One Synth Challenge #102: The blooo by Full Bucket Music (Meakaale wins!)

[ilmai]

This is heaps of fun, the first time I've actually dived deep into a synth! I scrapped my previous idea because I wasn't inspired enough and started from scratch, using this short clip to concentrate on sound design. Here's where I'm at the moment:

http://soundcloud.com/ilmai/one-synth-c ... 03/s-qYluZ

The drone-ish pad and bass are presets, rest of the sounds I made from scratch.

Resonance seems to work in a different way in this synth than what I'm expecting based on synths I've worked with, let's see if I can work with that.

[Darksynth FX]

This is heaps of fun, the first time I've actually dived deep into a synth! I scrapped my previous idea because I wasn't inspired enough and started from scratch, using this short clip to concentrate on sound design. Here's where I'm at the moment:

http://soundcloud.com/ilmai/one-synth-c ... 03/s-qYluZ

The drone-ish pad and bass are presets, rest of the sounds I made from scratch.

Resonance seems to work in a different way in this synth than what I'm expecting based on synths I've worked with, let's see if I can work with that.

Wow, this already sounds EPIC!!! Can't wait for the finished track!

[aciddose]

Why is everything above 11kHz not computed when you play a F... while a whole new octave of harmonics is added when you play a E

Sounds like a wavetable oscillator.

When you play "E4" the sample for ?3 ... E4 is transposed upward which fills out all the empty space with harmonics. When you play F4 it switches to another sample which is then transposed down (interpolation) at about half the rate which accounts for why only half the spectrum is filled up with harmonics. This is because the sample only contains a set number of harmonics and if it is played at a lower pitch there is nothing to fill in the higher frequency range.

Modern wavetable oscillators tend to use high quality interpolating filters and are mostly transposed upward to avoid this effect by allowing a small amount of aliasing to occur. High quality modern oscillators however are not based upon PCM/wavetables and are computed from vector arrays instead. The vector points stored in the arrays are interpolated when they are sampled in the same way as for vector graphics.

This tends to be more efficient than PCM/wavetables because the number of points is often much less than the number of samples in a cycle and so the anti-aliasing/interpolating filter doesn't need to work as much and can therefore be of much higher quality.

Despite the much higher potential quality of vector oscillators, wavetable oscillators are still frequently used for two main reasons: 1) they are very simple and easy to implement and can support any waveform trivially and without any changes (just replace the waves used) 2) they are very efficient and can be significantly optimized to trade-off quality for cost.

The solution to this problem is to use more samples (per semitone vs. per octave) which uses a ton more memory and bandwidth but isn't really expensive at all on modern hardware. That allows the harmonic content of each sample to be full and is reduced by a semitone at most.

In addition a bug report: the plug-in calls updateDisplay() from inside the constructor. Most hosts will ignore this (they haven't set the reserved pointers in aeffect yet since you haven't returned your aeffect pointer yet and so can't do anything!) but it is nonetheless not allowed to call into the host dispatcher from within the constructor for this reason. The suggestion is often to use "set dirty()" or similar to schedule those calls and make them from where the host calls into plugin.resume() instead.

[Full Bucket]

New version 2.0.1 is available.
The MIDI Sustain CC is fixed, and the UI performance on parameter automation is improved now, too. It still will need some good amount of CPU to redraw the knobs though... kill the editor if you are annoyed.

@aciddose:
Good catch with the updateDisplay() called within the ctor! It's fixed now.

About the oscillators: As you say it's a trade-off. The low CPU consumption makes the blooo playable on limited hardware, the V-Machine, and even on my almost 9 year old Asus Eee netbook. For "high-quality" I use higher sample rates (96kHz) - then everything is within the "approved audio range".

Anyway, I will see what I can do. But it may take a while because the osc code is brutally optimized.

Cheers, Björn

[photonic]

Thanx for the quick fix of the sustain problem!

I think I understand now the way of the LFO setting. +100 means that the amount of the LFO is now 100% controlled by the MW. But the intensitiy of the vibrato is set in the target (here the oscsillator). Clever, brings more versatility.

[RuediRena]

New version 2.0.1 is available.

Awesome, Björn!

LOL@ Hessisch Uganda from a guy who regularly gigs Märkisch Kongo.

Have a nice day
Ruedi

[Full Bucket]

Thanx for the quick fix of the sustain problem!

NP.

I think I understand now the way of the LFO setting. +100 means that the amount of the LFO is now 100% controlled by the MW. But the intensitiy of the vibrato is set in the target (here the oscsillator). Clever, brings more versatility.

Correct, this way you can set a different modulation amount for each of the targets.

Cheers, Björn

[Full Bucket]

LOL@ Hessisch Uganda from a guy who regularly gigs Märkisch Kongo.

[Dj Pomme]

Wow, very technical answers Didn't get everything on your answer accidose, but I guess I have the point

New version 2.0.1
About the oscillators: As you say it's a trade-off. The low CPU consumption makes the blooo playable on limited hardware, the V-Machine, and even on my almost 9 year old Asus Eee netbook. For "high-quality" I use higher sample rates (96kHz) - then everything is within the "approved audio range".

Anyway, I will see what I can do. But it may take a while because the osc code is brutally optimized.

Cheers, Björn

Thanks !
Actually, I had thought about that kind of things (but I was mainly looking for an aliasing filter box to uncheck so I missed that point^^) and yes, it's unusual for me to switch 96kHz but it works very well !

Edit: there are weird bugs like sometime I lose the key (It happened to me when I was editing the name if the preset bank without noticying it, then my keyboard would only play three notes, then only one, the same pitch for any key I hit. I'm on fl studio, and my key input is the computer keyboard for now)

[Dj Pomme]

Okay sorry for the spam I wanted to share the .fst that seems to make the bug replicable but I have to reach five messages...
Okay I have to put it somewhere else
http://www54.zippyshare.com/v/bbxMBwqY/file.html
this is the .fst if someone's interrested.
36 instances of the blooo so far !

Edit : haha the link protection of kvr forum doesn't work either, for me it says "do you wish to visit this page" and if I answer "cancel" it brings me there anyway.

Edit 2 : I read the rules, but that's not clear for me.
Am I allowed to use some reverbs for mixing my project ? Or delays... I understand you said "use very few effects" but if that's just a part of the song for instance the intro (cf example with drums where I cut the dry sound for a second) and that the other parts of the song are okay is this a problem ?

Edit : edited with last version https://soundcloud.com/dj-pomme/dj-pomme-blooo-lights

[Frostline]

New version 2.0.1 is available.
The MIDI Sustain CC is fixed, and the UI performance on parameter automation is improved now, too. It still will need some good amount of CPU to redraw the knobs though... kill the editor if you are annoyed.

Tested new version (website still shows 2.0.0 but zip is 2.0.1).
CPU usage is much improved (15% vs 28% with GUI open)and meters etc now work smoothly while GUI is open and automating parameters.
Thank you for the prompt fix.

[bluerobot]

This looks like fun. Sad that it's Windows only (unless I'm wrong). Though the link on the OSC page says "Download (Mac/Win/Linux)".

[Markku]

This looks like fun. Sad that it's Windows only (unless I'm wrong). Though the link on the OSC page says "Download (Mac/Win/Linux)".

Works in Linux with Wine.

[mmGhost]

any chance of getting an audiounit version compiled for Mac?

[Full Bucket]

any chance of getting an audiounit version compiled for Mac?

Not in the near future cause I have no Mac.
In fact I'm thinking about buying a Mac, but so far the donations received are not enough.

Cheers, Björn