Filerbank: Quad-Frohmage or Antares Filer?

[pummel]

i am leaning with the dr. on this one. how hard can it be to add a button to each LFO, "sync to key-on event" ? put it in the center of the LFO AMT knob, if space is a premium -- surely you can find room.

i know from programing synths that LFO sync to key-on is a often a make/break feature for patches. There should be a law against omitting it from plugs.

perhaps there are work arounds; but we do not want to be struggling with our poster child plugs, do we ?

[meister eder]

Well, it's a design matter. I can undersand you see it as a key feature, but when you start on this, you realise you have way too much key feature for something that stands on 700 per 700 pixel with no panels. Then you have to cut things, and of course there is no "right" choice.

That's not fair . I am not one of the blind "I-want-everything-in-every-plugin" shouters; I consider this a key feature for this plugin (and Mobilohm), and not this and this and this...
You decided it is not a key feature when you wrote your book for designing Quadfrohmage - I think that was a bad decision. One of the very few. I do understand you set your priorities along your basic design philosophy (which basically seems to be not too far from mine, otherwise I wouldn't be addicted to Ohmforce plugins). However, one of my optimization points would be "little_effort_:_high_effect ratio" when it comes to parameter selection, and for me the phase sync for LFOs absolutely fits in that category. Well, different opinions we have on this.

I think the reason why we did it this way is that if you want to use an LFO in a "composing" way (by opposition to a " general sound design way"), the best is to use an LFO creation tool in the automation track - something that a lot of host allready provide. All in all, we feel like it's the right way to do it, a bit like saying arpeggiator should be on host side, not plug in side.

Again different opinions. I'd consider this part of the effect program, because you could never use automation to duplicate the power of the countless LFOs that you put in your plugins. The LFOs are integral part of the sound design process and it can take quite a while to set them up to get to "this special very cool sound", and it's a playful, intuitive and experimental process to program your LFOs. I wouldn't want to re-program all this in automation on the host level just to get the sync right and then set all the LFO amounts back to zero as they are obsolete now. Yeah I know, there are the NRPNs and I could try to bring them back in sync by endless trial&error search for the right phase of each LFO...

OTOH there is the annoyance of not having the plug sounding the same when you reopen the song (well, sounding the same, but not at the same time). This is really annoying, but with an FX you don't have the help of a midi sequence plugged in by default to give you a time reference. VST is not VSTi and it's not really design to tell the plug where is the play pos in the bar, for insance...

That's very interesting info... I wonder how Angus from FXpansion managed to get this right in the good old PhatSync VST then, or *cough* how Antares Filter syncs its sequencer to the song's subpositions.

So you would at least have to automate it, then make sure the part you listen start with the automation (else you... loose sync), etc...

I don't quite get this. What kind of automation do you mean, and what should it be good for? All there is needed is the LFOs to play along subposition info once their phase is locked.

As you can see there is no convenient solution for an FX to handle this smartly - in any case you user will have to investigate things to get what you want.

Not with PhatSync and not with Antares Filter's sequencer, nor with lots of Pluggos, or - best example - u-he's More Feedback Machine, which's LFOs sync to tempo while the phase can be adjusted and locked. There must be some subposition or modulo data in the host sync info, otherwise all the above mentioned VSTs wouldn't work like they do. As for the user having to investigate things: When it comes to maths, that's the task of the computer IMHO.

[Red_Force]

Seems like I am not that much up to date on the matter then ?

Well, I am not the guy with the tech spec. I remember from the early days of Ohm Boyz that we had to decide how we wanted to handle that, but now I realise that it was four years ago, with VST 1.0. From what I remember, the choice was pretty unanimous.

Thus it seems now that we could improve this. Note that we allready did it for Symptohm - it's just that no one has asked us to have a sync knob on older plugs so far (at least once they got the NRPN clue).

Anyway, you're right to insist. I don't know if we'll add this one day to QF (or mobilohm, or Ohm Boyz...) but this will be a must for fresh new stuff - and not only instruments.

[meister eder]

Ohm Force.
We make good plug in. Now you make good music!

You can bet your life on that!

[polyslax]

Smart questions indeed. We do have some sort of plans, but it's not completely designed. One idea is to create a Quad Frohmage Hardcore version, preset compatible, but with different filters imbeded, that would be available at low price for QF owners interested, and it may well happend this year. Another is to release a Moog filter separetely... or inclueded in the box... whatever. We have not decided on this.

I thought I remembered reading about this, didn't realise it was that long ago!

Whatever happened to this idea? Red, you out there?

[jasonsantiago]

Heh, Ohmforce took over the thread with guerrilla marketing ;p

[Beardedone]

OuadFrohmage is interesting and can really twist things but there is a problem with the Windows version not showing the patch name when recalling projects in Sonar 4 & FLS 5. I work around that by labelling the wrapper - not really kosher fur menschen.

[soma]

There is a free one at www.obertone.com

Cheers

And that one is pretty nice too!
I hope it gets a GUI some day...

[Hunter]

QuadFrohmage rocks, Filtyerscape is worht a look too

[Urs]

QuadFrohmage rocks, Filtyerscape is worht a look too

Oh my goodness! I was almost gonna because nobody mentioned it

Thanks,

Urs

[Beardedone]

Right on Urs Filterscape outstrips QF in my book and is so much easier to program.

[Hunter]

QuadFrohmage rocks, Filtyerscape is worht a look too

Oh my goodness! I was almost gonna because nobody mentioned it

Thanks,

Urs

Actually Urs you'll see i was referring to the Filteryscape VST, which is like Filterscape but more unsure of itself. Its effecty, kind of goody, sounds expensivey.

Ach can you tell I'm bored...

Filterscape rocks, you don't know what your missing if you haven't at least tried it, its quite different from QuadFrohmage so why not get both

But don't use Filterscape VA as thats my secret weapon and I don't want anyone sounding the same as me

[polyslax]

I think you guys are missing the reason I revived this ancient thread, namely:

Smart questions indeed. We do have some sort of plans, but it's not completely designed. One idea is to create a Quad Frohmage Hardcore version, preset compatible, but with different filters imbeded, that would be available at low price for QF owners interested, and it may well happend this year. Another is to release a Moog filter separetely... or inclueded in the box... whatever. We have not decided on this.

So... any word on QF Hardcore?

[beatz]

would have loved to try 'obertone' stuff on my mac

[ktelj]

maybe he will port it when its on intel chips- I was always waiting for a REFX filter for mac too