Ambi Encoder Insect

s3g Ambi Encoder Insect is a zero-input procedural instrument for spatial insect populations. As many as 64 independently timed voices use stridulation, tymbalisation, wing vibration, percussion, tremulation, and resonant body models, then encode their moving positions directly to first-through-seventh-order ACN/SN3D.

The engine is a musical bioacoustic model, not a species-identification tool and not a sample player. Its controls preserve the separable time scales and sound-producing mechanisms found across insect communication while leaving room for imagined populations.

Workflow

1. Insert the plugin on a 64-channel track, choose a factory preset, and select the ambisonic ORDER.
2. Follow it with an ambisonic decoder.
3. Select a physical production REGIME and a communicative CALL TYPE, then balance population ACTIVITY, TEMPERATURE, VARIATION, and COUPLING.
4. Shape the regime-specific call clocks before tuning its body, contact, and radiation controls.
5. Place and animate the population with swarm motion, field origin, environment, and optional field-listener controls.
6. Use SURF to arrange contrasting populations as a playable two-dimensional ecology, or POP it into a separate utility panel while editing the field.

Insect Source

REGIME selects CHIRPERS, TRILLERS, CICADAS, FLYERS, TICKERS, TREMULATORS, or MIXED SWARM. The regime determines the physical production model. TEMPERATURE applies a regime-specific hierarchy: fine pulse articulation changes most, call rate changes less, and broad phrase timing changes least. It also shifts body pitch by a smaller amount. VARIATION separates individuals, while COUPLING pulls phrase timing toward a shared chorus without making every voice identical.

CALL TYPE is separate from production method. It applies one of eleven functional phrasing templates: CALLING SONG, CONGREGATIONAL SONG, RESPONSE CALL, PREMATING SONG, COURTSHIP SONG, AGREEMENT SONG, JUMPING SONG, RIVALRY CALL, POSTCOPULATORY CALL, DEFENSIVE CALL, or FLIGHT NOISE. These templates reshape rate hierarchy, duty, call probability, alternation, synchrony, and sustain; they are compositional interpretations of the controlled vocabulary rather than claims about a particular species.

Call Structure

The call panel presents the clocks actually used by the selected regime. Generic phrase, call, and pulse controls become biologically legible names such as TOOTH RATE, RIB RATE, IMPACT RATE, or TREM RATE. Parameters that do not participate in a model are hidden. Length and rest controls retain smooth attack and release at every level.

Production Models

The lower-left toolbox names the active sound-production method and relabels its controls accordingly:

Each flyer retains the periodic partial structure of an individual wing cycle, but population fundamentals are distributed across deterministic quasi-irrational log-frequency offsets. The spread increases with population size, and COUPLING coordinates calls without tuning wingbeats together. Mixed swarms map their flyer subset into the flight-frequency range before applying the same distribution, avoiding a shared upper-frequency clamp. Flyer sound also includes bounded cycle-to-cycle thrust and timing variation, thorax response, and body-size-dependent wake turbulence. Cicada colonies move slowly among locked, half-rate, double-rate, and irregular pulse states; changes are smoothed and energy-compensated so they read as massed actuation rather than level jumps. Tremulation uses body motion and intermittent contact to excite a low substrate path, with a smaller airborne component. Regime and call-type changes use a short transition crossfade.

Model Basis

The synthesis separates excitation from radiation: scraper impacts, rib snaps, flight strokes, percussion contacts, and substrate motion drive wing, body, abdomen, air, and substrate resonators. Stable per-voice identity controls placement and individual variation; a separate audio-rate random stream supplies texture without altering pitch, activity, or motion. Dense populations divide into deterministic colonies with related rate, pitch, activity, placement, and movement profiles. Mixed swarms use a dominant colony plus smaller satellite populations rather than assigning production methods in a round-robin sequence. Slow phrase decisions and pitch drift keep the population irregular without making individual wing cycles unstable.

The distinction between call function and sound-production method follows Baker and Chesmore's standardised terminology and the audioBlast controlled vocabularies. See Modal Synthesis and Physical Modeling for the source links.

Flyer synthesis combines short-window spectral detail with longer phrase-scale variation, producing more temporal structure than a pure tone at the same effective wingbeat frequency while keeping the noise energy bounded. The behavior is procedural and deterministic rather than generated by a trained model. See Modal Synthesis and Physical Modeling for the physiological, field-recording, and signal-analysis sources.

Swarm Motion

FIELD RATE, ROAM, COHESION, SCATTER, ORBIT, LIFT, and NEAR PASS move the population. Colonies share broad trajectories while their individual voices wander locally. Percussion and tremulation remain near the substrate, cicadas favor canopy strata, and flyers can orbit and approach the listener. INERTIA controls positional following. Point size and halo intensity show each voice's current call envelope.

Environment Field

PLACE selects MEADOW, FOREST FLOOR, CANOPY, MARSH, PORCH, GREENHOUSE, or INTERIOR WALL. ENV RETURN, ENV SIZE, ENV DECAY, and ENV DAMPING mix and shape the encoded environment response.

Field Listener

The optional field listener lets the completed insect ecology hear itself. Eight cubical virtual lobes analyze the generated ACN/SN3D field after the direct insects and environment return have been combined. They retain fast and slow energy, novelty, roughness, spectral tilt, habituation, charge, and directional gradients. The response is bounded control feedback—not sample recirculation—and the analysis remains warm while listening is off.

OFF disables listener influence and uses open-loop synthesis. FOLLOW reinforces populated directions that the field hears strongly. COUNTER transfers that response toward opposing directions. BALANCE applies negative feedback to restrain dominant directions. LISTEN AMOUNT scales the complete adaptation. LEGACY applies directional gain shaping; CHORUS uses novelty and charge to accelerate calling, activity, synchrony, and spectral edge; SETTLE lets sustained regions slow, darken, and stabilize; and ENTRAIN imprints local energy, roughness, and spectral balance onto call clocks, colony coupling, pitch, resonance, and flight-weighted spatial steering. The eight HEARD meters show relative lobe energy and the GAIN meters show the normalized response returned to the population. Mode and amount changes glide rather than switching gains abruptly.

Parameter Surface

SURF stores as many as 24 factory or captured insect states as cells in a two-dimensional performance space. The automatable Surface X/Surface Y target drives a gliding active cursor; continuous metabolism, call, body, swarm, origin, environment, and listener-amount controls interpolate across cells. Regime, call type, habitat, and other discrete choices follow the nearest cell with a transition crossfade. Population changes use per-voice membership gains, so surplus insects fade into or out of both synthesis and the field drawing instead of switching at a cell boundary. CURVE, FOCUS, and GLIDE shape the interpolation, while OUT and ORDER remain live. POP opens the synchronized SURF editor in an attached utility panel. See Parameter Surface for the shared workflow.

Presets

The 18 factory presets cover cricket choirs, katydid waves, cicada masses, mosquitoes, bees, beetles, interior ticks, substrate tremulation, layered forests, and mixed summer populations. Factory presets default to 3OA, -6 dB, and field listening OFF. RANDOM builds a seeded cinematic profile from related metabolism, morphology, articulation, social, density, motion, texture, and habitat traits while preserving the selected listener mode, amount, and response. It stays inside bounded regime-aware ranges while avoiding arbitrary combinations of every control. SAVE writes and LOAD reads portable .s3ginsect presets in ~/Music/s3g/Presets/Ambi Insect Encoder/.

Order and Routing

The output bus remains 64 channels wide. ORDER activates 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, or 64 ACN channels for 1OA through 7OA and clears the remainder.

Realtime Use

The strict maximum-density release profile covers 48 kHz at 32, 64, 128, and 256 frames. At 96 kHz the full 64-voice, seventh-order population is measured for reference but is not claimed as a realtime-safe maximum-load configuration. For 96 kHz sessions, begin with fewer VOICES, a lower ambisonic ORDER, and a larger device buffer, then verify the complete REAPER project on the intended computer. The output bus remains 64 channels wide even when fewer orders are active.