UVI Falcon - hybrid instrument - version 2.8 released - rumors, ads, praise, mud wrestling and off-topic inside!

[bharris22]

Where's the current lowest price for US residents - is it Best Service?

[otristan]

That is what I feared. I use Bitwig Studio which does not have surround tracks as such, but supports multiple outputs per VST and I use it for surround all the time, which is possible through it's very flexible routing system ( http://blog.thomashelzle.de/2015/02/sur ... io-part-1/ ) in version 1.2 this even has improved.
Any chance of having a manual selection like in the standalone?

This would be tricky to add.

Having no way to actually distribute and modulate sound in space makes the whole 10.2 surround business a bit useless I fear. Or how is this supposed to be used?
How do the factory patches like Experimental -> Contremy Bass that clearly shows more action on the center speaker (in the standalone) as opposed to the next preset in the folder that has nothing on Center work then?

All factory presets are stereo so it's matter of transcoding from stereo to surround with a matrix.
Will have to check on Monday with my colleague (who did the matrices),the one currently implemented.

Best thing would be to have a proper surround pan but we don't have something like that right now.

Our use case right now is more about surround in/surround out with multichannel samples support.
If you want to do surround panning, it's best to use a DAW with all those feature.

Hope this clarify things.

[bob.baffy]

Where's the current lowest price for US residents - is it Best Service?

Seems to be -- Comes out to around $202 with the exchange rate currently. And once you register with UVI, you do get the $100 voucher as well.

EDIT: Don't forget to use the discount code of course.

[jtenney]

Regarding creating wavetables. I used plain old (free) Audacity to do it, for creating wavetables for Kaleidoscope. Unless there's bells and whistles that Serum adds (and I wouldn't be surprised if there were), it's dead easy.

[Sampleconstruct]

Regarding creating wavetables. I used plain old (free) Audacity to do it, for creating wavetables for Kaleidoscope. Unless there's bells and whistles that Serum adds (and I wouldn't be surprised if there were), it's dead easy.

You're mixing things up, KS uses single cycle waveforms, not wavetables.

[jtenney]

Thanks for the correction! Back to the study hall...

[woggle]

no outputting midi is a bit of a drag for me, seems a silly limitation given Falcon can generate midi itself - prevents doubling on other instruments and other uses. That is the only thing holding me back from buying as it would be very useful to drive my other UVI product (IRCAM prepared piano)

[mdsp]

That is what I feared. I use Bitwig Studio which does not have surround tracks as such, but supports multiple outputs per VST and I use it for surround all the time, which is possible through it's very flexible routing system ( http://blog.thomashelzle.de/2015/02/sur ... io-part-1/ ) in version 1.2 this even has improved.
Any chance of having a manual selection like in the standalone?

IIRC REAPER used to work like you describe (having more than 2 channels but no surround format negotiation between plug-in and host), but latest REAPER versions now properly support the VST setSpeakerArrangement method (we had discussions about this subject some time ago with them). Of course Cubase, Bidule, Logic and Protools also support that kind of format negotiation respectively in VST, AU and AAX.

In plugin mode, we can decide about our initial channel format and we can tell the host which other ones we support, but in the end it's the host (and user) decision which one is chosen, not ours.

Having no way to actually distribute and modulate sound in space makes the whole 10.2 surround business a bit useless I fear. Or how is this supposed to be used?
How do the factory patches like Experimental -> Contremy Bass that clearly shows more action on the center speaker (in the standalone) as opposed to the next preset in the folder that has nothing on Center work then?

We do have surround panning when going from stereo to 10.2, it's not simple to explain. Here's basically how it works: stereo input is simulated in surround by 2 virtual speakers at -45° and +45° on the left and right of the listener, the pan control becomes a rotation angle between -180 and 180°. The rotated sound-field is distributed on the output speakers by first panning each virtual speaker on a quad setup, then by recursively splitting front, rear, left and right sides by adding new in between speakers according to the output format.

here's some simple examples showing how to go from LR to LCR, values in brackets represent speaker energy:

Code: Select all

[1, 0] -> [1, 0, 0]
[0.75, 0.25] -> [0.5, 0.5, 0]
[0.5, 0.5] -> [0, 1, 0]
[0.25, 0.75] -> [0, 0.5, 0.5]
[0, 1] -> [0, 0, 1]

This kind of method belong to the family of pair-wise panning, each virtual speaker is rendered on at most 2 real speakers at a time to maximise localisation.

What we don't have is explicit surround panners with additional controls like x, y, distance, radius, ... that's a whole subject on its own and there's so many ways to do it (VBAP, DBAP, ambisonic order 1, 2, 3... etc), we tried to keep the parameter set simple and independent of the output format.

[xcentric]

What's the CPU like?

[ThomasHelzle]

Any chance of having a manual selection like in the standalone?

This would be tricky to add.

All factory presets are stereo so it's matter of transcoding from stereo to surround with a matrix.
Will have to check on Monday with my colleague (who did the matrices),the one currently implemented.

Best thing would be to have a proper surround pan but we don't have something like that right now.

Our use case right now is more about surround in/surround out with multichannel samples support.
If you want to do surround panning, it's best to use a DAW with all those feature.

Hope this clarify things.

Hm, too bad. For instance NI Absynth works just fine with surround in Bitwig Studio, I simply create the needed outputs for it and route them to where I need.
There simply is not a single surround capable DAW I like.
Bitwig beats them all as a creative app (not unlike Falcon actually in many regards) so I rather go the extra mile and use some workarounds than working with those stiff oldsters

From what you said I realized that surround samples are supported, dragged in a 6 channel Flac and it works right away - awesome!

But since Falcon is mainly a tool for creating sound, it would be a huge waste if it wouldn't also allow to use the synths and wavetables as surround sources and at least pan them in a modulated, straightforward way.

In a next step, imagine the grain engines being able to pan individual grains through space and things like that. Way too little synths fully embrace surround sound IMO, much more would be possible then just simple panning...

Cheers,

Tom

[bharris22]

Where's the current lowest price for US residents - is it Best Service?

Seems to be -- Comes out to around $202 with the exchange rate currently. And once you register with UVI, you do get the $100 voucher as well.

EDIT: Don't forget to use the discount code of course.

Thanks! You get that price by buying in euros, excluding VAT, correct? Which discount code are you referring to - the best I have seen is "WITCH10", which doesn't get me down to the $202. Thanks again!

[Ghostwave]

Which discount code are you referring to - the best I have seen is "WITCH10", which doesn't get me down to the $202. Thanks again!

Halloween20

[woodsdenis]

If you own Serum all their wavetables import into Falcon.

[bob.baffy]

Where's the current lowest price for US residents - is it Best Service?

Seems to be -- Comes out to around $202 with the exchange rate currently. And once you register with UVI, you do get the $100 voucher as well.

EDIT: Don't forget to use the discount code of course.

Thanks! You get that price by buying in euros, excluding VAT, correct? Which discount code are you referring to - the best I have seen is "WITCH10", which doesn't get me down to the $202. Thanks again!

No problem! As Karten says, the code you want is HALLOWEEN20. And yes, buy in Euros and as long as you have a US address you should not be charged VAT. Someone said something about a difference with PayPal, but I used CC and got the $202 price. The price in Euros is something like $187, and then you can plug that into google to see what your actual price will be.

[mdsp]

no outputting midi is a bit of a drag for me, seems a silly limitation given Falcon can generate midi itself - prevents doubling on other instruments and other uses. That is the only thing holding me back from buying as it would be very useful to drive my other UVI product (IRCAM prepared piano)

There are many reasons for not having MIDI out, here's a few:

• our internal events are richer than MIDI, if we had MIDI out we'd lose a lot of information,
• we can have so many event processors within falcon that choosing which one to route to the output would be both restrictive and arbitrary, furthermore trying to merge multiple event streams coming from independent sources could easily create unexpected output.
• Midi out support in DAWs is very heterogenous.
• the goal was to enhance the playing experience with intelligent event handling, not to create an algorithmic sequencer to control other plug-ins.

That said, if you already own IRCAM Prepared Piano, just load it into a Falcon Part, add any Event processor you like (Midi Player, Arpeggiator, or any script of your choice) at the Part or Master level and you're done.