otophon most important of all: play the tones __l o u d__ to hear the effect. preferably on proper speakers. move your head around too. maybe cup your ears with your hands to improve the antennas. i've been always intrigued by otoacoustic emissions, or tartini tones, done by marianne amacher, marcus schmickler, thomas ankersmit and of course giuseppe himself. its effect is disorienting, umami and discombobulating. one of the most exciting yet underused psychoacoustic effects in a composer's toolbox. sprinkle it in your music for that extra inner ear wonder. use it for research on the ears of your favourite humans. so i decided to pack it up in a handy instrument. send it midi notes in the right range (it'll complain), crank up the volume of your speakers and your inner ear will start buzzing and a third tone appears inside of your head. cup one ear, or cup the other, for pronounced effect. you need to play notes in a specific range from 500 hz to about 4.5 khz. that's around C5 to C#8, or midi notes 72 to 109. the plugin will complain a couple of times about this, but it's in the end your own responsibility. here's how it works. otoacoustic emissions are simply two tones offset at a specific ratio and in a certain frequency range. i'm not a physiologist, but the gist is this: the inner ear is an active amplifier, so two loud tones push it into non-linear behaviour and it starts producing distortion products of its own. apparently it is even possible to hear those outside of the ear, which is what an audiologist listens for when testing your hearing. otophon is not meant to be used in a medical setting. otophon is a struggling tone generator instrument which struggles. it's too easy to have two tones playing at the same time in a computer. we have the note data, it's all available, so what's the fun in that? instead, play the left oscillator and make the right side, the pll, try to latch onto it based on the signal, not the midi data. the tracking dial is most fun. it allows you to set how well it tracks or not. how fast it picks up deviations in the primary tone. once you start playing with the attack and the glide on the left, you'll see that tracking is very important. set the tracking just low enough that it struggles to keep up, that's where it breaks and even more interesting distortion patterns come out. note that these distortion products are in the signal, they are not produced by the inner ear. the drift control sets the stochastic gendy nature, a lazy walk, making the oscillator drift even more and thus harder to latch on to. you won't actually hear this in the oscillator but that's basically noise added to the signal feeding into the pll tracking it. dial this in correctly and explore subtle, uncharted inner ear territory. instead of traditional vcas i opted to include the now eu verboten lpgs, which means that the vcas sound a bit plucky depending on the pitch, giving a bit of a percussive snap to the otherwise sinewaves. this also adds some initial confusion for the right side. i've tweaked both sides individually because like in the real world lpgs are never the same. so all in all the signal flow is like this: left tone > drift > lpg left > track right > offset tone > lpg right > mix tones together > speakers > cochlea. about drone mode drone mode turns otophon into a second instrument. midi notes are disabled, the lpgs are bypassed so you get raw sines, and pitch comes from dedicated tune and detune knobs instead. the drift becomes audible in the left oscillator too, not just in what the pll is chasing. it follows the transport in your daw: no transport, no sound. in the standalone app it just drones. the cochlea visualisation becomes interactive: drag the left dot to tune, the right to detune. and the whole ui goes dark with it. some extra guidance on how to use this: - use it loud, but watch your ears - the effect is weaker with other sounds in the mix, the more pure the bigger the effect. - the hardpan on a big sound system is most effective, just watch out for intermodulation of the sine waves. - use it sparingly, or use it a lot. technical information in bullet points: - vst3 or audiounitv2 instrument - needs a DAW with midi notes (or transport in drone mode) to make sound - preset system works by copy and pasting the preset links via the right click context menu about activation on purchase you automatically get sent an email with the licence keys. copy the key to your clipboard and hit the button in the plugin to validate. the plugin needs to go online every 30 days to do a background check if the licence is still valid. you can use the same licence on three different machines, if you are able to afford that luxury in this economy. about presets preset sharing works via the clipboard in the shape of urls, so you can quickly copy them in and out of the plugin and share them with your friends or enemies. easiest is to right click on the plugin, which opens a little context menu to export or import presets. or use the preset menu's top left button to import the preset url from the clipboard. now if you have questions or simply want to say hi, always feel free to drop me an email at hello@every-something-is-an-echo-of-nothing.com i sometimes do like to spend some time offline in nature so if it takes a bit longer, don't be worried.