KVR Audio

Cygnus86 · Post by **Cygnus86** » Fri Jun 05, 2015 10:52 pm

SoundGoddess wrote:Hmm a new OSC...I'm tempted to try my hand again. I got a little depressed at how low I placed on the first OSC I tried, but since I'm still pretty new at production I guess I did ok just getting a finished song out there.

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed Asteroid Belt. When I heard the submissions for that month, I felt a bit intimidated and ended up not participating; OSC 73 was incredibly competitive! I remember hearing your track and thinking to myself "This is really innovative sounding, I dig it."

I've only entered the OSC a couple of times, but I always get that "post-submission blues". Really though, I think we should just feel good knowing we put forth our best efforts, no matter where we fall on the scoreboards.

For myself, I'm excited for this month's OSC and have been enjoying the synth so far (though I can't stand how the knobs move when I try to click and drag them, but that's not exactly an insurmountable problem I suppose...)

mmoncur · Post by **mmoncur** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 5:37 am

My goal for every OSC is simply "finish a decent track in a month". Don't worry about winning or losing. I literally have tracks that have been sitting unfinished for 20 YEARS so any month I finish and release a track is a good month.

Parduz · Post by **Parduz** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 10:13 am

There's any doc explaining a bit of this synth?

alienoiz · Post by **alienoiz** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 10:34 am

....
For myself, I'm excited for this month's OSC and have been enjoying the synth so far (though I can't stand how the knobs move when I try to click and drag them, but that's not exactly an insurmountable problem I suppose...)

just click over the knob and drag the mouse up or down...the knobs are very responsive this way : )

alienoiz · Post by **alienoiz** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 10:36 am

Parduz wrote:There's any doc explaining a bit of this synth?

Not that know about!..Sorry!

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 10:38 am

Parduz wrote:There's any doc explaining a bit of this synth?

I know a good head shrink that might be able to help you after you've gone off the deep end trying to make this thing work.

Get it? Doc, head shrink?

Hey, these are the jokes man, these are the jokes.

RichardSemper · Post by **RichardSemper** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 11:08 am

Sorry guys, looooong shift at work yesterday

psmacmur wrote:I'm curious how you realized that it was, in fact, a DC offset, and not just, like, LF noise. I guess they're theoretically the same, but maybe you have a cool analytical tool you're using...

s(m)exoscope is a useful tool for seeing how the output waveform of a sound will look, and i use voxengo span to see the frequencies. Here is a pic of my eclipsis kick for eg:

Doffset-and-scope-03.jpg

And here is a 'd' note played using patch 16 AlienPad in Mantra EVO, along with the above kick:

Doffset and scope 04.jpg

three things to note here:
1. the low frequency on SPAN looks very high
2. the peak signal on the right is high
3. the wave form in s(m)exoscope is clearly above the line - and it has taken the kick with it.

Here is the same sound (ish) when corrected:

Doffset-and-scope-02.jpg

bjporter wrote:Richard, i was meaning to ask if you had a preset to share, so we can see the issue.

Sorry no presets ready yet, but hope the above example is ok (patch 16 AlienPad in Mantra EVO)

bjporter · Post by **bjporter** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 6:51 pm

Yeah that middle pic for sure is dc offset, thanks

RichardSemper wrote:
Doffset and scope 04.jpg
three things to note here:
1. the low frequency on SPAN looks very high
2. the peak signal on the right is high
3. the wave form in s(m)exoscope is clearly above the line - and it has taken the kick with it.

gwoodland · Post by **gwoodland** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 11:15 am

I am off for OSC76. I have no fun with this synth. Quirky behavior of knobs and sound is not interesting at all. And even lack of any manual or picture of signal flow is frustrating to me. Maybe next time.

MTLE · Post by **MTLE** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 3:54 pm

Had some time to experience this synth a bit more.

Thanks to Richard Semper to show how the DC offset is detected. I double checked my uploaded patch bank for this. Fortunaly everything looks fine to this behaviour. There are 3 patches with strong low end, but SPAN curve starts increaing there, so it doesn't come from anywhere.

What I'm not happy about are some other of my patches. I build and designed everything on my laptop with the cheap headphones and without any MIDI device using just a simple MIDI loop to tweak. Playing now on the MIDI keyboard shows me some unexpected behaviour of the synth. Some patches sound as expected only on repeating keys.

Some patches have extreme high output in small key ranges. My Bongo patch is an example for this. Output is in good range except F2-A2. It may vary from patch to patch. In the suspect ranges it seems to add output of following notes, but it already starts loud on the first note.

Some patches produce very high output at all.

Another thing made me wondering, I use for my Mindwalk parts some converted MIDI tracks. The OpenMPT converted the original tracker notes to a length until a new note is played. Thats ok and until now no problem for any synth. This one is different. I used now a part (with extraordinary complexity

) shown on picture. All the notes followed each other without any space between. This is a not very common way to mute the synth. It doesn't play these notes! After shortening the notes sound appeares as wished.

mehum · Post by **mehum** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 5:09 pm

MTLE wrote: Another thing made me wondering, I use for my Mindwalk parts some converted MIDI tracks. The OpenMPT converted the original tracker notes to a length until a new note is played. Thats ok and until now no problem for any synth. This one is different. I used now a part (with extraordinary complexity ) shown on picture. All the notes followed each other without any space between. This is a not very common way to mute the synth. It doesn't play these notes! After shortening the notes sound appeares as wished.

I have noted this too... Note start and note end must be separated... Very strange behaviour, indeed

I also recall there are problems with noise when playing two notes with the same pitch where release time makes sound overlap.
This synth certainly has to be tamed to work at all

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 5:14 pm

mehum wrote:
MTLE wrote: Another thing made me wondering, I use for my Mindwalk parts some converted MIDI tracks. The OpenMPT converted the original tracker notes to a length until a new note is played. Thats ok and until now no problem for any synth. This one is different. I used now a part (with extraordinary complexity ) shown on picture. All the notes followed each other without any space between. This is a not very common way to mute the synth. It doesn't play these notes! After shortening the notes sound appeares as wished.
I have noted this too... Note start and note end must be separated... Very strange behaviour, indeed
I also recall there are problems with noise when playing two notes with the same pitch where release time makes sound overlap.
This synth certainly has to be tamed to work at all

Reminds me of the old analog days of having to warm the damn things up and praying they stayed in tune. My Moog was especially bad at that.

Parduz · Post by **Parduz** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 6:13 pm

I can't get any decent sound from this. And when it almost happens, there's noises and hisses. I don't even know what i'm doing when fiddling with the knob. I hate this plugin from the bottom of my heart. Unless i get some really strong inspiration about a track that sounds like a bad tuned radio, i'll pass this one.

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 6:22 pm

Parduz wrote:I can't get any decent sound from this. And when it almost happens, there's noises and hisses. I don't even know what i'm doing when fiddling with the knob. I hate this plugin from the bottom of my heart. Unless i get some really strong inspiration about a track that sounds like a bad tuned radio, i'll pass this one.

I'd love a chance to get to hate it. I can't even get it to work as it's blown up 3 different DAWs.

sizemore0409 · Post by **sizemore0409** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 7:17 pm

MANTRA EVO is a really challenging synth for the OSC --- but we were told that up front. MUCH more work to do on this track --- this is only 1 of 3 sections which will ultimately appear in this track, by June 30. Eager for any suggestions for improvements. Took the perc presets made by Animehaus (thanks!), MTLE (thanks!), and BJ's snare he created by tweaking an Animehaus preset, along with BJ's ideas for tweaking sounds in this synth (thanks Brian!); and came up with dozens of interesting perc sounds and sequences (some of them pretty nice, I think). Also made a pretty good kick/tom preset. Chose about a dozen of those sounds and seq's, came up with a basic chord progression, threw it all together. I'm grateful for everybody's input on the DC Offset issue. Again, I welcome suggestions for improvement; and I will also be on a sharp lookout for any more cool presets you guys might create and share.

Update: I've removed the "work in progress" version, because I'm almost ready to submit the complete version, which is far more developed than the other.

One Synth Challenge #76: Mantra Evo (Syntax Project Wins!)