Lunacy Audio’s CUBE Review: A New Shape of Vector Synthesis

September 28th, 2023 by Kallie Marie

In this Lunacy Audio CUBE review, Kallie Marie explores this virtual instrument with a 3D sample-morphing engine. What are the creative possibilities of vector synthesis?

CUBE is a 3D virtual instrument from Lunacy Audio.

At first glance you may not guess what’s inside this CUBE; Lunacy Audio have made a 3D Sample Morphing Engine. It’s a visual instrument that allows the creation of new sounds via sample morphing within their 3D engine.

What does all that mean? The CUBE is based on Vector Synthesis, which was originally introduced by Sequential Circuits in their Prophet VS Synthesizer in 1986. In short, Vector Synthesis allows movement to occur in a sound by creating a combination of crossfades, typically through the use of multiple sounds — the CUBE enables crossfading four sounds on an X-Y axis, then adds a 3rd dimension with a Z-axis to support crossfading a total of eight sounds in 3D space.

Lunacy Audio have taken this one step further in their design, allowing users to not only experiment with movement between these varied points/sound sources, but also to control the movement patterns. Taking it even further, you can load up to eight of your own samples inside of their morphing engine. The result is a unique set of evolving sounds and textures,- and a really powerful tool not just for music makers, but for film and game audio sound designers too.

CUBE comes with a variety of presets, but there are also expansion packs available. Built-in FX can be applied to any user or factory preset.

Features:

CUBE comes with 100+ multi-sampled sound sources, each each with multiple dynamic layers adding up to 3000 total individual samples. You have the ability to include user audio, mixing and matching your own WAV or SFZ files with the factory sounds.

Rumble is one of four available CUBE expansion packs.

There are also expansion packs, adding up to over 250 multi-sampled sound sources and 1000+ presets for the entire CUBE ecosystem. Each premium Expansion Pack (Air, Threads, Rumble, Pastels) includes another 30-40 sound sources and 120 presets. New Artist Collection packs, like Dust, will focus on a more curated sonic palette from a single collaborator and have 10-20 sound sources and 50 presets per pack.

Choose Between CUBE and CUBE Mini

CUBE Mini is a lighter (and upgradeable) version of the plugin for $49, which has fewer sound sources and presets, but the same advanced sample editor, FX suite, randomization algorithm, and ability to load future expansions,. However it does not include the ability to add user samples. This is an eloquent solution for those wanting to try it out first, people on a budget, and /students.

In Use:

At first glance one might think that CUBE is some sort of surround sound instrument or plugin, something to do with immersive audio. In fact it is a way of morphing between sounds, and is a very powerful VST — so powerful it almost feels inadequate to call it that.

The layout is visually clean and simple, with a row across the top for Sounds, Orbits, Main, Mod, and Effects. There is a patch toggle just below to navigate through sounds, but you can also click on that and see a dropdown menu of each patch batch in their respective categories, which are Factory, Glo, Graphite, and Particles. (If you have the expansions you’ll see those listed there too.) This is also where you’d find any user sounds/creations.

Within the browser drop down menu you can favorite patches, search, and search by Author. To the far right they display the author of the patch, with some notes. The notes are very often helpful hints about how the patch performs best (i e register, or a macro) and sometimes they’re just plain humorous which I really enjoyed! Just beside this menu to the left is a nondescript set of lines in a triangle. This is where you can access a more filtered approach to your searches. You can also select that Eco mode here, and cam edit presets tags, if you like.

Once you have a patch selected and are back on the main page you’ll notice Ether to the left. Ether is a slider that blends between dynamics, but is also auto-mapped to the Modulation wheel on your MIDI keyboard, which makes for some really fun and dynamic playing. (The aforementioned notes help suggest when this comes into play.)

To the right of the UI, the Macro and Filter knobs add more elements of control. The Macro knob allows for variations of several parameters at once, while the Filter sets the global low pass filter.

The main star though, is the CUBE itself which is right in the center, and this is where things really get wild. From here you can see the orbit of the sound you are working with, represented as a ball. This is set on its orbit course (which you can choose, and or create your own orbit), and you can alter the orbit motion by musical divisions.

This might seem like a minuscule choice at first glance but it is so powerful as it changes the groove and texture, depending on the patch, of what is heard. For example, imagine applying automation to this, where most of your groove is locked to a 1-bar pattern but then temporarily speeds up to 1/8th just before a chorus drop.

This is also useful for those in the sound design world tasked with creating a custom sound during game play.CUBE makes it easy to move sound on a custom orbit pattern to mimic what is being visually represented on screen. This opens up so much creative flexibility: Imagine a foe flying erratically around, matched by the movement of sound!

Zooming in on the UI

Let’s dig deeper into CUBE’s controls.

At the top of the screen, starting from the left, with “Sounds” (also note the leaf icon for eco mode toggle) you can begin to see how much control they’ve given users here. You can edit the corners of the CUBE to assign them new sounds, change the arp steps, and more. They’ve cleverly designed this so that you have some standard adjustments for things like loop and ADSR under the “Basic” page, but there’s also a “Tweak” page that allows for adjustments in stereo width, loop time, and arpeggiation changes.

Next over on the “Orbits” tab you can change the Orbit, toggle the it off, change the intensity of the orbit (how large or small — think of zooming in or out), as well as change the XYZ of the orbit, which is akin to the rotation of the orbit. Spatially this adjusts the orbit inside the CUBE’s axis. On the right hand side of the main CUBE visualizer there are banks of orbit presets, and naturally you can create your own. You are also able to filter your search for these orbits.

“Mod” has LFOs on the main page, and not to be missed is the Mod Matrix toggle at the bottom of the screen. This opens up another really deep set of parameters for users to select target attacks for the LFO in terms of spatial volume patterns. For example, one could target Reverb to Corner C of the CUBE…It is wonderfully complex, but simple to navigate once you have the spatial representation in front of you.

The “Effects” toggle has all of the standard culprits you’d expect for shaping your sound, whether factory preset, or your own samples. What I love here is that at the bottom of the Effects toggle there are three buttons to choose from, which might be easily overlooked. They are Randomize Sounds, Randomize Orbit, and Randomize Effects — consider it a Russian roulette of creativity!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out some of my favorite patches from the factory presets; “Android Ballad” is a dreamy arpeggiation which they’ve termed “space hammers,” and I could agree with that. In the Glo family, “My Main Squizz” is a really interesting patch with a “tubular pulse aesthetic” with notes that move between tubular and harpsichord and back again — rhythmically the harpsichord element is more prominent with Ether setting at 100%, and more subtle at 57%. In their Graphite bank I particularly enjoyed “Entering the Void” which is a “percussion sequence with subtle synth pulse and pad swell(s),” along with Triangulation, which is a triplet based percussive synth pulse.

Particles has some wonderful presets too, my personal favorites being “Light of Earendil” which has a reverse pad effect, and “Atomic Precision,” which is a “low key variable arp” with a pulse. It has a dream-like quality that almost sounds symphonic. The variety of sounds in CUBE are innovative, fresh, and well rounded, offering something for everyone, making any style of music or sound design.

The expansion packs are just as diverse and well-rounded, and from them I had several patches that I fell in love with. In Air, “Star Child” transported my creative imagination to some place full of dreams and peace. I could have pressed any random key all day. Pastels holds a lot of wonderful presets, and one in particular had me giggling, “One Note Medical Drama” sounds like precisely that, and the description for the patch is… well, you’ll have to see for yourself! The Rumble expansion pack doesn’t disappoint, and serves up a lot of groove. “Among Us” had me ready to score some sort of Alien Dystopian Nightmare, or first person shooter game.

Last but not least, Threads was full of wonderful patches, but one in particular had people asking me what string library I used. I did a quick little video post using the “Baltic Waves” patch and everyone wanted to know how I got that cello sound. It was the CUBE! With the Modulation wheel, and my sustain pedal I was able to get a lot of expressive and evocative qualities out of this patch simply by manipulating my playing with these parameters. (Ed note, at time of review their latest expansion pack “Dust” was not out yet. Dust is the latest expansion pack in collaboration with Venus Theory.)

To Be Critical:

The flexibility of the CUBE is very innovative, and the presets are so expansive not only because of the good selection, creation, and variety, but because of the deep ability to shape the orbits and other parameters.

However, I really wanted to try out using my own samples, and found locating the information on how to do so a bit tricky. The implementation of user samples isn’t hard, once you figure out where/how to add them, but the UI design for this isnt in plain sight, and Lunacy Audio’s website doesn’t have a how-to video or area. The biggest hint I could find was from their FAQ section. (Editor’s Note: There is a YouTube video on this topic, “How To Transform Your Own Samples in CUBE”.)

Initially, since drag and drop was suggested, I kept trying to drag and drop my samples into the CUBE. Actually, what you need to do is start by clicking on the “Sounds” tab on the left, and then open up the sounds editor. From there you’ll find the potentiality of banks A-H of sounds to be combined from factory or user samples. Once you click where it says “Empty,” and then navigate on the right hand side of the tabs on the drop down menu and choose “User Samples,” you’ll be able to use your own sounds. Once selected, then import any samples into the database, under CUBE’s “User Folder”. It is my hope that Lunacy Audio will soon post some walkthrough videos or guides on their site to go over this feature because it is so powerful, but at present it’s not very intuitive.

Additionally, I found the preset browser to be a great feature, but didn’t discover the tag browser for a hot minute. I kept wondering where it was; it turns out that a nondescript triangle in the preset browser window opens up that menu, and it was so needed during some of my faster workflows. Now that I know that it’s there it will be much quicker to sort through the incredibly expansive library! Maybe in the future there could be a more obvious icon, or this could be included in a walkthrough video.

Summing Up:

With CUBE, Lunacy Audio have crafted something that is powerful, creative, and useful for composers and sound designers alike — across all budget ranges. There’s a price point offering for everyone, and the Eco Mode makes CUBE accessible for a variety of workflows and set ups. It will be interesting to see what expansions they add next. If you’re looking for something truly fresh sounding to add to your workflow,do not sleep on CUBE.

— Kallie Marie is a contributor to SonicScoop. She is the author of “Conversations with Women in Music Production“, available now from Backbeat Books.

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