of songs, tracks, presets etc. is done in XML text.
But in the future there will be an editor with a more user-friendly interface, and things like a better sample/slice editing tool 
4 Likes