Xoradora

Xoradora is a drum machine designed for resynthesising drum sounds from samples. Depending on your goals and the model used, you can tweak drums slightly - as if changing the shape of the resonating body, or the interaction between the different physical elements which comprise it - or you can tear them apart entirely to be reformed into novel alien sounds or rhythmic sources.

Xoradora is currently in public beta, priced at €44 / $49 USD. The price will increase when Xoradora reaches 1.0.

Seven models provide distinctly different ways of analysing and resynthesising your samples. For each model, a different set of parameters allow you to alter aspects of the model, with many of the parameters also being valid targets for modulation by LFO or an envelope follower on an external audio source.

Each model resynthesises the source as if from scratch, rather than altering it via a post-processing filter or effect. At neutral settings the original character remains almost identical. Move away from neutral and the same sample can adopt a different shell, impact, texture, or gesture. The resynthesis models offer a great breadth of sound design possibilities and are extremely flexible. The drum machine focuses on this dry resynthesis rather than nifty post processing or filters. As a result, the only effect-like parameters included in this release are output saturation and a per-voice "Voice Ceiling" - to keep the experimentation mostly safe to transient signals when using extreme modifications. The non-Warp modes also have a pre-saturation trim control in their Guided/Advanced view for extra headroom.

In the standalone app there is also a ducking compressor with side-chaining. This is meant more for messing around with sounds without a DAW or getting a feel for the drum machine. Like the built-in sequencer, it is by no means intended as a replacement for what you would find in a plugin host, but the patterns and settings are saved with kits so they help you create a demo for your kits if you so wish.

Everyone probably has their own tricks for incorporating drums into a mix. Side-chaining, reverb & delay sends - the VST3 and CLAP versions offer a main stereo output and four auxiliary stereo buses for those workflows. The Audio Unit exposes the main stereo output; Standalone mixes all five routes into its stereo device output. Xoradora aims to do one thing (albeit 7 different ways) and to do it very well.

Development background

At the start of the year, I began resuscitating my "Macomate 88" effect/synth for re-release with some nifty new features, but I wanted to have a sound source that I could use in demos, and (for reasons I now don't remember) I wanted a drum machine.

The drum machines I used to use, excellent though they are, are no longer maintained - and I decided (probably as procrastination, because releasing stuff is painful) to instead make my own drum machine. 26 years ago I was processing drum samples offline in Matlab; now - with faster processors, a large collection of signal processing bits and pieces I've tinkered on over the years, and more programming experience myself - it should be possible to re-realise those (then) painfully slow experiments in a drum machine/resynthesiser with the sort of workflow I would like to use myself to create music.

See Xoradora in action

• Xoradora Drum Machine — evolving through different modes

Seven models

Each model analyses the structure of the source sample from a different perspective. The models are described here in broad strokes, with diagrams showing which parts of a sound can be altered. Muted grey lines show material found in the source; blue lines show the reshaped model. Gold marks transients such as attacks and short sound slices. If a description is unclear or you would like more detail, please let me know.

Warp — attack and body

Warp separates the strike from the changing body of a hit. The attack can stay recognisable while you simplify or complicate the body, change its motion, or push it into something physically implausible. It is especially good at turning one shell, cavity, or thump into another.

Move the excitation and model independently, or use Coefficient Stretch to slow or reverse the changing body without stretching the strike. Noise can keep driving the body after the recorded excitation fades; AGC brings quieter excitation forward.

Halo — colour and detail

Halo separates broad colour/spectral outline from the fine texture that gives a sound its grain. Flatten or exaggerate that colour, make it more or less detailed, use Freeze to hold it at one moment, or stretch its movement through time while the finer character remains present. Carrier and Colour have separate placement controls, so the texture and its changing spectral outline need not arrive together.

Hull — ringing body and impact

Hull follows the decaying tones inside a hit while keeping the attack and noise separate. Tune, spread, damp, extend, or destabilise the ringing body without dragging the rest of the sound along with it. Shells, plates, bells, toms, and other ringing material become directly tunable. Body and Residual can also be placed and looped independently: keep the impact where it belongs while moving the ringing body around it.

Prism — bands in motion

Prism follows the low, middle, and high movement inside a hit. The fast texture and slower shape of each region can move separately, so gestures can stretch, stagger, smooth, exchange character, or drift toward noise without simply filtering the finished sample.

Grain — overlapping slices

Grain rebuilds the sound from short, overlapping slices. They can be thinned, held, smeared, folded, or punctured with holes; attack and pre-echo controls decide how much of the original strike survives. The result is musical digital damage rather than an MP3 effect placed after playback.

Source and Pattern have their own placements and loops. Repeat a short damage pattern over different source material, or let the pattern finish while the source continues. Holes and Hold can be shaped during playback.

Strata — learned musical roles

Strata learns several short patterns from a hit and groups them into strike, body, air, and tail. Balance those roles independently, change how clearly they separate, stretch or scatter their movement, and exchange their shapes and timelines. It treats the sound as a collection of percussive events rather than one solid object.

Strand — tone, attacks, and noise

Strand separates stable pitched tones, short attacks, and coloured noise. Retune or reharmonise the tone, move and sharpen the attacks, reshape the noise colour, and give tone and noise independent decay, stretch, or reverse timelines. Its normal live tier follows 24 tones, with an optional 48-tone HQ mode for dense metallic material.

Guided mode

"Guided mode" provides a scrollable view for the mode where each parameter has a short description. You can enter the Guided view from the default Compact view via context menu, pressing H or the TAB key on desktop or by pressing the button above the waveform/spectrogram display to left of the sample name.

Controls in the Guided view are grouped by musical purpose and are fully interactive. In addition, at the top of the guided there is a visualisation of the mode: Warp shows the resonances and notches in the changing frequency response, Halo the broad colour, Hull the ringing tones, Prism the band motion, Grain the sound slices, Strata the parts in time, and Strand its three layers.

The timing displays are editable. Drag placement flags and loop edges, follow the coloured playback cursors, and open a loop's crossfade popover to choose One-shot or Loop, set its repeat count and adjust the join. The same sound can use one Shared loop or independent component loops. Choose Infinite for an evolving texture, or a finite number of repeats followed by the remaining sound. The manual's looping workflow explains the count and timing rules.

For modes where not all parameters could be contained within the compact view, the Guided view also contains these "overflow" parameters.

Play and record from your phone

Standalone's Phone Link turns a phone on the same local network into a pad controller and sequencer remote. Pad waveforms and sample names help identify sounds; active-loop indicators and Stop all make sustained loops easier to manage.

With macOS Standalone, experimental phone recording also lets you capture a take, preview and trim it, then send it straight to a pad with undo support. Recording depends on browser microphone permission and trust for the Mac's local HTTPS page; physical iPhone/Safari recording validation is still pending. See the Phone Link workflow for setup and limitations.

Built for exploration

• Audition the original and resynthesised sound side by side.
• Learn how each model works in the interactive "Guided view".
• Place and loop components independently, with finite or unlimited repeats.
• Copy a complete pad with clipboard shortcuts or a modifier-drag, then undo the replacement if needed.
• Use an interactive evolution to audition variations and breed the sounds you want.
• Animate model-specific controls with envelopes and per-hit movement.
• Bounce a transformed pad in place, to another pad, or to an audio file, then reshape it again.
• Tune the result to standard or alternative microtonal scales.

Formats

• macOS: VST3, AU, CLAP and Standalone
• Windows: VST3, CLAP and Standalone
• Linux: VST3, CLAP, LV2 and Standalone (experimental)