KVR Audio

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:52 pm

it's gonna be a moderate priced commercial VSTi. and i will provide a (not too much restricted) demo-version. in particular, i will leave out the GUI-elements for the 3rd oscillator. besides that, it is fully functional. it is still under development, but i just uploaded a beta-demo version. here it is:

http://www.braindoc.de/vst/Aggressor.zip

manuals here (english and german):
http://www.braindoc.de/manuals/AggressorEn.html
http://www.braindoc.de/manuals/AggressorGe.html

i would appreciate some feedback very much. i'm currently considering oversampling on the oscillator side to reduce aliasing at higher notes - what do you think? is it worth the additional CPU-load? i mean, the synth is actually supposed to be used as bass-synth, so mostly it will be played in the lower key-range where it sounds OK, i think. but i would also like to hear general opinions about this synth. have fun with it!

elv · Post by **elv** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 9:15 pm

To be honest there is litle I find interesting in it.Sure it has some nice thing but nothing that really blows my mind.But then again I am a "Pad poofer" to quote BONES.And the CPU load is thru the roof.
But like I said before it has some nice touches the osc anf filters have some uniqe sounds(hope I am not going in circles here)and the GUI layout is a good idea one screen for basic edit of all and pages for more in editing.

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 10:54 pm

elv wrote:To be honest there is litle I find interesting in it.Sure it has some nice thing but nothing that really blows my mind.But then again I am a "Pad poofer" to quote BONES.

yes. it is definately not very well suited for the creation of pad sounds. in fact, conceptually it is designed for all the opposite.

elv wrote:And the CPU load is thru the roof.

mmhh. i'm aware of the quite high cpu-usage and will adress some optimizations for the final release. but i can't promise too much here - take into account, that the synth has quite a lot of things to do in these cpu-cycles, it calculates (all at sample rate):

-frequencies for the 3 oscillators and the filter (according to quite a lot of parameters, slide-state, etc.)
-3 oscillators (the frequency of which is updated at sample-rate)
-2 LFO's (that is 2 more oscillators)
-15(!) ramp envelopes
-3 full featured envelopes
-6 simple filters
-1 complex filter (the coefficients of which are also updated at sample rate - this unfortunately can not be taken for granted in all synths). and filter-design involves slow mathematical functions like sin and cos
-distortion (which may involve the tanh-function)
...and everything is done in 64-bit precision

just to explain and apologize a little bit for the CPU-consumption. i will see, if i can reduce it a little bit - but i'm not willing to sacrifice precision for this.

elv wrote:But like I said before it has some nice touches the osc anf filters have some uniqe sounds(hope I am not going in circles here)and the GUI layout is a good idea one screen for basic edit of all and pages for more in editing.

thanks!

elv · Post by **elv** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 11:50 pm

Just tried it in minihost (was usinf FL& before) and the cpu use is much better(was over 30% in FL , but is under 10% .Infact in FL the plug has all sort of problems

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:07 am

elv wrote:Just tried it in minihost (was usinf FL& before) and the cpu use is much better(was over 30% in FL , but is under 10% .Infact in FL the plug has all sort of problems

thanks for that hint. some of my other plugIns seem to have problems in fruity loops too. what are the other probs? i think i will have to download and install the FL-demo, in order to find out, what's wrong here - shit: i only have a modem connection. i usually test in cubase sx 3 and sometimes in energyXT, and here everything is fine.

elv · Post by **elv** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:12 am

FL has given me so much trouble.Very hard to beta test for people when there is always a question if the bug is in the host

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:21 am

i'm just downloading - it will take almost 3 hours. ...think i will break it up, and go on tomorrow and go to bed soon.

elv · Post by **elv** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:24 am

Let me know if there is anything I can do for you

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:40 am

@ elv: i just realized that you are the guy who is doing the wusikstation. i have already read a lot of positive comments about it but did't try it myself. just wanted to download the demo - and again 40 MB - i think i will have to visit some friend with a broadband connection soon

EDIT: or did i get that wrong? elv.wusik.com is not the same as wusik.com...

elv · Post by **elv** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:05 pm

Nah elv.wusik.com is not the same as wusik.com, William the programmer for WStation is hosting my songs.

snooky · Post by **snooky** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 12:08 pm

why would you try to sell this synth??
Don't be so 'effin greedy mate, put it out there for free

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 1:05 pm

snooky wrote:why would you try to sell this synth??
Don't be so 'effin greedy mate, put it out there for free

because i'm young and need the money. seriously, i'm a very poor student and spent so much time on it - and even i can't live from air and love alone. and i see, that there are quite expensive commercial bass-synths out there, which offer less features than even the free demo of aggressor. actually i see it more as a kind of donation which gives the user some additional feature. take also into account, that i offer a lot of freebies on my website.

Bastiaan from Tone2.com · Sun Jan 22, 2006 1:16 pm

smooky wrote:Don't be so 'effin greedy mate, put it out there for free

I guess being annoying wasn't enough?, now you gotta be rude to developers too?

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 1:35 pm

If you can somehow allow the users to load in samples as oscillators, that would be a good start to providing a synth that has some uniqueness to it.

That is a feature I would pay a moderate price for.

Also how about a mod. matrix instead of specific envelopes for things. Rather than having an amp env. and a filter env. like you currently do. Have a mod matrix where you can route these envelopes (and a few lfo's???) to various parts.

Two things that would increase the chances of me buying this synth.

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 2:14 pm

Chibs' Bath Toy wrote: If you can somehow allow the users to load in samples as oscillators, that would be a good start to providing a synth that has some uniqueness to it.

i also had this thought in my mind already. i will see, if i can include it somehow.

Chibs' Bath Toy wrote:Also how about a mod. matrix instead of specific envelopes for things.

eerrm... i think this would mean to code an entirely new synthesis engine and it would turn aggressor into a completely different synthesizer. so maybe for some other future synth-projects....

Aggressor - free VSTi - new version since Sep 6, 2006