Sculpture in legato mode with high resolution

When I play Sculpture in legato mode, the upward transposition seems to narrow down depending on how high the resolution parameter has been set. With the resolution value set to max I cannot get Sculpture to play legato upwards more than a minor third, after which all upward transpositions seem to go only as far as a little less than a major third. To reproduce, select a Sculpture patch with a fairly long tonal decay, set the keyboard mode to legato, the resolution parameter all the way to right and play big intervals in legato, lower note first. Downwards this does not happen. Is this normal behavior or a bug?

Didn't try your example, but I can confirm Sculpture behaves odd in some situations like this (I played around with Sculpture a lot in the past). I also had notes desintegrating to noises in the low range. I think it has to do with an internal tuning algorithm (just guessing). Sculpture performs a real emulation of a vibrating string consisting of coupled "particles", calculating forces and speeds and additional influences by the Exciters/Dampers. Such a model tends to get out of tune, and I suppose there is sort of an internal correction value table that is automatically adjusted so the user normally doesn't have to battle with the tuning, but for some conditions this is not sufficient.

Again, just guessing.

Thanks for the comment, I suppose it is not a feature then. Can a mod move this to the bug section?

I don't think its a bug, some tasks are just beyond Sculpture's capabilities.

I don't think its a bug, some tasks are just beyond Sculpture's capabilities.

So you're saying Sculpture can handle playing legato downwards but not upwards in high resolution?

Within certain ranges or with certain settings - yes.

Within certain ranges or with certain settings - yes.

Why would that be? 

Just limitations of the physical model or its implementation, respectively.

Just limitations of the physical model or its implementation, respectively.

What physical model? Sorry, I'm not following you at all. 

Either this is an intended limitation or it is a bug. If it's intended, it should be covered in the manual. I could not find anything in the manual, which is why I posted this question. 

Sculpture's sound generator is very different from usual synthesizer oscillators, you should have noticed that if you read the manual. It is based on physical modeling of a virtual string or pipe, which is good for experimental sounds, but sometimes it acts somewhat unpredictable.

Sculpture's sound generator is very different from usual synthesizer oscillators, you should have noticed that if you read the manual. It is based on physical modeling of a virtual string or pipe, which is good for experimental sounds, but sometimes it acts somewhat unpredictable.

I realize it is different, but saying it is unpredictable means we can never be sure if anything is a feature or a bug. I did a little studying and some experiments, and came up with a solution. In Legato mode, Sculpture doesn't retrigger following overlapping notes, nor does it recalculate material parameters for them. It seems to be as simple as pitch-bending the generated tone according to the Glide time parameter. I confirmed this by comparing note transpositions using both legato and pitch bend, and they sounded identical. Luckily because of this I noticed that the Bender Range parameter also seems to limit the upward legato. So with the up-range set to maximum of 12 semitones I can safely play legato even with highest resolution settings as long as my midi transpositions don't exceed an octave upwards. (There actually seems to be a little more headroom for bending, perhaps to allow Tension mod to function properly?)

 

It's still unclear to me why would pitch bend range and resolution limit legato range in one direction. Even if it's a limitation of the sound engine, it's still at least a design flaw (which I consider a bug), because pitch bend and legato are considered to function independently. 

Ok. You are right. Sorry for putting up resistance - and thank you for bringing Sculpture back into my mind, it ts perfect for a certain sound I was after. So I started designing a sound on Sculpture once more and stumbled over some odd limitations myself, one of which is: I can't move the "material ball" completely from left to right while playing a note - well, yes, I can move it, but somewhere halfway it stops changing the sound. It takes effect not until I play a new note then.

I remember, sound design with Sculpture is spellbinding, but it means you have to "work araund" a lot...