Charlatan v1.4.1 - free VA synth (Win VSTi 32-/64-bit)

[Jazz Franco]

Cute little synth, bot for some reason presets don't load in Psycle
From a point that's good cause it's simple to create sounds from scratch with this, and that can be creative, yet if the next version will work in Psycle with all features on, that'll be even better/

[vegantendo]

a few things i would want personally (maybe for your 1.0 release) would be saws on both oscillators

yeah nevermind about the saw, it slipped past me that it was morphable. sorry i was just excited.

[jensa]

Nice. Though, couldn't download it at all in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer just gives me an imcomplete zip-file. Any chance you could put it up somewhere else?

Did I say thanks.

[karrikuh]

hey i was just trying this synth out today and i have to say it is really exceptional. great oscillators, clever layout all round a well designed plug.

Thanks, that's encouraging to hear.

a few things i would want personally (maybe for your 1.0 release) would be saws on both oscillators,

Just choose triangle for osc1 and turn "shape" fully right...

maybe a sub osc

Osc2 can be used as a sub osc by turning osc2 detune fully left (1 oct down). If both oscs have the same pitch mod (or none) and the PITCH->detune is at 12 o'clock (zero) then osc2 will be phase-locked to osc1 giving you a consistent sound between notes.

and the envelopes might need to be tweaked a little. for example making kicks or percussion sounds it didnt feel like the envelopes were flexible enough, im not sure, perhaps it was just me. if i could get a snappy deep 808 kick from your wonderful synth i think it would be quite wonderful. it really is great already though!

I just reassured myself that 808-style kicks can be easily achieved. I will probably include a preset in the next update. For now, here is the receipt:
* osc1+2 volume to zero
* filter: bandpass, full Q (resonance)
* cutoff fairly low (like 50 Hz)
* Filter mod: envelope, mod depth maybe half-way
* Amp env: A=0, D=5s, S=0, R=5s
* Mod env: A=0, D=10ms (shortest possible, for the attack transient), S=0, R=0

That said, Charlatan does not claim to be a full-fletched drum synth. I for myself use drum samples exclusively anyway these days because every possible drum sound has been created and sampled already.

[AdmiralQuality]

- Hold a note down, bend the pitch down, and release the note while the pitch wheel is still down. Then release the pitch wheel (return it to center). The next note you play will start low and bend up. It's like there's excessive smoothing of the PB amount, and it only happens while notes are active. I can feel the lag from the excessive PB smoothing as well.

- It's a shame the mod wheel can't do anything. A simple button on the LFO to scale its amount by the mod wheel would make it useful for vibrato control.

- At first I thought, as someone mentioned above, why not saw waves on both oscillators? But I see now what the Shape knob is doing (maybe some indication in your panel graphics that the square and triangle are shapable... dotted outline or something?) But very cool to see another synth that can do triangle to saw morphing! I think it would be better if it didn't go all the way to inverse saw though. So that the mod envelope would have saw at one end, tri at the other. Not saw to tri to saw. Yes you can set the Mod Env's sustain to 50% to have it end on the triangle, but the attack portion is still going to go through saw to tri to saw. Odd also that the manual control only provides saw to tri, but not the reverse saw range that's accessible from the Envelope and/or LFO mod.

- More on shape: When OSC 1 Mod Env is selected, and the envelope is at zero (set all Mod Env sliders to zero), the Shape knob still has an effect. I would think that would be envelope amount, so with the envelope at zero the knob should have no effect.

- You could consider having the shape control do something to noise to. White to pink?

- Yes, it would be nice if you provided some preset slots so there's a bank. Even if you don't want to fill it with hard wired presets, just having the slots there assist in program changes from the controller or host automation which is otherwise impossible (as you can't automate the loading of an FXP file).

- Circular knob mode option would be nice. (You can request the user's preference from the host with getKnobMode()) Hate linear knobs. Also, why not use the horizontal dimension as well for linear knobs? (So moving right is the same as up, and down the same as left. You could even put different scales on the different dimensions.)

- I just found double-click centers knobs. Ctrl-click is more the VST "standard", but whatever. Not a problem now that I've found it.

- Filter keyboard tracking doesn't respond to Glide. I suppose that could be considered a feature, but it would be more usual to have both the Oscs and Filter to track the SAME keyboard control voltage (so you apply glide to the keyboard control voltage, not in the oscillators themselves).

- Not sure if it's a good idea to tie legato glide retriggering to legato envelope retriggering. Just because you want one doesn't necessarily mean you want the other.

- EDIT: One more. The ring mod is applied to the tuneable oscillator (Osc 2). It should be the other way around to keep a stable pitch. Much easier to make bell tones and the like that way. (As it is now you need to retune the synth.) Also, it sounds a little harsh.

- The red color is giving me EYE CANCER! (Just kidding, I like red too. But that's what people told me when I released this:



)

Other than that, seems to work and sound fine. Congrats!

[vegantendo]

thank you so much for the response. i was just being too quick to respond myself. i agree samples are the way to go. and i had not taken advantage of your self oscillating filters yet at the time of my earlier post. about the sub osc, it was more me just toying with the idea of your synth having a third oscillator which is probably not what your going for in its design. also, you aught to arrange something for receiving donations for your work. i do still think a swappable background color would be a nice little touch too.

[Bronto Scorpio]

@karrikuh: I sent you a PM by the way

Cheers
Dennis

[karrikuh]

Nice. Though, couldn't download it at all in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer just gives me an imcomplete zip-file. Any chance you could put it up somewhere else?

Did I say thanks.

I'm using Firefox (Linux and windows) where it works fine ... wait, I just found that the filedropper link does not work with JavaScript disabled! Could this be your problem?

[V'ger]

Thx for this, sounds good

Although a stereo output would be nice.

Any chance you could also share your Reaper bank file (rpl)?

[jensa]

Nice. Though, couldn't download it at all in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer just gives me an imcomplete zip-file. Any chance you could put it up somewhere else?

Did I say thanks.

I'm using Firefox (Linux and windows) where it works fine ... wait, I just found that the filedropper link does not work with JavaScript disabled! Could this be your problem?

I have JavaScript enabled but the browsers block any popup windows. I'll figure it out someway or another.

[karrikuh]

Cute little synth, bot for some reason presets don't load in Psycle
From a point that's good cause it's simple to create sounds from scratch with this, and that can be creative, yet if the next version will work in Psycle with all features on, that'll be even better/

Yeah, seems that Psycle won't read FXPs exported from REAPER. Since I don't know a simple solution I fear you have to live with it for now... However, loading FXPs which have been created by Psycle itself works smoothly.

[V'ger]

Cute little synth, bot for some reason presets don't load in Psycle
From a point that's good cause it's simple to create sounds from scratch with this, and that can be creative, yet if the next version will work in Psycle with all features on, that'll be even better/

Yeah, seems that Psycle won't read FXPs exported from REAPER. Since I don't know a simple solution I fear you have to live with it for now... However, loading FXPs which have been created by Psycle itself works smoothly.

Maybe load and re-save in f.i. Savihost might do it?

Cantabile lite and Minihost can also join the fxp's to a fxb bank btw.

[karrikuh]

...

Wow, thanks, these are essentially all very valuable comments! Before I can respond to them individually, I may have to further think about some them. But this surely will keep me busy for some time

[GaryG]

- The red color is giving me EYE CANCER! (Just kidding, I like red too. But that's what people told me when I released this:

I like red too but I think Charlatans red is much too saturated, quite hard too look at imo. Funnily enough I thought of Polyannas red skin as a better alternative.

But overall, nice work, very usable for such a simple synth (as all good monosynths were )

[AdmiralQuality]

...

Wow, thanks, these are essentially all very valuable comments! Before I can respond to them individually, I may have to further think about some them. But this surely will keep me busy for some time

The biggest and easiest to implement one would be to add more program slots. (It's the numPrograms parameter when you create your effect.)

You could hard-wire your presets into thost slots as well. But even leaving them empty (i.e. copies of the default patch) will provide spaces for people to build banks.

And I'd recommend no more than 128 programs, so they can be accessed by MIDI program change commands.

First I've heard about a .fxp compatibility issue with Reaper. I'm betting it's Psychle, which I'm testing for the first time now... will let you know what I find.