Tone2 Rayblaster: OUT NOW! (demo version available)

[flakes2]

[quote="fisherKing"]i don't care JUST about "new" and "different"; i just want a synth plugin to be GREAT; to make great, usable sounds,
to be intuitive to work with, to be stable. maybe to look decent LOL...

i want to make music. whenever i find a great new tool to do so, am happy.

the bottom line here should be: download the demo when it's out, see if this one works for you...or not.

just a thought...[/quote]

I agree with this. I remember this harmann neuron synth. It was innovative but did not output very usable sounds. Mainly scify fx.

I am curiuos of Rayblaster will do usefull sound that can be really used in a production. On the website they claim that it would be easy to mix and would sound more loud . Is this just marketing?

[tibah]

I have to admit, after looking at the feature overview video again, I like the simplicity to create sounds that it seems to offer. I never been into complex and heavy synths, but importing some interesting wavs into Rayblaster and noodling with the formant, sync, damp controls and going nuts in the mod matrix is my taste. The effect section seems to be gorgeous, along with the ability to load and save arp patterns. This could make up a nice couple along with Saurus, which I already own.

[pdxindy]

So far i found no synth which can do the motor and chinsaw sound for example.

Here is a better chainsaw than the one in that Rayblaster example... I made this in ACE

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Ace3.mp3

I have also done many varied motor sounds and industrial machine sounds.

[Frantz]

When the demo come out, I HOPE to hear "unheard" sounds (apart from saw gritting and whatnot).

Personally I would be pleased if Rayblaster turns out to be a low CPU chameleon that can approximate a wide range of familiar sounds: analog subtractive, wavetable, additive, etc. The problem with "unheard" sounds is they tend not to be very useful in a musical context unless you are into very experimental music.

[KBSoundSmith]

In any case, granular synthesis is a specific technique within the larger umbrella of microsounds. Which specific technique/techniques Tone2 is using I don't know (my guess would be something along the lines of pulsar synthesis, FOF, etc), but what their synth attempts to do (or does, rather) is provide the illusion of continuous tone (known as the forward masking effect).

Now, this stuff isn't new...

I too think this is some sort of pulsar synthesis - but where I think it differs is how it does it -> regular pulsar-synthesis is done in the time domain and I think Rayblaster does it in the frequency domain, via some transform - fft, dft, wavelet etc. The "filter extraction" is definetly in the frequency domain aswell - single cycle waveform -> transform -> determine fundamental frequency -> search the upper bins for harmonics that do not follow the same slope as others -> check adjacent bins to determine the "Q" of the filter. Something like that.

The only shortcoming with most "microsounds" type synths are - useful parametrization and predictability - when making your own pathes - a surprise is good - every once in a while but not all the time! Hopefully rayblaster fares well in this regard.

Good luck to the Tone2 team.

Andrew

Definitely agreed, there's really no way around using some type of frequency domain magic with what their synth does.

But I'm imagining the actual implementation is probably a mixture of several techniques, where something like pulsar synthesis is used for the time domain, but it's spectral content is determined by something like convolution, etc. Ultimately, it's probably some kind of proprietary pot-luck blending of techniques, where it's x% of A technique, y% of B, z% of C, etc.

In any case, I've listened to some of the demos (nice stuff, Ingo), but ultimately I'm not giving them a moment of heed whatsoever when considering a synth of this nature. Until I have a copy in my hands (if that's possible for software...) and I can put it through a godless series of experiments myself, I'll remain unsatisfied.

The techniques Tone2 most surely adapted for RayBlaster are exactly the type that got me interested in using electronics for music in the first place. These techniques are shamefully unexplored areas in commercial products, and because I care about their artistic potential so much (because there is such fertile areas to explore), I am going to be utterly ruthless in my evaluation.

Expect extreme audio examples when I get the demo.

[chk071]

So far i found no synth which can do the motor and chinsaw sound for example.

Here is a better chainsaw than the one in that Rayblaster example... I made this in ACE

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Ace3.mp3

Great stuff. Even sounds as if you were in the woods.

[tibah]

"Relase will be tomorrow 12:00 European time.

Everything is running fine and v1.0 seems be be very stable"

Guess we all can get the demo and try for ourselves soon!

[pdxindy]

So far i found no synth which can do the motor and chinsaw sound for example.

Here is a better chainsaw than the one in that Rayblaster example... I made this in ACE

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Ace3.mp3

Great stuff. Even sounds as if you were in the woods.

Thankfully, ACE doesn't actually cut down trees!

(I notice flakes2 disappeared quickly... hehehe)

[osiris]

Now the release is imminent, I'll speak. I was a demo tester for Rayblaster. It can do some amazing sounds. A lot of times it reminded me of an Andromeda with those gritty harmonics, other times a Juno with a creamy pad. I can tell you the 32 bit at least is as rock solid as anything. It took everything I threw at it and never winced. I also had @ 5 or 6 instances going at once and the computer barely registered 50% CPU (and this is with other fx and things in the mix) There were two presets I had issues with that really rocketed CPU and, as always, I'm sure it was related to release on the envelope. TBH - it was like ElectraX and Saurus had a mutant baby what with the being able to load waves and resynthesis.
I highly suggest you at least have a go with the demo. I, for one, can't wait for some of these talented sound designers to have a go at this.
Peace.

[Ingonator]

Hi,

here is a promo video created by Rayblaster beta tester and preset designer Satyatunes:



Drums are not from Rablaster and a few external FXs seem to be added to the audio track.


Ingo

[Ingonator]

Now the release is imminent, I'll speak. I was a demo tester for Rayblaster. It can do some amazing sounds. A lot of times it reminded me of an Andromeda with those gritty harmonics, other times a Juno with a creamy pad. I can tell you the 32 bit at least is as rock solid as anything. It took everything I threw at it and never winced. I also had @ 5 or 6 instances going at once and the computer barely registered 50% CPU (and this is with other fx and things in the mix) There were two presets I had issues with that really rocketed CPU and, as always, I'm sure it was related to release on the envelope. TBH - it was like ElectraX and Saurus had a mutant baby what with the being able to load waves and resynthesis.
I highly suggest you at least have a go with the demo. I, for one, can't wait for some of these talented sound designers to have a go at this.
Peace.

Rayblaster CPU use:

I used those two audio demos from me for testing under "real" conditions:
Ingo Weidner - Empire Of Rays - Rayblaster Demo 1
Ingo Weidner - Empire Of Rays - Remix 1

CPU use for the first audio demo with 6 instances of Rayblaster and one instance of Drumazon was 10-24% on a Core 2 Quad Q6600 (4 x 2.4 GHz) CPU.
The maximum on the "Remix" that uses FXpansion Geist for drums was 29%.

The maximum number of used voices for those demos including Unison voices should be around 19 voices (+ a few voices for the drum in Drumazon).

The CPU use of the presets, even polyphonic ones could be either quite low (6-10% on my Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU) or a higher depending on features, parameter settings and Unison etc.
Anyway all presets sounds should be usable also with 6 notes or more and "high quality" setting.
Lead sounds (monophonic) in average are around 2-5% on my CPU with "high quality" setting and 1-2% less with "Low CPU" setting (from "setup" menu.
While there are a few monophonic presets that only need 1% there are some extreme lead presets with 4x unison and delay/Echo FX that need up to 10% in high quality mode (again on a 5 years old Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU).
This also seem to depend on how complex the waveform and the resulting filter response is. A simple Sawtooth waveform usually needs only very few CPU.

Like with most other synths of curse also the Amp envelope release time plays an important rule for the CPU use.


About RAM use:

Rayblaster needs quite a bit of RAM for each instance which is not a big problem with the 64-bit version and a lot of installed RAM (8 GB+) but at 32-bit there is a limit of 3,3 GB usable RAM and a 2 GB limit for a single program.

I am using Windows 7 32-bit and here are the maximum of instances i could currently load without problems:

in Ableton Live 8.3.4: 7-8 instances (sometimes also 9 instances)

in Reaper 4.22 32-bit: 8-9 instances

The first instance of Rayblaster needs a bit over 200 MB of RAM and each additional one around 150 MB.

As alraedy mentioned with 64-bit and enough RAM you could do a lot (30 or more) instances.


UPDATE:

I have checked on my Sony VAIO notebook now which uses a Core 2 Duo CPU (2 x 2.53 GHz), 4 GB installed RAM and Windows 7 32-bit.

In Ableton Live 8 (32-bit) the CPU use for my first audio demo (6 instances of Rayblaster, 1 instance of Drumazon) is around 13-32%.

Maximum used voices including Unison voices should have been 19 voices (+ a few voices for the drum in Drumazon).

Maximum instances in Ableton Live 8 are 7-8 which currently seems to be the maximum for a 32-bit OS (maybe one instance more with Reaper that needs less RAM itself).


Ingo

[Igro]

Like with most other synths of curse also the Amp envelope release time plays an important rule for the CPU use.


Ingo

The AMP's Release and Decay is the first thing I will try on it. Hope Markus will finally make them without any issue. In minimal style is really important.

[GeorgeZ]

"Relase will be tomorrow 12:00 European time.

Everything is running fine and v1.0 seems be be very stable"

Guess we all can get the demo and try for ourselves soon!

[highkoo]

Now the release is imminent, I'll speak. I was a demo tester for Rayblaster. It can do some amazing sounds. A lot of times it reminded me of an Andromeda with those gritty harmonics, other times a Juno with a creamy pad. I can tell you the 32 bit at least is as rock solid as anything. It took everything I threw at it and never winced. I also had @ 5 or 6 instances going at once and the computer barely registered 50% CPU (and this is with other fx and things in the mix) There were two presets I had issues with that really rocketed CPU and, as always, I'm sure it was related to release on the envelope. TBH - it was like ElectraX and Saurus had a mutant baby what with the being able to load waves and resynthesis.
I highly suggest you at least have a go with the demo. I, for one, can't wait for some of these talented sound designers to have a go at this.
Peace.

Thanks for that.

I hope Tone2 is taking notice of how good a job you guys are doing repping him for KvR. And please, do not confuse that for a smart ass comment.
Im really looking forward to this thing.

[PietW.]

I have worked for about 2 weeks with Rayblaster. I'm so glad to have a plugin I can really make new sounds.