KVR Audio

DrewDale · Post by **DrewDale** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 9:57 pm

My own variations on Two TAL classics. Better for my eyes IMHO.

BlackWinny · Post by **BlackWinny** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 5:39 pm

What I deeply regret in TAL-Bassline-101 is the abandon by Patrick of the dark background. By wanting to absolutely reflect the mouse-grey color of the hardware, he has made the GUI totally impossible to use for me and for all the persons having a strong eyesight impairment with the contrasts. He has not understood that the size of a GUI can make a color totally impossible to use for persons having huge problems with the contrasts. It's possible to use that background color on the original hardware instrument which is 57 cm wide... but not at all (for impaired persons) on a little GUI of less than 20 cm wide at the screen. Since the loss of the dark background I can use this soft synth only thanks to the MIDI learn on my BCR2000. It is probable that without the same ability (considering the user has a MIDI controller as comprehensive as the BCR2000) almost all the eyesight impaired musicians can't anymore use TAL-Bassline-101.

I had even kindly asked Patrick by email an ability to switch between two skins in the future versions for example, the current one and the old dark one, explaining these reasons due to eyesight impairments for a not negligible part of the musicians... And he never answered me! It was the only time I've been disappointed by him. Therefore I have no solution, despite that I love the sounds of this emulation I can't use it as much as I would like and now it sleeps the major part of the time in the depths of my hard disk while I make an extensive use of TAL-UNO-LX which has a perfect GUI. Sometimes I come back to TAL-Bassline-101 to enjoy a little its sounds... but it's such a pain that it becomes more and more rare.

sfd · Post by **sfd** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 6:36 pm

BlackWinny wrote:What I deeply regret in TAL-Bassline-101 is the abandon by Patrick of the dark background. By wanting to absolutely reflect the mouse-grey color of the hardware, he has made the GUI totally impossible to use for me and for all the persons having a strong eyesight impairment with the contrasts. He has not understood that the size of a GUI can make a color totally impossible to use for persons having huge problems with the contrasts. It's possible to use that background color on the original hardware instrument which is 57 cm wide... but not at all (for impaired persons) on a little GUI of less than 20 cm wide at the screen. Since the loss of the dark background I can use this soft synth only thanks to the MIDI learn on my BCR2000. It is probable that without the same ability (considering the user has a MIDI controller as comprehensive as the BCR2000) almost all the eyesight impaired musicians can't anymore use TAL-Bassline-101.

I had even kindly asked Patrick by email an ability to switch between two skins in the future versions for example, the current one and the old dark one, explaining these reasons due to eyesight impairments for a not negligible part of the musicians... And he never answered me! It was the only time I've been disappointed by him. Therefore I have no solution, despite that I love the sounds of this emulation I can't use it as much as I would like and now it sleeps the major part of the time in the depths of my hard disk while I make an extensive use of TAL-UNO-LX which has a perfect GUI. Sometimes I come back to TAL-Bassline-101 to enjoy a little its sounds... but it's such a pain that it becomes more and more rare.

I totally agree !

And not only for TAL Bassline-101 but for many other synths.

There are many synths that I would be happy to buy if the GUI was more user friendly and viewable.

No matter how great the air craft might be I will be extremely uncomfortable flying anything with displays looking like SampleTank 2.

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Wed Nov 05, 2014 7:43 pm

what sort of colour combinations/schemes do you find most useful then?
(is it just that you want good contrast?)

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Wed Nov 05, 2014 7:56 pm

I liked the stock TAL gui's. They didn't have many features, so no matter what, it wasn't going to be a kid in a candy store.

BlackWinny · Post by **BlackWinny** » Wed Nov 05, 2014 11:51 pm

mztk wrote:what sort of colour combinations/schemes do you find most useful then?
(is it just that you want good contrast?)

The best contrast as possible... and physiologically it is now proved that for control panels (not for reading of books) the best combination for the eyes and the reading is light letters on dark background and not the invert as thought during decades and decades.

It was normal to make hardware synth control panels (all are and were wider than 50-60 cm when not almost 1 meter) with dark characters on light background without any problems for the eyes because of very wide surfaces but it is a strong strong strong error to think that this combination can be applied the same way on little surfaces like VST synths which on the screen are never wider than 15-20 cm. And in addition remember that the control panels of the hardware synths were (and are) simply reflecting the ambient light of the room while a screen emits itself the light! Active emission of light by a screen and passive reflection of color by a matter is not at all the same thing!

The use of a VST control panel is not at all the same situation as reading a full text (a full paragraph, a page, a book) where there, yes, physiologically the best is black letters on light background (except for the glaucoma where the light on dark remains still the best even for the reading of books because of the close angle of vision and the very weak mobility of the eye lens). For everybody, impaired or not, the use of words which are spread on a control panel is not at all the same use as the reading of a page of text. The movements of the eyes are not at all the same in the two situations, and the internal pressure in the eye either. Almost all the designers of GUI for musical plugins make very strong mistakes in their design because they think that the situation is the same... and I don't talk about those who don't care at all and piss on those having eyesight impairments.

And for website design, it is yet another story because it depends the content of the webpage in images, graphics, texts, and tables. It is yet another type of design. With the same physiological rules but for other types of readings, other types of contents, other movements of the eyes, other stops of the eyes on parts of texts... so with other rules to apply.

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Thu Nov 06, 2014 10:53 pm

full colourchange psychedelic GUIs for the people
not a popular option then.

moho · Post by **moho** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 3:15 pm

mztk wrote:full colourchange psychedelic GUIs for the people
not a popular option then.

What about RBR's they look like they are built from psychedelic lego, the colours hurt your eyes but they sound great, Never judge a plug by its cover

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:25 pm

i'm onto full colourchange trip right now

coming up.
really want to find a source of mental mystic icons+images somewhere,
send me the links!

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:28 pm

re SH-101s, they turn green after a few decades. or brown if
you're really unlucky, and not evenly either. maybe that
should be an authentic feature.

here you go. lovely job(not

)

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 8:48 pm

BlackWinny wrote:Here we are...

The filename is "Kriminal Freeware Pack at 2014-08-23.zip".

You simply unzip it. You get a folder named "Kriminal".

You move this FULL folder in your favorite VST directory (if you had previously these synths in your installed VSTs, first move yours elsewhere to avoid to loose something).

In only one gesture you'll have hence:

Bass Terminal (inspired by Novation BassStation)

Blue Synth

Czar

Dante

Dr Beat

EQ 10

EQ 3

EQ 31

EQ 64

Felix (inspired by Octave Kitten)

Karnage

Kombat

Koroder

Korosion

KRM 61 (inspired by Korg Poly-61)

KRM SFP

KRM-101 (inspired by Roland SH-101)

Krolar SX-2 (inspired by Roland SH-2)

Kroma

Krypt

Mozi (inspired by the EDP Gnat)

Nietzsche

Noise Synth

Oktagon

Omaha (inspired by Yamaha CS-5)

Padrone

Plato (and Plato Lite)

Pulse8or

Raptor

Sartre XT

Sexy Booster

Sexy Stereo

Solaris (inspired by Fender-Rhodes Chroma Polaris)

Spitfire

Synth 2

Tsunami

Twilight

Uberheim BO-X

Unamed Synth 2

Vektor

Vektor FM

Vektor PD

Vektor SF

Victor

Voltaire

WaveWitch

X
The first time you will relaunch your DAW, you will get four error messages. They come from "Vektor SF". It is a SoundFont player which as soon as its registration in the DAW (and at each launch of the synth) asks for these four soundfonts:

C:\Audio\SoundFonts\Choir_S.sf2

C:\Audio\SoundFonts\VintageKeys.sf2

C:\Audio\SoundFonts\FrhEns_S.sf2

C:\Audio\SoundFonts\Arco Strings.sf2
They are not in the zip file. But it will be very easy to replace them by any others that you can find everywhere on the web (they can even have other names, you'll have just to rename yours)... but if we had the original fonts, it would be nice, of course.

Maybe Dave (Kriminal) reads this thread...

In the bundle there are other soundfont players. They are:

Dr Beat

KRM SFP

Raptor

Vektor SF

WaveWitch
Only Raptor is provided with its wave files (they have the format "*.wav").

For all the others, it is easy to find fonts ("*.sf2") everywhere.

For all the products that I have gathered in this bundle I have recreated a screenshot at the format *.png and for many of them I have added a file named "What.txt" which explains in a few words what it is. And for all those which are emulations of vintage hardware synths I have added the operation manual ("*.pdf") and the service manual when it exists. I made that for all the emulations of vintage synths except for Uberheim OB-X because it is in fact very far from the original...

You can download the zip file ("Kriminal Freeware Pack at 2014-08-23.zip") here:
http://dfiles.eu/folders/HOUQN3MVZ
(link updated at 9 November 2014)

The size is 125.01Mb.

Have fun !

BlackWinny

quite a collection.... i think i have about 6 of those left from my old PC.

I think the error msg's are because i loaded SF's while i was building them in SE, so it saved the info etc. Im pretty sure they are not needed.

BlackWinny · Post by **BlackWinny** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 12:32 am

Hello Dave!

Have you ever counted how many VST you have released until today?

(don't reveal how many you've never released...)

Kriminal wrote:I think the error msg's are because i loaded SF's while i was building them in SE, so it saved the info etc. Im pretty sure they are not needed.

Yes, it is probably that, because it is very easy to deal with the problem, either by recreating the asked folder with personal wave files, either by choosing other wave files elsewhere on the hard disk (it depends the VST which is considered).

And even if some of them are obviously quite old, they all are good and some are really excellent! Felix, Krolar SX-2, Omaha and Karnage, for example, are among my preferred VST. Not that they are ultra-accurate emulations (Felix, Krolar and Omaha) of course but they give an excellent sound recalling perfectly the original hardwares for an ancient prog rocker (amateur, eh) who was 15 in the beginning of the 70's. I really like them.

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 6:51 pm

hey i like depositfiles

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 6:57 pm

The Kriminal synths were pretty good, I liked the old bitcrusher and multiband distortion.

BlackWinny · Post by **BlackWinny** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 9:23 pm

Yes, it works in 18 languages, among them of course in English.

I can't say if it's easier than Boxnet, I have heard of Boxnet but never tried it.

I quite like Depositfiles, it works a bit in a similar way than a remote hard disk (in fact it is a common cloud), in HTTP, in FTP (with any FTP client you want), and even with several little dedicated clients in Java to be used simply from any machine: you log to your account with one of these clients and you have a full access to your repository with all the features to create directories, upload up to 10 files simultaneously, move files between directories, etc. as in a local file commander. And these tools don't have any adwares, spywares, backdoors, etc. (I master very well that question).

The user support is very reactive. In four years I have used it several times, not for bugs but for questions in the kind of "How can I do...", and each time I got the answer in the 36 next hours, and twice it has been with an exchange of half a dozen answers, and always kind.

But in the next months I'm gonna leave all these cloud servers (Depositfiles as the others) because I can do all that directly here with my Synology NAS at home. And with a friend whom it is the profession I'm creating my own little server at home, with website, domain name, etc. So it will be much more easy not only for me but also for everybody (no captcha, no wait, no speed limitation, etc.) to download all these old freeware files, and perhaps not only in HTTP but also in FTP (protected of course) or SFTP. It's in work... And it will be probably enough advanced somewhere in the beginning of 2015 (January, February, I don't know, we work on it very quietly taking our time) to open the server to everyone here for these "free gems from the past". I can't say exactly when but it will be ready in the next months, with the server here in my home.

Old Free VSTi Gems From The Past