What's new in RigSculpt 1.04

More room to play

1.04 takes a measured pass over what each block of audio costs. The reverbs do less per sample where their work was repeated (Tension about a third less, Sanctum and Aegis less too), the NAM engine on Windows is built with a compiler that runs its models in about half the time, and the cabinet convolution is a partitioned FFT convolution that costs about a quarter of the direct form it replaces. Trails, preset switching, the afterglow and the send paths behave as before.

Checked sample for sample. Across these performance changes, every change but one renders every stock preset identically to 1.03b, sample for sample, on Windows and on Linux. The one exception is the cabinet: the new convolution works in double precision on the same impulse data, so its output differs from the old cab only by the old cab's own rounding, a null of about 147 dB below the signal (the new one sits within 306 dB of the exact convolution). The same impulse, the same sound, at a quarter of the cost.

Find it: nothing to switch on; the CPU readout and your DAW's meter.

The amps and cabinets wear new artwork

Every Artificer amp and its cabinet now wear original artwork made for RigSculpt: a 2x12 cabinet with two speakers behind its cloth, corner plates, and a tolex covering on the head and the cabinet. There is a set for each of the eighteen amp studies and one for a NAM. You see it in Rig View, on the cabinet card in Chain View and in the Designer's Play, Library and Appearance pages.

The Designer's choices stay independent. Grille chooses the cloth and its corner plates, Cabinet chooses the covering, Metal the face and ModelBadge the plaque. Nothing follows the model's name. A cabinet follows the amp before it in the rig; a cabinet with no amp before it wears a neutral covering and a plain grille with no plates. Scorch, Concord and Cinder have no corner plates.

The speakers fill the cabinet. They sit as a real 2x12 rather than as small drivers in a large box. In Rig View the cabinet runs past the bottom edge of the view and fades out there instead of being squeezed to fit.

Art opacity. The setting fades the cloth and the plates; the covering stays, as the head's covering always has.

The artwork changes no sound. Checked on its own, this change renders every factory preset bit for bit as in 1.03b, and a rig saved with 1.03 or 1.03b opens unchanged: the artwork draws the choices it already made. The images travel inside the plug-in and the standalone app, so each grows by about 90 MB, and the installers by about the same.

Find it: Rig View with any Artificer amp or a NAM; the cabinet card in Chain View; the Designer's Play, Library and Appearance pages.

Every Reliquary mode has its own scene behind the controls, Undertow included, and the Art opacity setting fades them as before.

Undertow

Reliquary has a seventh mode. Undertow is built on one picture: the wash swallows each pick and rises behind it, then sinks under the surface as the playing settles, while the centre clears before the sides and the whole space rolls slowly like water. Nothing in it shifts pitch.

• Tide is the deep: a long, dark, wide space that swallows the pick and sinks slowly. Shoal is the shallows: a smaller, brighter space with more of the early splash, a quicker swell and a quicker sink.
• Rise sets how long the wash takes to rise back behind each pick.
• Sink sets how deep the tail sinks once you stop. Each pick opens the surface; the top of the tail then closes toward the deep while the body and the lows keep the full Decay.
• Touch sets how your picking steers it. Positive: harder picks are swallowed deeper and sink faster. Negative: harder picks stay above the surface and the wash sinks when you settle. Zero treats every pick the same.
• Flow is the sea state: two slow swells roll the level, the width and the brightness of the wash, from still water to a heavy swell.

Decay, Size, Width, Predelay, Duck and the cuts work as in the other modes, and Dual runs two of them.

Find it: Reliquary, the Undertow chip; Tide or Shoal in the voicing stack to its right.

Wah and Volume Pedal

RigSculpt has a Pedals section now, built for playing live. The Wah is a sweep filter voiced after the inductor wahs: Manual puts the rocker on Pedal, which you map to an expression pedal through MIDI Control, and Auto lets it follow your picking from the resting position, opening by Sens and falling back at Speed, up or down. Range moves the whole sweep window from dark and throaty to bright and vocal, Q sets the width of the peak, Voice moves between the round lowpass character and more bite, and Level trims the output. It sits first in line after the input conditioning, where a Wah lives on a pedalboard.

The Volume Pedal sits right after the cabinet, so swells ring on into the delay and reverb. Pedal is the rocker, Heel sets the level at the heel (silence for a swell pedal, or a quieter rhythm level), and the taper is Audio or Linear. Both pedals have MIDI Control targets for every control, their own Flex blocks (Wah under Drive, Volume Pedal under Utility), and they are kept by Keep like the other effects.

Find it: the Wah and Volume cells in the rig strip; right-click a cell for on and off.

The Artificer knobs reach further

The Artificer amps perform better overall, and some knobs are more responsive. On the general Artificer amps (the eighteen studies other than Obsidian, Lancer, Scorch, Pinnacle and Sterling), 1.04 measures every knob of every amp and changes four things.

Gain drives the power section. The level plan that holds an amp's loudness used to measure the power drive again at every knob release, which took Gain's push away as soon as you let go. It now measures the drive once, at the knobs the amp was chosen with, and only keeps holding the loudness. Turn Gain up with Master up and the power section works harder, as on an amp. Output stays the one loudness knob.

Resonance and Presence gain an upper half. The lower half of each knob is the whole of its old travel; the upper half adds a shelf of its own (Resonance up to 6 dB at 100 Hz, Presence up to 5 dB more on top). A saved amp lands at half its old position and sounds the same.

Tone and Bass act over their whole travel. Tone on Belfry and Cinder now spreads its action over the travel and reaches a 15 dB cut, extended from 9 dB. Bass on Citadel spreads its action where the network moves, with full bass at 10.

Checked separately from the preset changes below, every stock preset renders bit for bit as in 1.03b after this change, and a saved amp opens at the same sound: the load converts it once. The one thing the conversion cannot reach is a DAW automation lane recorded against 1.03 for Presence, Resonance, Belfry's or Cinder's Tone, or Citadel's Bass: its numbers keep their old values and so play the new law (half the old meaning on the two extended knobs). Bright is unchanged: a switch whose effect fades as Gain rises, as the cap it models does.

Find it: any general Artificer amp, on the Amp page or in the Designer.

Presets

Three stock presets, Pinnacle Chugz, Obsidian Rhythm Wall and Sterling Singing Lead, were re-saved with their Artificer amps at the factory settings, the sound you get when you pick that amp. Every stock preset now carries Seance at V2, so switching it on from a factory rig gives the current voice; none of them has it on, so their sound is as it was. And Undertow arrives in Tide: pick it from any preset and the deep voicing is what you hear first, with Shoal a click away. Your own presets are untouched.

iPhone and iPad

The same engine runs on my iPhone and iPad, with the same presets, amps and reverbs as the desktop. I will write a dedicated post about the phone and tablet versions.

Windows, macOS and Linux

RigSculpt 1.04 is available free on Ko-fi for Windows, macOS and Linux. Choose the package for your system.

RigSculpt Workshop stays at build 1.1.201 and ships beside RigSculpt Artificer unchanged. Its installer filenames still say 1.03 because Workshop has not changed for this release.

What stays the same

Your DAW still finds the same plug-in. Existing presets, snapshots, saved amps, MIDI assignments and Flex boards remain usable. A rig saved with 1.03 or 1.03b opens at the same sound.

Where to start

Load any clean rig, open Reliquary, pick Undertow, hold a chord and let it sink. Then turn Flow up and listen to the water move.