Valo - demo version public beta

[mystran]

Oh, if anyone wants their patches in-there, send 'em now before I fill all the slots with my awful ideas.

[VitaminD]

very cool synth.. the sound is very nice.. punchy/snappy/crisp.. low lows with no buzz.. I like it..


I'd recommend you contact grymmjack too.. he does great GUI work http://designermonkey.rekkerd.org/

If you could get a GUI as sleek and refined as the work he did on Ubergate you'd have a work of art to visually match what you got aurally...

only other things I'd want on this synth would be another bank of LFOs (can never have too many) with a much larger set of routing options.. or perhaps simply a modulation matrix with a bunch of routing options..

Multi-Pulse (Square) might be cool too

oh yeah and a delay FX unit.. tempo-syncable..

[mystran]

very cool synth.. the sound is very nice.. punchy/snappy/crisp.. low lows with no buzz.. I like it..

Thanks.

I'd recommend you contact grymmjack too.. he does great GUI work http://designermonkey.rekkerd.org/

Yeah well I know grymmjack's work, but I'll have to think about it. The trouble is, if I outsource the interface, I'll probably have to fall back to bitmap graphics, and then it'll be a pain to change anything, doubly so if somebody else did it. That means there would be huge latency in release schedule for anything that requires the slightest of UI change.

Anyway, if things ever stabilize that might become a realistic option.

only other things I'd want on this synth would be another bank of LFOs (can never have too many) with a much larger set of routing options.. or perhaps simply a modulation matrix with a bunch of routing options..

If nothing else, more targets for the LFOs (and especially the modulation envelope which is still totally lacking at the moment), I'm hoping to add real soon now.

As for more LFOs or a modulation matrix, I'll think about it... but this might have to wait until the next project; I'm planning to do a more modular thing in the future, with free routing for not only control but audio as well. How long it takes before that thing happens, will kinda depend on external factors.

Multi-Pulse (Square) might be cool too

Well.. I never found such a sound very interesting, but I'll look into it. Shouldn't be hard to add, and I want more waveforms anyway, so this will probably make it.

oh yeah and a delay FX unit.. tempo-syncable..

Is in consideration already; I've been missing it myself now that I've tried to make patches without external effects.

[darsho]

I just tried your synth and I liked it. I didn't do much tweaking, just playing with the presets, though.

[streifentier]

Hello,

nice sounding synth. I wouldn't have thought it was so versatile at first. You'll find some (not very elaborate, but to my taste partly quite interesting) patches here:

http://streifentier.com/archive/other/valo_str_bank.fxb

It's a bank in which I have put some 30 patches after the original presets (from No. 22 onwards).
Have fun, and tell me what you think (if you like to),

Volker

[S-N-S]

yes the gui needs to fit the sound of this

[mystran]

Another update "pb1h" is live with some bug-fixes:

- multi-saws on osc2 now properly track osc2-modulation
- "impossible" values are internally avoided, to make patch upward-compability more robust (in other words: "red" values no longer should cause problems, should have done this in the first place); note that if your patch has "red" values but loads correctly in current version, then just saving it again should fix possible issues in the future.

On TODO list currently (the short-term priority list):

- MIDI learn function which is still missing
- temposync for LFOs, might add another LFO as well..
- delay effect (with tempo sync as well ofcourse)
- some modulation rework for more flexibility and more orthogonality
- some GUI rework will be necessary to fit delay/LFO and modulation changes

Since the above list has some changes that needs some restructuring of things, and changes to the patch-format (I'll make sure old patches will load properly anyway), I'll probably release most of the above stuff in a single update (which will obviously take at least a couple of days, depending on what happens on the GUI side). If you feel like something else should be on priority list, drop a note here (or PM or email).

Outsourcing flashy graphics to somebody else is in consideration, but probably will not happen until I'm fairly confident that what is on the screen is enough, so that I don't end up with somebody doing a really good design that won't work because I really need to add this one thing that won't fit. For the time being, I'll try my best at doing something that isn't too ugly.

[mystran]

Ok, I've done a redesign of the modulation stuff, and I'm posting this because while I believe the new system is going to be much more flexible, with more LFOs, orthogonalized targets and more clear (and flexible) modifier system, it's likely that there will be minor patch-incompatibility:

With high probability, patches that have both wheel and pressure set to the same LFO, will in future only be able to have one of these, and in the converter I'll handle this by using the wheel only.

I'm still looking for a sane design that would allow such a setup, but it's unlikely there's a good one. All other patches (including those where wheel/pressure are set to different LFOs or otherwise different targets, or even the same target, as long as it is not an LFO) will be properly converted in any case (gonna be fun to write a converter, pfft).

On the bright-side, in the future (with current plan anyway) it'll be possible to use not only wheel and pressure, but any other LFO or the modulation envelope as a modifier for any LFO (or the modulation envelope) with the same modifier affecting multiple targets (in different amounts or polarities if desired), and stuff like that.

Objections are naturally welcome, but I'm fairly decided, 'cos I'm fairly happy with what I'm planning... it has it's limits, but it should definitely be better than what there is now.

[osiris]

Any news?? And can you please post a link to the new beta when you're done.
Thanks, O

[mystran]

This will take a few days more (at least). In other words, no new download yet.

I've already done total re-layout (for better or worse) with the core synth on the left, modulations on the right (reusing graphics for now though, since that's easy to change later), and added two more LFOs. I've also totally rewritten almost all the code for routing modulations such that with minor limitations, any source can modulate any target (with some new targets).

LFO->LFO modulations don't work yet, and currently wheel/pressure can't be used for anything, patch conversion isn't really finished yet (though at least "factory presets" get converted quite well so far), and a lot of other things need fine-tuning. Finally, since new patch format is still changing every 15 minutes; so I'm not posting a new beta yet.

I want to try to keep even betas to some level of quality, so I don't wanna rush the changes, rather do them properly in the first place, so I don't need to patch too many things later. Nothing really complicated as such, but just takes some more time to write and especially test (the later of which I haven't had much time to do).

Finally, I'd like to see some sort of a delay-effect (will probably be of the basic ping-pong type, but we'll see) in the next beta. That will require tempo-sync, which will be then available for LFOs as well, but I haven't even started that yet.

I'll post here as soon as I'm done though.

[streifentier]

... total re-layout ... added two more LFOs... any source can modulate any target ... with some new targets... tempo-sync ... which will be then available for LFOs as well...

Sounds cool, looking forward to that!! Cheers, V.

[mystran]

... total re-layout ... added two more LFOs... any source can modulate any target ... with some new targets... tempo-sync ... which will be then available for LFOs as well...

Sounds cool, looking forward to that!! Cheers, V.

Well, before you get too excited, the new system isn't as flexible as I'd like to eventually see. I've been thinking, and ultimately I'd like to see a full mod-matrix, but writing a good mod-matrix (in both terms of audio and especially GUI) is a rather big project, so that'll have to wait until 1.5 or 2.0 or something. I want to do a lot of other things first.

But what is coming in beta2 is still a lot more flexible than previous:

There are 4 LFOs and the modulation envelope.

LFOs offer free-running, reset-on-note, single-cycle, tempo-sync (which resets on note-on) and song-position-sync (like tempo-sync but relative to song-start rather than note-on).

Modulation envelope offers positive and negative version of the three modes it had previously. This is so that "amount" control now is always unipolar.

Each of the above modulators has a selectable target, with current target list being: Pitch, Osc1-Pitch, Osc2-Pitch, Osc1-PW, Osc2-PW, Osc1-level, Osc2-level, Ringmod-level, Noise-level, Filter-Cutoff, Amp-gain and Pan.

Targets will hopefully (as in doesn't work yet) also include LFO frequencies for the LFOs above the source modulator in the modulator stack (the ordering limitation is unfortunately necessary with current engine).

In addition to amount control, there is a modifier-control (mod which is bipolar) and modifier-source (src) for each modulator. This works such that the total amount sent to target is amount+mod*src.

Modifier sources are currently velocity, modwheel, pressure and any (raw output of) modulator below the main modulator in the modulator stack (order limitation again unfortunately). I'm adding note-key in there as well I guess to allow key-tracking of modulations.

The main limitation with this system is that there is still only a total of 5 modulation slots. I'll see if I'll add (probably) two "free slots" with selectable source/amount/target without the modifiers, but that's about as much as I can do sensibly without doing a full mod-matrix.

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Now I'd only have to design a delay. Those need controls for wet/time/feedback, right?

Oh, and while I'm trying really hard to have a converter that automatically loads old patches and maps the old modulations and everything properly (old factory presets still load quite perfectly, although total volume levels can be slightly different), I'm going to do some clean-up and reordering of automation parameters (and reserving space for future additions) to make sure I don't ever need to do it later, and that means automations done for beta1 will not map to correct parameters in the next version (unless some host maps by name.. most map by order I think).

I'm sorry about that if somebody's already using this in a song, but I hope that isn't a big problem yet, and it's something that is essentially a side-effect of this whole modulation rework, and not doing it now would probably result in a mess later.

In other words, keep the old version around if you're using it in some song already. Sorry.

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I'm looking to get this done in a day or two.

[VitaminD]

Now I'd only have to design a delay. Those need controls for wet/time/feedback, right?

yep.. also could we have a regular stereo mode as well as a ping-pong mode too? oh and a way to control left or right spread would be cool too..

[mystran]

Now I'd only have to design a delay. Those need controls for wet/time/feedback, right?

yep.. also could we have a regular stereo mode as well as a ping-pong mode too? oh and a way to control left or right spread would be cool too..

We'll see what we can do, since this being a synth built-in delay I don't want the kitchen sink included, but some sort of regular stereo and ping-pong modes sound sensible, though I wonder, what sort of ping-pong is most useful with a synth?

The trivial thing is to swap stereo for every echo. I find myself using this kind of ping-pong the most I guess, but even with initial stereo-offset (say like Fruity Delay2) it's quite boring, and with just pan, even more so..

Maybe if I put a pan control and then initial-time and feedback time separately... that way one could have say 3L, 5R, 7L, 9R... or a full bar silence before the delay echos start.. or naturally also the other way around with first echo having shorter delay than the feedback time.. wonder if that'd be enough.

Also, is there any practical use whatsoever for delay-times that are not synced to tempo?

[mystran]

The main limitation with this system is that there is still only a total of 5 modulation slots. I'll see if I'll add (probably) two "free slots" with selectable source/amount/target without the modifiers, but that's about as much as I can do sensibly without doing a full mod-matrix.

Two "free slots" made it. I also made 'em work such that without a source, they'll send a constant "one" if they've got a source selected, which might or might not be useful for some things.

That means even those patches that used both wheel and pressure for the same LFO are now convertible.