Fathom Synth Development Thread

[FathomSynth]

Cool. I'm glad everyone is liking the new oscillators.

[provoc]

Loaded very fast.

Whistle is still there, though I have to go one octave lower (A-1) to hear it properly I can isolate that whistle sound with simple highpass near that cut point (4kHz) that can be seen in previous pic I uploaded.

Though, I don't have to use Fathom on bass sounds. The overall sound is great, and what I especially love is that FM section that makes my hands sweat

Otherwise, everything that SM just said

2.6 fixed any ringing for me so maybe a different issue or maybe just different ears respond differently?

Definitely a major improvement for me so well done Everett .. I look forward to playing around with the wavetable stuff when I have time now

Also as you say is not really a show stopper for low bass since you can simply put a nice analogish Sine underneath from another synth.

That said in previous posts Everett mentioned an option to go all the way up to Nyquist which I still think would be good even if it was hidden away to stop people accidentally enabling it and complaining about CPU if this proved to be an issue. For example, the old Alchemy has a max of 600 partials which gets you most of the way there.

Regards,

provoc

[provoc]

Is it possible to remove the default master pitch modulation (MIDI pitch bend modulation) or change its range? I couldn't find anything in the manual and I tried adding a multiply by zero modulator from the pitch bend to master pitch which I thought might work in theory but it didn't

EDIT: Actually, setting master pitch to 1 and 100% modulation in subtract mode gets pretty close to disabling the master modulation give or take a few cents of "analog" tuning variation!

Thanks,

provoc

[FathomSynth]

Provoc, Remember you can also add a Sin oscillator inside Fathom itself. Turning up the oscillator Noise page Distortion dial will add a little analogish sound.

Also, there is something important to understand here. Turning up the partials all the way to 400 has no impact on the CPU. All the partial buffers are pre-calculated and at run-time Fathom plays each oscillator by fetching from a buffer which already has all the partials in one waveform, so there is no extra CPU load at 400 partials.

The only slight bump in CPU with 400 partials is the calculation time after you move a dial will be a little bit more, but this has no effect on playback after you move the dial.

Good point about the master pitch. Currently it is hardwired. This means if you move your pitch wheel it will always move the Fathom pitch. I realized this was a mistake when I did it, but did not have time to change it.

In the next release I will make it so that if any of the master pitch dial is modulated it will disconnect the pitch wheel. In a future release I also plan on adding a settings page and this is a good place to provide a why to disable the pitch wheel connection.

[provoc]

Provoc, Remember you can also add a Sin oscillator inside Fathom itself. Turning up the oscillator Noise page Distortion dial will add a little analogish sound. .

Hi Everett, thanks for the quick response. Yes you are right and I actually realised this after I posted .. in fact I found there are lots of ways to get a nice sine bass, shaping the sine a bit towards triangle, using the various distortion settings etc.

Also, there is something important to understand here. Turning up the partials all the way to 400 has no impact on the CPU. All the partial buffers are pre-calculated and at run-time Fathom plays each oscillator by fetching from a buffer which already has all the partials in one waveform, so there is no extra CPU load at 400 partials

The only slight bump in CPU with 400 partials is the calculation time after you move a dial will be a little bit more, but this has no effect on playback after you move the dial. .

Indeed, and I have not had any issue with CPU at all so even though probably not strictly necessary if there was an option for the max partials to always go all the way to Nyquist without too much coding effort on your part that would be cool

Good point about the master pitch. Currently it is hardwired. This means if you move your pitch wheel it will always move the Fathom pitch. I realized this was a mistake when I did it, but did not have time to change it.

In the next release I will make it so that if any of the master pitch dial is modulated it will disconnect the pitch wheel. In a future release I also plan on adding a settings page and this is a good place to provide a why to disable the pitch wheel connection.

Thanks, this will be handy

BTW I found a few hours yesterday to play a bit more and a couple of things I came across.

The detune settings are really powerful (nice work!) but it did take a while to work out all the controls (had never seen an “amp amp” control before hehe but worked out it was modulating the modulation!) so a manual page would be useful when you have time. Also, with the default settings it saves them in FathomVoiceMap.xml in the vst folder but doesn’t seem to load them again as far as I can tell? (Reaper x64 latest pre).

EDIT: Could also use some help/docs on the distortion settings as well if possible .. I think I worked most of them out but would be good to know the exact details.

I also came across a few bugs here and there but wasn’t able to reproduce since I was doing a lot of tweaking. For example at one point the detune modulate button got stuck on and wouldn’t turn off. Also I had an oscillator that refused to make any sound even after enabling disabling it so had to delete it.

Another thing I found interesting was that the FM actually allows parallel and serial connections with multiple modulators (like DX7 algorithms) and seem to behave as expected with the limitation that all modulators share the same settings so not sure how hard it would be to have separate controls for ratio and amount for each modulator? Not strictly necessary since you could shape an individual modulator to get a similar effect (without multiple modulators) but separate settings would allow copying DX7/FM8 patches etc. and since all the infrastructure is there for it would certainly be in line with Fathom being a deep synth

Cheers,

provoc

[provoc]

Oops double post sorry.

[provoc]

Oops double post sorry.

[FathomSynth]

Sorry, another intense coding day today.

I'll review this tonight. You had some great ideas in the previous post and I recorded them all.

Yes, for sure the Detune and Distortion deserve sections in the manual.
Yes I think the FM controls could be independent, I plan on revisiting that at some point.

[provoc]

Hi Everett,

Thanks for taking a look, if you can let me know about the detune settings not loading in Reaper that would be great in case I am missing something or it is unique to my config.

Also, I had a play with envelopes today and have a few more suggestions, hopefully you will not get too sick of these

The first is a pretty simple one but I would find it helpful if the middle point of segments was drawn in a different colour or fill so it is easier to identify. I found myself accidently clicking the wrong point when I actually wanted to move a start end point and ended up changing its shape/type and then had to click through to get back where I started. So I ended up having to count to find the right point once there are more than a few segments

Another useful feature would be if when you moused over or dragged a point you got a tooltip popup or had an info display with the time and amplitude values for that point. Of course there is the use your ears argument and there are gridlines to help as well but having the actual values in seconds or beats is still useful especially since there is no way to explicitly set the time of segments as you would in a classic ADSR.

A further visual nicety that is not really necessary but I find quite useful is a real time marker that draws over the envelope so you can track note progress through the envelope visually as it plays. I just checked some synths that do this (Serum/Zebralette/Alchemy and Arturia DX7) and they seem to only show the most recently played note/voice but if you were keen you could really stand out from the pack by having a whole lot of voice dots or balls simultaneously tracking through the envelope

The final suggestion which is the one which I think would have the most utility and I would really appreciate the most, especially since the actual drawing of the envelopes is so powerful with all the curve options, is having a loop start setting. This is because although the current mode of having the whole envelope reattack is useful for rhythmic sounds, trance gating etc., it is not so good for other types of sustained sounds, for example if you want to draw a custom vibrato, tremolo etc. and have that portion loop without reattacking.

Since you already have the note off marker (and can have multiple segments after that) you already have a configurable loop end so having an option to select the segment number of the loop start (and ideally drawing a marker there similar to the note off marker) would give really flexible looping. A good example of this if you want to take a look is the MSEG in the new Arturia DX7 (the demo is fully functional apart from saving and automation). It lets you explicitly set the point/segment for both loop start and end and also draws a ‘dot’ over the envelope in realtime as you play a note (latest voice only). That said you totally have it beat when it comes to drawing the actual curves

One other benefit of such a looping option is that you probably wouldn’t need to use so much “smooth samples” to avoid clicking when looping since you could avoid instantaneously transitioning from somewhere in the loop/sustain back to zero amplitude of the attack.

All the best,

provoc

[FathomSynth]

Ah ha, someone's been getting deeply into the envelopes!

You know its funny, I absolutely agree with every single one of your suggestions here.

Especially the loop start line, that would be so useful.

Also, others have asked for the envelope transport position line so that is good also.

OK, these all go into the feature list, I'll try to get them in an upcoming release!

[Teksonik]

Would it also be possible to have a "Simple ADSR" Module that just shows four knobs please ? Sometimes you just need a simple envelope and I can see at a glance from the knob positions what the Env is doing...slow attack, long release etc. Much easier than having to use the multi-breakpoint Env's which are great for more complex Env needs.....

[FathomSynth]

Yes, that is for sure on the list.

Just a simple four or five knob ADSR on the mod slat itself
which does not need to be expanded.

[Teksonik]

Yes, that is for sure on the list.

Just a simple four or five knob ADSR on the mod slat itself
which does not need to be expanded.

Great ! That would be perfect.

[martinjuenke]

Watching in real time a fantastic synth emerging...
What a cool thing! Happy that I jumped on this wagon early.
Please, Everett, go on!

[bftucker]

Watching in real time a fantastic synth emerging...
What a cool thing! Happy that I jumped on this wagon early.
Please, Everett, go on!

+1