Sound

midi-sink was a visualizer that needed a synth beside it; since Phase 7 it carries one. Voxo is the sound engine: a library beside the core that receives the identical MIDI bytes — the one producer feeds two rings — and plays them on the platform’s default output. It has three sources: the sampler, which plays Decent Sampler presets and libraries (or one WAV at a root note, or a plain sine), the Suzu synth, and the two layered. The web has no sound core: in the browser the picture is the whole of it, except in the Suzu lab, where the synth runs alone.

Switching it on

• Desktop — Settings → Sound → Internal sound (Voxo). Volume, Source, and under the sampler an Instrument path (a .dspreset, its folder holding the samples, or a .dslibrary) with Load instrument, Unload and Demo instrument; a Sample (WAV) with its Root note sounds when no instrument is loaded. Under Suzu, every knob of the current voice (patches).
• iPad and Android — the Sound page of the sheet: Internal sound (Voxo), Volume, Source (Sampler, Suzu, Both layered), the Suzu patch (eleven: the bowed string, the bell and the three winds, and the six fitted to the Versilian Community Sample Library’s instruments — the patch table), the Synth trace rows (the synth’s orbits into the water, the scope on the canvas — the orbit trace), and the sampler’s instrument: the Dan Tranh demo, or one you import — Import a .dslibrary…, or a preset’s folder — copied into the app’s own Instruments folder (Files → On My iPad → midi-sink → Instruments on the iPad, where you can also drop them yourself) and never sent anywhere. Foreground only on the iPad: the sound pauses with the app and returns with it.

The Dan Tranh, a Vietnamese zither from the Versilian Community Sample Library (CC0), is the one instrument bundled, so a first launch makes a sound; everything else is yours and travels with its own terms — the licensing page.

Local Control

The play surface’s own notes reach Voxo only under Local Control (CC 122, the MIDI meaning): The play surface sounds here on the Sound page. Off, your fingers and the pen still go out over MIDI to your DAW and still paint the water, but do not sound inside — the right setting when the DAW’s synth is the instrument and midi-sink the picture. External instruments always sound.

What a library asks for

A Decent Sampler library may ask for features this version does not play — an effect, a scripted control, a sample format. midi-sink reads what it reads and says so: the compat report, shown once, calmly, when a library is loaded, lists what it asked for that plays without. The report’s contract is a test in the tree.

What Voxo consumes

The same stream the visuals read, with its own consumers: velocity, the per-note bend (the member range), channel pressure, CC 74 (the sampler’s cutoff where the preset maps it; Suzu’s filter and the trumpet’s embouchure), CC 1 (the rotor’s K), CC 2 and CC 11 (breath — the bow and the winds’ mouth), CC 64 (sustain, honoured as a pedal), CC 120 and CC 123 (the panic), and CC 122 (Local Control). The bus effects — a reverb (wet, room, damping) and a delay (wet, time, feedback) — are targets in the CC map from 1000 up, beside the engine’s dimensions, so a controller’s knob can ride the room.

Latency and load

The device opens at the platform’s lowest stable block; the tablets’ latency gates measure touch-to-sound against the phase’s record on every core change. The acceptance test for load is the storm: fifteen channels of dense MPE through a heavy library (and, layered, through the Suzu chain or the hybrid string) for the length of a piece, with the visuals at rate — zero XRuns, zero dropped messages, or the step does not ship.

Later: Voxo Dorean

Background playback (the iPad’s sound is foreground-only, said plainly above), disk streaming of large libraries (everything decodes to RAM today, with an advisory gate), and a shell of the sound engine’s own are one later project, Voxo Dorean — not 2.0.

Rendering offline

The desktop bench can render a replay to a WAV through the same engine, deviceless (--replay-wav): the seed of an offline bounce, not yet a feature.