Official Serum thread!

VST, AU, AAX, CLAP, etc. Plugin Virtual Instruments Discussion
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Greg Houston wrote:Getting off on filter resonance in Serum.

23 instances of Xfer Serum and one instance of the FabFilter Pro-L limiter...

https://soundcloud.com/gregoryhouston/i ... at-expanse
Nice build and interesting changes.

Cool tune!

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PatchAdamz wrote:Nice build and interesting changes.

Cool tune!
Thanks, Zak!

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Greg Houston wrote:Getting off on filter resonance in Serum.

23 instances of Xfer Serum and one instance of the FabFilter Pro-L limiter...

https://soundcloud.com/gregoryhouston/i ... at-expanse
Really nice Greg, very cool.

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Greg Houston wrote:Getting off on filter resonance in Serum.

23 instances of Xfer Serum and one instance of the FabFilter Pro-L limiter...

https://soundcloud.com/gregoryhouston/i ... at-expanse
Exciting, evolving, evocative.

/Joachim
If it were easy, anybody could do it!

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Thanks, guys.

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Greg Houston wrote:
23 instances of Xfer Serum and one instance of the FabFilter Pro-L limiter...
Wow! How are you using 23 instances of Serum when 1 instance (depending on the patch) really eats alot of cpu even on my fast 5930k?????

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quantum7 wrote:Wow! How are you using 23 instances of Serum when 1 instance (depending on the patch) really eats alot of cpu even on my fast 5930k?????
I have an older 2600k with 16GB RAM and am only using about 25% "CPU" with 23 instances of Serum (nothing frozen). My soundset demo had 108 instances of Serum in it. I didn't start freezing tracks in it until I was about 80 instances in. For me RAM is the bigger issue than CPU. If I weren't poor and could upgrade to 32 GB of RAM I could probably have 150-160 instances of Serum in a project without freezing no problem. As for CPU specifically, I don't make patches that put my CPU in the red and I don't tend to use a lot of chords. There isn't a single chord in the track I just posted for instance (at least that is played by a single instrument). I also use unison very sparingly. It is only used in 2 of the 23 instances here.

My advice for tracks that do have a high polyphony, unison and or release times would be to immediately freeze them after you've made them. Though freezing adds a layer of hassle it does make it possible to have unlimited instances of Serum (if your DAW doesn't have a track limit).

Also, make sure you are using the latest beta on the forums. There have been various performance improvements over the original release, and with more to come if I'm not mistaken.

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One more tip, if you are recording your parts from a controller rather than writing them by mouse and have a track that is so CPU heavy that you can't even record the part, make a draft track for the recording with lowered polyphony, lowered unison and/or lowered release time. The odd numbered unisons tend to sound very similar as well as the evens. So if you have 7 unison drop to 5, and if you have 8 unison drop to 6. Record on that draft track, then move the midi to the real track and immediately freeze it.

The 1x (Draft) oversampling is now working in Serum though if I understand correctly it is only going to give you a performance improvement when the patch has warp modulation, but don't hold me to that.

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Greg Houston wrote:For me RAM is the bigger issue than CPU. If I weren't poor and could upgrade to 32 GB of RAM I could probably have 150-160 instances of Serum in a project without freezing no problem. As for CPU specifically, I don't make patches that put my CPU in the red and I don't tend to use a lot of chords. There isn't a single chord in the track I just posted for instance (at least that is played by a single instrument). I also use unison very sparingly. It is only used in 2 of the 23 instances here.
I was going to call bullshit until I listened to your recording and figured what you did there. Sounds great. Extremely shrewd programming on your part! My hats off to you. I now officially feel like crap because I've become so spoiled with what I have, I forgot what it was to squeeze every single drop of performance out of the little bit of software that I could scrounge up. I'm inspired to actually rethink how I do things and go back to a time when I cherished every little thing that I had. Thanks.

.-.

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Thanks for the kind words, Orbit. Glad to inspire.

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Greg (Houston) isn't exactly waving his Fabled Serum soundset in our faces…

I just bought it and, wow – what an adventure! For me, the drones and the vaguely ethnic sequences especially are a treasure trove of inspiration.

Emphatically recommended!

/Joachim
If it were easy, anybody could do it!

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Hi there,
Is there a way to modulate the Octave pitch without the octave steps? (linear modulation)
Cheers,
David

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Spitfire31 wrote:Greg (Houston) isn't exactly waving his Fabled Serum soundset in our faces…

I just bought it and, wow – what an adventure! For me, the drones and the vaguely ethnic sequences especially are a treasure trove of inspiration.

Emphatically recommended!

/Joachim
Just bought this but the first patch crashes Serum

I assume this was made using the beta? Not a great idea, I prefer not to use betas unless I am beta testing.

btw the official update is still showing as 1.0.0 in my downloads - it would be good to have access to the updates in my account rather than having to scan this thread or the XFer forum for news about updates. This is why things like this crash happen.

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1.0.0 is the only official release up to now.

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aMUSEd wrote:
Spitfire31 wrote:Greg (Houston) isn't exactly waving his Fabled Serum soundset in our faces…

I just bought it and, wow – what an adventure! For me, the drones and the vaguely ethnic sequences especially are a treasure trove of inspiration.

Emphatically recommended!

/Joachim
Just bought this but the first patch crashes Serum

I assume this was made using the beta? Not a great idea, I prefer not to use betas unless I am beta testing.

btw the official update is still showing as 1.0.0 in my downloads - it would be good to have access to the updates in my account rather than having to scan this thread or the XFer forum for news about updates. This is why things like this crash happen.
Other sound banks also need a recent, or most recent, version of Serum. For instance, on his website for the Halcyon soundset, Ayin Zahev (Sami) states that it needs version 1.016.

I agree that it would be a good idea for Greg to include info about the Serum version demand on his Fabled Serum soundset webpage. And I also agree that it would be more convenient to have the latest beta update in Xferrecords account!

/Joachim
If it were easy, anybody could do it!

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