One Synth Challenge #101: Spiral Generator (Taron Wins!)

[bjporter]

Welcome to the One Synth Challenge #101! It's a friendly music competition where you can win cool prizes but most importantly, meet amazing musicians, and learn a lot about mixing, sound design, and more!


Submissions will show up here (may be a long delay before showing up):
https://soundcloud.com/kvrosc/sets/one- ... 101-spiral


Want a chat room with other OSCers? Join our slack here



Spiral Generator is something very different than usual. This synth uses an algorithm created by Jerobeam Fenderson, which can create oscilloscope-music. Many traditional synth sounds should be possible using the modulation capabilities of the synth.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K93NPOsPPhI



Prizes:
(Would you like to be a sponsor / prize donor? Contact me via PM or go ahead and post your intended donation here! Get a cool mention on our donator wall of honor)



Special Note:
Ridan is offering a secondary prize (on top of the normal prize): any 1 of his soundsets. Mention the soundset you want, along with your other prize. If you would like your winning track on spotify, please specify so as well, or you will be contacted by rghvdberg.


KV331 Audio : Synthmaster One


Tritik : Echorus (effect plugin)


Soundemote : PrettyScope (beautiful analog oscilloscope)


Audio Thing : Outer Space (vintage tape echo plugin)


NUSofting : 1 Copy of Modelonia v2 Synthesizer


Dmitry Sches : Tantra Multi-Effect + 3 Expansions


Dmitry Sches : Diversion


KV331 Audio : Synthmaster


Touch The Universe Productions: LuSH-101 Cloud Layers soundset


The FXB Project by alvfaria : Any 3 commercial sound banks. See the main site here


Guda Audio : Euterpe XL


Wusik : 1 bundle of Wusik 8000, Wusik Station 8, and Wusik EVE v3


Abstract Cats Music : AbiTron Bank for Synthmaster


JRR Shop : UVI: Mello


satYatunes : One of any commercial product


Xenos Soundworks : Choice of any 1 product


Ghostwave Audio : Any two soundsets of Choice


Twolegs Toneworks : Any one soundset


The Unfinished : Any two soundsets of Choice


Rob Lee Music or here : A soundset for either: Sylenth1, Predator, Largo, Blofeld, PPGV3 or Dune


Luftrum : One soundset free of choice.


Ridan: Any one soundset as a secondary prize, on top of the regular prize.
haunting soundscapes, atmospheric chords, layered pads, anamorphic guitars,
brass and woodwind-esque, rhythmic/melodic sequences, and macabre sound effects.


Kreativ Sound: RAW Bundle
(RAW Bass, RAW Drums, RAW TranSID, RAW Textures)


Aiyn Zahev Sounds: Any 2 Soundsets of choice from the website (Uplifting Trance Presets)


Studio 13.37: Pro audio studio on a USB stick


Pooya Payvar (Stonail) : 1 custom made Max for [Ableton] Live: controller, midi or audio effect


Mulperi : 1 Soundbank of Choice


Dream Audio Tools : 1 Indie Fingers bundle (Indie Fingers volumes One and Two)


Bjulin : Inspire soundset for Zebra²


LeapIntoTheVoid : Enchantment Of Absynth Trilogy


Bluff Munkey - 2 soundsets of choice


Solidtrax : 1 Soundset of choice


Any other offers of prizes will be greatly appreciated.


Questions? Comments? Concerns? You want some love? Just post here in this thread


Want to try out your skills in other contests / competitions /challenges?

• DiHalt Demoscene competitions
• Indaba - Has a mix of popular and indie artists with various contests like remixing and song writing. Some people from OSC have had success here.
• KVR Mix Challenge (see stickies) - Who can mix a song the best (Without adding extra recordings /musical additions)? Each person starts out with the same stems.
• Music Cafe (KVR, see stickies) - A thematic monthly competition. Use recording, real instruments, synths and samples.
• RemixComps - An aggregator for remix contests from a variety of artists and genres (mostly EDM) - indie and popular.
• Skio Music Contests - Lots of remixes you can join (Mostly EDM) - big prizes.
• Soundevotion (SDCOMPO) Competition - Even longer running than the OSC, the SDCOMPO is even more niche in that you must use a tracker, and set of specific effects. Great community.

[nickamandote]

Cool, sounds like a great synth for dance music

[Architeuthis]

This lacks presets at the moment, but I will hopefully have time in the next few days to add them. Percussion, bass, leads, plucks. Should help you get started on a track. Please note the three unfortunate challenges of Spiral Generator. 1. CPU heavy, 2. monophonic, 3. will "explode" i.e. go silent. Re-load the plugin in case it goes silent. If you can help me figure out when it "explodes" I can solve the bugs and upload new versions. All 3 issues will eventually be solved as time allows.

Edit: I'm also asking bjporter to put PrettyScope on as a prize.

[Gravity Gas]

Thanks for giving me a reason to download and try out this synth. I've had my eye on it for a while, but haven't gotten around to messing with it (too busy playing, "how to go from e-piano to crazy").

Please note the three unfortunate challenges of Spiral Generator. 1. CPU heavy, 2. monophonic, 3. will "explode" i.e. go silent. Re-load the plugin in case it goes silent. If you can help me figure out when it "explodes" I can solve the bugs and upload new versions.

Oh my god, you were not kidding when you said it's CPU heavy. Hitting notes pits me to 50%+ cpu on 1 instance.

This'll be quite fun indeed.

[HiEnergy]

CPU usage of this synth is directly connected to the oversampling setting... seems like each notch on the oversampling dial doubles CPU use.

Spiral Generator is capable of generating very different, almost unrelated signals on both channels. This probably might cause issues with correlation/mono compatibility. A stereo width control plug-in (e.g. Ableton's Utility) comes in handy.

Also had some trouble with DC offsets. Check Spiral Generator's high pass if you get bad pops and over-the-top levels that won't properly fall after the sound decays.

[mehum]

This lacks presets at the moment, but I will hopefully have time in the next few days to add them. Percussion, bass, leads, plucks. Should help you get started on a track. Please note the three unfortunate challenges of Spiral Generator. 1. CPU heavy, 2. monophonic, 3. will "explode" i.e. go silent. Re-load the plugin in case it goes silent. If you can help me figure out when it "explodes" I can solve the bugs and upload new versions. All 3 issues will eventually be solved as time allows.

Edit: I'm also asking bjporter to put PrettyScope on as a prize.

Cool synth! Certainly different which is great considering how many standard subtractive synths there are out there.

However, I find the envelopes not working as expected. Attack often seems to do nothing, even on extreme settings. Setting sustain to zero seems to kill the release making percussive sounds hard to create.

Sometimes when playing around it seems to get into a state where you get a click on the transient and even back tracking settings won't get rid of it.

Still managed to get some cool percussions and bass out of it! This will be interesting and I hope I'll have time to finish this!

[baalisoda]

Being an ultra noob sound designer (not the fault of the VST or its designer), i am going nowhere with this (plus the cpu spike is atrocious for even one instance of this vst).

I would be grateful, if some kind soul manage to make and share their presets here for this vst.

TIA and Cheers!

[nickamandote]

I have an Intel i5-4690, 3.5 GHz and it's eating CPU like crazy... but it's gonna be fun going to try something different

[generaldiomedes]

This month is going to be a challenging one I think .. seems very non-musical at first blush. Sounds of the Robot apocalypse comes to mind.

[mehum]

Does not seem to respond well to automation in Reaper. I get a lot of noise and artifacts automating Density. This is at total CPU load of 8-9% reported in DAW, 15-20% total CPU usage reported by task manager.

Instead using mod wheel events for the same parameter does not create any noise but is quite inaccurate. Since many parameters changes yield rather extreme results accuracy seems pretty important for automation.

Any one else experiencing similar problems?

[bh9090]

Does not seem to respond well to automation in Reaper. I get a lot of noise and artifacts automating Density. This is at total CPU load of 8-9% reported in DAW, 15-20% total CPU usage reported by task manager.

Instead using mod wheel events for the same parameter does not create any noise but is quite inaccurate. Since many parameters changes yield rather extreme results accuracy seems pretty important for automation.

Any one else experiencing similar problems?

Exactly the same here. Lots of pops and clicks when automating.

[zippy731]

Yeah, cool synth concept, but it's really killing my CPU (64 bit, Win7, 16GB RAM) with just 5 instances.

And that's with no automation.

When automating, it's like 2-3 instances before it starts crackling and stuttering. Not sure how far I'll get this month before rendering everything to audio.

Running in FL Studio 12.4 64 bit.

[doctorbob]

If it's going to be a cpu killer, then we can only freeze WHOLE tracks as we go along, and then unfreeze and re-visit those tracks again if the sound used needs a tweak. Gonna be a lot of work.

Only got a 7 year old PC, so gonna be hard - but I will get there I promise.

dB

Some presets an/or a little advice on settings for some basic percussion would be uesful.

[mehum]

I could share some presets if I figure out how

Basic percussion tips:
Z Depth and Z Amount will together with high Density produce noise.

For kick (and probably bass), route one channel to another track. Since channels never seem to be quite in phase this will reduce stereo image problems.

Envelopes are a bit fidgy. If Sustain is 0 notes will be cutoff without triggering Release so make sure to program enough note length.

As usual, a pitch envelope is key to snappy kicks but it's hard to make them clean since producing a pure sine seems virtually impossible.

[mehum]

Exactly the same here. Lots of pops and clicks when automating.

Some parameters seems worse than others so might have to experiment a bit...
Perhaps using an envelope and automating ENV Amplitude works better.