Cytomic "The Drop" Resonant Filter

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The Drop

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andy-cytomic wrote: I'm not sure I understood this completely, are you wanting to morph between filter circuits with a seamless transition? If so then that won't be included in The Drop as it would double the cpu load when changing circuit. I will be smoothing the LP and HP on / off power button transitions with a cross fade.
Correct, when I automated from Cascade SH to Cascade it was seamless, but when automating from Cascade SH to Sallen there is a gap where I presume a filter type will be and believe this is what caused an audible blip. Alltho I like your idea of smoothing the on off button, I will look forward to that update.

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HamHat wrote:
andy-cytomic wrote: I'm not sure I understood this completely, are you wanting to morph between filter circuits with a seamless transition? If so then that won't be included in The Drop as it would double the cpu load when changing circuit. I will be smoothing the LP and HP on / off power button transitions with a cross fade.
Correct, when I automated from Cascade SH to Cascade it was seamless, but when automating from Cascade SH to Sallen there is a gap where I presume a filter type will be and believe this is what caused an audible blip. Alltho I like your idea of smoothing the on off button, I will look forward to that update.
Right, that makes sense, I completely forgot about the missing filters, well spotted! So there are actually two things going on here, one is the missing Sallen Key MS1 filter type, and the other is switching circuit models. The Cascade and Cascade SH are essentially the same circuit model, the Cascade SH has more detail and so more cpu load, the Cascade is more efficient, so switching between these two will cause a tiny click, but you probably didn't notice it. Switching between circuits in general will click a bit since otherwise the cpu load is too great.

The missing filter is like bypassing filtering, so you will get a short burst of the dry mix. In the final product this won't happen since all the filters will be there. Right now you should be able to jump right over the missing filters with automation drawn into your DAW.

Toggling the power button will be smooth in the final product, it's just one of those things I haven't gotten around to doing since I figure people are more interested in new models instead.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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andy-cytomic wrote:PS: also when the filter is wide open I have designed The Drop to keep the original signal at the same volume and to be as clean as possible. Some drive is added, but if you set the resonance to around 15% you should be able to toggle the power button and not hear much difference at all, even without oversampling enabled. This is a very important part of making a professional resonant filter plugin to me since it is really useful to have this behaviour for breakdowns and buildups and other creative uses.
i've always just bypassed the plugin..is that a better way to do it?

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Bypassing the plugin halts all calculations, so this is the best for lowest cpu use. If you want a smooth transition between filtering and passing of audio then in the final product using the LP / HP power button will give you this, but this still uses cpu as the modulation is still calculated. There is no right or wrong way, just whatever you think is best for the situation :)
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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so powering off the hp and lp but leaving the plugin on will give u the exact same audio as if the whole plugin was disabled?

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ddeez wrote:so powering off the hp and lp but leaving the plugin on will give u the exact same audio as if the whole plugin was disabled?
If you leave the pre and post gain at unity then yes, the audio will be passed bit for bit just like it is when bypassed.

One thing to note is that even when bypassed if you have oversampling enabled then the audio still needs to be delayed by the same number of samples the oversampling does so it can properly align with other tracks.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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any update on when a version will be released with some presets. I am getting some nice sounds of this by doing really simple stuff but would be keen to see how it can be used in a more complex fashion (cool LFO stuff etc)

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Kindred wrote:any update on when a version will be released with some presets. I am getting some nice sounds of this by doing really simple stuff but would be keen to see how it can be used in a more complex fashion (cool LFO stuff etc)
I'm almost finished re-writing the copy protection and web page distribution system, after that it's back to developing The Drop. Once I've finished the last few models and other touch ups I'll get some presets designed.

I've designed The Drop to be fun to play with so you get interesting inspirational sounds by interacting with it, which I hope will give you a completely different result than programming it with a multi-point envelope editor. In that regard the presets are going to be pretty boring and just have some basic wobbles or auto wah, you really need to start recording knob twiddles as you jam with it like an instrument to get really impressive dynamic results.

How about I knock up some basic presets to show how to do a couple of things with the LFO and envelope followers and post a link here for you to download?
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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andy-cytomic wrote:
Kindred wrote:any update on when a version will be released with some presets. I am getting some nice sounds of this by doing really simple stuff but would be keen to see how it can be used in a more complex fashion (cool LFO stuff etc)
I'm almost finished re-writing the copy protection and web page distribution system, after that it's back to developing The Drop. Once I've finished the last few models and other touch ups I'll get some presets designed.

I've designed The Drop to be fun to play with so you get interesting inspirational sounds by interacting with it, which I hope will give you a completely different result than programming it with a multi-point envelope editor. In that regard the presets are going to be pretty boring and just have some basic wobbles or auto wah, you really need to start recording knob twiddles as you jam with it like an instrument to get really impressive dynamic results.

How about I knock up some basic presets to show how to do a couple of things with the LFO and envelope followers and post a link here for you to download?
awesome - cheers Andy. What would also be cool would be the corresponding preset files or if this is not possible, a couple of screenshots. I usually use the factory patches as a kicking off point when I am noodling so this would be awesome - however completely understand if you want to wait until 1.0
cheers

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is there a targeted release date for the non beta version of The Drop?

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SeeingInMidi wrote:is there a targeted release date for the non beta version of The Drop?
The end is in sight, but I don't have a fixed date. The R&D for all the filters is done so now it's a matter of fine tuning and adding the last few features.

I've been spending the last month working on the new copy protection and distribution system, I have another week or so to finish it off and I'll release new versions of The Glue and The Drop using it. This is required to support signed binaries, which is compulsory for AAX builds.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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Progress is going very well with The Drop, I've just go the final version of the Moog filter to go now and then adding the last few features like one shot mode for the LFO and a visualiser.

Here are a couple of audio demos I've quickly knocked up of the latest couple of filters, the StateV OSR (state variable OSCar full version with buffer clipping) and the SallenK MS1 (Sallen Key MS20-mk1). The demos demonstrate the newly added LP Drive and HP Drive knobs so you can individually set the drive amount for each filter. I'm using the HP filter as a bass boost on the arpeggiated bass sound to overload the LP filter and get some interesting variations:

http://www.cytomic.com/files/thedrop-ms1.mp3
http://www.cytomic.com/files/thedrop-osr.mp3

The final list of filter goodness will be:

SallenK MS2 (based on MS20 mk2)
SallenK MS1 (based on MS10 / MS20 mk1)
StateV OSR (based on OSCar)
Cascade SHJ (based on SH-09 / Juno-6)
LadderT PRD (based on Moog Prodigy)
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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:)

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It sounds fantastic but last time I tried it, I found the CPU hit high even on my i7. Does it have multi-core support?

I am slightly disappointed that the UI doesn't give animated feedback. For example, SoundToys FilterFreak does a great job of representing the affect of the LFO on the filters (although it doesn't compare to The Drop soundwise).

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Frantz wrote:It sounds fantastic but last time I tried it, I found the CPU hit high even on my i7. Does it have multi-core support?

I am slightly disappointed that the UI doesn't give animated feedback. For example, SoundToys FilterFreak does a great job of representing the affect of the LFO on the filters (although it doesn't compare to The Drop soundwise).
Well you're going to be covered on all fronts :)

Right now there is a decent amount of cpu taken by the framework itself, I have been putting my work into development the models but not optimising the framework. You can measure this by switching off all the blue buttons on the interface, this will be improved greatly.

The analog modelled envelope followers, anti-aliased audio rate LFO and high detailed filter algorithms won't change much in terms of cpu use, these are as efficient as possible already.

However, recently I have solved some breakthrough maths for low cpu Sallen Key and State Variable non-linear filters. These don't have as much high frequency detail as the other filters but they solve in a single step per sample unlike the other filters that require many iterations per sample to converge on a solution. For many situations where lower cpu use is wanted they will be perfect, they have astounding tone for the amount of cpu they use. I'm going to call these lower cpu filters "MD" for Medium Detail / Definition detail, and the other ones "HD" for High Detail / Definition.

More visual feedback is coming. I originally planned on having a visualiser screen but decided to drop it and keep it looking more like a rack unit. I've had numerous comments from customers saying they would find it easier to understand what is going on if there was more visual feedback, so I am going to add the visualiser back again like I originally planned.

It is not possible to use multiple cores for The Drop. I could use multiple cores for processing a stereo filter if I processed the left and right signal on different cores, but I already use SSE2 vector code to process a stereo signal with the same cpu it takes to do a mono one normally, so using two cores would be a complete waste.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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