Massive XL: What’s New and How It Changes Your Sound Design

Massive XL builds on Massive X with new ways of turning audio into synth patches, the ability to import custom wavetables, the option to explore variations and much greater expressive potential when performing. You still have the same underlying sound design architecture, the same deep modulation and open routing, just with a lot more tools to get you to a useful result in a much shorter time.

The key difference is between creating new starting points and making it easier to finish off existing sounds. Generate, custom wavetable import and Mutate are the tools for the former. Editable envelope graphs, modulation displays, module presets and undo history are all aimed at the latter.

If you're comparing Massive XL with Massive X then here's what's different, which features are better suited to which workflow and how you can use them without losing any control of your patch.

Table of Contents

• Massive XL vs Massive X: The Main Differences
• Choose Your Starting Point: Audio Reference, Wavetable, or Preset
• How Generate Turns Audio into a Playable Patch
• Custom Wavetable Import: Build from Your Own Recordings
• Mutate and Randomise: Explore Without Replacing Everything
• Make Useful Settings Reusable
• Performance Features: Morpher Freeze and Polyphonic Aftertouch
• A Clearer Interface for Complex Patches
• Common Mistakes to Avoid
• Massive XL Pricing and Whether to Update
• Your First Useful Massive XL Session

Massive XL vs Massive X: The Main Differences

Massive XL doesn't actually replace the Massive X architecture with a different approach to synthesis. The bulk of the work has been to do with the source material, assisted patch creation, performance and visibility.

• Audio based creation: generate playable patches from an audio reference and import custom wavetables to bring your own material into the oscillators.
• Controlled experimentation: Mutate allows you to target modules and lock others. Randomise parameter values.
• More sound sources: 100+ additional wavetables and 200+ new factory presets.
• Reusable building blocks: module level presets to save and recall sections of a sound.
• Additional effects: Raum, Replika Shimmer and Tape Wobble all expand the internal processing options.
• Performance updates: Morpher Freeze and polyphonic aftertouch bring a whole new set of expressive options.
• Workflow improvements: undo/redo history, direct envelope editing, improved modulation feedback, redesigned themes and an info pane all make navigating patches a lot easier.

Your reason for updating therefore is less to do with wanting a completely different engine and more to do with whether these tools remove the obstacles in your current process.

Choose Your Starting Point: Audio Reference, Wavetable, or Preset

Several Massive XL features can generate a new sound but each one does so in a different way. The right one to pick will obviously avoid a lot of trial and error.

• Use Generate when you've got an audio reference and want a playable synth patch that's in the spirit of that audio.
• Use the custom wavetable import if you want your recording or your designed wavetable to become oscillator material.
• Use Mutate when you already have a patch and want to play with changes to selected parts.
• Use Randomise when you want to explore alternative parameter values within patch modules.
• Use the factory library if you just want a starting point that you can play with, inspect and then modify.

For instance if you like the oscillator character of a bass preset but not its processing then targeted mutation is a much more sensible starting point than going away and making a completely new patch. If you've got an interesting mechanical recording you can get straight into oscillator based experimentation via wavetable import.

How Generate Turns Audio into a Playable Patch

Generate uses its in-house AI model to analyse the character of the imported audio and build a synth patch from scratch. You can use it to take a reference sound and turn it into an editable instrument without having to manually program every single component.

It's a patch generation tool rather than just an audio playback tool. Use the recording as a reference and then keep shaping the sound that comes out of Massive XL.

A Practical Generation Workflow

1. Import your reference audio. This can be a loop with a number of musical elements in it.
2. Separate stems if required. The integrated machine learning stem separation engine uses the same technology as in Traktor Pro 4.
3. Select the relevant material. Choose the stem and capture the four second section you want to use as your reference.
4. Set the matching preference. Work out how closely you want the generated results to match the source.
5. Set diversity. Select how much variation you'd like between the four generated results.
6. Generate and compare. Each generation gives you four options.
7. Refine the result. Use the character controls and the synth's editing tools to develop your ideal patch.

Why Stem Selection Matters

If your reference has drums, bass and a synth line you can actually isolate the element that you're interested in exploring. That gives you a much more focussed reference than just treating the whole arrangement as one sound.

You should still judge the result on musical grounds rather than expecting an exact reconstruction. The matching and diversity controls give you the option of either similarity or exploration, but think of Generate as the beginning of your sound design rather than the end.

If you also need to isolate the audio for other production purposes then this guide to stem separation tools covers the wider workflow.

Custom Wavetable Import: Build from Your Own Recordings

Custom wavetable import gives you a completely different relationship to source audio. Rather than having Generate design you a patch you simply import the audio or your pre-designed wavetable into the oscillator section.

You can drag and drop material directly into an oscillator or import an entire folder. The imported material will appear in the User folder and is thus available for further sound design.

This opens up a very practical way of working with recordings as textures rather than as complete musical phrases. A coffee grinder recording for instance could become raw oscillator material which you can then shape and process.

What else does the Wavetable library add?

Alongside importing your own material, you get more than 100 additional wavetables covering:

• Vintage PPG wavetables.
• Analogue hardware sources.
• Acoustic wavetables.
• Wavetables from the original Massive.

You can go and look at new oscillator sources without having to prepare the custom files first.

Use the Waterfall View to Understand Changes

The single oscillator waterfall view shows all the frames of the wavetable together. It goes with the dual oscillator view and makes it much easier to connect what you're hearing with the actual material that's being scanned and transformed.

You can see the effect of the various adjustments (oscillator modes, phase direction, filtering, phase, polarity etc). A good exercise for learning is to change one thing at a time and then compare the visual effect with the audible result.

Mutate and Randomise: Explore Without Replacing Everything

Mutate is particularly useful when part of your patch is already working. Its side panel splits the patch up into modules (oscillators, noise, filters, inserts, effects, amps etc).

You can mutate the entire patch, you can select individual modules or you can lock the bits you want to keep. That gives you far more control over your experimentation than just repeatedly changing everything and hoping for the best.

How to Keep the Best Part of a Patch

Suppose your oscillator sound suits the track, but the surrounding processing does not. You can:

1. Load the patch and pick out the bits you want to keep.
2. Lock the oscillators.
3. Mutate the remaining (unlocked) modules.
4. Compare the new result with the earlier version.
5. Keep the useful changes and continue editing deliberately.

You can also go the other way around by targeting just the oscillators and leaving the rest of the system alone. The key is to decide what you want to change before you go and trigger a variation.

What's the difference between Mutate and Randomise?

Mutate provides module targeted patch variation, Randomise provides variation in parameter values within modules. Both are available via the header shortcuts, though they should not be considered to be the same thing in any way.

The practical benefit is in controlling the scope of the exploration. A whole patch change can be very useful when you're looking for inspiration. A more targeted change is more useful when you're in the process of refining a sound that's already very close.

Undo History Makes Comparison Easier

Massive XL adds undo, redo and a change history so you can go back to an earlier mutation or move forward again rather than having to rely on memory.

Use the history to compare alternatives rather than just to rescue mistakes. After a few changes go back to an earlier state and check whether the sound has actually improved. More complexity isn't necessarily more useful.

Make Useful Settings Reusable

Module presets reduce the amount of work you have to do in every new patch to rebuild your favourite components. You can load and save the settings for your filters, inserts, effects, Performer modulators and Key Tracker modulators.

This is somewhere between recalling an entire preset and programming from scratch. You can re-use one useful bit without having to replace the whole instrument.

Build a Small Library of Components

A practical approach is to save your module settings whenever you create something that you're going to want to use again. So save a useful Performer pattern, a preferred filter setting, an effects chain etc.

Start with a small, clearly named collection. Reusable settings are generally most helpful when you can find them quickly and know what they do.

New Effects and User Banks

Raum, Replika Shimmer and Tape Wobble all add further processing options in Massive XL. Along with the module presets they give you a whole host of options for developing a sound once you've chosen the oscillator material.

You can also create and save user banks right in the browser. You can organise them by project, by genre or by mood depending on how you're going to be searching for sounds.

The expanded factory library contains over 200 new presets. You can use them straight away or treat them as a basis for your own variations.

Performance Features: Morpher Freeze and Polyphonic Aftertouch

Massive XL's performance parameters alter how a patch reacts to your playing rather than just how you edit it.

What Morpher Freeze Does

The Morpher moves between the four corners and their associated macro settings. The Animator controls that movement via a shape, playback direction and speed.

Freeze changes the response to incoming notes by holding a Morpher position when a note is triggered. This creates another relationship between your note timing and the changing sound.

• Try a simple shape at a slow rate to get a clearer modulation pattern.
• Try a more complex shape at a faster rate for less predictable (i.e. less 'model-y') variation.
• Compare different note timings to see how the triggered notes interact with the moving Morpher.

Start off with a simple configuration so you can hear what Freeze does before you start adding in any more complex motion.

Polyphonic Aftertouch Adds Per-Note Control

With a controller that has polyphonic aftertouch Massive XL can respond to the pressure on individual keys. You can use that pressure as a modulation source for your selected parameters.

For instance you could apply pressure to a tonal parameter and thus bring out a particular note within a chord via your playing. The essential thing is that your controller has to support it as such, standard key input alone won't allow for per key pressure.

A Clearer Interface for Complex Patches

Massive XL gives you several ways of understanding a patch without having to keep all the modulation relationships on screen at once.

• Direct envelope editing: just drag the handles on the envelope graphic rather than making all your adjustments via the knobs and values.
• Destination feedback: the modulation intensity at the controls is being modulated.
• Hover-based assignments: look at the modulators assigned to a control if you need that info.
• Global modulation: display assignments across the controls for a wider picture.
• Info pane: hover over a control for an explanation within the instrument.

We've redesigned both the light and dark themes for contrast, sizing and readability. The Browse and Play pages all adhere to your selected theme.

A useful troubleshooting sequence is to look at one destination first and only then reveal the wider modulation structure if you actually need to. That keeps the immediate question very clear: which source is altering this parameter?

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Confusing Generate with wavetable import. One is a method of building a patch from an audio reference; the other is a method of supplying oscillator material.
• Mutating everything when in fact only one bit of it needs to be changed. Use module selection and locks to protect the bits that are already good.
• Expecting Generate to produce an exact reproduction of the source. Compare its alternatives as editable interpretations.
• Overlooking controller requirements. Polyphonic aftertouch requires compatible pressure input.
• Keep going exploring without any comparison. Use the undo history to check whether the later versions are in fact any better.

Once the sound works, assess it in the context of the arrangement rather than in isolation. If the problem is tonal shaping then these practical EQ techniques can help you make more targeted decisions.

Massive XL Pricing and Whether to Update

The announced introductory prices are:

• Massive X customer update: $49.
• Crossgrade from Massive: $79.
• New customers: $99.

These are just the introductory figures (not a guarantee of pricing continuing at that level). Always check the current offer and eligibility in the Massive XL product listing.

If you're already a fan of Massive X then the main reasons to upgrade would be custom wavetable import, audio guided patch generation, selective variation and much clearer editing. If expressive playing is your thing then the key bits to look at would be Morpher Freeze and whether your controller has poly aftertouch.

Your First Useful Massive XL Session

Start with one aim really: to create a playable sound from a reference, to take your own recording and turn it into oscillator material or to improve upon an existing preset. Pick the right tool, keep what works and use history to compare the various changes.

Then save the finished patch in a user bank and any reusable components as module presets. That takes a one off experiment and turns it into something you can re-use rather than another sound you have to go back and rebuild.