Official Serum thread!

[bharris22]

Very cool! One question - the other page states "Serum has a variety of methods and options for importing + analyzing audio (WAV or AIFF) for breaking it apart into individual waveforms." How long can the imported sample be - for example, can I load a short (5 second or less) vocal phrase) and have a wavetable created from that?

[Neon Breath]

Very interesting! Will look into it for sure.

[zerocrossing]

Yeah, count me as interested. Looked on the site and it's still not listed as a product though.

[V0RT3X]

how good is the CPU usage?

[xx JPRacer xx]

Very nice about the intro price, thanks!

[MillerSam]

Good man for making communication, give it to Deadmau5 :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EMhjocxlpQ

[bitcrusher]

Very cool! One question - the other page states "Serum has a variety of methods and options for importing + analyzing audio (WAV or AIFF) for breaking it apart into individual waveforms." How long can the imported sample be - for example, can I load a short (5 second or less) vocal phrase) and have a wavetable created from that?

Yes, you can import a vocal phrase of that length and create a wavetable from it. However for that length, because there is a 256-cycle limit, you'd have to use FFT import options (which are spectrally overlapping larger chunks of audio) or have a very low voice (50 hz??) if you really wanted 5 seconds worth. My natural speaking voice allows for a little over 2 seconds of raw audio (every wave cycle of my voice as a table frame).

how good is the CPU usage?

There's a lot of SSE2 optimized code, just to pull off what it does (which is an essentially flat frequency response to 20 khz with an aliasing point well below any other WT synth I'm aware of). That sort of quality comes with a price (CPU wise) but nothing in the absurd realm (every tester asked has found it reasonable or a non-issue). In the future I should be able to provide a 'draft' mode, but I was more concerned with attaining a superior quality while more or less matching the per-voice CPU expense of other WT synths.

[penguinfromdeep]

That sort of quality comes with a price (CPU wise). In the future I should be able to provide a 'draft' mode, but I was more concerned with attaining a superior quality while more or less matching the per-voice CPU expense of other WT synths.

That's the attitude I like! Consider me interested!

[MillerSam]

-Are the filters fixed or is there an option to paint your own filters?
- What is the format where you saved your wavetables? or are there different one possible?
- Possible to get a "public beta" version to test it or to publish it here like other companies (U-he...) ?

Thanks in advance

[JonSolo]

Interested for sure!

[GeorgeZ]

-Are the filters fixed or is there an option to paint your own filters?

Fixed I believe (based on what I saw on Stephen's (SeamlessR) stream last night.

- What is the format where you saved your wavetables? or are there different one possible?

Based on a previous stream a while back, wav iirc....?

[bitcrusher]

-Are the filters fixed or is there an option to paint your own filters?

GeorgeZ is correct, they are algorithmic. Painting your own requires IFFT/FFT (huge latency), or an additive synth engine to begin with (or perhaps some form of black magic I'm not disciplined in).

What is the format where you saved your wavetables? or are there different one possible?

The format is .wav with additional info for Serum in a header (e.g. interpolation modes, frame size, factory table or user-made). I added a .256 export for Wiard and related modular hardware (untested with hardware, but the file format is simple enough). There are a whole ton of "undocumented" WT import file formats (not tested enough to officially support / reverse engineering file formats involves some guesswork). Other file export formats may be possible to implement in the future upon request.

Possible to get a "public beta" version to test it or to publish it here like other companies (U-he...) ?

Beta is finished up for the most part, I keep that to a closed set of people who communicate with me, I have some professional testers (literally) and they do a great job. There will be a demo version released concurrently. I'm going to pre-release the demo as "beta" for Xfer customers on he product forums (maybe tomorrow, we'll see).

[bharris22]

Very cool! One question - the other page states "Serum has a variety of methods and options for importing + analyzing audio (WAV or AIFF) for breaking it apart into individual waveforms." How long can the imported sample be - for example, can I load a short (5 second or less) vocal phrase) and have a wavetable created from that?

Yes, you can import a vocal phrase of that length and create a wavetable from it. However for that length, because there is a 256-cycle limit, you'd have to use FFT import options (which are spectrally overlapping larger chunks of audio) or have a very low voice (50 hz??) if you really wanted 5 seconds worth. My natural speaking voice allows for a little over 2 seconds of raw audio (every wave cycle of my voice as a table frame).

how good is the CPU usage?

There's a lot of SSE2 optimized code, just to pull off what it does (which is an essentially flat frequency response to 20 khz with an aliasing point well below any other WT synth I'm aware of). That sort of quality comes with a price (CPU wise) but nothing in the absurd realm (every tester asked has found it reasonable or a non-issue). In the future I should be able to provide a 'draft' mode, but I was more concerned with attaining a superior quality while more or less matching the per-voice CPU expense of other WT synths.

Beautiful - thank you!

[xx JPRacer xx]

It's my birthday today (37, damn, 40 is approaching), can I have a free copy!

[bitcrusher]

It's my birthday today (37, damn, 40 is approaching), can I have a free copy!

Happy birthday! Now if it were your 40th... I might have to say yes