
Charlatan 

(c) 2010-2011 BlauKrautEngineering

Introduction
============

Charlatan is a polyphonic, subtractive virtual analog (VA) software synthesizer plugin whose design focuses on sound quality and easy usability. The design philosophy was to provide a feature set just large enough to cover a wide range of sounds rather than an infinite number of parameters and modulation options cluttering the user interface and distracting from the creative process. That said, Charlatan's synthesis architecture is flexible enough to create all kinds of sounds, from conventional classic leads, basses and pads to weird blips and noises.

While making no compromises about sound quality, the algorithms have been optimized for efficient CPU usage making Charlatan well suited as a ``bread and butter'' synth even in projects with a large number of plugin instances.

Best of all, it's FREEWARE! Enjoy!


Feature Summary
===============

* 2 oscillators with triangle, sawtooth, rectangle and noise waveforms
* oscillator pulse-width modulation (PWM) and slew rate modulation (morphing between triangle and sawtooth)
* oscillator hard synchronization and ring modulation
* 2 ADSR envelope generators
* 1 LFO
* 3 filter types emulating nonlinear characteristics of classic hardware: 4-pole (24 db/oct) and 2-pole (12 db/oct) lowpass, bandpass
* 3 voice modes: Monophonic with retriggering, Monophonic Legato and 8-voice Polyphonic
* low CPU usage
* 100% coded in C++
* native 64-bit support


Version History
===============

1.1.3 (2011-11-21)
* BUGFIX: corrected placement of nonlinearities in 4-pole lowpass filter. Mainly noticable with high resonance
* Filter key tracking: account for glide and pitch bend
* introduced slight pitch tuning error of voices in polyphonic mode
* Detune parameter is now nonlinear to make it easy to dial in small values
* minor tweaking of presets

1.1.2 (2011-11-06)
* Handle MIDI program change
* BUGFIX: aliasing artifacts of triangle oscillators at very high pitch
* smoothing of filter cutoff parameter to eliminate artifacts when doing fast manual sweeps
* BUGFIX: regression which broke compatibilty with older hosts such as Cubase SX
* some more presets (based on banks from KVR member Alvfaria)

1.1.1 (2011-10-04)
* BUGFIX: crash in Live with multiple instances

1.1 (2011-10-03)
* improved 4-pole filter sound and time-varying behavior by introducing more nonlinearities, at the expense of higher CPU usage.
* BUGFIX: properly report automatable parameters. Fixes crash in Orion/bug in Cubase.

1.0 (2011-09-09)
* enhanced factory preset banks
* small fixes and performance optimizations

1.0rc1 (2011-08-27)
* BUGFIX: Crash in Orion
* Changed preset management to "chunk-based". Required for compatibility with Orion; might also have other advantages in future releases.
* Changed PITCH DETUNE parameter behavior when OSC2 SYNC is active so that the overall pitch stays in tune
* updated/enhanced presets
* Filter: minor tweaks

IMPORTANT NOTE: FXB bank and FXP patch files saved with version >= 1.0rc1 have a different format than those saved with earlier versions. However, any decent host should still be able to load banks/patches saved with earlier releases. Still, it's recommended to convert old files by loading and resaving them with the current version of Charlatan (make backup before). 

0.9.5
* BUGFIX: crash on load in MuLAB
* BUGFIX: force immediate oscillator phase locking after enabling/disabling ringmod or sync

0.9.4
* 64-bit version
* circular mode for knob controls (determined by host settings)
* filter cutoff knob now has a default value (double-click) which allows to play self-oscillation in-tune (with key tracking = 100%)
* pitch tune and pitch bend range knobs now can also be fine adjusted by holding down shift key
* OSC2 sync now also works when OSC1 is set to noise
* gentle prefiltering of ring modulator inputs for less harsh sound
* handle "all notes off" MIDI message
* organized presets into different banks; more presets (thanks Teksonik)
* BUGFIX: denormal issue in envelope generator
* BUGFIX: regression regarding parameter labels in host default GUI
* BUGFIX: potential crash in MiniHost

0.9.3 (12-8-2011)
* support for VST preset banks with 32 presets
* LFO: sample & hold waveform
* LFO: new switch mod wheel -> LFO intensity
* new switch VELO: velocity -> mod envelope intensity
* changed bandpass filter from 4-pole to 2-pole
* output is now stereo to improve compatibility with some hosts
* reverted behavior of filter mod pot
* increased max. pitch mod depth from 2 to 4 octaves

0.9.2 (9-8-2011)
* BUGFIX: wouldn't produce sound in VSTHost
* BUGFIX: change FXP-preset file extension to lower case. Required to be readable by Psycle!
* BUGFIX: releasing pitch bend after note off results in initial pitch sweep at next note
* include REAPER preset file (presets\Charlatan_default)
* GUI: pots can now be set to their default value either via double-click or ctrl-left click
* GUI: new background color. Fixes eye cancer.
* GUI: changed labels Osc2 detune->tune and Pitch master->tune
* Osc1 shape mod: envelope and square-wave LFO are now unipolar
* Various changes to modulation behavior. Presets have been adjusted.

0.9.1
* now has a single VST program (rather than none like before) needed to allow preset loading/saving in some hosts like VSTHost

0.9.0
* initial release


System requirements
===================

* Intel(R) x86-compatible CPU with support for Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2)
* Microsoft(R) Windows(R) operating system
* VST 2.4 compatible 32-bit or 64-bit host application


Installation
============

Just copy Charlatan.dll from the zip-file into your VSTPlugins folder (often C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins).


Legal Disclaimer
================

See license.txt
