Fors Tela

[cake builder]

And I have zero care for Mac so that's 60 dollars less in their pockets.

[JerGoertz]

Would plop down $59 for this if it were Windows

[gaggle of hermits]

this may be a swing and a miss when comparing to things like prism or kaivo. Ok, it's got granular for the impulses and a fair degree of control by the looks of it. But real-time control? you got lfos. no mention of midi mapping or even automation in the manual. just lfos.

I have more than one finger, guys.

Frankly I just didn't think I had to even mention automation or MIDI mapping in the manual – to me that's sort of a given for a plugin. It exposes every single parameter accurately within the DAW so you can automate and/or MIDI map. :–)

wow, imagine my embarrassment to realise I'm not a frickin' mindreader.

which is a bit of a problem because I thought I'd try it to see how it handles even simple things like velocity and aftertouch and do I need to convert those in the DAW to automation signals because, well, y'know I'm not a mindreader, which we've established earlier. which is a shame as the screenshots demonstrate it has a slightly inscrutable UI.

so I download it. is there a trial mode? I don't know because there's just a log in. lemme see, is that in the manual? no, silly. it's obvious because I'm a mindrea...oh wait. darn it.

do I register an account? is that it? let's try that. hit register. 'please fill out this field'. what field? it's a totally black box. man this using stuff while not being a mindreader is real hard. I'm guessing it's email but who knows? maybe I've stumbled into some kind of game where I have to find some easter egg on the page to get in.

maybe I'm just not cool enough to use it.

but seriously, you might want to work on how you communicate with people who are new to your operation and might want to demo it.

[wintoid]

Another wonderful product from Fors. Everything is an instabuy from them for me. The post before seems a bit harsh, but then perhaps I am just used to the Fors way of doing things.

[ess_m]

but seriously, you might want to work on how you communicate with people who are new to your operation and might want to demo it.

Sorry if my response came across as rude! You are right that we have goofed on the trial information, I'll fix that.

[c0nsilience]

this may be a swing and a miss when comparing to things like prism or kaivo. Ok, it's got granular for the impulses and a fair degree of control by the looks of it. But real-time control? you got lfos. no mention of midi mapping or even automation in the manual. just lfos.

I have more than one finger, guys.

Frankly I just didn't think I had to even mention automation or MIDI mapping in the manual – to me that's sort of a given for a plugin. It exposes every single parameter accurately within the DAW so you can automate and/or MIDI map. :–)

wow, imagine my embarrassment to realise I'm not a frickin' mindreader.

which is a bit of a problem because I thought I'd try it to see how it handles even simple things like velocity and aftertouch and do I need to convert those in the DAW to automation signals because, well, y'know I'm not a mindreader, which we've established earlier. which is a shame as the screenshots demonstrate it has a slightly inscrutable UI.

so I download it. is there a trial mode? I don't know because there's just a log in. lemme see, is that in the manual? no, silly. it's obvious because I'm a mindrea...oh wait. darn it.

do I register an account? is that it? let's try that. hit register. 'please fill out this field'. what field? it's a totally black box. man this using stuff while not being a mindreader is real hard. I'm guessing it's email but who knows? maybe I've stumbled into some kind of game where I have to find some easter egg on the page to get in.

maybe I'm just not cool enough to use it.

but seriously, you might want to work on how you communicate with people who are new to your operation and might want to demo it.

Yikes! It’s extremely intuitive if you’ve used any of their M4L devices, which is what many folks are going to know them from. It also clearly states on the website that there is a trial version available for download. Even though I have most of their devices I still trialed Tela before getting it simply because they offered a trial.

Personally, when a synth comes along that is ⅓ of the cost of most mainstream synths and is backed by the reputation of a legit creative company that has roots in the hardware world, that’s insta-buy territory because it just doesn’t happen often.

KVR is known for polarized overreactions from folks that would much rather argue than create. It is a bit of a vipers den.

I had such high hopes for this thread.

[tonycore]

KVR is known for polarized overreactions from folks that would much rather argue than create. It is a bit of a vipers den.

not to mention that many of the devs (and contributors) here are not native english speakers & may appear "rude" or abrupt to us completely unintentionally. we have to give them some leeway.

But this thread is about Tela, which I think is pretty cool. Looking forward to exploring it.

[Kyunghee]

Really intriguing plugin. I'll get it cause Fors devices have never disappointed

[gaggle of hermits]

Yikes! It’s extremely intuitive if you’ve used any of their M4L devices, which is what many folks are going to know them from. It also clearly states on the website that there is a trial version available for download. Even though I have most of their devices I still trialed Tela before getting it simply because they offered a trial.

you manage to quote my entire reply but not read a word of it.

I’m aware there’s a trial. I downloaded it. that’s the point. it’s what happens next that’s the issue.

i didn’t even get as far as using the plug-in in that reply because of the lack of clarity around what needs to happen to activate it. so the point about its operation being similar to Live plug-ins *that I haven’t used* is just specious arguing for the sake of it. I wasn’t even aware that trials are a possibility for third-party M4l plug-ins.

I get you’re a fan but try reading things first.

[Dalle]

Nice synth! Installing and activating the trial was very easy : - )

[JamminFool]

hoping this comes to windows (or M4L).

[gaggle of hermits]

It exposes every single parameter accurately within the DAW so you can automate and/or MIDI map. :–)

yeah, about that. maybe some people like it like that but it's a royal ballache in hosts like logic where the emphasis is on mapping control surfaces to automation rather than having a setup like a linnstrument with a breath controller usable across multiple channels.

and Ableton doesn't exactly have a stellar bunch of m4l transformers. so you can wind up with a pileup of midifx plugins that, unless you write a custom script for, need to be individually invoked for each incoming cc message. convert aftertouch to cc etc etc. and to move presets from Ableton to logic, you've got to remake the mappings.

ok, maybe not a showstopper because pluginguru's unify exists. let's just save presets in that and then at least there are eight learnable parameters using the macro knobs. not ideal but better than a kick in the head.

...but then you've got pitchbend, which unify doesn't convert and PG's modmate isn't on apple silicon yet. which isn't an issue if a synth supports pitchbend, but...

...this synth doesn't seem to support pitch bend or if it does I haven't found it yet. so it's either scripting time or add a converter in the logic midifx. then you have the issue of mapping to a usable range. linnstrument set to ±24? no major problems. pitchwheel on a keyboard where the default is usually ±2? careful with those range settings, eugene. one false move and you'll never get it back in the centre again.

I get this wasn't meant to be a physical modelling instrument per se but to have a modal synth that doesn't handle tactile control all that well does not seem to me to be a winning idea. the sound comes alive with a bit of midi controller action but like I say it's real ballache to set up. prism's midi handling is not great but at least it's there.

I also think you should maybe reconsider just having vertical mouse movements for parameter changes (I've now lost count of the number of times I've tried to slide to the right or left and found nothing happens) and whether the ui language is really appropriate for some of the controls. it can be really difficult in some cases to tell whether some are on/off switches, which don't react to vertical x/y at all, or are sliders. or maybe just allow a slide to change state on things like Retrig.

[aMUSEd]

Seems a bit buggy in Bitwig - I have to click on a control twice before I can use it

However I have made a Bitwig Device Map for it which negates that issue and enables more direct control
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gs6ho4dd ... e2wgl&dl=0

[dayjob]

hoping this comes to windows (or M4L).

doubt it. they posted a response about why it's mac/clap/auv2 only over on elektronauts. hopefully it's cool to copy/paste that here:

Like some other people pointed out, it’s not about the sales for me/us – honestly I’m just so excited to build stuff.

Of course the economics need to make sense, we all need to live somehow and so far that has worked out well with Fors, but we don’t make product decisions based on what will sell the best etc… Since we’re a small team we can take these risks and I’m very grateful to be in this position.

For some more backstory here; when we set out to build the first Fors plugin we knew we wanted to build it from scratch. Neither Alex nor I were happy with the state of larger plugin frameworks and we felt like it would be an interesting challenge that would yield a very polished instrument.

We’ve been both keeping an eye on Apple’s modern tech stack and libraries for some time now, and their more cutting edge stuff had matured to a point where we felt like it was good for production. To us it was clear that we could make something special with this, and seeing as we’re only two developers it would have been too difficult and too time consuming to build a multi-platform framework between the two of us.

So the reasoning here has nothing to do with ideology or economics, we just wanted to build this in the way we did. Of course I don’t enjoy excluding people but on the other hand we have to pick our battles a little bit.

[c0nsilience]

I wouldn’t recommend switching to macOS just for Tela. But, once they’ve built out a suite of plugins, sure, why not? Fors is top-notch and at an exceedingly good price point.

That being said, Tela is fantastic sounding, easy to use, and keeps on point with the aesthetic of the current M4L devices.