One Synth Challenge #80: MUX by MuTools (Voting Over, preliminary results in)

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With "plastic" I normally mean a certain kind of "thinness", almost as if you put a bandpass on it, really, but it's also about the movements inside the sound. Some of these things are extremely subtle, of course. You could hardly see it, when you were looking at the waveform it produces, but it gives body and life to a sound. Also, sometimes we have synths call oscillator modes SAW and SQUARE and so on, while what they produce is really more complicated than that, like bandlimiting or antialiasing or spectral completion what one might call that. All these things still allow us to identify a sound as SAW or SQUARE, but it has a richness that goes beyond the simple replication of it.
But this stuff can go even deeper than all that. Although some of it is simply frequency related, it's not just the constant presence of a frequency or harmonic layering, but a kind of motion that flows like waves through the harmonic layers. It provides spectral complexity that you can feel. Blahblublablah, it's hard to try describing it. I can't wait for my synth to be done, because it has a curious magic inside that even I can't explain. The not so magical part is the processing speed, but I'll try to work that out some more... :roll:

Another part of all this, though, is the modulation logic and performance powers. Even simple sounds can get damn near perfect brilliance, if the performance features for modulations allow for lively playing. This is not just for live performances, but even when you create patterns, it's the way it can respond to velocity and other modulations.

Oh man...way too much ground to cover on that topic, I'm afraid. Warmth, though, doesn't mean any specific frequency, that is silly. Warmth comes from gentle fluctuations and can be relevant at many frequencies even into the upper mids, I suppose. I can see, however, that someone would say 400Hz and lower, sure. And may I add: What the hell do I know? :lol: ...dang, I'm not a dsp-head or the likes (unfortunately). But I've been creating sounds and have dealt with digital music and synthesis for almost 30 years now. Hmm, yeah, that could lead to some trained ears, hmmm... 8-)

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It sounds to me like you're describing free running oscillators with harmonic saturation, wrapped in a thick coat of micromodulation.
I've never actually tried Synthmaster, but based on your description, I might guess that SM's "plastic" comes from default DCO-style oscillators, mathematically clean default waveforms, and insufficient LFOs, or routing thereof, for expressive micromodulation.

What's the opposite of "plastic"? "Fat"?

The fact that your definition of warmth is "fluctuations" and others I've seen are more about frequency bias supports my theory that a lot of these terms are subjective, each with multiple vague definitions. "Punch" seems to be another one that has multiple definitions, ranging from pitch envelopes to transient's dynamics.

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Yes, this is pretty much it, and why I say the warmth is in there but it takes more work than other synths.

It's a combination of small things: a particular EQ curve somehow affecting the overall synth, typically reducing the low end, and with non-free-running DCO / static oscillators that lack of overtones / harmonic distortion and movement, often it's hard to get a "smooth" sounding low end with these synths. This results in fairly "lifeless" or "plastic" sounds, as I would describe them. Whereas, an analog synth may have some unintended overtones possibly through circuit distortion, imperfections in the analog oscillators, or other noise that adds to the movement and ends up making the lows more audible. A combination of modulation (maybe requiring a chorus plugin or something) and corrections to the overall EQ to get more low end or "warmth" / "fatness" can help.

It's very confusing, really, because I've also programmed a bit of a synth (sounds like Taron is going to beat me to completion! argh!) and that thing had massive bass and no apparent overall EQ affecting it, so I'm very confused why any synths seem to have a particular EQ character to them - seems like it must be intentional.

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The opposite of "plastic" I would call "organic". :)

And, yes, I'm most certainly going to beat you to completion, haha, because I'm almost done. I just need to hook up midi/performance modulation and velocity parameter implementation and it's ready to roll, I think. It will have troubles, I'm sure, but it will be alpha ready for sure!

My synth is all real time synthesis without the use of waveforms or tables. One could think that that would fall under the category "clean DCOs", but it really, really doesn't hahahaha...it's crazy. You'll hear/see! :phones:
I believe, most of the time the "plastic" character actually comes from using waveforms and just interpolating them. One can try as hard as one likes, this stuff will always be intrinsically static. At least that's what I think. With my little beasty there is only the danger of it flipping out, mahaha, which can happen. I do have safety measures in place, though, preventing your gear from exploding, so to say. A few other potential kinks I still have to track and nail down. By now this thing is quite big, though...every new parameter is like an adventure to hook up. It's kinda crazy.
Anyhow, I can imagine you may never have heard anything quite like it. :shrug: (Hoping that that's a good thing, hahaha) :scared: :lol:

I really wished, I would know how best to optimize it, though. I mean, it's alright on a halfway decent machine, but I would really want it to be about 10x as fast, honestly. I have a self-oscillating filter and phaser in there, allowing for some physical modeling type sounds that are quite beautiful, but I had to go to doubles to make this more stable. I sometimes wonder, if that is part of the drag...but well. It's well worth it, if you asked me.

Oh, anyway... moving on! :)

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That sounds hard to optimize... self-oscillation in particular. Last time I looked into optimizing code, back in the P4 era, "structure of arrays" data was a big win, as well as quadword alignment (so the doubles map to memory efficiently), and doubles are fast if you can convince them to run in the SSE units. Better yet, vectorized. Anyway, good luck! Look forward to hearing your creation!

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Vectorization, hmmm...that is interesting. Haven't thought of that, yet. It does fit with my style of coding, though.
The self-oscillation doesn't require much optimization, haha, that's just a trait of my wild concept. But I am wondering about processor cache and loops, if I pack too much into one loop, may it be smarter to do two smaller loops, for example!?
And then there's the holy Denormalization, which really annoys the heck out of me. I've been trying to catch as many potential places for that issue as possible, but I'm almost wondering, if I really do myself any favors with it. I should put in the effort to compare with/without.
I also have this increasingly insane concept of my Note structure, which by now is monumental. I really have to comb through that, see, if I really need all of it, but I'm afraid I just might. The stuff I do is rather unusual, I imagine... but at the same time I really have pretty solid polyphony and not this kind of crap I've encountered in almost every single free synth out there. I do still have to hook up my clean (click free) note replacing (if max polyphony demands sacrifice, hahaha). But I need that anyway for the reintroduction of my mono mode...oh, the sweet, sweet mono mode. :hyper:

OH, dang, almost forgot, I still have to hook up custom LFO shapes and some more features for them besides rate, haha. What a freaking little monster this thing is becoming. :borg:

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z.prime wrote:Yeah, I have to second that SM is a very capable synth. It sounds amazing but always seems to take a bit of extra work to get it there. I know what you mean about the "plastic" sound, but trust me when I say there's a lot more in there. The multitudes of places you can add distortion end up adding a lot of life to the sounds.

Did you check out the synth master osc tracks? https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/os ... ynthmaster
I bought Synthmaster a while ago and almost never use it. I find that it's sound fits really well into mixes even though solo'd tracks don't always sound great, but the interface is not much fun to use so I almost never go to it.

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Greetings everyone! Very glad to finally have the time to post here again. It's been quite busy to say the least and I even just got back from a Thanksgiving trip. I will decided to go with the Mux bundle so that I'd be able to open the track I worked on in the future and since it is a prize rarely offered. Cheers everyone and hope you all have had a nice thanksgiving.
100 High Quality Soundsets: Omnisphere 2, Dune 3, Tone 2 Synths, Pigments, Uhe Synths, Halion, Spire, and others.

TTU Youtube

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The soundcloud playlist here : https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/osc-80-mux seems to be the one for OSC 82 by mistake.

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urlwolf wrote:The soundcloud playlist here : https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/osc-80-mux seems to be the one for OSC 82 by mistake.
There are only 2 soundcloud groups, which alternate every 2 months so that happens. The internet archive player should have all the tracks.

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The MUX Modular OSC playlist still is available here: https://soundcloud.com/mutools/sets/mux ... ontest-oct

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Aha! it was never updated... should look like the player here: https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/osc-79-lokamotiv

That explains it all...

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This wast the OSC that I liked the most. Congrats to everyone in it.

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Was a precious one, true! :)

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Taron wrote:Was a precious one, true! :)
This OSC was my best finish at 15th place.

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