Betatesters wanted for Upcoming synth EuterpeXL!

[idfpower]

The GUI is b.t.w. all generated in code, no images, except for the textures that are layered almost translucent on top.

Oh, I see Good to know


@bailees7irish
Yes, metal/plastic/neutral is very played-out - but for good reasons. It's a more natural look (trying to emulate real hardware layouts and design). But you're right, it's all up to the dev and the design he's going for

[davidguda]

Alot of nice stuff here!
Adding a "speed in HZ" could very well be possible I presume. (You can still get that from using one of the LFO's if you can spare one).
Definitly worth a think, and not super hard to implement.

Adding more overdrive to the filter, well...lets just say for technical reasons that will be hard I'm afraid. What is technically "overdriven" actually differs slightly from the different filter types but it's all related to the feedback that makes the resonance. Try with "ladder" and "double ladder", crank up the resonance and play a bit with overdrive back and forth, not quite as subtle as in the normal 12db lowpass filter.

unison for osc4, I have definitely thought about it, but it would cost CPU for sure! While the classic oscillators are (very simplified) prerendered at the start up of the synth, the osc4 is very much real time with all the modulations and a lot (adaptive) oversampling and all kinds of technical jibber jabber going on........ but I still have that in mind. Maybe I could go "halfway" and just go up to say 4xUnison or so instead of 10.

"Can we have an alternate bigger GUI where we can see osc 4 along with the others, please?"
- interesting idea for sure... but that would mean maintaining two GUI's or making some other "fancy" solution..
Having that would kinda make it rather big as in not fitting in many laptop screens for instance. It is already a little bit cut off in the bottom on my windows laptop, although still fully useable.

about the clicks in Reaper......I have no idea what that could be. Makes no sense it would differ between DAWs like that... on the other hand I've seen weirder!

The higher filter response in the start of the knob thingy.... well..To some degree I can agree that most happens in the start. I don't really get the steppy thing... If you want more detailed steering you can press ctrl (or cmd on mac) while dragging for more fine-control.

[davidguda]

I'd love a smooth random choice for modulation shapes for osc 4 points, also known as sample & glide.
- I added it to my "maybe TODO list", it is a good idea! Great for making moving sound that are not predictable.

A choice of regular detuning between unison voices and constant / absolute detuning would be nice.
- I don't quite understand you. Explain to me like a five year old

What's the difference between the 4 types of decimation on the filter? 1 & 2 is obviously after the filter and 3 & 4 before but besides that?
All are after the filter! Since you obviously already understand the concepts of sample and hold, and sample and glide...
1 and 2 is "and hold" where 3 is and glide version of nr 1, and 4 is "and glide" version of nr 2. Would I write anything like that in the GUI ppl would just get confused so I just call them 1,2,3,4.....lets call it artistic freedom

[Gone soft]

Alot of nice stuff here!
Adding a "speed in HZ" could very well be possible I presume. (You can still get that from using one of the LFO's if you can spare one).
Definitly worth a think, and not super hard to implement.

Glad you thought so. I could, but there are so few LFOs compared to a seperate modulator for every single point so I'd appreciate a Hz option.

Adding more overdrive to the filter, well...lets just say for technical reasons that will be hard I'm afraid. What is technically "overdriven" actually differs slightly from the different filter types but it's all related to the feedback that makes the resonance. Try with "ladder" and "double ladder", crank up the resonance and play a bit with overdrive back and forth, not quite as subtle as in the normal 12db lowpass filter.

Ah, I misunderstood what kind of overdrive we´re talking about here, I thought it simply meant what is usually referred to as how hard one drives the filters which actually tends to have the opposite effect on resonance. Oh yeah, that's certainly "unsubtle" enough on the double ladder.

unison for osc4, I have definitely thought about it, but it would cost CPU for sure! While the classic oscillators are (very simplified) prerendered at the start up of the synth, the osc4 is very much real time with all the modulations and a lot (adaptive) oversampling and all kinds of technical jibber jabber going on........ but I still have that in mind. Maybe I could go "halfway" and just go up to say 4xUnison or so instead of 10.

4 x unison for osc 4 would be fine by me.

"Can we have an alternate bigger GUI where we can see osc 4 along with the others, please?"
- interesting idea for sure... but that would mean maintaining two GUI's or making some other "fancy" solution..
Having that would kinda make it rather big as in not fitting in many laptop screens for instance. It is already a little bit cut off in the bottom on my windows laptop, although still fully useable.

On my laptop with 1920 X 1080 resolution I have space for it (some laptops have better resolution than that as well these days), and it would make a lot of difference for me in how well I get along with your synth as I'd otherwise be going a lot back and forth between osc 4 and other settings... Could an option for a popup with osc 4 settings that could be set to remain open while I tweak other parameters be an option, or would that be as fancy a solution as anything from a programmers point of view?

about the clicks in Reaper......I have no idea what that could be. Makes no sense it would differ between DAWs like that... on the other hand I've seen weirder!

The clicks happened in FL Studio only, but strangely enough not in the other two DAWs.. And after I restarted my computer it's gone in FL Studio to so whatever it was it seems it's gone now...

The higher filter response in the start of the knob thingy.... well..To some degree I can agree that most happens in the start. I don't really get the steppy thing... If you want more detailed steering you can press ctrl (or cmd on mac) while dragging for more fine-control.

Ok, ctrl ofcourse helps though then it becomes to fine.. Nag nag, I know, sorry... Also on Windows I think many users expect shift to be the button for finetuning, though I know there's no official standard on these things. How does other people here feel about the filter opening up so much for the first part of the range? If I'm the only one who sees this as an issue I'm sure I'll find ways of working around it, I'll just need to make a mental note to myself when automating the filter.

I'd love a smooth random choice for modulation shapes for osc 4 points, also known as sample & glide.
- I added it to my "maybe TODO list", it is a good idea! Great for making moving sound that are not predictable.

A choice of regular detuning between unison voices and constant / absolute detuning would be nice.
- I don't quite understand you. Explain to me like a five year old

Hm, I'll try explaining it sort of technically and hopefully I won't have to try and explain it as if to a five year old cause I think I suck in explaining stuff to small children. While normal detuning is in cents there's also absolute or constant detuning which is always in the same value in Hz across the keyboard, so the beating freqeuncy of the oscillators in relation to each other will be the same for all notes. With "normal" detuning" the beating frequency gets faster on higher notes. You can find it as an option in for instance Vember Audio Surge. I hope that made sense to you.

What's the difference between the 4 types of decimation on the filter? 1 & 2 is obviously after the filter and 3 & 4 before but besides that?
All are after the filter! Since you obviously already understand the concepts of sample and hold, and sample and glide...
1 and 2 is "and hold" where 3 is and glide version of nr 1, and 4 is "and glide" version of nr 2. Would I write anything like that in the GUI ppl would just get confused so I just call them 1,2,3,4.....lets call it artistic freedom

Ah... As 3 & 4 added so little high frequency content I assumed they where before the filter but adding such an extreme amount some if it would bleed through the filter so to speak. But what's the difference between 1 & 2 then? Anything it makes sense to be aware of technically, or just different flavours so to speak?

[davidguda]

On my laptop with 1920 X 1080 resolution I have space for it (some laptops have better resolution than that as well these days), and it would make a lot of difference for me in how well I get along with your synth as I'd otherwise be going a lot back and forth between osc 4 and other settings...

1920x1080 (full HD) is a quite good resolution on a laptop, probably more than I can assume that my theoretical lowest common denominator user have.

Could an option for a popup with osc 4 settings that could be set to remain open while I tweak other parameters be an option, or would that be as fancy a solution as anything from a programmers point of view?

How do you mean, do you mean as in having the right-click popups open at the same time? Sounds like a recipe for confusion (and bugs) to me...or I might misunderstood what you meant.

....absolute or constant detuning...

Yes now it makes sense, thanks! I have never really thought of having an absolute unison detuning like that, nothing I have missed myself. I suppose it would not be the hardest thing in the world to implement but I believe the use is rather limited, right?

decimation 1 & 2 difference....
Well, they are very very close in implementation as a start, and as you can hear they sound kind of similar.
A little simplified... nr 1 samples and holds always for a fixed number of samples. nr 2 can be "in between" two number of samples so it holds 5, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 6, 5, 5.... samples...... and so on..... does it make sense!?

[davidguda]

http://gudaaudio.com/images/euterpeXL_4.png
A new color theme and slightly improved "3d-effect" on group boxes.

[Gone soft]

Hm, I think I'll have a hard time explaining what I meant with osc 4 settings as a popup that can be set to remain, ehm, popped up. Also if it's a potential source for bugs it's offcourse probably not worth it anyway, and perhaps not even possible to do.

Concerning absolute detuning I find it very useful as it can sometimes double up as more or less a modulation source in itself. Also sometimes synthsounds with oscillators detuned against each other can almost sound a bit like sample playback with regular detuning as you play higher notes, and if you're detuning to make a special effect like a flanger like effect on one oscillator it can also be very useful to keep it constant for all notes.

The explanation of decimator 2 makes me think of a coded message from outer space that I'm not recieving clearly. Do you mean it semirandomly alters between two samples in the same period where the other algorithm would have held one? You're probably going to have to try and explain this to all us daft non-programmers when making the manual, right? EDIT: Do you mean it's kind of like if the held sound was contained within the steps of a stepsequencer running at audiorate, and it's length is being altered at somewhat irregular intervalls from 5 to 6 steps? Sort of a stepsequencer functioning as a wavetable? Or like an array in Pure Data, if you're familiar with it? Or am I way off here?

[davidguda]

I have had some thoughts of how to make it visible in an overview of all the modulations of the osc4 points, like a matrix-like view or just summed up text wise or so... I have yet to come up with a way that would not make the interface cluttered, messy or just complicated.

decimate 2...
not random... lets say you need you would want to sample and hold for two and a half sample each time... not really possible.
so I sample and hold for 2, then 3, then 2, then 3 etc....
2 and a quarter.... 2,2,2,3,2,2,2,3,2,2,2,3 etc..

I haven't used Pure Data so no idea about that but guess not.

[davidguda]

I'll be doing some work on the preset server parts during the weekend so expect preset loading/saving/listing to a flaky at times....

[davidguda]

What would be the right price for a synth like this do you guys think?
Correct pricing is quite tricky, too low and people will think it is just a cheap toy, too high and they will choose other synths.
Curve2 which is probably the synth closest in how it works is a 119 euro. I think that sounds like a lot.
69 euro...would that be a good price?

[Gone soft]

I was going to ask if you would consider adding an extra envelope or two, there's so much tasty stuff in there that begs for (envelope) modulation I really miss that. If you add that I'd consider 69 Euro a fair price.

Speaking of Curve 2, if it was possible to morph between two settings for osc 4 that would be awesome. I reckon offcourse the modulation rate and waveform for each point and probably the number of points would have to be the same for those two settings, but the degree of modulation for each single point could be different. Thus one setting could for be a more intensenly modulated and perhaps more spiky version of a waveform, for instance. EDIT: too late in the process to add something like that perhaps, it may have to wait for "EuterpeXL 2: big momma just got bigger"!

[davidguda]

extra envelope, I have had the thought but I think it would be hard to add without cluttering up the GUI too much.
I usually use one of the LFO's set on "one shot" and reverse saw shape and pretty high speed to emulate an extra envelope that is just a quick attack. It's good for giving a little extra push in the start of bass sounds and such, or adding a tiny push of noise in the start of a sound to make it attack a little harder... Of course far from a real envelope and it uses up one of the LFO's.

Morphing between two settings in OSC4, that would be kinda cool in a way I suppose, and control the morph with that extra envelope... but as you write it gives a lot of extra restrictions. There is a risk of making the GUI rather confusing and cluttered.

Keeping the GUI from being confusing and cluttered is a pretty hard thing to do actually, like adding an extra aux envelope would be relatively simple programmatically but i has to be shown and edited somewhere.

[Gone soft]

Well, I've seen interfaces where you just click a button to switch between the settings for envelope 1 and 2 (I'm sorry I can't remember which synth right now). That could perhaps work, with a little colour change within that space to make it as clear as possible which envelope settings are open?

EDIT: probably a better idea to have an extra mod envelope under "LFO & MOD" perhaps?

[davidguda]

I suppose I could make that work by having the amplitude envelope box being switchable between "AUX1 ENV", "AUX2 ENC" and AMPLITUDE.
The gui would need to get a little bit bigger with bigger mod matrix too.

[Gone soft]

I suppose I could make that work by having the amplitude envelope box being switchable between "AUX1 ENV", "AUX2 ENC" and AMPLITUDE.
The gui would need to get a little bit bigger with bigger mod matrix too.

I'd love that! Perhaps you could make a test GUI or proposed GUI and post an image (or images I guess) to see what the other folks here think of it?