Splash Instrument Manual

Thank you for buying Splash from Wobblophones!

You will find two instruments in the Splash library: Splash and Nebulon Splash.
This manual will give you an overview of the Splash instrument included in the library.
If you want to use the provided snapshots from Kontakt’s snapshot menu, please install them
manually. Alternatively you can use Kontakt’s browser to drag snapshots to Splash to load them.
More information on how to install the snapshots manually can be found in the installation
instructions.

Splash virtual instrument.

The Splash virtual instrument is all about tuned water drops and streams. When playing Splash
with your midi keyboard, you’ll find yourself playing a kind of water piano, or perhaps a water
organ.
The Splash instrument gives you the ability to fine tune your drops, streams and even the bubbles
that pop out of the water after the drops or streams have landed. You can tune Splash to give it a
splashier or less splashy sound. You can even go far beyond and create previously unknown sounds
with the built-in effects.

This panel is the first thing you’ll see when loading the splash instrument. We’ll refer to it as the
front panel.
The front panel.
When loading Splash, you’ll first see it’s big front panel with two big knobs, a pipe with water and
a splash in it, and the fine tune button.
The big knobs are macro controls that allow for quick adjustments to the sound of the splashes or
the bubbles.
The splashes knob changes the drops or streams from not splashy at 1 to normal splashy at 50 to
very wet and splashy at 100. When you twist this knob, you’ll see the splash inside the pipe change
according to the level of splashyness.
The bubbles knob changes the bubbles that pop out of the water, after a drop has landed or a
stream has stopped. It changes two things: their density and their high frequency brightness.

The fine tune panel.

On the left side of this panel you can fine tune the sound of the drops / streams. On the right side
you can fine tune the sound of the bubbles.

The blue lines that go from the “FRONT” switches to several knobs, indicate which knobs are
connected to the two big knobs on the front panel. For the “splashes” knob these are “Envelope
DEC”, “Dynamics SUS” and “Equalizer HG”. For the ‘bubbles” knob these are “Density DNS and DCY”
and “High Bell Filter GN”. Their functions will be explained later, but now is a good moment to
explain the way these knobs interact with the front panel knobs.
When you change the value of any of the linked knobs, their new value will be linked to the value
of the connected front knob.
For example: if the “splashes” knob is at 50 and “SUS” is at 0%, then 0% links to 50. The “SUS”
knob has a range of -50% to +50%, the “splashes” knob ranges from 1 to 100. “Splashes” 1 will be
“SUS” -50%, “splashes” 50 will be “SUS” 0% and “splashes” 100 will be “SUS” + 50%. If you now
change “SUS” to -10%, while “splashes” is at 50, then this relationship will change to: “Splashes” at
1 equals “SUS” at -50%, “splashes” at 50 equals “SUS” at -10% and “splashes” at 100 again equals
“SUS” at 100%.
So full “splashes” is always full “splashes”, and minimum is always the same minimum. But you can
set the way in which the front knob changes the linked knobs from full to minimum.

Splashes side.
The switches “FRONT” on the left and right switch the interface back to the main panel. The
“INSERT EFFECTS” and “SEND EFFECTS” switches take you to the insert effects panel or the send
effects panel respectively.

Envelope.
The “ATT” and “DEC” knobs are used to set the attack time (fade-in) and decay time (fade-out) of
each drop or stream. If you set the attack time to a large value or the decay time to a very short
value, it is possible that no sound is heard when playing single drops. When this happens, reduce
the attack time or increase the decay time, until you hear something again.

Dynamics.
The “ATT” knob is used to set the volume scaling of the attack portion of the drop or stream.
Higher levels make the attack (beginning) of the drop or stream louder and more present. Lower
levels make the attack less loud and less present.
The “SUS” knob sets the volume scaling of the sustain part of the drop or stream. The sustain part
follows the attack. It is the relatively stable part of the sound. Increasing this value, makes the
drops / streams more splashy and somewhat more pitchy. Reducing this value, reduces splashyness.

Equalizer.
The equalizer is a 4 band parametric equalizer that you can use to color the sound of the drops.
The LF and HF bands are shelf filters, so they cut or boost all frequencies below (for LF) or above
(for HF) their frequency setting.
LMF and LHF are low mid and high mid bands, and include a Q (bandwidth) control.
“LG” sets the low shelf cut / boost. “LF” sets the low shelf knee frequency.
“LMG” sets the low mid cut / boost. “LMF” sets the low mid frequency peak. “LMQ” sets the
bandwidth of this band. Higher values mean a wider frequency band.
“HMG” sets the high mid cut / boost. “HMF” sets the high mid frequency peak. “HMQ” sets the
bandwidth of this band, higher values mean a wider frequency band”.
“HG” sets the high shelf cut / boost. “HF” sets the high shelf knee frequency.

Stream.
This switch turns the stream feature on / off. When switched on, water streams while you hold
down a key. When switched off, only a single drop will be heard for every key you press.
The two menus below the switch can be used to set up a key on the keyboard to toggle the stream
on / off switch. The default key is c-0, and it is marked red. You'll find it one octave below the
lowest key of the Splash instrument.

Timbre.
This knob crossfades between “clear” and “murky” water sounds.

Bubbles side.

Timing.
The “DLY” knob sets the delay between a key press (or stream end) and the first appearance of
bubbles. When a drop hits water, it can create bubbles under the surface. It normally takes some
time for the bubbles to reach the surface, and then to pop. With the “DLY” knob you can set this
delay. Natural values are around 150ms.

Density.
“DNS” sets the initial density of bubbles per second. It shrinks over time. The speed of this density
decay can be set with the “DCY” knob. Setting “DNS” around 85 and “DCY” to 5, gives natural
sounding results.

High Bell Filter.

This is a boost / cut filter for the high frequencies of the bubbles.
“FRQ” sets the center frequency of the filter. “BW” sets the bandwidth in octaves. “GN” sets the
amount of cut / boost in dB.
Gain.
Sets an additional cut / boost in dB to the bubbles.

The insert effects panel.

The insert effects panel’s signal flow is from left, top to bottom, to right top to bottom.

To Send FX (left top).

“Delay” sends the splash signal to the delay effect before any of the insert effects have processed
the signal. “Reverb” works the same, except it sends the signal to the reverb effect.

Distortion.
“ON / OFF” turn the distortion on / off.
“TUB / TRN” changes between tube distortion and transistor distortion. Each option has a different
sound.
“Drive” sets the amount of distortion applied to the signal.
“Tone” works like a lowpass filter: it reduces the amount of high frequencies added by the
distortion.

Chorus.
“Depth” sets the strength of the chorus effect. Higher values make the chorusing effect stronger.
“Speed” sets the speed of the low frequency modulation in the chorus effect.
“Phase” sets the difference between the low frequency modulations for left and right signals.
“Mix” sets the mix between the unprocessed dry signal and the wet chorus signal.
Flanger.
“Depth” sets the strength of the flanger effect. Higher values make the flanger effect stronger.
“Speed” sets the speed of the low frequency modulation in the flanger effect.
“Phase” sets the difference between the low frequency modulations for left and right signals.
“Colour” adjusts the range of the flanger effect.
“Feedback” adjusts the amount of signal that is sent back into the effect. Higher values result in a
sharper, more intense effect.
“Mix” sets the mix between the unprocessed dry signal and the wet flanger signal.

3 Band EQ.
This is a basic 3 band parametric equalizer.
“Freq1”, “Freq2” and “Freq3” set the center frequency of each band.
“Bw1”, “Bw2” and “Bw3” set the bandwidth of each band.
“Gain1”, “Gain2” and “Gain3” set the gain for each band.

Convolution.
This is an effect that alter the signal by “convolving” it with an impulse. It can behave like a filter,
or turn into a reverb.
“ON / OFF” turns the effect on / off.
“Mix” sets the mix between the unprocessed dry signal and the wet convolution signal.
“Impulse” chooses the impulse to use for the effect. This is an operation that can cause glitches and
drop-outs in the sound while the impulse is loaded, so change it when you’re not playing Splash.

To send FX (right bottom)

These knobs work just like the two on the left top, but instead send the sound to the send effects
after the insert effects have done their processing.

The send effects panel.

Delay.
Delay can be used to create echos.
“Time” sets the delaytime. It can set time in milliseconds or in several musically relevant timings.
You can select between milliseconds and the musical timings by using the “Base” drop-down menu.
“Feedback” sets the amount of delayed signal to be send back to the input of the delay effect. If set
to zero, delay creates a single repetition of the input sound. With slightly higher settings, multiple
repetitions are audible, with each repetition getting less loud. At really high settings, it takes very
long for the echos to disappear.
“Damping” reduces the high frequencies in the delayed signal: each echo has less high frequencies
than the ones before.
“Panning” sets the stereo spread of the delayed signal. At 100 delay works like a ping-pong echo.

Reverb.
This is a high quality convolution reverb. It uses impulses from real (or unreal) spaces to create
realistic sounding reverbs.
“Impulse” lets you choose which impulse file to use for the reverb. Loading new impulses causes
drop-outs or other glitches in the sound, so you should only do it when not playing anything on
Splash.
“Pre-delay” sets the amount of delay applied to the signal before it gets processed in the reverb. It
makes spaces bigger or smaller.
“Level” sets the output level of the reverb.

That's all! Enjoy playing and exploring Splash’s sounds!

If you have any further questions or suggestions, or need some more support, please contact us at
support@wobblophones.com.

Credits: All recording, editing, programming, interface design, sound design etc. by Wobblophones.
Additional credits: Spring Mechanics impulse by Ernst van der Loo (ernstvanderloo.com).