One-Synth-Challenge 57: Tunefish - Chat & Gossip

[payne_bc]

OK, I'm about to throw in the towel for this one, it just won't work stable on my system. Here's what I have so far:

- switching presets now work, both the GUI and Reapers patch manager interact correctly (afaics).
- I got the parameter assignment working, including GUI redraw, but it's not reliable (see below).
- As soon as the GUI is closed and reopened, parameter assignments are no longer responding (neither GUI or sound wise).
- Also, when the GUI is closed (or even goes behind another window) the currently loaded sound is messed up, visually the graph for the oscillator has changed then.
- I'm pretty sure it's not my setup, as just about every other (free) synth I use works without problems in this regard on my system.

So far this is much to buggy for me to work with. I appreciate the developer doing his best to get these bugs ironed out asap. But for me to participate I'm already very much discouraged with this. Too bad as I really like the sound of it and already had an idea for a track

So maybe another version might surface today or tomorrow, and if so I'll test it to see if it's usable. But I'm not about to go beta-testing for a few weeks to be able to participate in this months contest.

Sad but I can perfectly understand this. It's also very unlikely I could be able to fix these kind of bugs within a couple days because it runs very stable and albeit not flawless, I do not even have close to the kind of problems you have and if I cannot get to reproduce them, it's very unlikely I can fix them quickly.

I suppose I'll try to get a virtual machine with as close as possible to your system and see what happens then. I am on Win8.1 64bit so that could not be further away from what you use

[crimsonwarlock]

It's also very unlikely I could be able to fix these kind of bugs within a couple days because it runs very stable and albeit not flawless, I do not even have close to the kind of problems you have and if I cannot get to reproduce them, it's very unlikely I can fix them quickly.

I suppose I'll try to get a virtual machine with as close as possible to your system and see what happens then. I am on Win8.1 64bit so that could not be further away from what you use

I'm a software developer myself, so I know that the first step in fixing a bug is being able to reproduce it. This is a though one, as V'ger seems to run pretty close to my setup and things seem to work pretty well there. I would be utterly impressed if you could fix this over the course of a couple of days.

So I have to be honest with you. I mainly have a few hours during the weekends to do any sound design and recording, so I was hoping to get going this weekend. If you can fix things this coming week it's possible I can still find the time to participate, but it's also very much possible that I won't. So it's up to you if you want to put in the time needed to try and fix this. You should not feel obligated in any way, every month there are a few that need to give in because of problems with certain DAWs or setups. That's life. In the meantime, if you do want me to test out stuff I'll be happy to do that for you. I'll be following this topic anyway

EDIT: I'll see if I can get a reproducible scenario here, as till now it's pretty much hit and miss. If I can reproduce things here, you at least have a scenario to test with.

[DzAH]

After a few hours of testing, Im still not able to make this synth work well in either Mixcraft or VSTHost. I tried different versions and different settings in the hosts.

So far I have mostly just tried to get the volum envelope right, but I cant... The ADSR is always acting very strangly.

[photonic]

I also still have problems with Tunefisch in Cubase (44.1kHz, 24bit). Here some of the facts I found in the last hours:

- When the GUI is open, some functions of Cubase like piano roll, trackname etc.. are blocked. I have to close the GUI to get full Cubase functionality.
- Not able to assign pitch bend or modulation wheel. Essential for my style of playing. No reaction when I choose "wheel" as a source.
- Unreproduceable changes in ADSR. Cracks in the end of the release phase.
- Longer attacks or releases only in the last 10% of the fader. Hard to adjust.
- Knobs jumping from value 0 to 99 and vice versa. Sometimes (distortion!!!) with dramatic effect.
- Changing from one Osc to the other (spline to additive) sometimes changes ADSR behaviour. Soft attack suddenly became hard.
- Cannot save patches with names. No reaction in the Manager when I click save. I have to store the sounds in the DAW. When I recall them, I cannot see the name in the GUI.

To be honest: Tunefish hase some great sounds, different to other synths. The sound generators do have a great potential. Maybe I am wrong, but for me it is in a too early beta phase for an OSC.

Sorry!

[crimsonwarlock]

Maybe I am wrong, but for me it is in a too early beta phase for an OSC.

Sorry!

You are stating what I was keeping to myself so far. The fact that we are now actively bug-hunting the synth we should be composing with tells it all

[e@rs]

You didn't know? This month is bug hunt. The next month is making music.

[RichardSemper]

I also still have problems with Tunefisch in Cubase (44.1kHz, 24bit). Here some of the facts I found in the last hours:

- When the GUI is open, some functions of Cubase like piano roll, trackname etc.. are blocked. I have to close the GUI to get full Cubase functionality.
- Not able to assign pitch bend or modulation wheel. Essential for my style of playing. No reaction when I choose "wheel" as a source.
- Unreproduceable changes in ADSR. Cracks in the end of the release phase.
- Longer attacks or releases only in the last 10% of the fader. Hard to adjust.
- Knobs jumping from value 0 to 99 and vice versa. Sometimes (distortion!!!) with dramatic effect.
- Changing from one Osc to the other (spline to additive) sometimes changes ADSR behaviour. Soft attack suddenly became hard.
- Cannot save patches with names. No reaction in the Manager when I click save. I have to store the sounds in the DAW. When I recall them, I cannot see the name in the GUI.

Sorry!

All of the above apply to my setup too, plus several crashes. and when after spending a while shaping a sound I left the computer for a minute it somehow changed the sound completely when I came back.

still trying for the moment, but very difficult to work with all these issues.

[crimsonwarlock]

It seems I can't reproduce the strange redrawing of the waveshape. However, the midi cc-mapping problem I can reliably reproduce:

- setup new project, add track with Tunefish.
- as long as the tunefish window has focus, all is well. I can map a CC to a control and this works.
- when mapping the control, the control-parameter window opens and therefore tunefish window/gui looses focus but this doesn't seem a problem.
- when (after mapping) tunefish window looses focus (doesn't matter if it's pinned or not) or gets closed, mapping is lost and won't work anymore.
- re-mapping the control has no effect after this.
- deleting tunefish from the track and re-inserting, doesn't help. still won't work.
- only way to restore correct behavior is to open e new reaper project.

So everything together it seems I can conclude:

- as long as the tunefish window has focus, mapping can be setup and works as expected.
- as soon as tunefish looses focus, mapping is no longer working and can not be setup again until project-reset.

[V'ger]

Shame with the issues but remember Tunefish 2 can also be used, maybe it works better on your setups. Or are the error reports concerning both synths, I think none of you have made that clear?

FWIW I don't have the issues, I can map MIDI CC to parameters fine and I can do whatever in the DAW without any trouble, also reloading project and they still work. The ADSR works as expected and the modwheel can also be assigned and works. And I don't even run the synth in 'buggy plugin compatibility mode' or as a separate or dedicated process as Reaper allows which can usually cure the peskiest of plugins. I think other DAWs have similar features you could try.

The only thing that doesn't work are pitch bend and the internal preset system during saving, but then my DAW preset system works fine and I can save and reload no problem which I prefer anyway. The upside is a unique sound and low CPU usage.

It might seem like beta testing for some, but regulars will know there has hardly been a single OSC without troubles as the difference and flaws in systems and DAWs are simply too great that all will always work perfectly. Only freeware or demos from the top commercial developers have been (99%) trouble free. OSC is mostly about freeware and the vast majority of those are made by people in their spare time without any guarantees and limited access to testing systems. When selecting synths for OSC there is a similar restriction on testing systems so it will never be sure. As we all know by now, a plugin can work fine on one system or DAW, but not on others. It's just the weird combination of things.

Anyway, if MIDI control mapping is pesky just don't use it. Write automation in the DAW by hand. Surely not a huge thing. Remember synths like for example SQ8L don't even have any automation parameters available at all, but it's still one of the most loved synths and good tracks can be made with it.

I'm not here to back up the developer or justify my choice of synth, just saying there are things that can be overcome or worked around. Of course some have show stopping issues and that's not nice at all, but then that happens for some almost every OSC. For example this synth can not even be loaded by Mac users, but that's just the way it is.

[bjporter]

Test song with Tunefish 3 & 2
https://soundcloud.com/bjporter/tunefis ... se/s-YRsqU

Seems to work fine in Cubase 6, except Tunefish 3 presets are best switched from the GUI itself.

Very very stable*, and really REALLY interesting sound.


However, this is definitely a challenge... as the sound is not totally predictable, and has some features like cent-wise tuning that don't seem obvious in the GUI.


That's what makes it fun



*12 Instances... lots of automation, and no hassle so far.

[JKF Flashico]

Hi,

I have done now Tunefish 3 64bit 20 instances with Cubase 64bit 6.5.5 and no problem.

[JPQ]

Only thing what makes me angry now synth is only VSTI and very likely Windows only. I hope we soon exclude such plugins i know many them are good/great but i cannot use them.

[loft_electronics]

It seems pretty sweet to me, but then I'm a renoiser and it looks like it was made for just that purpose. I was even wondering if it might be part of the infamous Renoise3 build (there were discussions about having a native synth), but no doubt that's nonsense. Still getting my head around it: nice to have an interface that's not so familiar, and I have never really done additive before so it's a new adventure.

[payne_bc]

Thank god finally some people who this thing works for I was getting depressed already. Nevertheless, I've tried to improve things. The instrument manager was indeed a bit buggy (I have to be honest, I never use it)

Also it was said that the knobs are easy to turn from 0 to 99 or back (I can confirm that, I ran into this trap several times before)
So this next version also tries a different approach and I converted the behaviour from an angular to linear. Meaning you grab the knob and push it up or down instead of around. That way you cannot ever jump from 0 to 99 or back. Let me know what you think:

http://www.tunefish-synth.com/beta2/vst24_tf3_x64.zip
http://www.tunefish-synth.com/beta2/vst24_tf3_x86.zip

[abovethoughts]

1. Will my presets for 2.0 work in the new 3.0 beta2 ?

2. Why the rule that we have to choose version 2.0 or 3.0 but not both? I came up against trouble with 3.0 and 3.0 beta 1 so I fell back to 2.0 and made some lovely v2.0 audio segments. If I choose to go with 3.0 beta2 and it manages to be stable, it seems not fair to not be able to use those sequences from v2?