Nikolator

Overview

Nikolator is a software instrument that plays a Tesla coil. It uses no recordings. Play a key and the coil fires again and again; how fast it fires is the pitch. What you hear is computed from the discharge heating and expanding the air, and from that pressure travelling through a room to a microphone.

So the panel is mostly about the coil and its discharge rather than a synthesizer’s waveforms and levels. Raise the voltage and the discharge grows stronger; widen the plasma channel and the sound grows darker.

Quick start

System requirements

• macOS 10.15 or later on Intel, 11.0 or later on Apple Silicon. Standalone, AU and VST3
• Windows 10 (64-bit) or later. VST3 only (there is no standalone app)

Installation

On Windows, copy the whole Nikolator.vst3 folder to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\. This Windows build is unsigned, so SmartScreen may warn once. After installing, restart your DAW or rescan its plug-ins.

Making a sound in the standalone app

1. Open the app.
2. In Preferences (⌘,) on the menu bar, choose the audio output and the MIDI input device. The MIDI input starts out as “none”, so a MIDI keyboard plays nothing until one is chosen.
3. Without a MIDI keyboard, play the keys on screen.

The standalone app has no project to keep the sound in for you. Save anything you want to keep with ≡ → Preset → Save Preset As….

A first sound

Choose a preset from the preset field and play. BUS VOLTAGE, the large knob on the lower tier, sets the voltage: up for a stronger discharge, down for a weaker one.

Panel sections

The panel has an upper and a lower tier. Click a section to jump to its description.

The tower

What fills the upper half of the window is not somewhere to work, it is somewhere to watch what is sounding. The coil discharges inside its cage, and the lightning runs on the same envelope as the sound; how far it reaches is how long the discharge you are hearing is. What is on screen is what is being heard.

The discharge lamp to the right and the band along the top of the window are lit by the same light, so the coil can be seen working at the edge of vision without watching the whole window.

Pitch normalize

The panel reads NORMALIZE.

• PITCH NORMALIZE — evens out level across the keyboard by lowering high notes. 0–100%, 0% by default. At 0% the coil is as it is
• Meter — shows PITCH NORMALIZE in percent

It works in two stages: first it shortens each note’s on-time, then it evens out what difference is left at the output.

Before 1.1.0 beta 5 this knob and meter were CURRENT LIMIT’s. CURRENT LIMIT is now in ≡ → Settings.

Power supply

• BUS VOLTAGE — the bridge voltage. Higher values produce a stronger discharge. 200–800 V, 325 V by default. It follows smoothly, so it can be swept without stepping

Raising it makes the sound louder, with more low end and more body.

• Meter — shows BUS VOLTAGE in volts

Driver

The PERFORMANCE DRIVER section of the panel: how the coil is driven, and how it is played.

• MODE (FIXED / FEEDBACK) — fixed-frequency drive or primary-feedback drive. FEEDBACK is a little louder and clearly darker. FIXED by default. This switch cannot be automated from a host
• BURST (PULSE / DOUBLE / CLUSTER) — the number of sub-pulses in each event: one, two or three. It is not a waveform: the energy is much the same, only its spacing in time changes. PULSE is the brightest, DOUBLE the loudest and darkest, CLUSTER in between. In DOUBLE and CLUSTER the later pulses land where the channel has just begun to cool, so how they behave depends on MEMORY. PULSE by default. Hosts list it as Oscillator
• VOICE (MONO / POLY) — monophonic or polyphonic. In POLY, up to eight notes sound at once; in MONO the most recent note takes priority. POLY by default
• OCTAVE — transposes in octaves, five steps from −2 to +2
• TUNE — fine tuning in cents, ±100, 0 by default
• PORTA — how long the pitch takes to glide from one note to the next. It works in POLY too: even a chord glides from the note played before it. 0–2000 ms, 0 by default

Drive envelope

How the energy sent to the coil changes over time. It is not a volume envelope: it moves the strength of the discharge itself. DRIVER ENVELOPE on the panel.

• ATTACK — 0–2000 ms, 8 ms by default
• DECAY — 0–4000 ms, 0 by default. At 0 the decay stage is skipped entirely
• SUSTAIN — 0–100 %, 100 % by default
• RELEASE — 0–4000 ms, 0 by default

Release starts at 0 because a real coil stops discharging the moment its power is cut; the tail comes from the plasma channel cooling and from the room. For a gate-like sound, set ATTACK 0, DECAY 0, SUSTAIN 100 % and RELEASE 1 ms.

Coil unit

The properties of the plasma channel. These change the discharge itself, not the sound after it.

• SPARK — the interrupter’s on-time per burst. Raising it makes the sound louder, darker and thicker. Shown 0–100, 30 by default
• MEMORY — how long ionisation remains between bursts. It decides whether each burst breaks fresh air or reuses the path the last one left. The difference shows in the attack and the texture more than in level or brightness. 0–100 %, 35 % by default
• BRANCH — the number of discharge branches; more branches sound sharper. 0–100 %, 30 % by default
• CHANNEL — the discharge channel’s width; wider channels sound darker. 0–100 %, 0 % by default
• ARC LENGTH — the streamer length. Lengthening it makes the sound louder and darker up to about 1.5 m, and quieter and brighter beyond that. Shorter lengths are quieter. 0.05–3.0 m, 0.75 m by default

CHANNEL darkens the sound because a wide source cannot radiate high frequencies well, so the control works like a filter.

Filter and output

The MASTER FILTER and MASTER OUTPUT sections of the panel.

• CUTOFF — the cutoff of the valve low-pass filter. 12 Hz–16 kHz, 16 kHz (fully open) by default. Spelled Cutoff in the host’s automation and in the ≡ menu
• RESO. — filter resonance. 0–100 %, 0 % by default. Resonance in the host
• AMBI. — the room ambience level. 0–100 %, 35 % by default. Ambience in the host
• VOLUME — the master output level. −48 to +12 dB, 0 dB by default. Master in the host

Filter Drive (how hard the valve is driven, 0.2–4.0, 0.2 by default) is not on the panel. Reach it from the host’s parameter list or the mod wheel (≡ → Settings).

At its defaults the filter leaves the sound alone.

Modulation envelope

An envelope that exists only for the modulation matrix. On its own it changes nothing; it moves whatever the matrix connects it to. ENVELOPE GENERATOR on the panel.

• CURVE (LOG / LIN / EXP) — changes the shape of each stage without changing its time. EXP starts slowly and finishes fast; LOG is its mirror. LIN by default
• ATTACK — 0–2000 ms, 5 ms by default
• DECAY — 1–4000 ms, 250 ms by default
• SUSTAIN — 0–100 %, 50 % by default
• RELEASE — 1–4000 ms, 200 ms by default

LFO

A repeating modulation source. It is shared by every voice, and starts from the head of its cycle when you play into silence.

• Wave (TRI / SQR) — triangle or square. TRI by default
• RATE — the LFO’s speed. 0.05–12 Hz, 1 Hz by default
• DELAY — how long after playing starts the LFO fades in. 0–4000 ms, 0 by default

Modulation matrix

A grid of pins connecting four sources to six destinations.

• Pins — each click cycles OFF, ON and INV (inverted); right-click returns a pin to OFF
• ENV / LFO / VELO / KEY knobs — the modulation depth for that row. 0–100 %, 0 % by default

Several sources connected to one destination add together and stop at the limit.

Emergency stop

Stops every discharge. Sounding notes and the room’s tail end on the spot.

While it is engaged, nothing new will sound — that is what makes it more than a mute. Releasing it does not bring back what was playing. It cannot be automated from a host (MIDI CC 3 does work).

Header and menu

The band along the top of the window and the ≡ menu are the same in every Hügelton plug-in.

The ≡ menu

• About 〈product〉… — version and copyright
• Preset — Save Preset As… / Import Preset… / Reveal Presets Folder
• Settings — settings that belong to the product (see its own chapter)
• Virtual Keyboard — show or hide the on-screen keys (products without keys of their own)
• Window Scale — 75% / 100% / 125% / 150%
• Language — Automatic / English / 日本語 (only where a Japanese font is available)

Help and tooltips

Point at a control and its name and current value appear beside the pointer, while the strip along the bottom of the window says what it does. The keyboard band shows no bubbles: they would cover the hand that is playing.

Settings (≡ → Settings)

Lower Current Limit and, from some point down, it starts to act: below that the sound gets quieter and starts to break up. The preset Arc: Current Starved is built on that sound.

Presets

The presets that come with the product (factory presets) are listed in the preset field. ≡ → Preset → Save Preset As… keeps the current sound as a preset of your own; your presets are listed after the factory ones.

Where they are kept:

≡ → Preset → Reveal Presets Folder opens that folder in the Finder or Explorer. A preset someone has sent you comes in with Import Preset….

Init Preset, at the end of the list, returns every parameter to its default.

Keyboard

A keyboard is always shown along the bottom of the window, so the instrument can be played without a MIDI keyboard.

A note arriving from a MIDI keyboard or from a host track lights the same key.

MIDI

Also note on / off (velocity is a modulation source), pitch bend, CC 64 (sustain pedal) and CC 120 / 123 (all sound off / all notes off).

A value moved from a MIDI controller shows on the panel but is not written to the host’s automation.

Troubleshooting

The standalone app plays nothing from my keyboard Check that a MIDI input device is chosen in Preferences (⌘,). It starts out as none.

Nothing sounds at all Check that the emergency stop is not at STOP. While it is engaged, nothing new will sound.

Nikolator does not appear in my DAW Check where it was installed, then restart the DAW or rescan its plug-ins.

Changelog

1.0.0

First release.

Terms of use

This software, and everything that ships with it — presets, images, sounds, typefaces, documentation — is the work of Hügelton Instruments. Copyright belongs to Hügelton Instruments. It is not open source.

Buying it, or taking part in a beta, gives you a personal, non-transferable right to install and use it on your own equipment. That is all it gives you.

The following are strictly prohibited:

• Reverse engineering, decompiling, disassembling or otherwise analysing it
• Redistribution, whether paid or free, in whole or in part
• Resale, lending or transfer
• Taking any bundled asset — images, sounds, presets, typefaces, documentation — and using it outside this software
• Circumventing licensing or protection

The software comes as it is. There is no warranty on how it works or what it produces.