Modelonia 2.0 public Beta PC&Mac: download and contest

[liqih]

If only all devs were so accommodating

50% bigger would be great, but thinking longterm it's going to be about vector graphics, not bitmaps. That would really be the dog's Bs.

I meant it when I praised the sound quality!

Cheers.

Ok I will make it double large, at least I can make it first for Windows, for Mac you have to wait two weeks since the Mac programmer is on holidays.
About vector graphics I absolutely agree, the new effect series I'm making is based on that, anyway fortunately Modelonia is at least skinnable and I can build (using some patience and time) skins of any size.

Thanks again.

When you say "double large" are you referring to total area or twice as large on each dimension? If the latter then double would likely be too big. Both my monitors are 1920*1200.

If you double the vertical dimension that would conflict with the memory bar and dock on my Mac (and probably something on Windows too).

50% bigger in each dimension would be good for me, but I guess it would be worth checking on common monitor sizes to see if that would reach plenty of potential customers.

749 x 595 is now, using a factor of 2 would become 1498 x 1190, which is maybe too big as only 10 pxs are left vertically in 1920*1200,
so a good size could be 1198 x 952 which is about a factor of 1.6, or thinking about notebook with wide screen where the rez is 1600 x 900,
then I should stay in 1049 x 833 (factor 1.4) maybe it would be large enough for your 1920*1200 too?

[tatanka]

Hello Luigi,

just a short feedback in here too: works nice in Mulab, Eight tracks, only problem was that one time the beta message killed mulab but that should not bother for final version.

Changed one preset a little bit, saving and loading works without problems.

Preset loosing all the time was a little bit annoying for making a small clip for the contest with these eight tracks, but o.k., thats beta(live) .

Great presets, really looking for the rest of them.

When you look from the contest-way for a whole track (though I know it will and should never be a "synth for evrything") some more keys and pads (of course in the way and style of modelonia) and maybe some basic bass would not hurt

EAP is gone now, haunting hour is over, will have some nice modelonia dreams

Richard

[liqih]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your early contribution and report, as I replied you in the other thread:

About what your say: "Preset loosing all the time was a little bit annoying " I wrote a tip in the "Must_Read_This_Before_Using_The_Synth.rtf"

"- the beta is fully functional except it doesn't save its state in the
project song of your host, but you can save and load single presets (XML files) using the "save" and "load"
buttons on the Modelonia GUI. So if you use it to make a track make sure to save the preset you
tweaked to a new XML file using the "save" button, you may want to name the preset with
the same name of your track so when you load the project song again you know which preset
to load. Or simply render to audio (or freeze) the track before closing your host.
Remember that all MIDI links to parameters are saved in the preset too."

"keys and at least a few basses" There are some keys, and there will be basses, the challenge so far is to make your own!

Have a good night!

[lnikj]

749 x 595 is now, using a factor of 2 would become 1498 x 1190, which is maybe too big as only 10 pxs are left vertically in 1920*1200,
so a good size could be 1198 x 952 which is about a factor of 1.6, or thinking about notebook with wide screen where the rez is 1600 x 900,
then I should stay in 1049 x 833 (factor 1.4) maybe it would be large enough for your 1920*1200 too?

I think that (1049 x 833) would do it. Dmitry Sches recently released Tantra which has a gorgeous interface at 880px high, but that has got a lot of complaints from laptop users with small screens.

WDYT Wagtunes?

[Spitfire31]

Hi Luigi,

Could you please PM me a suitable email address for sending attachments?

I just tried the AU version (OS 10.9.5, Live 9.2.1 and Logic 10.1.1 on the same system): immediate crashes. I have the Apple crash logs for the enjoyment of your Mac programmer.

Kind regards,

Joachim

[wagtunes]

749 x 595 is now, using a factor of 2 would become 1498 x 1190, which is maybe too big as only 10 pxs are left vertically in 1920*1200,
so a good size could be 1198 x 952 which is about a factor of 1.6, or thinking about notebook with wide screen where the rez is 1600 x 900,
then I should stay in 1049 x 833 (factor 1.4) maybe it would be large enough for your 1920*1200 too?

I think that (1049 x 833) would do it. Dmitry Sches recently released Tantra which has a gorgeous interface at 880px high, but that has got a lot of complaints from laptop users with small screens.

WDYT Wagtunes?

It's not just the size. Dune 2, which is maybe 20% bigger, is an amazing GUI. So easy to read and use. The size helps but the real beauty is how little is on one screen. The multiple tabs are a huge help.

This synth simply has too much stuff crammed into one screen. I don't even think a 33% increase is going to help that much. Look at the size of the knobs.

Dune 2 has 64 controls of some kind on the main screen.

This synth has over 100. It's like looking at a circuit board. In fact, it has more controls on it than ImpOSCar 2, which is loaded and that GUI can be made so large that it's wider than my resolution at 1280.

Point is, I think the GUI layout itself needs an overhaul. I don't think increasing the size alone is going to fix the "problem" though I could be wrong depending upon just how large it's made.

1028 might do it but I won't swear to it.

[blurk]

It's good to see Modelonia resurrected – it's the most delightfully quirky synth that I know of.

However, my Live 9.2.1 on Mac OS 10.9.5 found this beta a bit too quirky, apparently – the Modelonia VST caused a sudden crash when I changed presets, after I'd explored for some fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, Live then disables the offending plug-in, so I can't continue testing.

Sorry to see that you are experiencing Modelonia crashes. I am just checking in during a brief interlude in my holidays, and have tried to reproduce this to no avail so far. I have two main test machines: an old MacBook Pro running 10.6.8 and an old but still grunty Mac Pro running 10.9.5. On the 10.9.5 I've just installed an Ableton Live Trial 9.1 (32-bit) I downloaded a while ago and had no problems with the AU. So to be sure we're testing the same thing I've just downloaded the Live 9.2.1 trial (64-bit this time, not sure if you are running 32-bit or 64-bit). I'm just trying the Modelonia VST now and still no problems.

I just tried the AU version (OS 10.9.5, Live 9.2.1 and Logic 10.1.1 on the same system): immediate crashes. I have the Apple crash logs for the enjoyment of your Mac programmer.

So, just to confirm. You initially tried the Modelonia VST and it worked OK for about 15 minutes and then crashed when changing presets? And after that it consistently crashes? What method did you use to change the preset immediately before the crash: the arrow buttons, the pop-up menu or the load dialog? Before the crash, did you change and save any presets?

Basically, from what Liqih has inferred from the crash logs, Modelonia is crashing during preset reading. This is the same preset reading code that obviously worked for you for the first 15 minutes (and is still working for me and hopefully other users; everyone else please send in details of hosts / OS versions that are successfully working too!) So my best guess at this stage is maybe the presets file have been corrupted somehow (which would be a bug we need to track down too, I'm not trying to shift the blame here).

If you are handy at the command line in OS X Terminal, could you please run the following command and email the resulting zip file to Liqih:

Code: Select all

zip -r ~/Documents/CrashingModeloniaPresets.zip ~/Library/Audio/Presets/Modelonia

Then, if you are feeling particularly brave, remove / trash that presets folder, either via the Finder or by running:

Code: Select all

rm -r ~/Library/Audio/Presets/Modelonia

The next time you rescan / open the Modelonia plugin (either kind) it should recreate that presets folder from factory defaults. If that works, then we can conclude that corrupted presets are a problem and we need to figure out what corrupted them. If that doesn't work, and Modelonia still crashes, then we need to investigate some more.

Is there anyone else trying out the Modelonia beta on a Mac? I'd like to get a feel for whether this is a common or a rare problem, since I don't have an obvious way to reproduce it myself here. Thanks for any assistance anyone can give.

[Gamma-UT]

I've got the beta on OS X 10.10.4 and it's running in Live 9.2. I think I've been running the AU but will check later on the machine. I haven't had any crashes that I can recall - I'm at about four instances so far in a prospective demo track.

I think I've had a situation where the preset recalled wasn't what I thought I saved, though I haven't ruled out user error.

[Spitfire31]

@blurk: I'll explore, but I can't do it right away.

I think you have a point with the presets. When starting up Logic the first time after having installed the AU, I did get a message about some difficulty reading the presets. It was gone almost immediately, so I had no time making a screen shot.

/Joachim

[blurk]

@blurk: I'll explore, but I can't do it right away.

No rush, because I'll be away on the 2nd half of my holiday. But I will look out for whatever you can find when I get back in about a week's time.

I think you have a point with the presets. When starting up Logic the first time after having installed the AU, I did get a message about some difficulty reading the presets. It was gone almost immediately, so I had no time making a screen shot.

OK, I'm pretty sure I know what that is. I'm assuming a certain VST initialisation function is called first (the AU is the VST wrapped by Symbiosis, which I've used successfully in the past) and the presets are copied to their final location there. But if Logic does the AU initialisation in a different order, you will get that message. But that shouldn't be related to the crash problem. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of Logic (I personally run a whole different bunch of Mac OS X hosts for my own music projects) so I can't test with what is arguably the main OS X Audio Unit host.

[Spitfire31]

OK, I cleared the deck for action and reinstalled Modelonia from scratch.

This time, everything seems to have worked fine (I had already scrapped the presets folder, so nothing there to zip and send to Liqih, unfortunately). I again replaced the automatically installed presets with the new ones.

I belatedly recalled that I did fiddle around quite a bit with the 'Sound Wizard' function that first time with the VST in Live, and was surprised that the resulting sound was written to the current preset. I think that I did a fair bit of back'n'forth and that may well have been responsible for some sort of corruption of the preset folder or at least that paticular preset. I haven't made any further torture test, but Modelonia now works as expected in Live 9.2.1 (64 bit) and Logic 10.1.1.

I think that it might be a good idea if the result of the Sound Wizard were stored in a buffer and had to be actively saved instead of just overwriting a preset in RAM. In Live, in order to get the original preset back, I have to delete Modelonia from the track and reinstantiate it. Not quite ideal, I think.

Another beta issue that I feel should be addressed, is the massive low bass artifacts present, especially in the attack phase, in many sounds. Even in mid or treble range patches, you sometimes have these gross bass peaks socking your ear from some 40 Hz and down to virtually DC (the spectrum analyser I use only goes down to 10 Hz) and at a level competeing with the fundamental.

I assume this is a probably unavoidable side effect of the algorithms. A built in, optionally selectable, steep cutoff highpass filter, adjustable from, say 100 down to 30 Hz as part of preset parameters might help a lot, though. The EQ at the bottom of the GUI isn't suitable for taming these almost-infra sound peaks.

Enjoy your vacation!

Kind regards,

Joachim

[overhishead]

I remember Modelonia being one of the first physical modeling synths I have ever heard. Nusofting is a respected old school developer and it's great to see something new, especially Modelonia.

How does this synth compare/contrast with the other big boys, Tassman, Kaivo and Yamaha VL1?

[ChamomileShark]

well I won't be trying the beta but I expect to buy this - I think it's been in the works for a while (like years on and off) and I'm looking forward getting it. Still love harptime pro - hope all goes well for you!

[Spitfire31]

well I won't be trying the beta but I expect to buy this - I think it's been in the works for a while (like years on and off) and I'm looking forward getting it. Still love harptime pro - hope all goes well for you!

It might be a good idea to try the beta anyway, because Modelonia is… different, in the best sense. It can have an acoustic, quirky character that is really difficult to find in any other synth. It's perfect for adding 'spice' or provide an ear-turning, 'alive' solo sound that leaves you guessing what kind of instrument it might be.

What Modelonia isn't, is a meat'n'taters synth. Many of the presets, while interesting, may have a useful range of only an octave and a half, and others may be fairly unpredictable – sometimes a note will sound and sometimes not, or sound like another instrument altogether…

This is all part of the discreet charm of Modelonia, as long as you don't expect it to be your go to EDM instrument. Modelonia is quirky, unpredictable, surprising – and a lot of fun!

It's one of those instruments that you'd to well to demo before purchase, to confirm that it's up your alley.

/Joachim

[ChamomileShark]

hi, that's helpful advice but I'm already reasonably familiar with it from the original modelonia demos, already have and use Harptime Pro and other physical modelling stuff - I'm not looking for a mainstream synth and I don't do EDM.