Madrona Labs Sumu

[tlkmx]

Working really well on bitwig 5.1 and macos so far.
What a stellar synth.
A pad monster but also a really good weird sound generator. I can get stuff that i never heard before in any other synth.
Its weird for sure but its my fav madrona labs so far and the only one i've buyed after messing with it for 4hr

[dayjob]

The pads it can do are really just amazing. Drop a choir sound in the partials and omg so lush and soothing. I let it go round and round enjoying a patch for a good long while. Just listening.

[kraster]

its definitely something and quite interesting. i havent fully made up my mind about it. i dont think they do a good job explaining the thing. top is basically midi control, 3d data stream derived from sample, envelope array, trigger array and bottom is 2op fm, vca, spatialization, filter, output stage. or in another way: it has a lot of ways to make data streams but tonality comes from 2op fm.

all the modules make sense to me, especially the spatialization stage because it works with the 64 partials idea. the resynth stage also makes sense because it gives you a lot of variant data streams while the data streams themselves have a good amount of regularity in them. i also appreciate that they didnt add any effects. i feel just adding a reverb would have made a lot of presets sound more impressive but this is better, everyone has enough reverbs by now. intuitively i would have liked a more extensive osc section but maybe it would just result in chaos or spike the cpu use, so we cant have it.

i guess my main problem is that i cant tell how many useful sounds i will get out of it and having noise every minute doesnt help when trying to learn the thing but ill keep the demo around to see if its something i would like to purchase.

edit: also the small circles are i guess modulation attenuation but i cant always tell what they are connected to and there is no tooltip or pretty picture in the manual.

Yeah.

It's more fascinating than useful for me and it feels a bit like a building site at the moment.

Deleting cables is hit or miss for me, a few things are greyed out like unison and the tuning menu, the AU version makes no sound for me in Ableton 12, sometimes sound just stops completely when changing the partials, I get a massive blast of sound when I change the polyphony.

[kraster]

Thanks, guys. I guess time will tell as more get a handle on Sumu and show more of what it's capable of.

----

"Generally the issue with resynthesis is that you end up with a ton of parameters which is really unwieldy and a PITA to work with. It's not practical or particularly useful to be tweaking the pitch and amplitude and noise components of 64 oscillators..." ~ kraster

I guess that's where mathematical functions come in to automate the process?

Exactly.

In terms of resynthesis it's one of the best implementations. Vutu is pretty impressive on its own.

[Borbolactic]

Thanks, guys. I guess time will tell as more get a handle on Sumu and show more of what it's capable of.

----

"Generally the issue with resynthesis is that you end up with a ton of parameters which is really unwieldy and a PITA to work with. It's not practical or particularly useful to be tweaking the pitch and amplitude and noise components of 64 oscillators..." ~ kraster

I guess that's where mathematical functions come in to automate the process?

Exactly.

In terms of resynthesis it's one of the best implementations. Vutu is pretty impressive on its own.

Good to know, kraster, thanks again. I'll be listening.

[tlkmx]

Tbh i wish we had more send/receive. I wish it was possible to control more parameters and that it had modulation. I'm fine because i'm in bitwig but heh

[bob swans]

Tbh i wish we had more send/receive. I wish it was possible to control more parameters and that it had modulation. I'm fine because i'm in bitwig but heh

Randy has said that the same "pop up" LFO's that are available in Aaltoverb 2 will be in Sumu in some form. So we will have more modulation eventually outside of Bitwig/Ableton

[tlkmx]

Tbh i wish we had more send/receive. I wish it was possible to control more parameters and that it had modulation. I'm fine because i'm in bitwig but heh

Randy has said that the same "pop up" LFO's that are available in Aaltoverb 2 will be in Sumu in some form. So we will have more modulation eventually outside of Bitwig/Ableton

Oh nice so its not all the current "patch points" that will be available in the end ? I wish i could modulate way more stuff
Also would love a bit more reverb algorithm because they are soooo important to shape the sound not just like standard verb stuff.
Would be cool to have a plate and maybe shimmery verb ?

[cake builder]

This thing is really neat, but I agree with a couple of the other posts, the demo noise is a bit too aggressive (I see they are going to tone it down) and it is eating my poor old CPU for breakfast.

[masterhiggins]

This thing is really neat, but I agree with a couple of the other posts, the demo noise is a bit too aggressive (I see they are going to tone it down) and it is eating my poor old CPU for breakfast.

What’s your CPU? I’m rocking a 1st gen M1. Anything over 4 voices leads to audio breaks.

[cake builder]

This thing is really neat, but I agree with a couple of the other posts, the demo noise is a bit too aggressive (I see they are going to tone it down) and it is eating my poor old CPU for breakfast.

What’s your CPU? I’m rocking a 1st gen M1. Anything over 4 voices leads to audio breaks.

i7 4790k, it's getting up there in years but it handles most things fairly well still

[pdxindy]

So far, the sound demos I've heard haven't inspired me. Not that they sound bad, just not that much I would make use of. For now, I'm not gonna bother with the demo. Maybe when the 1.0 version is out I'll look at it again.

[davide37]

The CPU usage worries me. With a single instance of Sumu in Ableton Live 12 running on a Surface Pro 9 doing nothing - no sound, no VST display - using the 'Sumu drones/bell manufacturer' preset, the CPU meter shoots up from 0% to 40% immediately I activate it in Live. Surely that can't be right?

Madrona Labs support say this: "We've gotten quite a few reports of crashes and performance issues on various systems and DAWs since we launched Sumu into early access a few days ago, and Randy is hard at work on a fix for this issue. We suspect that this issue has something to do with various dual monitor configurations. We should hopefully have a fix issued very soon and will be updating everyone via our newsletter once it's out."

I'm using dual monitors.

[kraster]

This has to be the synth that I have pretty much zero use for but am so unbelievably enchanted by.

It feels like a "forbidden synth". Every time I open it I feel like I'm invoking some kind of arcane ritual or angering some pagan god.

It's so mysterious and other worldly and just plain weird.

It can be beautiful but it's at the fringes where it's most interesting.

[buffalo roam]

Sumu seems good for cinematic sounds. I don't know what else. Seems odd that a long-awaited synth is being intro'd as a beta-test with a hefty price tag.