What’s happening, is the pitch (an audible frequency) is being modulated by an LFO (an inaudible frequency).

In a synth this is easy to achieve, we just use an LFO to slightly modulate an oscillator’s pitch. The great blues and soul singers such as Ella Fitzgerald were masters at this, a gentle undulating swell of vibrato on certain notes makes phrases sound beautiful. Vibrato is a technique employed by singers and many instrumentalists (including guitarists, violinists, trumpet players etc) that slowly fluctuates the pitch of a resting note. These make them useful for changing other parameters such as filter cutoff or amplitude, or in the case of vibrato: pitch. So LFOs are below the human hearing range – if we plugged one into a speaker you might feel some change in air pressure or hear a click, but as an oscillator it’s inaudible. This range is sub-sonic, sub meaning below and sonic meaning audible. LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillator, and would ordinarily function between about 0.01 Hz and 20 Hz.

It’s been around for years to transmit radio signals. As a concept, I struggled with it for years until I had a eureka moment – I was unsure how it different from standard pitch modulation.

The term FM is probably (or at least until not that long ago) a household term which you would have come across through radio (see also AM, or Amplitude Modulation). So without further ado, let’s start with some background… Frequency Modulation Yes, it’s not a walk in the park to program compared to standard subtractive synthesisers, but it’s capable of producing the same detailed timbre sounds as its forefathers, and going further in the process. I started Cubase on version 8.5 pro, and I’m now using 9, and it’s the same story.Luckily FM8 is far easier to manoeuvre. It’s mind boggling… Ableton takes the cake when it comes to that creative control like mapping and macros. I couldn’t agree more… when I switched from Ableton to Cubase, I tried to map my A&H Xone:4D… yeah right, I could only really map 8 of the knobs.

The macro/quick controls in Cubase really sucks, it’s a joke really… I find nothing useful about it at all to be honesty. I see posts all the way back to 2011 about this matter, yet Steinberg totally ignores the request. Steinberg please make this work like the Ableton macro’s! it’s been in other DAW’s for so long, I really miss this in Cubase, and since it’s requested so much, I don’t understand why Steinberg refuses to listen to their customers on this matter. I don’t understand why Steinberg isn’t doing anything about this since I’ve seen SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many posts about this. The macro/quick controls in Cubase is a JOKE, seriously.

Fm8 ableton