Valo - demo version public beta

[mystran]

edit: Enough changes that we'll do a new thread: go HERE instead. Leaving info here anyway for archive.









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edit: changed thread title to be more informative (was: Anyone wanna test my synth?)

Release was undercover, but there wasn't much problems, so more users the merrier.

The first public beta demo of my PC VSTi synthesizer "Valo" (which is Finnish and means "light" as in the thing that comes out of light-bulbs and occasionally from the sun).

Limitations in this demo:

- This build requires SSE2 (and is likely to crash without, non-SSE comes later)

- max 4 voices, max 1 instance (sorry, had to limit it somehow, see below)
- only a few presets (more in the near future, quality maybe someday)

edit: now includes a few more presets, including the drums from my demotune... edit2: and yet a few more

Please note that MIDI implementation is still limited as it only responds to wheel, pitchbend (will accept range changes by MIDI) and aftertouch (mono or poly, but latter is untested as I don't have a keyboard that can do that). Sustain should also work now. So for now the knobs can only be controlled from host or by mouse. Everything else "should" work.

Patch format "should" be stable (if one does automation from the host, menus having red background mean you're really in the "reserved" range and it's defaulting back to the last value available so patches with those will break with future updates, other than that I'll try really hard to not break anything).

There are couple of "interesting details" when it comes to modulations: it's mostly explained in a post below.

This thing took quite a bit of effort to make (and will take some more), so the full version (when done) will be "commercial" (unless something crazy happens). I'm now pretty sure 1.0 licenses will be costing 50 euro a piece, but might be selling early adopter licenses during beta for 40, if there's enough interest to make it worth the trouble (so pm or mystran@gmail.com if interested).

Both positive and negative feedback are welcome... and I guess I'll have to accept bug reports as well.

Download here like if putting the link at the bottom would make you read it all?

edit:
Thought it might be a good idea to post a screenshot (edit2: no longer representative, another coming real soon):

(details my vary)

edit: scroll down for a small sound examples I did..

[mystran]

edit: there's now some sort of a license in the .ZIP package

[very angry mobster]

Hi Mystran,

Valo seems to be ignoring note-off messages from my midi keyboard. (I tested it using EnergyXT).

[mystran]

Downloaded eXT (says 1.3.6) and I can't reproduce here.. what version of eXT? What keyboard?

[mystran]

Ah, maybe your keyboard sends noteOffs as "noteOn with velocity 0"? Uploaded new version in the same place, should handle that case now.. so maybe that helps?

[very angry mobster]

eXT is version 1.4.1. My midi keyboard is by Miditech.

[very angry mobster]

That fixed it. I'll continue playing with it.

[mystran]

That fixed it. I'll continue playing with it.

Obviously my test-keyboard is too fancy sending note-off velocities and all.

[very angry mobster]

On first impressions, it sounds like a good synth. The multi-saw waves are a nice addition. It took me a little while to figure out what knobs did what, the GUI doesn't help in this aspect. There were a couple of times I thought the synth was behaving strangely, but then realised that it was the way the modulation parameters had been setup.

[mystran]

The modulation thing is something I'm still trying to figure out a better solution if that doesn't mean much more screen-space, as one of the primary design objectives was to keep the GUI to a sane size (it's already too big to my taste) and to have everything immediately available.

But ok, I'll explain how it works:

From LFOs the amount control scales the output, but if either modwheel or pressure is set to control that LFO, then normal output is blocked, and the amount will control the amount when wheel/pressure is at maximum value (if you use both, you can get twice the amount actually).

For filter, wheel/pressure will be scaled by envelope amount control, while velocity will directly affect the scaling of the envelope.

Oh and the pitch-env amount is bipolar (there will be tooltips for the knob values as soon as I get around to getting 'em done).

[qqq]

Me like.... warm digital is what I like

Now if it only had the bass response of Straightliner, we'd be gettin' somewhere

Keep it up

[mystran]

Pfft.. two more bug-fixes.. (new version identifies as "pb1b")

The more meaningful: fixed a bug that could cause a crash on startup.

The minor one: the first MIDI event during a given buffer was parsed at the beginning of said buffer even when it had non-zero offset. Would only affect hosts that use such offsets, and only noticeably with large buffers (=large latency), but now MIDI parsing should be sample accurate even in this case.

[qqq]

(edit: added a quick demo track: http://hyperfileshare.com/d/5ed4a07c ... Valo = lead, Straightliner = bass, FL = the rest... Enjoy)

[mystran]

Wonderful.

Did a REALLY quick demo myself (mostly trying to use my awful presets) with 9 instances of Valo, and a Yohng W1 on master (to tame the peaks). Resisted doing any EQ or even panning, just basic level mixing. No samples, no other plugins.

Found here: http://mystran.googlepages.com/ValoX9.mp3

[qqq]

Nice... I was going to say, those strings sound awesome

I reckon you'll get plenty of interest re: preset designers in no time