XHip--Please finish your synth!!

[aciddose]

something i did a long time ago (several years now, was it 07, or 08?) without any effects or anything, raw xhip.

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/temp/omfgchega.mp3

this is of course a famous samba song though,

in a similar vein timbre-wise and similar genre i guess. it uses organ, bass, piano and guitar sounds as they should be. in my opinion they're "just synthetic enough" where they resemble the real instrument enough that if you really don't pay attention you might start thinking they're not synthesized, but you always can tell they are if you bother to listen.

sounds sort of like a very cheap casio keyboard from the 90s.

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/temp/bossolaiessa.mp3

this one i did compose, obviously based upon how terrible it is

i think it used my envelope follower / filter, which i really need to update and put into the new effects set.

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/temp/bbqsong-04.mp3

this one is cool for the voice effects i did. they're just pulse waves with pitchbend and cutoff mod by modwheel. it sounds similar but much better than the vocalesque stuff in flat beat.

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/temp/aci ... abcxyz.mp3

this one is just improv on the keyboard with a synthetic voice which says "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" looping. don't forget xhip can use pcm as oscillators!

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/temp/randomshiz.mp3

improv i think there are four tracks. i just played each one, totally at random, shifting randomly and letting different progressions or melodies come together on their own. i think i did the bass first, then added drums in a loop, then the pad and finally the lead.

[cheul]

Any major changes, new features or fixes over the past year regarding xhip ?
Unfortunately I haven't been able to check lately.

[aciddose]

it's all on the page - you can contact me if you want to try alpha stuff. i'm not too motivated because i haven't used xhip or any instruments much recently (the past couple years) and this is also a problem with the effects suite i'm developing. i'm motivated mostly just by a "finish the damn thing and get it out the door", but that isn't in my opinion a good way to work as it produces inferior-quality results and also i tend to find myself wanting to avoid working on this stuff when that methodology is employed.

releasing constant versions isn't ideal even here on the kvr forum, as it for a time was the primary source of xhip and there was no "official" version. it's tempting to constantly release new versions due to improvements, bugs fixed or other reasons. that puts users at a disadvantage though. it leads to confusion about which version is best to use. it prevents preset sharing and use of features that are considered "unstable" due to changes being made.

so because of that, i want to limit new versions to a smaller group that i communicate with in a more personal manner rather than in public. although i've got a special xhip forum for public discussion as well, people seem not to want to use it much.

feature list is quite extensive. the biggest changes you'll notice are:

- perfect oscillators. absolutely perfect. sync works everywhere with no aliasing. it can now produce complex shapes, morph between waveforms.

- the osc can combine waveforms or fixed syncs - for example you could specify pulse with ramp at +6 semitone sync'd at -3db as a waveform and it could generate that for you, per-oscillator. ideal for sub-osc type features.

- xmod is currently not working as i'm changing the implementation for that to a through-zero mode rather than the old clipped mode. i haven't followed through with this because i haven't been motivated.

- there is a new filter saturation method that can be used to model filters such as a ms-20 "korg35" with much greater accuracy. anti-aliased, close to zero cpu use. it was a brilliant insight i had some time last year and turned out to work great. as with any saturation however it modifies the pitch - same as in analog gear if it were adjustable.

- it has LEDs to represent various things now. eye-candy is ideal when it also provides useful information. everyone likes led meters, don't they? (probably not, but it can also be disabled in that case )

- i'm making improvements to interfacing to get things working correctly again and i was hoping to release a new version with the "old" per-sample synthesizer some time in the future.

- there is a new version of the synthesizer which divides the modulation rate by a factor such as 16. there are some issues that need to be worked out with this since linear-interpolation between these 16 samples isn't accurate enough in some cases and can "destabilize" some types of filters.

- i've improved many features by simplification. for example instead of a "pos" and "abs" waveshaper mode, they're combined. the depth now acts to cross-blend from full signal to pos to abs. this is accomplished due to the fact that adding abs(x) + x = pos(x) which i should have realized a long time ago. in fact i always "knew" this but didn't think of applying it to this case.

- i've eliminated the "linear-cv" glide modes for now because although they produce slightly different results, it wasn't really justified. i'll re-evaluate this in the future before making a release.

- i was wanting to eliminate panning, but decided not to. there are effects like diffusing voices randomly that are arguably stupid, but none-the-less usable features that some presets actually _did_ use. i've switched from unity-pan to equal-power law because when i selected unity-pan years ago i couldn't stand equal-power. now i can't seem to tell the difference anymore. i think my addiction to unity-pan was through my heavy use of trackers around that time and the fact the perceived "width" to pan value curve is so different. if you can look beyond that however, modulation sounds pretty identical in both cases and placing a knob at a different position isn't going to kill anyone.

- the change with the new synthesizer to block-level modulation allows for both:
- audio block processing, which could significantly improve cpu performance. (elimination of the modulation per-sample already has)
- reduced cpu cost for modulation makes a few extra additions or multiplications involved in a true mod-matrix much less expensive. now rather than my complaints about the cost of a true matrix and unachievable attempts to come up with a solution, a mod-rate true matrix can be implemented in only a couple hours. (i need to implement gui features for this mostly. the audio-related code is ultra simplistic)

- the lfo waveforms have been simplified. for example, sample&hold noise and "random" mode are now the same mode. "duty" is a continuous morph from sharp edges to smooth edges. another thing i thought of in a couple minutes of really thinking about it where it should have been this way from the start.

- reduced cpu for modulation allows for more extensive modulation capabilities. with the mod-matrix presets in the future will be mostly driven by the matrix and "anything to anything" excluding audio channels (no osc1 to lfo's rate, for example) can be routed that way. "osc2 pwm" solved, for example.

- new gui lib allowed for new improved gui. i've implemented many improvements to both "xgdb" and done a new although simple default xhip gui. it has the same advantages of the slider-based gui with less of the disadvantages. other gui's like branis', limeflavor and so on will be updated in time.

- i like the idea of using one version of a product as a demo, and another version with more fine-tuned features as a for-sale version. i can use xhip as a test-bed for features i implement in other synthesizers. this is a tie-in to the issue with confusing users and is the explanation i haven't posted here or made any updates to the existing version for two years.

as i said a few posts back, i'm not dead! i'm just trying to waste less time in forums

[Mutant]

people seem not to want to use it much.

IMHO It is because they don't know about it...

You don't even have a link to your homepage in your signature here...

This thread is way too long and your forum is way too "not-kvr" if you know what i mean.

I think most people here are busy and they would prefer to read about all important news on just one site instead of checking homepages of all their favorite synths - i have many favorites and even though i am quite a fanboy of Xhip and you, i will only check your site from time to time, while checking kvr few times a day.

feature list too long and too awesome to quote

OK now you made it ! I will register on your forum today and ask you for the alpha dowload link

[cheul]

Aciddose, you really are the obsessive type. That's why your synth sound so darn good, but also why it'll always be daunting for outsiders to get into Xhip world. Even though I'm really interested and tried to stay up to date, I lost track of your progress. And I'm quite obsessive as well.(I think this thread is a personality test on its own).

Maybe make some press release with a package that would include your synth with a tidy interface, presets that will cater to the bread and butter, giving commercial synths a run for their money, and a webpage on your site with only a few catchy demos (listened quickly to those on your site). The ideal would be presets showcased in the audio demos.

But only one link to a single version. Keep you work in progress for a few aficionados like you said, who will be as obsessive as you about the latest developments.

[aciddose]

that's the plan - unfortunately this methodology has it's own set of drawbacks. for example the release isn't there until it's finished.

i can't possibly release the working version now, and the issues with the existing version in some cases were not really small so as to justify making small updates and maintaining to the older branch.

it works.. there are a few things i would fix. for example it would be nice if the modwheel and bender worked, which wouldn't have been that much effort at all honestly. also the volume got set via typo to -32 rather than -12. not all the controls on the gui (flags for example like drum mode) are saved in a project. the support for wav files is good, but the filenames needed to be saved. small changes like those i mentioned i've made in the unreleased version it's hard not to make as they should have been that way from the beginning.

so it's small things mostly, i stopped listing them because the list was becoming too long; you can see the issue though, although they're small individually as a whole there are so many that big changes start to seem more the same size rather than giants vs. dwarves. so although i'd still probably like to quickly patch up the version on the site and make it "1.0" it's not simply perfectionism that would lead to the regret i'd feel if i were to do that.

more work on things as they're going now though - only limited by lack of motivation - would solve this quickly. so i'd better be doing that than ranting about it instead

[Mutant]

Hey aciddose !

Clean that Louis Vuitton spam on your forum

And update the synth please

I am still the biggest fan of Xhip

[Aroused by JarJar]

Yes. We need a Diva vs. Real Xhip thread.

[aciddose]

the forum has stood up pretty well so far.

i had a crash that reverted everything to a backup a little while ago. disappearing threads, but at least those had already been "completed" for those involved at the time.

happy new year! another year of plz finish xhip?

everything i said in my last post still applies. although, i would hope the grammar could be improved at least a little. grammar improvements sufficient solution to logic transference occur shall wishing of mine.

as for xhip, i've still been using it as a test bed for new code and again still not been aiming to complete it with all my efforts, at least yet.



i've modularized quite a lot of new stuff and i have it set in my head that i want to implement a full mod-matrix and fully modularize the complete synthesizer now. this wouldn't mean that you need to connect cables or anything, just that it would be possible if desired in the code to do that. on the face of it, xhip would remain the same, of course.

it's now possible to use as many filter modes as desired, sub-menus are supported which were a requirement for a full mod-matrix.

many other such changes. i'll need to package the plugin so you guys can play with it due to it's use of bitmap graphics.

since i'm no longer making releases i've also changed to static linkage - which means no more need for extra dll files. (with the consequence that xhip goes from 100k to 1meg in some configurations)

i have really started to like the whole "if it almost works, release that shit!" method, but caution is required as it may just be nostalgia.

[penguinfromdeep]

Does Xhip have zero feedback filters?

[aciddose]

no, it's always used a compensated and oversampled implementation instead. this is less cpu-hungry and produces "ok" results.

i've implemented zero-delay filters before. they're used in my phaser and reverb implementations for example in a zero-delay allpass. they're used to calculate average fps at very low sample rates where a normal filter would oscillate out of control in my graphical code whenever i need to measure fps.

i've used both methods - iterative and approximate. while these can be better in some ways, there is a trade-off involved. you're just moving problems around.

to be honest, i'm still not happy with the computation involved in the methods that xhip does use. so there is no way i'd be willing to attempt to justify making the code more expensive, even with the quality improvements it provides.

for an analog emulation style filter it can be justified no problem. in that case the goal is to produce accurate results regardless of cost and to move in the direction of minimizing cost. the threshold is accuracy.

in the case of xhip, by far the threshold is cpu cost. i did move to a more expensive filter in 2005 because it brought us from a limited frequency range to a full frequency range. in that case it was a "working" vs. "not working" kind of issue.

i will probably be using such filters in other synthesizers in the future. "modularization" of course means that xhip could include such modes as extra options as well.

(as well as comb filters, phasers, wave multipliers, convolution filters, etc)

i just wish i had this capability back in 2003 when i was really interested in it.

edit: btw, zero-feedback and zero-delay would be different. i assumed you meant zero-delay because this is the new trend introduced recently. (although implementations have been around for quite some time.) zero-feedback would be just when you set "resonance" to zero. actually, it's when you set it to 100% due to the type of filter these are.

yes, xhip also includes zero-feedback filters. all the 6db filters have no feedback. the 12db and 24db (and others) have always some feedback, but so close to zero as to be immeasurably different in practice. if that is what you meant, just set res to zero. if the non-zero issue is too much for you for some reason, it requires a different type of filter. those along with new oscillators and oscillator waveforms will become available as i implement them. they're all possible now.

[75ips]

Best synth ever

Bump

[aciddose]

You probably want to move to / watch this thread instead at this point:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=360110

Also keep in mind though that any news will be posted at http://xhip.net/ for alpha stuff. Also see http://xhip.net/alpha/ if desired.

Any news about full releases will be posted here on KVR, you can watch the Xhip KVR page for that.

http://www.kvraudio.com/developer/aciddose
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/xhip-by-aciddose
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/xhip-ef ... y-aciddose

[2NDMOUSE]

Can't find 17.5 online.

^edit -- found it.

[starflakeprj]

7 years, entering god mode...