A MODULATION MATRIX?

Can I modulate the volume with an LFO? Can I modulate the filter envelope amount by velocity? The stereo panning by a note's keyboard position? A random cutoff frequency? A noisy pitch attack? A ... ?

Yes of course! There are a number of 'hardwired' modulation possibilities for the most popular modulations, such as the filter LFO amount, or pulse width modulation on the square and saw waveforms (PWM). But next to that, you can attach up to 7 virtual modulation wires between 19 modulation sources and 86 modulation destinations. These sources are:

3 LFO's
S&H and LS&H
4 Envelopes
Velocity
Aftertouch (Channel and Polyphonic Aftertouch both work)
Pitchbend
Modwheel (CC#01)
BreathCtrl (CC#02)
Controller 3 (CC#03)
An expression pedal (CC#04)
Keyboard tracking
A random value chosen at the beginning of each note
Slide, used in Midi Polyphonic Expression (MPE) keyboards as made by Roli and Roger Linn Design.

The modulation wire's possible destinations are:

Every oscillator's pitch, level and MOD parameter
The carrier & modulator frequency ratios of the FM waveforms
The filter's cutoff, resonance and drive
The formant filter's FORMANT and MIX parameters
The speed of every LFO
Each of the 7 parameters of all 4 envelopes

And also...

Every parameter in the Chorus/Flanger and Delay effect sections

But even :

Every modulation wire's modulation amount... !

So you can even modulate the intensity of other modulations, the hardwired ones and the 7 freely assignable wires.

To connect your 'modular wires', use the SRC/DEST buttons on the NF-1 or the MOD button on the NF-1m, set the right connections and set the modulation amount.

Sounds too good to be true? What's missing here, where's the hidden drawback? Well, we'll be honest: there are no audio-rate modulations. You can't cross-modulate the oscillator's pitches, and there's no audio-rate filter frequency modulation. Audio rate modulation are very difficult to achieve in digital synthesis for some complex theoretical reasons. Some other digital synth manufacturers do offer some audio rate modulation, mainly pitch X-mod. We chose to keep our valuable CPU time for other tasks, such as our special Noisy waveforms and our Formant filter.