Viper｜1.2.2 update with bugfixes and new skin

[Shiek927]

Tbh, Viper filters dont sound exactly like Virus filters. They do sound similar and i like them a lot but when Virus and Viper are compared side by side with the same filter settings the difference may be heard

I’m not intimately familiar with the virus filters (though I do know that I find them pleasing), but are the differences intended to improve upon? I don’t see why else zdf would be needed if the goal was to get as close to virus as possible. I think virus was going for Moog style at least for some modes.

I think it's not so much about analog or digital, but about getting a richer, deeper sound that's typically associated with hardware synths. The Virus (to my knowledge) is a digital synth, but it sounds as rich and deep as any other hardware synth. That's where ZDF filters comes in handy: to give it that richer sound.

That's my reasoning anyway haha!

[recursive one]

Tbh, Viper filters dont sound exactly like Virus filters. They do sound similar and i like them a lot but when Virus and Viper are compared side by side with the same filter settings the difference may be heard

I’m not intimately familiar with the virus filters (though I do know that I find them pleasing), but are the differences intended to improve upon? I don’t see why else zdf would be needed if the goal was to get as close to virus as possible. I think virus was going for Moog style at least for some modes.

Virus TI has an additional analog mode for filters, i believe these are modelled after a Moog but I don't think they are zdf - not that I can actually tell from the sound, but i think zdf was not available when TI was released. Viper doesn't have these (but it has an "analog" saturation mode in the normal filter which is not present in Virus).

As for the rest of the filters, TBH i didn't compare them in great detail. When making short plucky patches with the filter controlled by an envelope with a short decay it can be heard that Viper's filters allow a bit more high frequencies to pass or like that. Also when making patches with high resonance and animated filter movement the resonant peaks in Viper tend to be more smooth (because zdf?). But I think these are non-essential differences, the filters pretty much have the same character.

Viper can definitely sound big, fat and rich, and so does Spire. They both can cover similar sonic grounds but have different character and go well together in the mix. I think Viper generally tends to sound fatter, fuller and more smooth, more like analogue-modelled synths such as Diva.

[adamszabo]

The very simple explanation why I used ZDF filters is because I didnt like the filter in the Virus that much. I preferred the sound of a more modern sounding filter. It was a design choice I made, and I modified the filter to match the Virus filter as much as I can. ZDF filters tend to sound more musical and are more smooth when you modulate them with a fast lfo for example, plus I was able to reduce a lot of CPU by using that, so that was another factor. I think the Viper filters sound close to the Virus ones, plus I will add new features over time which the Virus doesnt have, so as the synth grows I hope it can stand on its own over time.

[Echoes in the Attic]

The very simple explanation why I used ZDF filters is because I didnt like the filter in the Virus that much. I preferred the sound of a more modern sounding filter. It was a design choice I made, and I modified the filter to match the Virus filter as much as I can. ZDF filters tend to sound more musical and are more smooth when you modulate them with a fast lfo for example, plus I was able to reduce a lot of CPU by using that, so that was another factor. I think the Viper filters sound close to the Virus ones, plus I will add new features over time which the Virus doesnt have, so as the synth grows I hope it can stand on its own over time.

Sounds like a good choice! They sound good to me.

I was watching some virus videos about the formant and grain table oscs and those are so gnarly, I hope those oscillator modes are higher on the list than additional filter modes, just because they seem like they would add more overall variety and are the main things that’s are missing from the virus ti, while the current filter selection is perfectly good as is.

[recursive one]

I was watching some virus videos about the formant and grain table oscs and those are so gnarly

There is the Virus TI wavetable pack floating on the web, you may put these wavetables into Serum and get something vaguely similar with some external processing. But the F-Shift and F-Spread controls which Virus TI has, whatever they are doing, they can make some very distinctive sounds. I'm not aware of any software synth doing the same thing.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I was watching some virus videos about the formant and grain table oscs and those are so gnarly

There is the Virus TI wavetable pack floating on the web, you may put these wavetables into Serum and get something vaguely similar with some external processing. But the F-Shift and F-Spread controls which Virus TI has, whatever they are doing, they can make some very distinctive sounds. I'm not aware of any software synth doing the same thing.

Hopefully viper will! Thanks for the tip but I don’t have serum anyways. I think if viper keeps adding the virus osc modes as close as possible it will be the one for me.

Are these virus packs a generic format that can load in most wavetable synths? Ive never gotten a specialized wavetable synth that can load external ones as I always felt I had enough of the wavetable thing in Massive, Absynth, Omnisphere 2, Harmor. I don’t think any of those can load wavetables but I recently got ppg wave and soon wavemapper, perhaps those can load virus wavetables? I’d be curious what the sound would be like since ppg has a ditch native quality. Also considering ANA2 though which could probably do it. Sorry for the sidetrack!

[AnX]

I was watching some virus videos about the formant and grain table oscs and those are so gnarly

There is the Virus TI wavetable pack floating on the web, you may put these wavetables into Serum and get something vaguely similar with some external processing. But the F-Shift and F-Spread controls which Virus TI has, whatever they are doing, they can make some very distinctive sounds. I'm not aware of any software synth doing the same thing.

D2 does exactly that at osc level.

[recursive one]

I was watching some virus videos about the formant and grain table oscs and those are so gnarly

There is the Virus TI wavetable pack floating on the web, you may put these wavetables into Serum and get something vaguely similar with some external processing. But the F-Shift and F-Spread controls which Virus TI has, whatever they are doing, they can make some very distinctive sounds. I'm not aware of any software synth doing the same thing.

Hopefully viper will! Thanks for the tip but I don’t have serum anyways. I think if viper keeps adding the virus osc modes as close as possible it will be the one for me.

Are these virus packs a generic format that can load in most wavetable synths? Ive never gotten a specialized wavetable synth that can load external ones as I always felt I had enough of the wavetable thing in Massive, Absynth, Omnisphere 2, Harmor. I don’t think any of those can load wavetables but I recently got ppg wave and soon wavemapper, perhaps those can load virus wavetables? I’d be curious what the sound would be like since ppg has a ditch native quality. Also considering ANA2 though which could probably do it. Sorry for the sidetrack!

These wavetables are in wav format, Serum loads them just like its own wavetables, also I've imported them into Rapid. I think these wav files just contain all wavetable frames as consecutive cycles in the wave. I don't know how Wolfgang Palm synths work but I guess Wavemapper must load wavs and be able to extract wavetables from them.

D2 does exactly that at osc level.

I think D2 only has a wt position control. How exactly can it do formant shift and formant spread with wavetables?

[Distorted Horizon]

Also considering ANA2 though which could probably do it. Sorry for the sidetrack!

Synthmaster(s) plays them nicely too.

[recursive one]

Also that Sektor synth seems to already contain them, though renamed.

[AnX]

D2 does exactly that at osc level.

I think D2 only has a wt position control. How exactly can it do formant shift and formant spread with wavetables?

All osc controls work with WTs.

Density/amt/tuning detune/spread etc.

[recursive one]

D2 does exactly that at osc level.

I think D2 only has a wt position control. How exactly can it do formant shift and formant spread with wavetables?

All osc controls work with WTs.

Density/amt/tuning detune/spread etc.

Sure they do, but the detune spread has nothing to do whatsoever with formant spread in Virus TI formant complex mode.

From what I understand from the TI manual, F-Shift (F-spread is a sort of auxiliary control to F-Shift) is basically some complicated variation of oscillator sync (except that it doesn't need another oscillator). Playing with sync warp modes in Serum loaded with Virus wavetables can produce some sounds reminiscent of Virus formant complex but they don't sound as detailed and interesting to me.

[Echoes in the Attic]

At the risk of sidetracking the Viper talk even more, what's D2? Then back to Viper!

Edit: Oh Dune2? Yeah don't have that either. Seems nice, but still prefer Viper for Virus sound, just hope those formant and grain table oscs get added!

Maybe I'll loading those Virus waves into Harmor and see how that works.

Are we talking about the 99 virus wavetables for serum that is floating around out there?

[Shiek927]

Remember that when wavetable osc's are available in Viper, it'll likely have it's own wavetables since it's probably not legally possibly to use the ones from the Virus .

[adamszabo]

The 64 bit is finally in Beta, I sent it to my testers, I hope they dont find any problems with it, so the release can be very soon!
I plan to add wavetables to Viper in the future, but I really need to take a little break after all this work. Indeed I wont be able to include the virus wavetables, but you will be able to load your own from Serum, or Icarus or any other wavetables.