# Xoradora modes

Xoradora can play a source sample unchanged, or reconstruct it through one of
seven models. The neutral setting uses the selected model's own analysis and
resynthesis path; it is not a bypass switch.

## Choosing a starting point

| Mode | What it reconstructs | Good first question |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Warp | Excitation through a time-varying all-pole resonator | Should the body become more hollow, sharp, or vowel-like? |
| Hull | A sparse bank of decaying sinusoidal/modal resonances plus residual | Is the hit's ringing body the interesting part? |
| Halo | A smooth spectral envelope and fine spectral detail | Do I want to recolour the body without redesigning its timing? |
| Prism | Complementary subband carriers and envelopes | Would separate low, mid, and high behavior make the sound more useful? |
| Grain | Lapped MDCT coefficients with codec-like damage | Do I want digital smearing, holes, aliasing, or pre-echo? |
| Strata | Learned spectrotemporal parts grouped as Strike, Body, Air, and Tail | Which semantic part should change independently? |
| Strand | Tracked partials, tonal residual, transient, and coloured noise | Should pitch, attack, tone, and noise be edited as separate layers? |

## Mode notes

### Warp

Warp is the best starting point for resonant, vocal, hollow, or strongly
filter-like changes. Start with the body/Warp control, then Ring for a moving
resonance, and finally Harmonic or Notches for targeted structure. Warp Order
sets the resonator detail; Excitation Quantize, Excitation Decimate, Excitation
Tilt, Track, and Reorder change what drives it or how its shape moves. Large
changes can expose prediction artifacts rather than simply brighten the sound.
Warp's Guided response view compares the analysed response with the current
effective response. For a ringing hit that should follow a song, tune the pad's
Root and Coarse/Fine first, then raise Harmonic: it pulls complex resonant poles
toward the nearest valid integer multiples of the actually played pitch. Ring
controls resonance persistence and expansion; it does not by itself make the
ring harmonically aligned. Positive Harmonic may use a prepared background
cache, so wait for the updated result before judging it. Notches adds moving
valleys between Warp's current resonant peaks, rather than removing one fixed
frequency like a conventional EQ notch. Use a small amount to make a broad
resonant body more articulate, hollow, metallic, nasal, or comb-like. A useful
order is Body/Warp, then Ring, then Harmonic if the sound should be pitched,
then Notches to emphasize the spaces between those resonances. If the hit
becomes thin or phasey, reduce Notches first; if it is simply too boomy or
long, reduce Ring. Notches is also a Warp modulation destination, so it can
vary per triggered hit without becoming a static DAW EQ curve.

### Hull

Hull is useful when a sound contains identifiable ringing modes: toms, bells,
metal, resonant percussion, or tuned noise. Start with mode count and Tune,
then Duration/Stretch and Damp. Keep Residual up when the attack or noisy body
must remain believable. High damping and jitter are expressive but can quickly
remove the stable identity of the source.

### Halo

Halo separates broad spectral colour from finer detail. Start with Colour or
Depth, then Stretch if the spectral motion should last longer, and Freeze when
one point in the source should become the colour reference. Colour Detail
changes how much envelope detail is retained; Colour Mix helps keep the result
from becoming an overly smooth replacement, while Motion Steps controls whether
the colour movement is smooth or deliberately stepped.

### Prism

Prism is the clearest choice for band-specific transformations. Begin with
Depth, then adjust Low/Mid/High together or separately. Skew changes relative
band timing; Noise and Shuffle add instability; Attack, Glue, and Smooth shape
the band envelopes. Shift and Freeze alter subband placement and are easier to
judge with the spectral display visible.

### Grain

Grain exposes transform-codec behavior rather than pretending to be a clean
time-domain effect. Bits and Mask make the representation coarser, Smear
spreads detail, and Pre introduces pre-echo-like motion. Hold, Holes, Alias,
Shift, and Rotate provide more extreme damage. Grain Stretch is a saved cache
control; distinguish it from ordinary modulation and allow analysis/render
work to settle before judging a final setting.

### Strata

Strata learns parts from the sample and presents them as Strike, Body, Air, and
Tail. Start with the role gains, then role timing and tuning. In Guided view,
the four Role Time controls use sign for direction and magnitude for duration:
`+1x` is neutral, negative values reverse that role's learned timeline, and the
global Stretch multiplies all four with a `16x` combined cap. Focus, part count,
Scatter, Rotate, Route, and the six layer offsets change the learned structure;
they can require a new background analysis. The four role filters provide a
musical way to remove or emphasize low/high content without collapsing the
whole model into a single EQ.

### Strand

Strand splits a hit into four separately controllable paths: **Partials** is a
tracked oscillator bank made from stable spectral peaks; **Tonal Residual** is the
analysed tonal residual left after subtracting the bank's neutral render;
**Transient** is the short attack stem; and **Noise** is the coloured residual.
Partials can therefore sound clean, precise, and synthetic, while Tonal Residual
keeps complex pitched texture that is not represented by the selected partials.
Turn Tonal Residual down and Partials up to hear the transformable oscillator
model alone; turn Partials down and Tonal Residual up to retain a more
source-like tonal body. Keep
Transient active when changing either path if the attack matters.

For musical ringing, Harmonic pulls each retained partial toward the nearest
integer multiple of the analysed fundamental. Partial Tune then transposes the
oscillator bank without changing the Strand timeline; Residual Tune moves the
remaining tonal body through its timeline-preserving path. Partial Spread is
applied after Harmonic, so use it to fan the result back toward controlled
inharmonicity rather than as the first tuning step.

**Partial Slew** is frequency-following smoothness, not amplitude smoothing or
duration. At 0%, each active partial follows its measured time-varying
frequency immediately. Higher values make it glide behind changes, up to a
roughly two-second response at the maximum; a new track still starts at its
measured frequency, and its amplitude is unaffected. Partial Slew is applied before
Harmonic, so Harmonic organizes the smoothed trajectory rather than the raw
one. Use it to make unstable partials feel steadier or to create a slow,
resonant glide. The host parameter ID remains `pNN_stn_inertia` for saved-state
and automation compatibility.

**Chirp** controls how newly born partials enter, not their steady-state pitch.
At 0%, a partial starts at its measured frequency and only its amplitude fades
in. Increasing Chirp lowers the starting frequency; at 100% it restores the
original one-analysis-hop sweep from DC to the partial, and 100–200% lengthens
that sweep to two analysis hops. Use it for pitched attack sweeps, laser-like
or metallic onsets, and exaggerated resynthesis motion. Return it to 0% when
the transient should begin cleanly at the measured pitch.

High-quality analysis and some control changes are intentionally prepared in
the background. Judge Partials and Tonal Residual both in isolation and
together: a bright partial bank can mask a quiet tonal residual, while a strong
residual can make changes to Chirp, Partial Slew, or Harmonic seem less obvious.

## Neutral audition

For a comparable neutral audition, use the pad's Root note with Morph at 0%;
keep pitch at 0 st/0 ct, full trim, Playback Start at 0%, Loop off,
Saturation off, Voice Ceiling at its default setting, and the model's shared output
controls at their ordinary defaults. Disable envelopes, modulation, and custom
placement state when comparing modes. Do not use a neutral audition to claim
that one model should sound identical to another.
