Image-Line Harmor released

[Hunter]

As an Alchemy owner, i just hope the Camel audio team will speed up trying keep their resynthesis engine competitive, my main purpose beeing soundscapes samples manipulations, an (as much as possible) accurate resynthesis is crucial in many aspects,

Accurate loudness contour's restitution for instance (especially the hi-end freq.) seems still beeing "Mission impossible"

...until now, perhaps ?

Can you post an audio example showing the difference in resynthesis between the two synths for the same sample please? I would be interested to hear what you are hearing.

Although I've not tried harmor yet, it is the additive engine programming where future versions of Alchemy will need to up its game, with Harmor and Razor giving great accessibility to additive synthesis.

[olepro]

Yes but how many demo video's did Camel Audio have out when Alchemy was just released !

Actually the demos came out first as teasers.

The Alchemy teasers was not in depth videos...
...as i remember it the first teaser was someone fooling around in a desert

The best to do is to try the demo anyway, i think...

[george]

Harmor has 512 oscillators max and Alchemy up to 600. Theoretically the latter should provide slightly better re-synthesis unless the importing algorithms are inferior.

[tony tony chopper]

Harmor's default resynthesis quality only uses 255 partials anyway.

[Krakatau]

As an Alchemy owner, i just hope the Camel audio team will speed up trying keep their resynthesis engine competitive, my main purpose beeing soundscapes samples manipulations, an (as much as possible) accurate resynthesis is crucial in many aspects,

Accurate loudness contour's restitution for instance (especially the hi-end freq.) seems still beeing "Mission impossible"

...until now, perhaps ?

Can you post an audio example showing the difference in resynthesis between the two synths for the same sample please? I would be interested to hear what you are hearing.

Although I've not tried harmor yet, it is the additive engine programming where future versions of Alchemy will need to up its game, with Harmor and Razor giving great accessibility to additive synthesis.

I'm mac based, no demo version of harmor for the moment

What i'm mainly saying is that until now, except perhaps for harmor at a certain degree, it seems as far as i could experiment, that it is to much to hope on additive resynthesis to recreate for instance hi/low-end contour of natural or bioacoustic soundsapes accurately

I apologise i'd love to but i cannot at the present time give examples, i still need to reinstall programs after a HD crash of my laptop, and i may admit not being very resourceful sometimes

[paterpeter]

Any body managed to get the visual feedback window working in Cubase 6 and Reaper 4 using XP 32 bit? It works fine in Studio one and in standalone mode on the same set up

What happens when you press the > button, save your project & reload it? In hosts that don't support plugin resizing, normally the resizing will occur the next time the plugin is reloaded (or not at all, but it's not our fault, unless you've seen other plugins resize in that host)

I've tested this in Reaper x64. It seems that Reaper does not save the state of the > button. When I reload the project it's in the collapsed state again.
In Reaper x86 (running on a Win 7 64bit system) there's no issue with the visualizer for me in the first place. The plugin expands and collapses without problems.

Other plugins resize flawlessly in Reaper (x86 and x64): e.g. Alchemy (64bit) or the Synth Squad synths (32bit bridged).

[tony tony chopper]

I've tested this in Reaper x64. It seems that Reaper does not save the state of the > button.

The state of the > button isn't saved, it will be guessed according to the size of the plugin. But something has to be restoring the size of the plugin somewhere. Well I don't know how it works, ideally the host would support plugin resizing.

You're not missing that much anyway, as the view is typically enabled only to learn the synth, but eats quite some CPU & should be hidden for normal use.

Other plugins resize flawlessly in Reaper (x86 and x64): e.g. Alchemy (64bit) or the Synth Squad synths (32bit bridged).

In that case I don't know, I will leave it to Fred (who handles the VSTi version).
Maybe we could release 2 versions of the VSTi, one with the visual panel open.

[chroma]

i think it's important to differentiate fourier series from the fourier transform - at least, as i understand it.

most of the time, when we are talking about additive synthesis, we are talking about the fourier series - this is the theorem that says that any periodic signal can be represented as some sum of the harmonics of the fundamental. there is a 1:1 mapping (afaik) between a fourier series and a given signal - i.e. every fourier series calculates to an exact waveform, and every waveform only has one fourier series associated with it.

fourier transforms are valid for any signal, even aperiodic ones, and are what you see on spectrum diagrams. fourier transforms are by nature inexact - you have buckets of frequencies, instead of exact frequencies. if you get it small enough, you can make it look sort of like a fourier series, but it's not really even related.

in alchemy, these are split between additive and spectral synthesis panels (and you can mix them), and i haven't gotten to play with them nearly as much as I would like.

however, any time you have pitch modifications (as you often do in real instruments... a guitar for instance tends to have an attack that is sharp to the note) then it is not likely to be periodic (though it usually needs to get there quickly or it's going to sound out of tune). variations in pitch (like vibrato) also are aperiodic for the same reason, and can only be done in additive if it supports the standard pitch variations (and the harmonic series follows it of course, if that model is valid).

that said 255 harmonics is likely to be way more than enough... at middle C (261.63 Hz), with standard hearing maxing out at 20kHz, that's only about 76 harmonics (261.63 * 76 = 19883.88Hz) before you are out of the audible spectrum. With 255 partials per note, you won't start running out of partials until you get down to ~78Hz, about D1. And bass sounds that low don't tend to have a lot of high frequency content anyways; 255 partials at 41 Hz (a low E on a bass guitar IIRC) is ~10.5k, which is quite a bit higher than bass guitar is typically known for... here's a representative bass speaker (a 10", which would have more highs than a 12" or 15"): http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Basslite_CH2010.pdf)

afaik, the 512/600 partial limit is an upper limit on all notes, not per note. i think alchemy might be able to use them all for a single note, but in practice, it's rarely necessary.

[chroma]

I've tested this in Reaper x64. It seems that Reaper does not save the state of the > button. When I reload the project it's in the collapsed state again.
In Reaper x86 (running on a Win 7 64bit system) there's no issue with the visualizer for me in the first place. The plugin expands and collapses without problems.

Other plugins resize flawlessly in Reaper (x86 and x64): e.g. Alchemy (64bit) or the Synth Squad synths (32bit bridged).

Also reproduced here on Live 8.2.5 (which is 32 bit); i can't get the visualizer window to open. Also in Live, if I open the GUI, click to open it (so the oct/hz selector appears), close the gui, and then re-open it, the oct/hz does not appear (as if it's not expanded). So it's not just not storing the state across save/reload, but just closing the gui and reopening it (which I guess is accounted for by what you said above)?

i agree, this is probably better, as I'd use the visualizer for sound design, and turn it off for actually playing, but it would be nice to have it.

Other resizable windows (Alchemy in 'simple' mode, and Kontakt which allows resizing of the window in the normal 'grab the corner' method) both work as well.

[zerocrossing]

As an Alchemy owner, i just hope the Camel audio team will speed up trying keep their resynthesis engine competitive, my main purpose beeing soundscapes samples manipulations, an (as much as possible) accurate resynthesis is crucial in many aspects,

Accurate loudness contour's restitution for instance (especially the hi-end freq.) seems still beeing "Mission impossible"

...until now, perhaps ?

Can you post an audio example showing the difference in resynthesis between the two synths for the same sample please? I would be interested to hear what you are hearing.

Although I've not tried harmor yet, it is the additive engine programming where future versions of Alchemy will need to up its game, with Harmor and Razor giving great accessibility to additive synthesis.

I think Alchemy's got a lot going for it, but in all honesty, IMO it's resynthesis isn't even as good sounding as the older Virsyn Poseidon. I haven't a/b'd Harmor against Alchemy or even Poseidon, but from my first impression I think it probably does sound better than Alchemy at least.

[zerocrossing]

I've tested this in Reaper x64. It seems that Reaper does not save the state of the > button. When I reload the project it's in the collapsed state again.
In Reaper x86 (running on a Win 7 64bit system) there's no issue with the visualizer for me in the first place. The plugin expands and collapses without problems.

Other plugins resize flawlessly in Reaper (x86 and x64): e.g. Alchemy (64bit) or the Synth Squad synths (32bit bridged).

Also reproduced here on Live 8.2.5 (which is 32 bit); i can't get the visualizer window to open. Also in Live, if I open the GUI, click to open it (so the oct/hz selector appears), close the gui, and then re-open it, the oct/hz does not appear (as if it's not expanded). So it's not just not storing the state across save/reload, but just closing the gui and reopening it (which I guess is accounted for by what you said above)?

i agree, this is probably better, as I'd use the visualizer for sound design, and turn it off for actually playing, but it would be nice to have it.

Other resizable windows (Alchemy in 'simple' mode, and Kontakt which allows resizing of the window in the normal 'grab the corner' method) both work as well.

I'm seeing this too on a windows vista 64 bit machine running Live.

[Neon Breath]

Can't wait to try the demo on mac, sounds like an amazing synth. Can't wait also to really compare its resynthesis engine against Alchemy. Would love to hear precise -VS- exemples, see how their resynsthesis engines sound compared to each other. Cause from what I've read so far on here, Harmor seems to beat Alchemy all the way with a buttery and smooth resynthesis, but still I'd like to hear proofs of this

[tony tony chopper]

So it's not just not storing the state across save/reload

It's not, but by design. Originally it was, & thus presets (as state in project or presets are pretty much the same) were deciding on the visual panel. But then it was pretty annoying, you had the visual panel open, switched to a new preset, and it was closed. Also a problem with preset designers who can't behave and had it open or closed randomly. So it stopped being stored, and its state got auto-detected according to the size of the window.

[Nokenoku]

I like that synth more and more.

It's great to just make a usual VA-style sound but then give it a bit additional life by just loading a picture, which modifies the frequencies of the harmonics.
Like that: http://www.box.net/shared/9c55blol618dbvbyxghn

Or just load an image, move through it until you find an interesting place and get something like this: http://www.box.net/shared/ct9x9dm3656mrvn3b68b

I wish I had better skills in patch-making to really make use of all the possibilities. But hey ... maybe now's the time to finally learn it. ^^
Can't wait to see, what real sound-designers will do with this synth.

[tony tony chopper]

With 255 partials per note, you won't start running out of partials until you get down to ~78Hz, about D1. And bass sounds that low don't tend to have a lot of high frequency content anyways; 255 partials at 41 Hz (a low E on a bass guitar IIRC) is ~10.5k, which is quite a bit higher than bass guitar is typically known for...

It's for resynthesis that I use 255 partials, for subtractive it's dynamic but it will be up to 520, which will support the harmonics a C down to 32hz, which is still "at audio rate" to me. It's only under 32hz that a pure saw starts to sound like a bunch of clicks. But 255 would be 1 octave too short IMHO.

afaik, the 512/600 partial limit is an upper limit on all notes, not per note.

really? It's per-voice in Harmor (thus a note can end up processing 9(unison)*2(parts)*520 partials).