Raèld Sense

Raèld Sense is an instrument whose every stock sound is made in code: synthesized, or modelled from how strings, pipes, bars and drums behave, never recorded. 338 sounds for Afrobeats, Amapiano, Hip-hop/Trap, Drill and R&B sit in a browser by genre, subgenre and instrument. Each has eight macros that change it in musical ways; a strummer or an arpeggiator can play your chords; 100 MIDI loops drag straight into your session; and your own sounds come in as playable instruments beside the stock ones.

Installing

1. Close your DAW.
2. Unzip Raeld-Sense-1.0.0-Windows.zip from the download page or your purchase email, run Raeld-Sense-Setup.exe and follow the steps. The plugin goes into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, where every DAW looks; a standalone app can be installed too.
3. Open your DAW and rescan plugins. Raèld Sense is an instrument: in FL Studio, add it to the Channel rack. Plugin lists show it without the accent, as "Raeld Sense", so type "raeld" in the plugin browser.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and any VST3 host (FL Studio, Ableton Live, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Bitwig...), or the standalone app. Sample rates 44.1 to 192 kHz, any buffer size.

If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" when you run the installer, click More info → Run anyway.

Activating your license

1. Open the plugin. The activation screen appears; if it doesn't, click LICENCE in the toolbar above the unit.
2. Paste your key and click ACTIVATE: the Raèld Sense key from your purchase email, or your All Access key. You need an internet connection for this step.
3. That's it: Raèld Sense is unlocked on this computer.

Each key covers 3 computers. To move to a new one, open the license screen on the old one and click DEACTIVATE THIS PC first.

Without a key the plugin runs as a demo: the sound drops out briefly every 45 seconds. Everything else works.

Quick start

1. Pick a genre in the browser on the left (Afrobeats, Amapiano, Hip-hop, Drill or R&B), then an instrument under it.
2. Click a sound: it loads and plays a short phrase where that instrument lives. Click another to hear the next.
3. Play it from your keyboard or the keys on the unit, and turn the eight macros on the right.
4. Let it play: set PLAYER to ARP or STRUM and hold a chord.
5. Take a loop: press LOOPS, click one to hear it on your sound, and drag its MIDI or AUDIO tile into your DAW.

The unit

A long deck in brushed gunmetal. On the left, the browser's screen. In the centre, the main screen: the sound in use (its name, its instrument and source, its genres and moods, a drawing of its instrument, what it is, how many voices sound), or the page you choose with the keys above it. On the right, the eight macros. Under the main screen, the player, VOLUME and the output meter; at the foot, the keys.

• Knobs: drag up and down (hold Shift for fine steps), or use the mouse wheel or the arrow keys; double-click returns a knob to its default. Stepped knobs click into each position. A small readout shows the value while you turn.
• The page keys: SOUND, EDIT, EFFECTS, MOD MATRIX, MY LIBRARY, LOOPS.
• The toolbar above the unit: < and > step through the sounds; the sound's name opens your own presets; SAVE keeps the sound as one of yours; LICENCE; SIZE (85 to 300 %, or drag the window's corner; the size is remembered).
• Drop files anywhere on the window to import them (see Your own sounds).

The browser

• The tree: all sounds, then each genre, its subgenres, and inside them the instruments (19 kinds) that have sounds there. A sound can be filed under several genres; one filed under a whole genre shows in each of its subgenres.
• Filters: Stock or My Sounds, instrument, key; moods (dark, bright, warm, sad, happy, aggressive); BPM from and to; a search box over names, instruments, genres, moods and keys.
• Click a sound to load it and hear a short phrase in its register (808s low, leads high, chords for keys and pads, a groove for drums), at your song's tempo. The next click stops it.
• Favourites (the star), ratings (1 to 5) and RECENT are kept with your library, so they move with it. SIMILAR lists the sounds nearest the selected one: what they're filed under and how they sound.
• The genres are yours to extend: %APPDATA%\Raeld Audio\Sense\Genres.json lists the genres, subgenres, instruments and moods. Edit it in any text editor; the plugin reads it when it opens. If the file has a mistake, the built-in list is used and the browser says what's wrong.

The stock sounds

338 sounds: Afrobeats 67, Amapiano 68, Hip-hop 68 (mostly trap; also boom bap, lo-fi, West Coast and Southern), Drill 68 (UK, NY/Brooklyn, Chicago, Afro-drill) and R&B 67 (contemporary, neo-soul, alternative). Every genre has all 19 instruments: guitars, bass, 808s, keys and pianos, electric pianos, organs, pads, leads, plucks, bells and mallets, flutes and winds, brass, strings, vocal textures, drums, percussion, arps, textures and atmospheres, FX. They play at about the same loudness, so browsing never jumps in volume.

The guitars, pianos, flutes, marimbas, log drums and other acoustic instruments are physical models made in code, not recordings, and each says so in its description. For a recorded instrument, import your own samples on a layer (Your own sounds).

• Guitars that say "the strummer plays it" and the Arps play from a held chord.
• Drum kits: kick on C1, snare or clap on D1, clap on D#1-F1, closed hat from F#1 up.

The eight macros

Each turns several settings at once; the middle (5) is the sound as made.

The player: strummer and arpeggiator

PLAYER on the unit turns what you play into a strum or an arpeggio, before the sound, so it plays through all of it and is saved with the sound. While your DAW plays it locks to the song's grid; when stopped it starts from your first note.

• STRUM: play a chord and it is strummed like a guitar: down strums low to high, up strums high to low and a little softer, across SPEED (4-120 ms). STRUM chooses the rhythm: Strum once, Down 8ths, Down-Up 8ths, Island (D-DU-UDU), Highlife picking, Afrobeats picking, Afro chop (muted offbeats). PALM MUTE shortens and softens every note. The strummer waits 20 ms to gather a chord's notes.
• ARP: PATTERN Up, Down, Up-Down, Down-Up, As played, Random (the same every play), Chord; RATE 1/32 to 8 bars, dotted and triplet values too; OCTAVES 1-4; SWING (every second step later); GATE (how long each note is); LATCH (it keeps playing after you let go; a new chord replaces the old).

Loops

• LOOPS shows 100 loops: chords, bass, melody, guitar and drums for Afrobeats, Amapiano, Hip-hop/Trap, Drill and R&B, written for Raèld Sense (not taken from songs or sample packs). Click one: it plays through the sound you have loaded, in time with your song.
• Key: DAWs don't tell plugins the song's key, so set it on the page; loops move to it, drums stay. The tempo is your DAW's.
• Drag the MIDI tile into your playlist or piano roll to take the loop as notes; drag AUDIO to take it as a WAV played on your sound at the song's tempo and key (it repeats with no click).

Editing a sound

EDIT opens every setting of the sound in the main screen, in tabs:

• LAYER 1-4: each layer's source and split (LEVEL, PAN, OCTAVE, SEMITONE, FINE; KEY and VELOCITY LOW / HIGH choose which notes it plays), its filter and amp, and its source's own controls.
• Sources: Analog (sine, triangle, saw, pulse, noise, supersaw; unison, detune, sync), Wavetable (eight tables made in code), FM (four operators, eight algorithms, feedback), Physical (modelled guitars, bass guitar, flutes, whistle, marimba, kalimba, balafon, log drum, piano, tine keys), Granular (grains of five code-made sources), Drum (808, kick, snare, clap, hats, shaker, conga, talking drum, rim) and Sampler (code-rendered samples, or your own). Each has a SHAPE the mod matrix can move.
• Filters: low-pass (12 dB or ladder 24 dB), high-pass, band-pass, notch, formant (vowels); DRIVE before the filter; KEY TRACK; FILTER ENV in semitones.
• ENVELOPES + LFOS: four envelopes (1 the amp, 2 the filter by default) and four LFOs (SYNC to your DAW's tempo, RETRIGGER per note).
• PLAYING: VOLUME, POLY MODE (Poly, Mono, Legato), VOICES (up to 64), GLIDE and GLIDE MODE, BEND RANGE, and the macros.

EFFECTS: a chain on each layer and on the master: EQ, compressor, saturation, bitcrush, chorus, phaser, flanger, delay (SYNC, PING-PONG), reverb and width. MOD MATRIX: 24 slots, each a source (envelopes, LFOs, velocity, aftertouch, mod wheel, pitch bend, random, key, the macros), a destination (pitch, cutoff, resonance, drive, level, pan of every layer or one; envelope times, glide, LFO rates, the master effects, volume) and an amount.

Your own sounds

The first time you import, Raèld Sense says: "Only import sounds you made, bought, or have permission to use."

• Import: drop files anywhere on the window, or IMPORT... on MY LIBRARY. Audio: WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG. Instruments in open formats: SFZ, SF2 (its first preset), Decent Sampler (.dspreset, .dslibrary). Files from closed sampler formats are refused. Dropped while a layer shows under EDIT, it goes to that layer; otherwise to the layer chosen in INTO.
• AS Automatic decides from what it hears: one file is a note, or a loop if it is rhythmic or named so ("loop", "bpm"); several files are a multisample. Or choose: One note (its pitch found and set as the root, silence trimmed, a held note looped smoothly), Multisample (each file on its own pitch; several on one pitch become velocity layers), Slices (a loop cut at its hits, one hit a key from C2), Tempo loop (hold C4 and the loop plays in time with your song, at its own pitch).
• An SFZ, SF2 or Decent Sampler instrument keeps its own map (keys, velocities, root, tuning, volume, loops).
• Shape it like any stock sound, and save it with its tags (genre, subgenre, instrument, mood, key, BPM): it appears in the browser under My Sounds and in its genres.
• The library is a folder of your choosing (CHOOSE FOLDER...; at first Documents\Raeld Audio\Sense\Library): Instruments (the audio and its map) and Sounds (your sounds). Copy it, sync it, or BACK UP... to one zip.

Processor use

It depends on the sound and how many notes sound at once: at 16 voices about 4-12 % of one core, at 64 voices about 13-45 % (the heaviest are big supersaw stacks, FM pianos and granular pads). If playback crackles, raise your DAW's buffer size, lower VOICES under EDIT → PLAYING, or freeze the track.

What we measured

• Every stock sound within 2.6 dB of its level on the phrase the browser plays; no four-note chord on any stock sound past -1 dBFS.
• All eight macros change every one of the 338 sounds; none makes a sound run away at either end.
• The strummer, arpeggiator and loops on the song's grid, the same at any buffer size; audio loops repeat without a click.
• Your imports in tune across the keys; aliasing under -55 dB when pitched up.
• 44.1 to 192 kHz, every buffer size, automation, sessions and offline bounces, checked through the VST3.

Troubleshooting

• It doesn't show in my DAW: rescan plugins and look for "Raeld Sense" among the instruments (it isn't an effect).
• No sound: make sure the channel gets MIDI (in FL, the Channel rack's channel is selected), and that VOLUME isn't down.
• The sound drops out every 45 seconds: the demo; activate your key with LICENCE.
• An import is out of tune or mapped wrongly: import it again with AS set to what it is (One note, Multisample, Slices, Tempo loop).
• A loop is in the wrong key: set the song's key on the LOOPS page.
• Anything else: support.