Official Serum thread!

[Skyre]

Hi Lance,

I'd like to congratulate you on the GUI too. I think the whole design is thought out and executed extremely well. It's one one the most intuitive interfaces that I have seen on a synth.

I guess you are going to be a busy bee with graphical work now, however If you do get a chance, while Steve is not looking, I would love to see a more orange based skin, to blend into Bitwig. Blue is nice and professional, but I like a little warmth too.

Cheers fella. =]

The colors are defined in the code so I couldn't do much I'm afraid. Blues and greens are used in all Xfer products so we stuck with them. There's always the possibility in the future of having some predefined color themes in the preferences somehow, but it'll be the last thing on his mind at this stage. We've had ideas for post-1.0 since the beginning, so I'm as excited as anybody to see how Serum grows!

[zvenx]

So what if Serum's presets suck. You don't buy this thing for presets. ........

says who?
When I buy a guitar or piano, I am sure not going to rip out what they made it with and put my own wood/hammer/strings etc in.....
it;s what you do with the sounds to me......your way (or mine) isn't the only true way... People work differently.

rsp

Sorry but that's a terrible analogy. A synthesizer's presets and a piano's wood/hammers are not even close to being the same things.

No problem. We can agree to disagree. The point i was trying to make is a piano comes with one preset, more or less the same one preset to everyone who buys that brand piano. For most pianist, the indivduality comes from each pianist technique and creativity etc, not sound design. No reason a keyboardist can't have the same approach to a synthesizer.
Rsp

[zvenx]

Hey everyone, Lance Thackeray here (the GUI designer)

Couple of things. Firstly, thank you all for such positive feedback on the GUI! ......

- Lance

Really great job Lance.
Rsp

[goatgirl]

Hi Lance,

I'd like to congratulate you on the GUI too. I think the whole design is thought out and executed extremely well. It's one one the most intuitive interfaces that I have seen on a synth.

I guess you are going to be a busy bee with graphical work now, however If you do get a chance, while Steve is not looking, I would love to see a more orange based skin, to blend into Bitwig. Blue is nice and professional, but I like a little warmth too.

Cheers fella. =]

The colors are defined in the code so I couldn't do much I'm afraid. Blues and greens are used in all Xfer products so we stuck with them. There's always the possibility in the future of having some predefined color themes in the preferences somehow, but it'll be the last thing on his mind at this stage. We've had ideas for post-1.0 since the beginning, so I'm as excited as anybody to see how Serum grows!

You're welcome girlee !

Oh well, no harm in asking. Colour themes would be nice to see, but as you say they are not really that essential.

[db3]

Hey everyone, Lance Thackeray here (the GUI designer) Couple of things. Firstly, thank you all for such positive feedback on the GUI! I'm just beginning my career in VST interface, so it's super encouraging to read this stuff.

Hey, superb job Lance, the GUI looks fantastic. Not sure where the line is drawn between you and Steve on UI/UX, but the visual feedback has really raised the bar.

I've also just connected the dots...recall suggesting in a post to Richard that the Dune2 GUI could be better and pointed him to your Sylenth skin as an example

[tehlord]

I disagree on the arp and would like one in Serum.
Though they are external possibilities (like Cthulhu) it's nice to be able to save arp settings along with the patch for easy recall.

+1

I really like the option of using step velocity to modulate parameters, and in Serum it would be an awesome addition.

[Skyre]

You're welcome girlee !

Touché. My bad. xD

Hey, superb job Lance, the GUI looks fantastic. Not sure where the line is drawn between you and Steve on UI/UX, but the visual feedback has really raised the bar.

All things animation is Steve! I thought the 2D displays were awesome enough, but then he surprised me with a 3D view one day. I think we both took the roll of a user throughout - Steve creating the visual tools he would appreciate, and then I would visually present them in a way I would appreciate. I'm all about forming the bigger picture with many small details.

Tangent alert: Hold two or more adjacent white keys and notice the shadow appears on the left most key only. Not even NI care to go that far.

I've also just connected the dots...recall suggesting in a post to Richard that the Dune2 GUI could be better and pointed him to your Sylenth skin as an example

Haha, thanks. I didn't expect that Sylenth skin to become as popular as it has. Lennard gave me a nod and added me to a "list" for possible work. Not sure who to go to from here to be honest.

[2ZrgE]

Haha, thanks. I didn't expect that Sylenth skin to become as popular as it has. Lennard gave me a nod and added me to a "list" for possible work. Not sure who to go to from here to be honest.

Just googled that - fantastic skin, can't wait to try it on my Sylenth...

[c_voltage]

BTW also recently come to mind a similarity to Rapture - work with envelopes, maybe filters, and especially unison sound nature (which seemed was underrated in Rapture IMO) same cold and clean. But here work with it is more convenient.
(promise no longer remind about unison )
Just a thought.

[Ingonator]

One thing that confused me with the enveleops and LFOs in Serum:
While the enveleops seem to be quite "usual" AHDSR enveleopes (with adjustable slopes) in the LFO it actually seems to be possible to create custom waveforms with an option to add additional steps etc.

My point is that for scanning trough a wavetable an envelope with multiple steps could be quite useful (like e.g. the MSEGs in DUNE 2) but the problem with the LFOs opposing to the enveleopes is that they don't really offer a proper scale (like the values displayed when changing one of the envelope parameters/steps) for using the LFOs as a proper Multistage envelopes (MSEG).

IMO it would be nice if also with the envelopes it would be possible to add additional steps, at least with one of them (e.g. ENV 3). Maybe it would also be possible to switch the envelopes between two different modes (e.g. AHDSR and MSEG).

[vasilis_et.ma]

is it multithreaded? there is a an option for multiple threads on serum.. i just bought it and i cant find it..

thank you!

[zerocrossing]

Hm, I was excited, but upon demoing... I'm not feeling it. The UI is great. Reminds me a bit of Circle. I didn't have to crack the manual to get around with ease. However, the synthesis engine just doesn't sound like what it's asking of the CPU. I'm putting it up against Diversion, Electra2, Largo, Synthmaster, Curve 2, Zebra 2, etc (yeah, I own all of those and more except for Electra2) It doesn't sound bad, but when a plug in is spiking my CPU all over the place, crack'n and pop'n and taking a few seconds to switch presets, I'm expecting great sound. I just don't think it sounds all that good.

I understand what people are talking about when they're critical of the presets, but they're easily edited to something good...usually removing the reverb and adjusting the filter is enough, however I do think that at the very least a developer should have some performance modulation assignments in each preset. I was surprised at how few of the presets even used the mod wheel and fewer still (if any?) use aftertouch, though I appreciate the ability to adjust the curve of modulators in the matrix. Also, it's pretty confounding to me that a synth gets released without a good patch browser.

Overall, it feels like an alpha release to me. The feature set and UI is excellent, but with the current competition in wavetable synths, you've got to be something really special in the sonic department. I'll wait and see on this one. Could become one of the greats but I think it needs some polish at this point. I was waiting to try this before I bought Electra2... and I think I'm going to buy Electra2.

[zvenx]

hi, of course we are all entitled to opinion and sonic quality is highly subjective.
However one question.

Also, it's pretty confounding to me that a synth gets released without a good patch browser.

Diversion, Electra2, Largo, Synthmaster, Curve 2, Zebra 2,

I have most of the above except Curve 2 and Largo, but I played a Largo demo years ago.
But apart from Zebra 2 favourite and synthamster's favourite (which still doesn't work properly on either my machines) compared to these, what makes Serum's browser a 'less good' patch browser compared to those?

rsp

[zerocrossing]

hi, of course we are all entitled to opinion and sonic quality is highly subjective.
However one question.

Also, it's pretty confounding to me that a synth gets released without a good patch browser.

Diversion, Electra2, Largo, Synthmaster, Curve 2, Zebra 2,

I have most of the above except Curve 2 and Largo, but I played a Largo demo years ago.
But apart from Zebra 2 favourite and synthamster's favourite (which still doesn't work properly on either my machines) compared to these, what makes Serum's browser a 'less good' patch browser compared to those?

rsp

Is there a patch browser at all? If there is, I apologize, but it wasn't clear enough to find.

[4damind]

There is a patch browser but it's only a menu with sub-menus. It's not some of this full featured browsers with tags, categories, filter function etc. I think such a browser should be implemented with some of the next updates.