Obxd synthesizer

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OB-Xd - Virtual Analog Synthesizer

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BlackWinny wrote: You can see that our friend Breeze did that tune with... 35 instances of OBXD !!!

I can't imagine the CPU!!!
I am 100% sure he used his DAWs equivalent of freeze to compose all the tracks one to few at a time.
[====[\\\\\\\\]>------,

Ay caramba !

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Yes, probably
[====[\\\\\\\\]>------,

Ay caramba !
Beep Beep?
:D
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

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fluffy_little_something wrote:When people write so much about it, do they still have time to actually make music with it?
Interesting comment for someone, who writes 3 posts per day!

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Guys, notice that OBXD is this month's choice for One-Synth-Challenge here at KVR: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=404872

Please join if you can. :)

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BlackWinny wrote:I can't imagine the CPU!!! It must have a motherboard with 4 chips model i9 on it (beta tester for Intel, heh?) and a full store of RAM!
It's the first time I ever submitted something to the OSC, and in fact there are people there who are currently boasting over 60 instances of a synth (I think one has 111!) like it's the point of contest. However there are considerations:

- People don't have all those synths playing at the same time.
- Sometimes one instance is used for one specific effect and not re-used.
- Because of the rules of the OSC (no effects, no optimized rendering), you have to sometimes have to combine sounds to get things to sound right. For example my kick uses 2 instances.
- Like Mutant mentions, you can render any number of tracks once your CPU count gets too high
- Most synths don't use CPU if they're not actually generating sound.
- It's easier to create a new instance for a new sound because you can manage track assignments, effects and mixing more logically.

In the case of the Obxd, you can also limit the voice count which helps enormously. But all that said, you're right that my machine is no slouch. ;)

Anyway, I did this as more of a stress test to see how well the Obxd scales in use and with multiple instances. I only considered entering it in the OSC in the last few days (which I've never really paid much attention to before). I was actually surprised there were no other Obxd entries, but there are many really nice creative submissions. Oh, and I see that the loudness war is healthy and living at KVR. :hihi: I made no effort to push the mix to the hot standards we've come accustomed to...

Here are a few observations:

- I'm pretty sure I'm using the latest build and there are still some issues with the sounds settling down after a few iterations. The end whip sound is the most obvious: after the project is loaded, it doesn't sound right until it's played a few times. But after that it's fine till the project is closed.
- Even with the variation and spread controls at 0, the Obxd still has a lot of variation. While that's part of its charm, I sound myself wishing there was some control that would allow me to scale this variation from the current Obxd style to "perfectly predictable".
- All my instances play live to cater to the OSC rules, but for the record the unpredictable behavior makes it that it's sometimes better to render a sound several times and pick the best result (like you might to capture non-time-synced processing).
- Stability seems very good, although I once got thrown one of those scary 3 paragraph Steinberg pop-ups that said that something had gone terribly wrong and that I should save the project immediately. I had just saved moments ago, so I closed Nuendo and restarted it and kept working with that project to the end with no issues. Not sure why that happened but the only other plugins in use were Nuendo's Reverence and EQ, and TDR-Comp.
- The project sometimes seems to freeze unpredictably during which I can't control the DAW GUI for a good 10-15 seconds. This is more than in any of my other projects and I'm still not sure if it has something to do with the combination of the DAW's auto-save and the Obxd.

It was a fun experiment. :D

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V'ger wrote:Guys, notice that OBXD is this month's choice for One-Synth-Challenge here at KVR: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=404872

Please join if you can. :)
Hah! Looks like I had the opportunity of a dry run. ;)

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The sound keeps cutting off for me.. When I first tried it a few days ago it would load and I'd doodle about with the knobs and then the sound would cut off, I'd reopen it and it would work and then cut off again, I'm trying again today and it won't make any sound at all..

Not a problem from my end I'm sure, it's recieving MIDI just not outputting any audio

Any ideas?

Cheers. :)

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Agility wrote:The sound keeps cutting off for me.. When I first tried it a few days ago it would load and I'd doodle about with the knobs and then the sound would cut off, I'd reopen it and it would work and then cut off again, I'm trying again today and it won't make any sound at all..

Not a problem from my end I'm sure, it's recieving MIDI just not outputting any audio

Any ideas?

Cheers. :)
It sounds (I make a pun) like a problem with the sound driver or with the Asio driver...

Could you try (just for a moment) to disable the Asio driver and try with your native Windows (MME or Directsound) driver?
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

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Agility wrote:The sound keeps cutting off for me.. When I first tried it a few days ago it would load and I'd doodle about with the knobs and then the sound would cut off, I'd reopen it and it would work and then cut off again, I'm trying again today and it won't make any sound at all..

Not a problem from my end I'm sure, it's recieving MIDI just not outputting any audio

Any ideas?

Cheers. :)
Actually, I did find that sometimes some instances of Obxd just shut off for no good reason. But it turned out to be the Obxd volume turning off, even though I hadn't created automation for it. I sort of glossed over the problem since I'm still not sure what was happening. Check the volume level on the Obxd GUI and see. Maybe you're inadvertently automating the volume.

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Breeze wrote:- People don't have all those synths playing at the same time.
- Sometimes one instance is used for one specific effect and not re-used.
- Like Mutant mentions, you can render any number of tracks once your CPU count gets too high
- Most synths don't use CPU if they're not actually generating sound.
- It's easier to create a new instance for a new sound because you can manage track assignments, effects and mixing more logically.
Beyond my joke I was indeed thinking of things like that, yes.
Breeze wrote:- Most synths don't use CPU if they're not actually generating sound.
It depends the DAW also...

And it also depends the tuning of the latency of some elements (not only the sound drivers create latency...)
Breeze wrote:In the case of the Obxd, you can also limit the voice count which helps enormously.
Yes, and I suggested it here above just yesterday (or the day before, I can't remember anymore).
Breeze wrote:I only considered entering it in the OSC in the last few days (which I've never really paid much attention to before). I was actually surprised there were no other Obxd entries...
We can be sure that there will be others...
Breeze wrote:Oh, and I see that the loudness war is healthy and living at KVR. :hihi: I made no effort to push the mix to the hot standards we've come accustomed to...
Yes, sadly the loudness war seems to be far from over. May I make the most of the opportunity to recall some articles? and last but not least :
Breeze wrote:- I'm pretty sure I'm using the latest build and there are still some issues with the sounds settling down after a few iterations. The end whip sound is the most obvious: after the project is loaded, it doesn't sound right until it's played a few times. But after that it's fine till the project is closed.
Woah! 2Dat has emulated even the warm-up of an analogue synth!
:hug:
:clown:
Breeze wrote:- Even with the variation and spread controls at 0, the Obxd still has a lot of variation. While that's part of its charm, I sound myself wishing there was some control that would allow me to scale this variation from the current Obxd style to "perfectly predictable".
Funny... One hour ago I was just answering something similar about Mux (but to resolve the opposite: a too much permanent homogeneity).
Breeze wrote:- The project sometimes seems to freeze unpredictably during which I can't control the DAW GUI for a good 10-15 seconds. This is more than in any of my other projects and I'm still not sure if it has something to do with the combination of the DAW's auto-save and the Obxd.
I'm pretty sure that it is a problem with the management of the RAM by this first release of OBXD. Something to work about for the next releases.
Breeze wrote:It was a fun experiment. :D
For sure! I believe you!
:tu:
Last edited by BlackWinny on Sat May 24, 2014 1:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

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V'ger wrote:Guys, notice that OBXD is this month's choice for One-Synth-Challenge here at KVR: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=404872

Please join if you can. :)
Congratulations, 2DaT. It is great that your new synth vst, Obxd, was chosen for the competition. Some very creative and gifted musicians participate so we can expect fine songs and perhaps even more inspiring patches as a result.

:clap:
바보

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manandmusic wrote:
fluffy_little_something wrote:When people write so much about it, do they still have time to actually make music with it?
Interesting comment for someone, who writes 3 posts per day!

So? 3 posts a day is not much, and what's more, many of my posts are just a few lines, not essays :roll:

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Breeze wrote: - I'm pretty sure I'm using the latest build and there are still some issues with the sounds settling down after a few iterations. The end whip sound is the most obvious: after the project is loaded, it doesn't sound right until it's played a few times. But after that it's fine till the project is closed.
I thought he had fixed that.

On a similar note, I found out a couple of days ago that my DAW restarts the sound engines of all the plugins used in a project whenever I mix the project down. The DAW developer said it does so in order to prevent any sound tails that might still be around. The problem is that when I use any plugins that require warming up, I have to record a couple muted chords before the actual parts to be heard.

Another thing the DAW developer said is that this issue might also depend on the sampling rates used. This was the reply:

"What are you mixing down to? There's a chance that if you mix down to a wave file with the same sample rate as your project sample rate, you might avoid this problem. This is because if the sample rate changes during mix down, the plugin is reset at the start of the mix down. If you can avoid that initial reset, you might avoid this problem."

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Breeze wrote:
Agility wrote:The sound keeps cutting off for me.. When I first tried it a few days ago it would load and I'd doodle about with the knobs and then the sound would cut off, I'd reopen it and it would work and then cut off again, I'm trying again today and it won't make any sound at all..

Not a problem from my end I'm sure, it's recieving MIDI just not outputting any audio

Any ideas?

Cheers. :)
Actually, I did find that sometimes some instances of Obxd just shut off for no good reason. But it turned out to be the Obxd volume turning off, even though I hadn't created automation for it. I sort of glossed over the problem since I'm still not sure what was happening. Check the volume level on the Obxd GUI and see. Maybe you're inadvertently automating the volume.
I'd considered that and just investigated it, I got it to play again but it has cut out again, and the volume knob nor any of the Cubase(I'm using Win, Cubase 7.5 btw) volume controls are making any difference, even drawing in automation in the controller lane for the channel makes no difference, I really don't understand.. and yes the OSC/Env/Filter/Volume are set accordingly to make noise.

BlackWinny: ASIO drivers are irrelevant in this situation, it's the VST.

Damn shame as it sounds pretty good and another classic synth for my tool box! :D

Cheers.

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BlackWinny wrote:
Breeze wrote:- Even with the variation and spread controls at 0, the Obxd still has a lot of variation. While that's part of its charm, I sound myself wishing there was some control that would allow me to scale this variation from the current Obxd style to "perfectly predictable".
Funny... One hour ago I was just answering something similar about Mux (but to resolve the opposite: a too much permanent homogeneity).
Ahh... the Goldilocks Syndrome. :hihi: Truth is, the best option is to have some control over the variability, to optimize it depending on the usage and purpose. Something like the Spread control but at the meta level. Though it would seem to me easier to take away than to put it in...

BTW, thanks for the replies and the links. The tally on the historic changes in DR are really telling.

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