Thorn: Dmitry Sches' new synth!

[EnochLight]

They work in the sense that you can click to bring up a preset browser, then arrow up and down through a list, press enter and then the preset is loaded. That is, the same as they work in Thorn.

I'm not sure what you are expecting? What behaviour do you want exactly?

"Archaic" synths like Serum and U-He synths behave just like Thorn.

No, they do not. In Serum, even when you're in its proprietary browser, arrowing up and down through the presets with your QWERTY keyboard auto-loads the patch as one would expect. Same as Spire, as well as SynthMaster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbugT3Fa7GA

I assume you are not expecting that the arrow keys will be hard mapped to the preset arrows?

This is the way it works in most top tier synths, and even stock synths in apps like Reason or Studio One (although in S1, you have to hit "enter" to load the patch).

[BlitBit]

The manual says that the osicllators have 128 harmonics organized into 16 frames. Whatever it means

128 harmonics/partials & 16 frames (comparable to a cycle of a waveset/wavetable).

But then does it mean that when you press a key the synth produces only 128 harmonics? If we assume that a frame is comparable to an individual position in a wavetable (which seems to be somehow true as there is a POS knob which morphs between the adjacent frames) shouldn't this mean that when you press a key only one of the 16 frames produces a sound?

And the chk071's pics seem to confirm this. It this a clean saw? (i.e. are the filter and whatever comes after it disabled?)

I'm not at my DAW right now. Definitely should dive deeper into this and also educate myself about what spectral synthesis actually is.

I assume that the osciallator interpolates between those 16 frames which means that you can also get inbetween sounds instead of only the 16 frames themselves. Regardless of the frame position you will always get up to 128 harmonics. This gives you a full spectrum for tones starting at 156.25 Hz (20000 Hz / 128 = 156.25 Hz). This is around D#3 in musical terms.

One idea to get around this for bass tones might be to make use of the drive and distortion modules to enhance the spectrum. From what I have read in the thread so far the distortion seems to be of very good quality.

[sqigls]

[ehem]
IT SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD

[lnikj]

No, they do not. In Serum, even when you're in its proprietary browser, arrowing up and down through the presets with your QWERTY keyboard auto-loads the patch as one would expect. Same as Spire, as well as SynthMaster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbugT3Fa7GA

I assume you are not expecting that the arrow keys will be hard mapped to the preset arrows?

This is the way it works in most top tier synths, and even stock synths in apps like Reason or Studio One (although in S1, you have to hit "enter" to load the patch).

We're cross-purposes then. It might work that way inside a preset browser, but not from the main interface, where being able to accidentally change preset from the one you've just spent half an hour working on would be disastrous.

Thorn doesn't have a preset browser. Nor does Tantra. But, Diversion does, and it does NOT allow you to arrow through the presets like the Serum browser or the u-he browsers. I'm sure that could easily be changed but maybe nobody has complained.

[chroma]

The manual says that the osicllators have 128 harmonics organized into 16 frames. Whatever it means

128 harmonics/partials & 16 frames (comparable to a cycle of a waveset/wavetable).

I'd assume the '16 frames' = one per voice. And bin 0 almost always = 1.0 in most additive systems (it's the reference/harmonic; it has to be the loudest, otherwise it's a subharmonic, not a harmonic), and all other bins are <= 1.0 (however they call it).

[EnochLight]

We're cross-purposes then. It might work that way inside a preset browser, but not from the main interface, where being able to accidentally change preset from the one you've just spent half an hour working on would be disastrous.

Thorn doesn't have a preset browser. Nor does Tantra. But, Diversion does, and it does NOT allow you to arrow through the presets like the Serum browser or the u-he browsers. I'm sure that could easily be changed but maybe nobody has complained.

Well, if I'm the only one in this multiple page thread that's even bringing it up as a problem, I doubt my suggestion will carry much weight to Dmitry's punch list. As I said earlier though, my complaints about preset browsing aside, it's a pretty cool instrument.

[BlitBit]

[ehem]
IT SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD

Sorry, I got a bit carried away with technicalities. In the end all what matters is whether you like the sound that comes out of a synth. I have downloaded the demo of Thorn and browsed the presets. Some very nice pads in there. I think the harmonic filter with its different presets is also a very interesting concept.

Also, as SOlo has pointed out Thorn's character might make it easier to put it in a mix because you have to do less EQing. Same might go for creating layered patches.

I wish Dmitry good luck with his new baby!

[sqigls]

exactly, unless a person is an obsessive chin stroker, when the music hits, it could be one, two, even THREE pings only. Just use it if you like it, use it to its strengths. After almost 20 years of tweaking synths, Thorn is the first synth where I'm genuinely compelled to write everything from scratch, using just one synth. I've already got a few sweet track ideas going with only the demo... 100% Thorn.
a lot of white noise swooshing around, for which I'm employing an instance of my inbuilt cognitive dissonant selective hearing plugin

I'll buy it as soon as i can sell Diva.
I'm totally inspired!

[JoeCat]

Well, wasn't that a nice surprise...

Another "synth I don't need, but will probably purchase anyway". It just lends itself so well to experimentation.

Yeah - does need another GUI size between Normal and Large. Some weird font issues too. Nitpicking. Nice layout, looks "pretty".

It's a fun feature set - already having fun drawing in the harmonic filter and tweaking all the presets with that alone. Between that, the oscillator tweaks, two filters, seq. and effects, I see a lot of ambient, spacey, pseudo-glitch happening.

Of particular note: Great having a demo that saves - I can tool around with sound design before making a purchase (which is pretty much a given)

Congrats, Dmitry!

[chk071]

The glitch sequencer is great really. A nice and easy way to do modulations, without using complicated step LFO's, or wasting modulation matrix slots. Every synth should have that.

[audiosabre]

It says in the manual that the first is fixed and cannot be edited.

You're right, it does. Having used Harmor a lot, I've always took it for granted that you can edit the first harmonic

[Daru925]

I find that enveloppe could be a little more plucky sometimes, even with osc retrigg, and the first note of the glitch sequencer doesn't glitch in ableton live. (it seems first note problem are common in ableton)

Anyway, uninstalling forever(tm) etc, you know the drill .

Such a fun synth.

[skyscape]

I caved and bought this, absolutely loving it. One thing I really don't like about the preset management though is that the 'Save Current Preset' doesn't have a warning/confirmation come up if you click it. I just overwrote a patch I had put some effort into and really liked, because I hit 'save current preset' instead of 'Save New Preset As'. I can see this happening a lot if I'm in the zone... Personally I think an overwrite should have a warning.

[Ingonator]

Just had a first look at the Thorn demo.

The additive oscillators itself seem to be comparable to synths like e.g. Spectral, Icarus or Serum (the waveform editor in Serum and Icarus is a quite powerful additive editor).
The 16 "frames" in the 3 oscilators in combination with the "Pos" knobs seem to be nothing else than wavetable morphing that use a wavetabkle with up to 16 waves. In terms of wavetable synthesis Icarus and Serum seem to be superior to Thorn by far.
On the other hand Thorn like those seem to offer importing WAV files too.

The"Harmonic filter" looks comparable to the drawable filter in Linplug Spectral or the FFT filter in VPS Avenger (which there is available for each of the oscillators independent of the other filters).
This part of the synth engine of Thorn might e the most interesting one while somwhow i think that that the combination of additive oscillators and the drawable filter in Spectral might be more powerful. In Spectral it has controls like a "normal" filter which includes e.g. Cutoff and Resonance. With this you could reproduce standard filter types or create totally crazy ones dependimg on the shape. Same seems to be true for the Harmonic filter in Thorn.

While both Icarus and Serum do not offer a "Harmonic filter" their combination of additive waveform editor, wavetables, WAV files import, a wavetable editor and many different filter types seem to be very powerful too in comparison.

One interesting feature in Thorn in terms of doing wavetable morphing and some other stuff are the two MSEGs.

The advanced oscillator features in Thorn including e.g. FM, Sync (comparable to the Morph modes in e.g. Icarus and Serum) could be interesting too.

Overall my first impression is that Thorn on it's own looks and sounds quite nice but based on the synths i already got including those just mentioned above i do not think that i really need it at the moment.
As alraedy mentiomned for me the Harmonic filter seems to be the most interesting part of the synth and currently this might be the only reason to buy it. On the other hand this would also depend on how much this feature is really useful to create new sounds, also compared to a bigger collection of "fixed" filters like in e.g. Icarus and Serum.

[cb8rwh]

Have any of you tried using the filters in serial. I can't seem to get it to work as expected. I select a BP filter for F1, select a LP for filter 2. Engage the F1 input button next to F2, turn the cutoff all the way down and it seems to have little effect on the sound. I would have expected it to completely filter the sound out.

All the OSCs are sent initially to F1.

Anyone had the same experience? Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

ALso I have just found that if you use the default preset and just engage the serial filter mode, the volume seems to increase. I would have thought the level would stay the same? Perhaps I am misunderstanding serial filters!