De 3.0 firmware is nu in open beta!
V3.0 new features
V3.0 adds support for audio clips and live looping, allowing you to use your Deluge more like a DAW, or more like a looper / loop pedal.
Also new is the QWERTY keyboard, allowing text input on your Deluge, and the naming of songs, presets, and more.
There are various other fixes and improvements too, and CPU-efficiency (meaning the number of sounds you can have playing at once) is always inching upwards, too.
Audio clips and looping
Create an audio clip in song view by turning a regular instrument clip (what we used to call a "track") into an *audio* clip: hold down a pad on it in song view and press the select knob.
It will default to receiving its audio input for recording from the left input channel. To change this, hold down the learn button and press on the clip. You can now select right, stereo, and two more options detailed below. Options which have a dot after them indicate that this input source will also be "echoed" straight back out - in other words, monitoring will be enabled for it.
Additional audio source options are MIX and OUTP. MIX records the Deluge’s internal audio without any master FX or volume applied, allowing you to “bounce” tracks. OUTP records the output with all master FX and volume. You’ll usually want MIX.
To record to an audio clip, just be in "record" mode, and "play" the clip. It'll start recording (its play-cursor will be read instead of white) and keep lengthening until you arm it to stop recording by tapping its launch pad again. As soon as it's stopped recording, it'll start playing back, all in sync.
To easily create a next overdub during playback, hold down the record button and press a pad on the next row down from an audio clip (we're still in song view, here). Your new overdub will arm, and begin recording shortly after. It'll keep extending until you tell it to stop.
Or, there's a "continuous layering" mode which will create an overdub of a fixed length, and as soon as that's finished recording, another one will begin, and so on, until you stop it (discarding an overdub - see below). To do that, hold the record button and press the audition/section pad on the row where you want to create the new overdub (below an existing audio clip).
Anytime an overdub is armed to begin recording, the whole overdub (which more technically is still also an "audio clip") will appear as a red bar. Tapping any pad on it will instantly delete it, in case you decide you don't want to record another overdub after all.
Undo and redo work in conjunction with all of these functions, just like you'd expect from a loop pedal.
You can go into an audio clip by tapping on it, just like a regular "instrument clip" (fka "track"). You'll see the waveform - but unlike regular waveform view, your view is zoomed to a note interval like 8th-notes, 16th-notes, etc. because your audio clip is locked to the beat.
In audio clip view, shortcuts are available for most parameters.
As well as recording, described above, you can also use the "browse" shortcut to load an audio file into an audio clip.
There's a special mode which allows you to record an audio clip like a basic loop-pedal does, and it'll take the tempo by looking at the length of the loop as soon as you stop it. To do this, record an audio clip while no other existing clip is playing and the metronome is off. Record your audio, then hit your clip's launch pad to stop the recording. The newly calculated tempo will blink on the display, and your loop / clip will instantly begin to play back.
If you want to "grab" the tempo from an existing audio clip (e.g. a loop loaded from file, or if you fiddled with the tempo and want the clip’s native tempo back), hold down the tempo knob and press on the clip - either its row in song view, or on any of the pads in audio clip view.
Audio clips and tracks in arranger
You'll be used to each row of pads in arranger representing an "instrument". Well now, a row of pads can also represent an "audio track" - a lane of audio-clip-instances just like the familiar lanes of "instrument-clip-instances" (previously we just called these track-instances).Think of the arranger as a DAW. You've got lanes for your instruments, lanes which are your audio tracks, and you'll put a bunch of clip-instances in your lanes.
(This paragraph is not very important and quite technical.) For a project where you've already done some looping in "song view", you'll notice that for each audio clip you recorded or created, there's a separate "audio track" (a lane) in arranger. If this seems confusing, you can just not worry about it. Or if you do want to know the reason (which won't really affect you), it's that the way the Deluge works, for multiple clips to sound at once, they have to be on separate "instruments" (remember?), and so for your multiple audio clip overdubs to sound at once, they have to exist on separate ones of the audio-clip equivalent of an "instrument", which is an "audio track", aka a "lane in the arranger for audio clip instances".
Anyway, that's not too important - if you want to use audio clips in arranger, you'll want to create one of these "audio tracks" (aka lanes) for yourself, so hold down an empty audition pad and press down on the select knob. This sets that row of pads to be a new audio track. You can even rename your audio track from the default AUDIO1, AUDIO2 etc, by holding its audition pad and pressing the new "name" shortcut pad (above arp mode). You could call it "GUITAR" or something - like you would name a track in a DAW.
And you can place new empty (and white) audio-clip-instances in your audio track by tapping in it, just like with any other lane in arranger. You can then tap them to go into audio clip view for that clip, and from there you can browse for an audio file.
Another crucial thing you'll want to do is record a new audio clip directly into one of these arranger audio tracks. See “arming clips and tracks for recording”, below.
To change your audio track's input channel, hold down the learn button and press the audio track's audition pad.
MIDI / instrument looping
Almost everything described above for audio clips and looping now works for regular instrument clips (synths, kits, etc) too! This allows you to record instrument clips whose length auto-extends til you tell it to stop, etc.
This will happen anytime you have a clip which is completely empty (no notes) and play it from the beginning with the Deluge in record mode (see below if you want to unarm this). Its play-cursor will be red to indicate this mode - the same as for recording audio clips.
MIDI / instrument looping does *not* have a version of the audio looping feature where the tempo is taken from your first loop.
When recording your various overdubs of instrument clips, unlike for audio clips, only one will sound at a time - because they're playing through the same instrument (e.g. same synth), and that's how the Deluge works - only one active clip per instrument.
Arming clips and tracks for recording
Clips in song view are armed to record by default if they don’t already contain audio (if audio clip), or notes (if instsrument clip). To deactivate this, hold down the record button. Clips’ launch pads will begin blinking red to indicate that they’re armed to record - as they are by default. Tap one to deactivate it.
And the system is very similar in arranger - except arming is off by default. Hold down record, then tap the mute/launch pad for a row/track. That will then become armed to record a new clip (audio or notes) when you press record.
MIDI / pedal control
There are some new commands you can set up in the settings menu -> MIDI -> CMD. These are: UNDO, REDO, and LOOP. The first two are self-explanatory. LOOP is basically a one-stop live looping control. It’ll start playback and recording (you’ll first want an empty clip already set up), or close a loop if one is already recording. Or, if no empty clip to record to, it’ll create an “overdub” (see above) below the last-recorded clip. Or if you’re holding down a pad on a clip in song view as you activate the LOOP command, it’ll create the overdub from that clip.
Advanced click-free audio looping with extra “margins” recorded (it’s on by default, so you don’t have to read this)
Enabled (by default) in settings menu -> RECOrd -> MARGins. Switch to ON.
With the margins setting on, audio clips recorded from external sources will get a few milliseconds of extra audio captured at their start and end, to allow a crossfade to be done at the loop point, to avoid those nasty clicks that inherently result from jumping back to the start of a waveform.
Yup - to do this it even recalls the last few milliseconds of audio from a buffer from before you even hit the button to record. This extra audio is just written into the WAV file as part of the main waveform, along with tags indicating the intended actual start and end points - meaning that if the WAV file is later loaded into another Deluge project it'll know what to do with it. Other software / hardware may or may not know what to do with these tags; if you're intending to use your Deluge-recorded audio clips in other devices without hiccups, you have the option of switching MARGins back OFF - but of course you'll lose the benefits of this feature.
And that's it - you shouldn't hear any clicks at the loop point. Just a little bit of a dull thud in some cases - that's the sound of a crossfade between two portions of a wave whose frequency content isn't necessarily in phase.
The crossfading even works hand-in-hand with the time stretching algorithm to deliver the best result.
So, that's what happens when the loop point is hit - but this does nothing to help the potential click you might hear when the waveform is played from the start for the first time if it didn't start right on a zero-crossing, with no previous iteration to crossfade from. For this, there’s an attack setting. It defaults to slightly on when margins are in use for a given recording, or off otherwise.
Internal recordings (from MIX or OUTP) do not record these extra margins (and so they don't crossfade), and they do not enable an attack-time by default. This is expected to sound the best in most cases.
Audio clip squishing / trimming / changing loop points
You can shorten an audio clip just like an instrument clip (formerly called a “track”) - while viewing it, hold down shift and turn the <> knob. For audio clips, this squishes its audio contents to the new length. If you instead want to trim or extend its end, then tap a pad at the right-most end of the visible waveform. A red marker will begin blinking there. That's the loop-point - looking similar to in “waveform view”, which you might already be familiar with. Now tap where you want to move it to. That's it. You can tap the red marker again to make it disappear again.
Or, you can enter “waveform view” for an audio clip to do a low-level edit of the start and end points. In here, just like how it is for regular old samples, e.g. “snares”, the waveform is white - so you know you're not in just "audio clip view", where of course you also see the waveform but it's coloured. This editing of start and end points here in “waveform view” is not quantized to anything, and you can zoom right into the individual sample level. The audio clip stays the same length, so will continue to loop at, say, “120bpm” - you’re just changing the region of the waveform which will be squished into that amount of time.
Recording count-in
There's now a recording count-in option! Enable it in settings menu -> RECO -> COUN. Then anytime you begin playback (with Deluge as "master") with the record button enabled, it'll do a count-in first. But it won’t do the count-in if recording is going to begin for just one audio clip from which it’s going to auto-detect the tempo - see above.
QWERTY and file management
Qwerty mode general
You can now enter text on the Deluge, and name your songs, synths, kits and more.
Now anytime you're in a saving / loading / browsing interface, pads will illuminate to illustrate a qwerty keyboard, and you can start typing. This includes even the sample file-browser.
When loading songs, you'll need to tap a pad first in order to make the qwerty keyboard appear - this is so as not to obscure the visual song preview you see.
So, you can name your songs / presets now. Alternatively, you can still browse / save numbered files just like before.
As you start typing, the rest of the filename is automatically "predicted" if a matching file exists - just like when typing a web url. Use the <> knob to move left and right.
Renaming sounds ("drums") within a kit
There's a new shortcut pad - the pad above arp mode. Shift+pressing that allows you to rename the currently selected sound within a kit.
Change to handling of preset suffixes
Presets are no longer automatically renamed to have a letter suffix (e.g. 1A) when a song is loaded or when you turn the gold knobs. Instead, there's the system detailed below.
New preset loading interface
You can still select presets like before by just turning the select knob. But if you want some more advanced options, and a qwerty keyboard, then press load+synth or load+kit. So you can easily type the name of the preset you want.
Now, suppose you want to load preset 2, but another track is already using preset 2 so you can't (this new interface will give you a "USED" alert in this case). You can long-press the load button, bringing up a context menu allowing you to CLONe the preset, causing it to load afresh as preset 2A. Give it a go - it may sound like a complicated system from my instructions, but I feel this is a much nicer solution than the automatic renaming way from before.
Deleting files
Now, in any browsing interface, including for samples and presets, you can shift+press the save button to delete - it'll prompt you "DELE" first.
Overwrite confirmation
Now, anytime you're going to save over an existing file, it'll prompt you "OVER" first.
USB host mode for MIDI devices
You must power your Deluge with a DC (centre-negative!) adapter in order to use this feature - it won’t work on battery power. The Deluge is able to deliver a little bit of power to connected devices, but not much. Basic controllers without lots of LEDs should work in many cases, but not everything will. If your MIDI device has the option to provide it with power externally, that will get you around this limitation.
To do this, you need to have the USB MIDI device connected when you boot the Deluge up. Once it's connected like this, you can even disconnect and reconnect the device, but you won't be able to successfully connect your Deluge to a computer until you reboot.
Some USB MIDI devices actually present themselves to their host as a “hub” - not just a MIDI device. Unfortunately, the Deluge does not yet support such devices, though support is hopefully coming in the near future. If such a device is detected, the Deluge will blink “HUB”, so you’ll know that this is the reason it won’t work. Or, it’ll blink “MIDI” for a working MIDI device, or “UNKNown” for anything else. If your device doesn’t work and you get no error message, it may be a power issue - see above.
Currently, hosted MIDI USB devices are for MIDI input only - not output. I’m hoping to add to this, possibly even during the beta testing phase.
Notes for Deluge 3rd-party developers
Deluge XML files now look a bit different. Ones saved in the old format will still load fine. But if your software needs to *read* Deluge XML files, a lot of what were “tags” are now “attributes” in files saved from V3.0. I’m putting together some documentation on the format in the next couple of days.
