Fxpansion Strobe 2 is available

[EnGee]

I downloaded the demo. I was afraid that it doesn't have the feel of the design of Strobe 1, which I like a lot. But it didn't disappoint me The design is great and still have this lovely animations of the 'killer' filter and other parameters.

The sound is great as well and has the same 'soul' of Strobe 1. I didn't delve into it a lot, but I know how to use it and the modulation. The cpu is not very high, something between 10% to 30% in my i5 desktop (of course this is for 2x oversampling, for 8x? forget it!).

The price is OK if we consider all the efforts that went into the making. It is a quality software, and the efforts shows there especially to those who used Strobe 1. Anyway, it is a new release and I expect the price to be dropped after one year. I will wait for one year, as if I convert the currency, it is about NZ$281, which really a lot! I'm not sure though if I will buy it (or any other VA soft synth!), as Pulse 2 costs here NZD 899 and I can buy it with installments without interests so for third price and dependent on computer, it is not a great value for money for me.

Anyway, the price is for first wave buyers which either need it so much or the price is not that high for them. I expect big discount after one year though, that if you can wait

[2ZrgE]

An installment plan on (hobby) software seems absurd to me. .

But maybe not to others...

Yes I see that.. But why finance entertainment? That is what a hobby is.. Why not just save until you can buy it outright and then it is yours.. no catches.. no installment plans.. no owing anyone anything else.

I wouldn't finance a trip to the movies or a disney ticket.. same category.

Same category for who? Does that include the people here who make money from music. I don't think that would go over well for them. Them includes me.

Perhaps your definition describes more your own relationship with making music. Again, no offense.

If a professional needs to break a 180 dollar piece of software into monthly plans they are really scraping by...

A professional wouldn't need it in the first place, because a pro would use all the other great tools he (hopefully) already has.

[digitalboytn]

A professional wouldn't need it in the first place, because a pro would use all the other great tools he (hopefully) already has.

It's looking like Strobe 2 isn't quite setting the world on fire for so many reasons....

There's a lot of competition out there these days...

So many great choices

We're all so overloaded with "stuff" now that it takes something really special to get our attention and then get our money...

There's always the early adopters - the fan boys - who will buy anything that moves,but a company is dependent on long term sales that are generated primarily from the main stream...

And that's where all the competition is...

So like this thread clearly shows,it's a fine balancing act between the features and the price point

[maschinelf]

Fxpansion make some good products, and Geist is just awesome.

Having said that though, I agree that Strobe 2 is expensive. Tbh though, I don't really see why so many ppl are complaining. It's not like the price was a secret even months before release, as Angus had hinted at it several times in the other thread.

I expected the upgrade price to be around $80-100 and realised it didn't appeal to me, and sold an fxpansion bundle containing everything I owned but Geist a few months ago (the price of strobe 2 and their $50 transfer fee weren't the only factors, but they were important considerations). All the dcam synths were nice, though their guis kind of came in the way of useability imho, and I had enough other synths to not miss them much. Actually the same is sort of true for Tremor, which though extremely powerful, is very cpu heavy and also way beyond my needs. I realised I didn't want to spend more on their products other than a possible Geist upgrade, and I really wouldn't miss anything other than Geist. I might've even hung on to tremor and etch actually, but the transfer fee ultimately made it a financial decision as well. And that was the end of that, but seriously I see no point in people harping on about the price. It's their product and their pricing decision, and people can choose whether to buy it and keep it, or not. End of story.

[Apostate]

A professional wouldn't need it in the first place, because a pro would use all the other great tools he (hopefully) already has.

The above post is the perfect example of someone who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, and posts just to post. Reminds me of all the boneheaded, non-musician/producer/composer opinions on music on social media. Think things out better next time, son.

Most professionals (especially the ones whom wish to continue making money) become familiar with and take advantage of new tools regularly, otherwise their style/sound/knowledge becomes too dated to be lucrative.

But I don't live here, so I have to get back to work making money doing music. Some people here really should find a new hobby, and I mean outside of KVR, because obviously they're putting more time pretending this is Facebook than doing anything remotely worthwhile musically.

I wrote this laughing, but not in a mean way.

[BDeep]

A professional wouldn't need it in the first place, because a pro would use all the other great tools he (hopefully) already has.

The above post is the perfect example of someone who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, and posts just to post. Reminds me of all the boneheaded, non-musician/producer/composer opinions on music on social media. Think things out better next time, son.

Most professionals (especially the ones whom wish to continue making money) become familiar with and take advantage of new tools regularly, otherwise their style/sound/knowledge becomes too dated to be lucrative.

But I don't live here, so I have to get back to work making money doing music. Some people here really should find a new hobby, and I mean outside of KVR, because obviously they're putting more time pretending this is Facebook than doing anything remotely worthwhile musically.

I wrote this laughing, but not in a mean way.

So why don't you take your own (admittedly very good) advice to heart then?

[2ZrgE]

Wow I really touched some nerve there, despite the tiny little laughing face. Well, whatever, you tried hard, but I'm fine with your assumptions.

Sorry to say that but you seem more like the kind of wannabe professional who gets easily offended when someone puts their 'professionality' to question. Do you think your (even not proven) "professionality" makes you a better musician automatically?

Really, if you cannot affort that 180 bucks maybe it's time to look for another profession? (If you are a professional that is). It's like a "pro designer" saying "Oh I cannot afford the Adobe Suite though I am a pro, I really am!".

And btw there's a trick to become familiar with new tools regularily, its' called "demo".

[murnau]

Most professionals (especially the ones whom wish to continue making money) become familiar with and take advantage of new tools regularly, otherwise their style/sound/knowledge becomes too dated to be lucrative.

I think you don't have a clue. Would make you wonder how many pro users are not up2date and there's a reason for it.

But I don't live here, so I have to get back to work making money doing music. Some people here really should find a new hobby, and I mean outside of KVR, because obviously they're putting more time pretending this is Facebook than doing anything remotely worthwhile musically.

I wrote this laughing, but not in a mean way.

When it is a hobby it doesn't matter anyway or? In any case: Good luck with your money making.

[Ah_Dziz]

@ epiphaneia I think we're looking at a couple of months til beta of any kind. Drop me (or better Drew, if you have his details) a line if you're interested in private beta on that one.

I've only had SS1 for a while now so I'm a bit hesitant to upgrade my least favorite of the three synths. On my workstation the CPU Usage even with fusor and lots of stuff going on is rather negligible so as far as I can tell the main feature I'm paying for that I have wanted (and that has kept me from using strobe quite often) is that I can detune the main osc without affecting the sub. That's a big deal and greatly ups the usefulness of this thing for bass sounds.

That, and phase reset, and the separate tone controls for main and sub. Let us know how you get on with the demo.

The eight patch switching can be mapped to CC0 or the keyboard (as well as program change), it's great fun to create 8 variations on the same patch and switch between them while playing.

Is it set in stone that all the upgrades are gonna cost 80$ or more or is there going to be a bundle upgrade discount if you buy all three?

Nothing's set in stone, depends on things that haven't happened yet to some degree. Part of what determines Strobe2's asking price (both new and upgrade) is the preset library, I think it's too early to say if it'll even be possible to get 900 such presets out of Amber2 (string machines have a more limited range, let's face it).. equally, when we let Himalaya & Tasmodia loose on Cypher2, there's no knowing what those two mad geniuses will come up with.

Also is there a multipoint loop able envelope somewhere in all that modulation? The mod lanes in fusor were the closest in v1 and they were nowhere near precise enough for serious sound designing.

Not a multipoint loopable envelope, but you can remap anything through either of the two polyphonic Curve processors (be it an envelope, the LFO, the Ramp, or some combination) & get complex, polyphonic, one-shot or looping shapes that way.

Thanks for the info. If you need sound design, I think I could get at least a few hundred sounds out of Amber provided it has all the effects, modulation, and sequencing that strobe 2 has. I just downloaded and am gonna check it out tonight.

Thanks again
JJ

So I demoed it for a bit the other night. I'm loving the melohman style patch switching, but it was giving me discontinuities in the sound when switching. I'd love to see a mode where instead of trying to make the switch instantaneously, it would trigger the new sound with the next note only. This would require some strange stuff as I'm imagining having the ability to hold down a sound switch to another and play a melody on the new sound while the old sound is still being held. I've also been unable to find how to make the patch switching notes not send note data to the synth engine which is less than ideal. The main issue though is that the plugin crashed six times in a few hours of playing with it. This was in both bitwig and cubase 8. All the crashes were on either loading or unloading the plugin. As it stands I could probably get into buying this update after a couple point updates. I love any synth with modulatable fx and really would prefer developers left fx out all together if they weren't going to make them a part of the instrument itself.

Anyway aside from the crashing. It's an amazing update. I'm sure people who are into that sort of thing will enjoy the large amount of presets. As for the pricing, a person could make tons of electronic music that sounds fresh as can be if all they had was the synth squad synths. I'm sure there will be bundle sales once all three are released and people who can't afford them as is can grab them then.
I'm personally gonna skip it for now and see what happens with the first couple updates. I'll definitely be grabbing cypher 2 when it comes out though. There just isn't enough there for me yet to bother with the update.

JJ

[Angus_FX]

So I demoed it for a bit the other night. I'm loving the melohman style patch switching, but it was giving me discontinuities in the sound when switching. I'd love to see a mode where instead of trying to make the switch instantaneously, it would trigger the new sound with the next note only.

That's an interesting idea. We considered something like that for Fusor (round-robin per note triggering of different synths), indeed it's already possible if your controller/DAW can change MIDI channels. Will give it some thought.

I've also been unable to find how to make the patch switching notes not send note data to the synth engine which is less than ideal.

There's a point-fix coming to address that one (which also fixes an audio bug specific to FL Studio, & improves support for multi-dimensional controllers)

The main issue though is that the plugin crashed six times in a few hours of playing with it. This was in both bitwig and cubase 8. All the crashes were on either loading or unloading the plugin.

That's a little worrying - can you send me the crashlogs please? Angus *at* fxpansion. Thanks!

[Ah_Dziz]

I'll send you the cubase crash. Do you know what if any kind of log bigwig generates when a sandboxes plugin crashes. It didn't bring the daw down. Just said "strobe 2 crashed". Cubase definitely listed strobe as the fault module. Something like "strobe 2_unload". I'll send that one when I get back in the studio.

JJ

[Ah_Dziz]

You guys need beta/ alpha or whatever testers for cypher 2? I also do sound design. I'd buy that today.

JJ

[Angus_FX]

We will do, yes.

If you run Strobe2 standalone, it'll say "An FXpansion product recently crashed" & offer to put the crashlog on your desktop. When it does that, you can send us the log & dmp files which should allow us to pinpoint the crash.

[SJ_Digriz]

There's a point-fix coming to address that one (which also fixes an audio bug specific to FL Studio, & improves support for multi-dimensional controllers)

Hey Angus, I'm trying to set Strobe 2 up to respond to the performance pad on my Voyager. Unfortunately that pad simply sends 4 continuous controller (x,y,pressure, gate) messages simultaneously. Is there a way to manually assign the CC in a file or something? The learn always takes the gate CC.

EDIT: I should add that I found the io.xml, but it doesn't apply to hosted instances that I can tell.
EDITEDIT: and sorry for asking for support on KVR,, there was just a conversation about controller support and thought I'd piggy back. Maybe others will find it useful info. I'll hit up your forum or a support ticket if you prefer.

[Angus_FX]

io.XML does apply to hosted instances, but you'll need to restart the host probably.

Also there are TWO io.xml - the factory one

Program Files (x86)/FXpansion/Strobe2/Settings on PC
/Library/App Support/FXpansion/Strobe2/Settings on Mac

and a user one which is loaded over the top:

~/Documents/FXpansion/Strobe2/Settings