The Neutron’s front offers no PWM but the ATTENUATOR 2 is default-hardwired inside to altern between both width settings, independently from the Mod Depth which results in a kind of cyclical PWN. You easily get beat patterns following the various selected waveshape, as they cross as the oscillator phases zero in – all that even before.
Hardware manufacturer Behringer, known historically and primarily for their cheap noisy mixers, fucked up.
Their recent efforts to re-brand themselves as a cheap clone company have been mostly welcomed by the larger music making community. They got a bit carried away though and started to trademark names from other companies. Synth Anatomy first broke this story, but CDM's Peter Kirn brought more attention to it. Two weeks later Behringer trademarked Peter Kirn's last name.
Peter had previously attracted Behringer's attention when he exposed their attempts to sue a site that called Behringer a shameless copycat. They also tried to sue Dave Smith Instruments and some DSI forum posters for defamation; which Peter also reported on. While many people have been happily buying up their new cheap clones, it seems like Peter Kirn has been the only one pointing out their disturbing trend of silencing critics.
Behringer Neutron Overlay 2.0
Faced with a voice that they could not easily intimidate into silence, Behringer's marketing department spent a lot of time and money producing a mock product to mock Peter. This was almost immediately pulled from their social media posts when people began accusing the German manufacturer of antisemitism. I think the nose looks more like Pinocchio. I spoke with Peter this morning and can report that Peter is not Jewish.
Behringer have apologized specifically for any implications of antisemitism, but have yet to apologize for attacking an independent journalist with the full force of their goddamn marketing department. Fuck Behringer.
It is worth noting that Behringer doesn't even own the rights to the music they used in this video. Like many of their real products, their fake product is also a clone, because they're shameless copycats.
Neutron by Behringer was a pretty good value for money before this update, and with version 2.0, Neutron got quite a lot better. In this video I cover the pros, cons and important new features in Neutron firmware version 2.0.
The new firmware has important improvements to Neutron’s paraphonic playability and options, LFO and more. It also supports Behringer’s new Neutron control software, which makes accessing its “shift” features substantially easier, gives bi-directional feedback to parameter status and tuning, and controls other parameters not configurable in the panel.
Along the way I explore 13 patch ideas and general tips which will hopefully make life easier for Neutron users. Here’s the video and the tips are below…
Tip #1: Neutron’s overdrive and delay circuits can change your sound from a subtle to substantial way. You can bypass components in the signal chain by patching around them in the patch bay.
Behringer Neutron Application
Tip #2: Neutron has quite a few default modulation routings that can mess with your sound without you quite understanding why. Reset knobs to the “Init” position if you’re hearing modulation and can’t figure out where it’s coming from… (e.g., turn ATT2 fully counterclockwise, same goes for the filter LFO and envelope mod depths)
Tip #3: Neutron’s tuning knobs are quite sensitive. Tune the oscillators to interesting intervals using the control software and use the mix knob to vary the balance or fade between them different tunings for creative effect.
Tip #4: Use a precisely attenuated and tuned Square LFO to create a simple two note sequence.
Tip #5: Don’t be afraid to rearrange the knobs… I think the filter cutoff knob should have been bigger and that the oscillator frequency knobs are too big and easy to hit by mistake. Luckily, it’s quite easy to rearrange the knobs to whatever works for you.
Tip #6: By default, paraphonic mode is hard to use consistently because you don’t have control over which oscillator gets played next. Set note priority to low in paraphonic mode to help mitigate that problem.
Tip #7: Sum the two filter outputs to create new filters… for example, a summed lowpass and high pass filters make a notch filter, and with increased resonance, it’s possible to create a subtle peak filter.
Tip #8: While not the best way to create a stereo filter, since Neutron has two filter outputs with different filter types in each, you can use the two filter outputs for an interesting stereo filter effect. For example, route a band pass filter to the left speaker and a low pass to the right.
Tip #9: Neutron’s envelopes are quite snappy. Make bassy kicks with a fast resonant filter decay modulation.
Tip #10: You can change the shape and phase for each of the 5 shape slots in the LFO. Creative shape and phase morphing can create quite interesting rhythmic results. Check out the companion video for an example.
Tip #11: Create a flanger with slow subtle delay time sine LFO modulation .
Behringer Neutron App Mac Pro
Tip #12: Use velocity, aftertouch and the mod wheel in your patches!! They’re available as mod sources so make sure you map them to something interesting and use them when you play.
Behringer Neutron Update
Tip #13: Quite a number of faceplate/overlay manufacturers have popped up with alternate Neutron overlays. Regardless of the color, makes sure you get an overlay with the new 2.0 “shift” features.