Actually, I was just using Diva and mentioned this idea in another thread: every synth should have a built-in oscilloscope.

So, I'll make that an official request :

1.) Add a built-in oscilloscope.

Yes, that would be very useful I'll make a case for it, but can't promise anything ...

Peace,
Andy.

Actually, while I'm in feature request mode, here's a rather different one.

Before I decided on purchasing Diva, I was demoing Diva and Synthix. One of the things I found interesting in these synths is their extremely flexible approach to the control of individual voices.

Specifically, though, I want to focus on voice management in Synthix. In Synthix, you can have up to 8 layers of sound. Additionally, Synthix has up to 16 voices of polyphony. Now, the 16 voices are assigned to specific layers. Voices 1 and 9 are assigned to layer one, voices 2 and 10 to layer 2, and so on until you get to voices 8 and 16 being assigned to layer 8.

In addition, you could manually decide how Synthix assigns voices. For example, you can force it to play 1,2,3,4 and then 5,6,7,8 when using four voice unison. However, you could manually assign it so that 1,3,5,7 and 2,4,6,8 were used in four voice unison, or any combination of the above, etc. Personally, I thought options like that were the most clever part of the synth.

I was thinking how interesting a similarly flexible voice management system would be in Alchemy, where there are many more voices of polyphony.

For example, Alchemy has four sources. Lets say I import an sfz into each source, and each sfz has round-robin capability. If I'm using 32 voice polyphony, I might assign voices 1-8 (or 2, 6, 22, 30, etc) to source one, 9-16 to source two, etc. Then, to add an additional layer, each voice separately tracks the round robin samples (not saying you would want to do that, just saying it might be possible). I think the possibilities of such a flexible system would be marvelous.

Also, rather than only assigning particular voices to specific sources, you can have each source receive all voices as normal, but each source is simply going to react to that particular voice number differently. For example, I have two sfz sources, one a crying baby, the other a drummer. Voice 1 triggers a high baby scream in source one, while a snare is triggered in source 2. When voice 2 is activated, source one has a baby puking sound, and source 2 has a hi-hat, etc.

Anyway, sorry for the length or if I was unclear. Long story short:

1) really flexible voice management would be cool.


edit: In general, I really like the way both Diva and Synthix manage voices. In Diva, choosing you can specifically choose "voice" or "voice mod" as modulation sources. I imagine that some lovely Camel has probably had a chance to check out one of those synths, and I think they both might be interesting models to adapt.
Last edited by KBSoundSmith on Tue Feb 21, 2012 10:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

Yeah, the Synthix implementation is quite nice if a little confusing at first!

Anyway, yes Alchemy 2 is very likely to feature improved voice management including a per source arp, ability to make a specific source mono only (think background drone ...) and also improved FX routing. It might not be exactly as you described, but it will be a lot more flexible and generally better.

But that's getting ahead of things a little ... none of this is set in stone yet ...

Peace,
Andy.

be really cool if Alchemy could parse file short-cuts so you could make a folder in 'Presets' called SFZshortcuts, and in that group folders of short-cuts to the actual SFZ files (which could be scattered all over your systems drives and partitions). Alchemy would recognise that it's being asked to load a short-cut and would follow the short-cuts path expecting to find and load an SFZ (as opposed to an ACP) appropriately.

You could then have instant access to all your SFZ's

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for the suggestion. We did discuss this idea recently - as you probably know, the v1.30 update is going to feature a preset browser with searching and I was hoping we could also include SFZ files and samples in the results. However, this is a lot of additional work that would complicate the design e.g. which source is the SFZ intended for? so we have decided to leave it out until at least version 2.

Allowing shortcuts presents an additional problem of needing to scan extra folders. Some users will have vast sample and SFZ collections, and if we make shortcuts work this way they will expect Alchemy to index the files properly, which will slow things down considerably. But as I say, we will look at this again for v2 since one of my personal high priority requests is improved access to samples.

Some time back I think you posted a suggestion for adding buttons in the performance section. While it may not be part of the perform section itself, we have received a lot of requests to allow MIDI learning of buttons on the GUI. So, there is a good chance we will see this in v2 e.g. the ability to change preset, SFZ or filter types from a MIDI controller.

Peace,
Andy.

Id like to make a suggestion for ability to import fallowing File types:

DWP - Image Line DirectWave sampler format
SF2 - Sound Font

Filter sidechain...

Have incoming audio process the filter movement...

Or have incoming audio control the osc.. like a pitch follower.. i see folks doing it with that moogerfooger and the korg ms-20 vst..

Incoming audio from where? I believe it's not something they are planning to do yet... Just import, not external in real time...

With ESC (Extreme Sample Converter), you can convert your SF2 to SFZ...

Sidechain input for external signal to envelope follower.

I know... they said external audio wasn't a priority... anyway, here we post what we would like to have... just that I heard that... It would be cool though... Maybe an external app that converts any audio signal you want into an MSEG file? You could even this way make it quicker or slower... Any kind programmer out there :S ? That would be cool too...
There is one app that transforms any wav into a RAW file for LFO's and OSC's... but it "shrinks" the samples... not sure how accurate it would be if the audio is too long... Can't explain it right now, hope you understand what I mean...

The ESC part was for the previous guy

Sure, link when you get a chance. Thanks.

Link my brain cells... ... The apps are on the download section on your account... not the product one, but the one from other users

The raw files must have a fixed number of samples (like snapshots of the wave?). So I don't know how this app works, but it gets any audio and it gets it to that "samplerate" (kind of, don't remember the actual term). So if it is too long (like with what I guess you want) you miss "definition". You have to shrink the audio and then take snapshots of that on a very small file... like a single cycle osc... So I guess that analize the audio and take any snapshot and turn it into an MSEG file (ending with a very large MSEG anyway with lots of breakpoints, maybe using the curving option of the MSEG, don't know how, would ease these part, ending with less breakpoints) is a better option... anyway is slower than just having and audio and doing following... BUT... you can play, shift it, sync it, change it, modulate the depth, etc... just throwing ideas here...

The other day, I created a patch where an envelope (ADSR2, say) modulated another envelope (ADSR1, say). I found it very inconvenient that the knob controlling the strength of the modulation is on the page for ADSR2, but the graphic depicting the strength of that modulation (the green ring) is on the page for ADSR1. This results in a lot of page-flipping, and adjusting that knob is far more difficult than it should be.

It would be nice if it were possible to manipulate the mod strength at the target of the modulation (ADSR1), rather than at the modulator source (ADSR2).