New Xhip version

[aciddose]

nothing will work inside sandboxie except the dll itself, so that means no presets, no bitmaps, no configuration, nothing

apparently 7-zip can extract the files from the installer and you can put them where they need to go yourself, if you want, for some reason

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/alpha/re ... _wip_b.exe
http://xhip.presetexchange.com/temp/adxs.zip

try using load bank to load one of these adxs files

http://soundcloud.com/aciddose/synthesizah

i made this one 100% within xhip. now that is funny. (i didn't use a host. i recorded xhip directly running in my own host for 'standalone' and never touched another piece of software.)

once there is support for effects and you can bus things from individual channels you'll be able to render complete tracks from xhip alone.

i'll have to update my tracker though i guess.

[eidenk]

Sounds greater than ever but unfortunately I get a "Failure Calling ::CreateWindow()" popup message on my Windows ME + KernelEx system and after clicking on it I only get a blank, empty plugin window from the host with the UI bitmap appearing on the top left of the desktop, that image disappears with a screen refresh. The synth plays as normal though and sounds absolutely awesome (an understatement). Do you think you can do something about that UI stuff so I could fully use it or is it a lost cause?

Cheers

[SWTrex]

unfortunately i've started using bitmaps. rather than store these in the dll, i write them as they're supposed to be written to /all users/application data/xhip/guilib/cache/
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it's just a nsis installer that allows you to specify the target directory and meanwhile dumps the bitmaps where they need to be in the background.

Right. And do you provide an uninstaller that removes the leftover bits when the plugin is to be removed?

[aciddose]

Sounds greater than ever but unfortunately I get a "Failure Calling ::CreateWindow()" popup message on my Windows ME + KernelEx system and after clicking on it I only get a blank, empty plugin window from the host with the UI bitmap appearing on the top left of the desktop, that image disappears with a screen refresh. The synth plays as normal though and sounds absolutely awesome (an understatement). Do you think you can do something about that UI stuff so I could fully use it or is it a lost cause?

Cheers

that's because winme doesn't support transparency. i could do a compatible version just by disabling it but the menus would then no longer have the transparency applied to them.

i never thought there would be someone running winme or any version less than xp out there. it'll be fixed in the next version. (i'll just check if the window failure occurs, attempt it again without the transparency option if so.)

i could do an uninstaller if that were needed. you could also just remove /application data/xhip/ yourself by deleting it. (that is all the uninstaller would do, it would be a one line nsis script.)

if you're worried about that, whatever you do don't go looking in the application data directory.

[Mutant]

Bug report: "invalid" in the number display place when moving unison related knobs.

And a crash in REAPER when trying to move "coarse tune" knob on osc #2 while modifying the Brass preset #6.

For now returning to the good old version 0.6.17.0 - i prefer the old style multipaged gui anyway

[GaryG]

i never thought there would be someone running winme or any version less than xp out there. it'll be fixed in the next version.

I never thought I'd see a dev supporting WinME in this day and age.

Now that's support.

[eidenk]

i never thought there would be someone running winme or any version less than xp out there. it'll be fixed in the next version. (i'll just check if the window failure occurs, attempt it again without the transparency option if so.)

Cool, thanks aciddose, looking forward to trying that next version.

Cheers

[SWTrex]

i could do an uninstaller if that were needed. you could also just remove /application data/xhip/ yourself by deleting it. (that is all the uninstaller would do, it would be a one line nsis script.)

if you're worried about that, whatever you do don't go looking in the application data directory.

And how would I know to look there? Unless I read this thread?

[Kriminal]

just a heads up that i've got a new version of "xhip classic" if you want to call it that. i finally put in some effort to get it updated.

most scary part is i haven't really changed a thing to do with the core synth itself since about 2003. xhip is pretty much vintage at this point.

so whats new in this update?

[aciddose]

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/alpha/re ... _wip_c.exe

this one has:

- the new oscillator (alias free triangle sync!, needs a bit more work though)
- unison works
- fixed some controls that weren't working right
- new alias free sample playback, no interpolation, perfect for sampled waveforms!

there is still quite a lot not working. i'm going to aim to get the menus done next.

[aciddose]

so whats new in this update?

bug fixes and gui.

what's better? the new oscillator code is a fairly big step. it still needs tweaking though.

the other big feature of this update is that for ages the velocity and pitch-bend routing didn't do anything. it works now. i'd always said nah, i'll just implement the matrix correctly. that's a gui issue - you need to use sub-menus and all the lists and things associated. i now have all that code working so it's finally possible to get the matrix done.

the menus will be a big improvement over the old system. that's all gui stuff of course. with self-drawn sub-menus i'm able to arrange preset banks into categories. i'm going to just divide the bank into eight sets of sixteen to make the menu easier to navigate and smaller. in the future though the possibilities are now a lot more open.

i'm still working to try to find a way to display a child window in windows without taking the focus. the menus use a hack to accomplish this and i wonder if i can use the same hack to get the same kind of result. i think maybe you just have to divert the message for the window to go out of focus and then it is never redrawn out of focus or informed that it's focus was lost.

there will be a whole slew of minor features once i get everything back into working order. new waveforms, filter modes, effects processing, event routing / mod matrix, multiple outputs, layering, splits. i could go on and on.

this isn't really an update so much as a "bring things back in line" after three years of neglect.

[scoobz]

Glad to see this project is going again.

What I like is the efficiency of programming and the different approach to things like oscillator generation, it could be a case of the emperor's new clothes but xhip has always sounded different to my ears.

What I don't like is the procrastination and how long it takes to get things done. I really became disillusioned after my initial excitement about xhip. I know you're a bit of a mad scientist in his lab tweaking away and you think differently (which is good) but is there any way to get a more structured approach?
I'd really like to see you get xhip into a fully functional synth as I think it would be a valuable, distinct addition to the plethora of vsti's already out there.
The only help I can offer is cosmetic, so I'm downloding now to see how viable the 'skinning' is you mentioned.

I guess what I'm saying is 'Come on man, give it a final push and get it out there and if I can help you know where I am'

Good luck and I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

[aciddose]

that's the plan really. it's been sitting around for quite a long time and actually doesn't need a huge amount of effort to get it into a "finished" state.

so:

0700 = everything at least works, including menus and support for 100% of the existing gui, plus projects save everything correctly
0800 = store wav data in presets or support referencing in some way (open problem)
0900 = implement that damn matrix so i can use my mod wheel for vibrato! (also in presets)
1000 = make sure there are no bugs known, also need to be able to edit the preset names with a text edit

to be really serious about this i'd have to make some significant amount of cash for doing it. the delay is due to the fact i don't spend enough time actually working on it. the reason i haven't updated it for so long is i just haven't cared, and i was burnt out after writing vanguard-2 and having it completely thrown out. i'm finally starting to get back into the game now.

the reason i haven't worked much on xhip is also that i made quite a lot of changes to the structure of my code. you have to remember coding is my hobby. that meant that the original xhip code that i had was no longer compatible with all the new work i had done. it seemed pointless to try fixing xhip's small bugs when i knew it was full of large bugs and just didn't work the way i wanted it to. so, now i've finally pushed everything to the point where i have support for all the things i want to accomplish and now i can bring xhip back to life.

not really from the ashes though - i don't know who these people are but it seems to be downloaded regularly all the time with more and more blog posts about it. i guess when i updated the website last year somebody decided to post kvr news about 6.17.5 not realizing it had been in that state already for years.

anyway 0700 is for certain going to happen in the next while. at first i wasn't going to care about projects / chunks saving correctly, but if i'm going to make any release i want it to at least work well enough to be a final version even if i don't follow through on the others.

the others are sort of open. things i'd like to see done before i'll willingly call xhip "finished" but i don't really know how long it might take.

the velocity support though makes me really happy. it's something i added by request in 2003 and at some point i broke it and didn't bother to fix it. horrible!

[aciddose]

Cool, thanks aciddose, looking forward to trying that next version.
Cheers

could you let me know if this last version works? i don't think winme has support for the application data directory either which would mean the bitmaps won't show up. i'd like to provide some kind of work-around to just get it to work correctly.

you're not supposed to store configuration or data files with programs anymore - it's basically against the law of windows and it would anger the gods if i were to ignore it.

so on windows i suppose there is the option of storing configuration in the registry to point to where the "real" configuration is stored. it all just gets messy being turtles all the way down, though.

ideally the program (xhip.dll) goes into the vst folder, and 100% of the configuration, data, banks, presets and all that other neat stuff goes into your documents folder and under application data.

this is important because while i'd like winme to work, i'd also like it to run at all on win7 and win8.

worst case for the last guy using winme on earth, i can just do a special version that assumes the local folder with the dll also contains everything else

[scoobz]

That's good news, sounds like you've done alot of the hard work already.

I didn't know about vanguard 2, I can see how this would really knock your drive and desire to get things done.

Perhaps if enough people showed support it would help to get things finished?
It might be worth doing a poll to evaluate interest and what people would be willing to pay?