Voice & play
The voicing section decides how notes become sounding voices: up to 16-voice polyphony, five play modes (Poly / Duo / Mono / Legato / Latch) with note priority and glide, unison stacking (count / detune / spread), and the analog-character controls (Voice Detune, Drift, Variance, and Transient) that loosen voices away from perfect digital precision for an “alive” sound.
Polyphony
Section titled “Polyphony”The Voices control sets the polyphony cap from 1 to 16. When every allotted voice is busy, a new note steals the oldest. The effective cap follows the play mode and unison count; mono modes and heavy unison stacks fold down to fewer sounding notes automatically.
Play modes
Section titled “Play modes”Five modes decide how held keys become sounding voices:
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Poly | Full polyphony: every key sounds its own voice |
| Duo | Two-voice polyphony |
| Mono | A single sounding voice; each new note retriggers the envelopes |
| Legato | A single voice that glides to each new note without retriggering, so envelopes keep running |
| Latch | A single held note that new notes replace, and that keeps sounding after you lift the key |
With the arpeggiator on, Latch becomes arp hold: the chord keeps cycling after you release the keys, and a fresh press with no keys down replaces the latched chord.
Note priority
Section titled “Note priority”In mono modes, the sounding note is chosen by priority:
- Last: the most recently pressed key.
- Highest: the highest held key.
- Lowest: the lowest held key.
Glide slides the pitch from the previous note to the new one over a settable time. Two modes:
- Always: glide happens on every note, regardless of whether keys overlap.
- Fingered: glide only happens between overlapping notes. A fresh note after all keys are released snaps cleanly to pitch, so you can shape legato passages without glide following you everywhere.
A whole chord glides from the previous note cleanly, without each voice smearing its own start.
For slide steps in the step sequencer, Glide has to be non-zero for the slide to actually bend pitch. See the step sequencer for details.
Unison
Section titled “Unison”Unison stacks up to eight voices per note. Two controls shape the stack:
- Detune: spreads the stacked voices in pitch, on top of any base detune. Because each stacked voice carries its own stable offset, the stack fattens into a wide, slowly beating cloud rather than a chorus that pulses in lockstep.
- Spread: pans the stacked voices across the stereo field.
At Unison 1 there is no stacking; Detune and Spread have no effect. Turn Unison up and Detune up together for the classic “megasaw” texture; add Spread for width.
Analog character: the aliveness layer
Section titled “Analog character: the aliveness layer”Four controls loosen each voice away from perfectly matched digital precision, modeling the way separate analog voice cards each have their own personality. At zero every voice collapses to identical. Higher settings model older, looser hardware.
- Voice Detune: a fixed per-voice pitch spread across the stack. Even a small amount makes a chord shimmer and feel live rather than static.
- Drift: slow, quasi-random per-voice pitch wander that keeps the tone moving over time.
- Variance: one knob that adds per-voice slop to cutoff, envelope times, pulse width, and glide time simultaneously. Push it up and the synth starts to feel like individual analog voice cards that each have their own character.
- Transient: two settings. Analog leaves oscillator phase and filter state running when a voice is stolen and reused, for a punchy, varying attack. Reset zeroes them at each note-on for a consistent, clicky attack. Transient governs the DSP state reset only; it is separate from Env Restart, which controls the envelope’s starting level when a new note arrives.
The analog-character controls are what the philosophy chapter describes as “aliveness.” See The Aconite philosophy for the broader framing of why these exist.
Velocity curve
Section titled “Velocity curve”The velocity curve is a drawable map that reshapes how hard you play into the velocity the synth actually uses. It sits in the performance area alongside the pitch and mod wheels.
The horizontal axis is the velocity you play; the vertical axis is the velocity Aconite receives. The default is a straight diagonal, a 1:1 pass-through. Bending the line away from the diagonal changes the response:
- Soften: flatten the upper end so hard playing lands gentler, for a more forgiving touch.
- Harden: steepen it so subtle differences in strike force become dramatic dynamic swings.
- Compress: pull the whole range into a narrow band, so loud and soft notes sit close together.
- Expand: push the extremes apart, widening the gap between your softest and hardest playing.
- Fix: a flat horizontal line for one constant velocity regardless of how hard you play.
- Reverse: slope it downward so soft playing is loud and hard playing is soft.
- Freehand: draw any contour; the curve follows exactly what you draw.
Because the curve reshapes velocity before anything reads it, it moves everything velocity drives at once: note loudness and every velocity-based route in the modulation matrix respond to the same drawn shape. It also feeds the arpeggiator and step sequencer, so their accents ride the reshaped velocity too.
A live indicator dot shows where your last played note landed on the curve, so you can see your touch mapping as you play. A reset returns the curve to the straight linear default at any time.
Pitch-bend range
Section titled “Pitch-bend range”The pitch-bend range controls how many semitones the pitch wheel reaches at full throw. The standard is two semitones; wider ranges suit expressive lead playing or trombone-style glides.
When MPE is active, each voice tracks per-note bend from its own MIDI channel, and the per-note pitch-bend range is adjustable from 1 to 96 semitones, 48 semitones by default, to suit expressive controllers. Per-note pressure and vertical slide are exposed to the modulation matrix as the sources MPE Press and MPE Slide, so you can route them to any destination (filter cutoff, timbre, volume, or anything else in the matrix) for fully independent expression on every finger.
Panning
Section titled “Panning”Two pan controls are available:
- Voice Pan: places the overall voice output in the stereo field. Because this follows the modulation matrix Pan destination, an LFO or other source can auto-pan on top of the static setting.
- Scene Pan: places a whole scene in the field when Layer or Split mode is active.
A PANIC button is always visible in the header. One click instantly silences everything: it stops all notes, kills any stuck or hung voices across both scenes, clears held and latch state, and flushes the effect bus so ringing reverb and delay tails go quiet. Use it any time a note will not release or a patch runs away on you.
Quality and CPU
Section titled “Quality and CPU”The oversampling Quality setting and the Auto HQ on bounce option live in the Master band. For a full explanation of Quality levels and CPU tradeoffs, see Performance & CPU.