Sugar Bytes - Obscurium

[bailees7irish]

i hate their GUI's as of late... particularly the phoney space-ship-control-deck and cartoony stuff ... GUI on this seems fine though.

The only GUI of their's I don't like is Looperator. Everything else is pure eye candy!

[Neon Breath]

Obscurium AKA The LITE-BRITE Synth

[synzh]

looks like even in the VST version you can host another plugin and the internal synths will be turned off automatically (you click on the "sound" tab and then the "plugin" button). You have it scan for plugins in a given dir. Then once you choose a plugin, and the preset to use in that plugin, you can associate the 11 automation targets to controls in your plugin
[edit] OK this works, Obscurium hosting Alpha CM and set the 11 automation targets to random AlphaCM controls, manually; then found there is a dice button you can click to automatically randomly assign all the parameters.
you can then save the mapping.
looks like you have to set this for each preset you switch to however (not global).
They do mention it's an experimental feature in the doc - likely because there are so many plugins and some incompatibilities will probably exist somewhere.

[highkoo]

the Midi/sequencer concept is brilliant

+1
I think this thing looks amazing...
The internal generators are indeed nothing special, but I dont think that is the point of this thing at all...
Im interested to check it out and see how it interfaces with other synths...

edit!
Wow, pretty cool.
It is surprisingly cheap, for what it can do.

[jbw]

So is it a plug-in? Or does it only host plug-ins?

[Daags]

just had a quick test...

loaded some presets and sent it some note data ... all fine. Recorded the midi output ... it only seems to output note data, and not midi cc envelopes...

they've really missed a trick here if this can't output midi in the same way it is used for its own internal plugin hosting.

i really hope i'm overlooking something, I use external gear... not to mention I would probably want to pipe some midi from app to app, in the box.

[Daags]

So is it a plug-in? Or does it only host plug-ins?

ya, it''s a plugin that can host other plugins. this isn't uncommon.

i believe it's a standalone app as well, but I haven't tested that.

[jbw]

So is it a plug-in? Or does it only host plug-ins?

ya, it''s a plugin that can host other plugins. this isn't uncommon.

i believe it's a standalone app as well, but I haven't tested that.

Yeah just went through the manual, and it shows how to use in DAWs.

I will certainly check this out. I have a lot of Sugar Bytes stuff. In fact just recently got to really like Consequence which I have owned for a while now, this after almost writing it off.

[elxsound]

Hmmmm... Can't get it to recognize any plugin parameters on OSX in Live 9.2.

I tried NI products, U-he products, Aalto... And nothing.

Also when Massive was loaded, after clicking to show the UI of massive, it only could display the bottom most row, which of course is not enough.

Honestly, as cool as this looks, I don't see much I can't already do with automation lanes and arpeggiators or step sequencers. The lone benefit is the ability to see all the different layers of automation, color coded and pretty cool LFO animations. All of that is nice, but it seems like extra work vs. completing this in the host. The only way I'd feel different would be if I liked the built-in sound generators, but I don't.

Still, nice to see them continuing to build unique products.

I don't like the workflow within the plugin... I often feel they sacrifice workflow for style/aesthetics. It wouldn't be so bad if they had resizable UI's, but they don't so these plugins are still tiny on my screen, making many of the small text parameters obscurely available/readable.

Anyway, I'll try to leave it on that positive note from above... cool unique product.

[elipsis1]

not impressed by the demo tracks or sound design on this...

Yeah it is obscure, but it really sounds obscure like "hmm I don't know if I like this patch or not."

The concepts are great but I'm just not feeling it

[Naenyn]

Tried the demo .. pretty crazy instrument. Kinda makes me wish I'd installed more VSTs to go with my AUs. Like others have commented, the sounds it produces on its own aren't very interesting, but loading a VST up in it is good fun.

Not fun enough to get my money, though.

[Sugar Bytes]

Yes, it would indeed be nice if Sugar bytes had upgrade pricing model for new plugins like most other companies releasing new synths after initial bundle.

Hi, our bundle customers always receive a special price via newsletter or upon request, usually a few days after release.

best
Rico

[Sugar Bytes]

If you find plugins crashing or acting weird, please report to support@ with a system info,

thx
Rico

[James Yo]

the Midi/sequencer concept is brilliant

+1
I think this thing looks amazing...
The internal generators are indeed nothing special, but I dont think that is the point of this thing at all...
Im interested to check it out and see how it interfaces with other synths...

edit!
Wow, pretty cool.
It is surprisingly cheap, for what it can do.

It's a great laboratory for midi sequencing and all of the modulation available takes some time to get use to. But when you can add all of the morphing it does a great job with vst.

For the synth that comes with it I have to get my hand on the chord, poly, pitch, arp combinations. I have more fun right now with my vst's that I can load in it.

[inkwarp]

they seem to churn out this type of thing every other week...
i demo'd egoist and i just did not get on with it at all.
if you are looking for something similar maybe try ultraloop. phenominal plugin : )