New drum-synth called smackbox. Beta-testing has commenced!

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It crashed when i tried to randomize a patch in EnergyXT 1.4. THe cpu rose up to 207% and i had to [ctrl+alt+del]...
Thank for getting into the P4 bugifxing.

The stutter doesn't seem to be that much efficient (well, in fact, i didn't manage to understand in which circumstances it was heard or not) ?

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207% ftw!

There seems to be something wrong with the stutter envelope. Will look into it tonight.

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Just a word to say that at first glance, the thing sounds very very well, one of the best drumsynth I've tried. No crashes yet. Will test it with Sonar and Samplitude.
You can't always get what you waaaant...

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stefancrs wrote: How long? I get around 2-3 seconds on the two machines I've used.
here about 4-5 seconds

stefancrs wrote: That's what the volume knob does, no? Maybe I need to move it away from the "crush" section to avoid confusion.
yes, I found it works like that, but it is not that obvious, would be good to have it somewhere else located
stefancrs wrote: You don't think the colour control in conjunction with the EQ provides enough "sonic shaping" of the noise?
no I don't think, the colour is only in the OSC section, and the EQ just cuts or emphazises,
but doesn't change the character of the noise.
sound is vibration, vibration is life

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rsmus7 wrote:
stefancrs wrote: That's what the volume knob does, no? Maybe I need to move it away from the "crush" section to avoid confusion.
yes, I found it works like that, but it is not that obvious, would be good to have it somewhere else located
I know... As you will see later in my reply to you, there are other issues too, layout-wise :) At the moment (in my internal working-version) I have actually changed the name of the section to "amp", and it has drive, pan and vol control knobs in it. Will see if it changes again before the next beta-release or not :)
rsmus7 wrote:
stefancrs wrote: You don't think the colour control in conjunction with the EQ provides enough "sonic shaping" of the noise?
no I don't think, the colour is only in the OSC section, and the EQ just cuts or emphazises,
but doesn't change the character of the noise.
Yes, it does, it's in the wrong section :) It only changes the sound of the sine generator if you're using x-mod to modulate the sine with the noise... Sorry about the sucky layout :) Will improve this.

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[edit]

but maybe I adjusted some parameters wrong ;-)
sound is vibration, vibration is life

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Hah! I read it before the edit! :D

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:D

I played a bit more with it tonight,
and got more used it,
and I must say the sounds are really special.
it can sound really full and alive and ...

here is a little loop I made with it:

smacked

100% pure smackbox ;-)
sound is vibration, vibration is life

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Nice loop rsmus7 :)

FWIW, here's what I managed to get done tonight:

- per-sound pan
- room for 16 kits and kit-switcher (standard SM preset manager, but still)
- stutter-bugs fixed
- click on lower section of piano keys to trigger notes
- fixed buggy "shape" knob behaviour (sound got cut off if shape at its lowest setting)

And now I'm going to bed. G'night!

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This is a nice roadmap, Stephan :)
gnight, then

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Lovely thing this smackbox!! I was recording some automation which worked great and I got some cool melodies even, but unfortunately it crashed FL Studio 7 on me after playing with it for about 15 minutes without saving it...

Here's another little loop, also 100% smackbox :D
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stefancrs wrote:click on lower section of piano keys to trigger notes
Great! Clicked on the keys trying to get a sound more than once after already finding out it didn't work that way. Good job making it more intuitive
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Hi, Stefan. I like the colors. It seems straightforward to use and the possibilities for sounds variation are great. I only played a few minutes so far. I tried randomize in FL 7, but had to turn it off. It created a gigantic hiss. I'll try recording automation as someone else suggested.
Thanks a lot for sharing. I hope you allow me to use it now.

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I may not get anymore time tonight, so here's my further 2 cents

-the shape and pitch knobs: .01 goes a long way and hard to dial in sometimes, especially on the osc delay knob and the osc pitch knobs. They aren't any better or worse, but those are the two values I found myself using to affect the sound most. I don't know if this should be a host issue, FL has a ctrl key function that slows the cursor down for fine movements, or if the ability to enter numerical values would help.

-hung on rendering: In FL7, the plugin wrapper must Not select "used fixed size buffers." If that option is selected in the host, then it will not render and hangs FL. (The opposite is often true, especially for plugins made in other modular hosts which will remain nameless in your thread :) )

-re: patch loading- the dialog box drop down doesn't work in FL. It works graphically but doesn't load the .txt preset files. I found this to be true whether or not the wrapper selected "invalidate plugin window". The buttons do load the files, as does the host wrapper load .fxb and .fxp patches correctly. I still think some parameters (crush?) are not consistently loaded correctly from presets, but I can't reproduce it yet.

-an artifact: after rendering in FL, the last channels (instruments 1-12) to be used are highlighted with the orange box around them, as if they are being played currently. This dissappears as soon as it is triggered again after rendering.

-I don't know if there is a limiter internally, but when the kick on 1 and say, the snare on 6 are played, the snare seems to mute or phase out. (is this the stutter bug?) if I play a snare line of very fast hits, varying velocities, there is no problem, but a big kick kills the *sharp* transients of the snare. It's as if one kills the crusher for the other?

-automating parameters has been impressively bug free thus far.

One last thought. The sound is fantastic but the relationship of the pitch envelop to the oscillator shape is just unituitive enough that I frequently cannot make the sound I imagine. This is certainly my failure, not yours, but a graphic explanation in a manual, if there is one, would help.

keep on truckin'! :)

-edit- the hiss CoudNine is probably either the result of the shape bug previously mentioned or simply that the randomise function in FL is not intelligent so all manner of weird settings occur with reaaallly long attack and decay; chaos more than formal sounds.

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Thanks. I really don't understand the randomize function in FL. Hardly used it, I guess. I tried it because someone had mentioned it.
Thanks for your analysis. I have to go back and read it.
Jim Cloud

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