Spitfire Audio & BT present PHOBOS

[Gribs]

I just posted this another Phobos thread... posting here too as i don't know which i the correct one.

I bought Phobos and my advise would be... don't!
The VST doesn't appear in Ableton Live 9.7.1 on mac and the AU crashes Komplete Kontrol and Logic...
The sounds are nice before it crashes but the GUI is hard to read it's so small.

This was my first and last Spitfire Audio purchase i'm sorry to say. Sad Face...

I am running Windows 10 on a ThinkPad Xeon-based mobile workstation. I have not had an issue with the 64 Bit VST plugin in Live 9.7.1. I get maybe 8% CPU use with 8 voices going. I would contact Spitfire and ask for help. This is their first instrument that is not a scripted Kontakt instrument and I would not be surprised if there is a bug. My general perception is that the company will bend over backwards for its customers. In addition, their Kontakt instruments are excellent in my opinion - top shelf stuff.

I agree that the GUI is much too small. I hope that Spitfire creates a larger-sized version of the GUI. My laptop has a standard 1920x1080 HD display and the GUI is tiny.

I pre-ordered the Phobos product pretty much right after it was opened up for preorders in the Spitfire shop. When its release was delayed for one week, Spitfire offered me a complimentary license for their North 7 Vintage Keys library which normally sells for $229 and is an excellent library.

[simmo75]

I just posted this another Phobos thread... posting here too as i don't know which i the correct one.

I bought Phobos and my advise would be... don't!
The VST doesn't appear in Ableton Live 9.7.1 on mac and the AU crashes Komplete Kontrol and Logic...
The sounds are nice before it crashes but the GUI is hard to read it's so small.

This was my first and last Spitfire Audio purchase i'm sorry to say. Sad Face...

I am running Windows 10 on a ThinkPad Xeon-based mobile workstation. I have not had an issue with the 64 Bit VST plugin in Live 9.7.1. I get maybe 8% CPU use with 8 voices going. I would contact Spitfire and ask for help. This is their first instrument that is not a scripted Kontakt instrument and I would not be surprised if there is a bug. My general perception is that the company will bend over backwards for its customers. In addition, their Kontakt instruments are excellent in my opinion - top shelf stuff.

I agree that the GUI is much too small. I hope that Spitfire creates a larger-sized version of the GUI. My laptop has a standard 1920x1080 HD display and the GUI is tiny.

I pre-ordered the Phobos product pretty much right after it was opened up for preorders in the Spitfire shop. When its release was delayed for one week, Spitfire offered me a complimentary license for their North 7 Vintage Keys library which normally sells for $229 and is an excellent library.

That's reassuring man, thanks for the reply.
I did send Spitfire support a message, hopefully I'll hear back soon.

[woodsdenis]

no demo !! And it's their first synth outing.

[simmo75]

Phobos.. so far
The installer doesn't install into the correct vst/au folder on mac.
Instantly crashes Komplete Kontrol upon selection in Live 9.7.1, Logic 10.3.1 & Bitwig Studio 2.
There is not a proper preset manager.
The sounds are great! but are not properly leveled, really uneven levels.
The GUI is too small.

My feelings with BT Phobos is i wish i hadn't bought it, it feels unfinished and more like an unstable beta.
I've learnt a big lesson here because i bought it on Spitfire Audio's reputation because there is No demo.
Really disapointed.

[woodsdenis]

Phobos.. so far
The installer doesn't install into the correct vst/au folder on mac.
Instantly crashes Komplete Kontrol upon selection in Live 9.7.1, Logic 10.3.1 & Bitwig Studio 2.
There is not a proper preset manager.
The sounds are great! but are not properly leveled, really uneven levels.
The GUI is too small.

My feelings with BT Phobos is i wish i hadn't bought it, it feels unfinished and more like an unstable beta.
I've learnt a big lesson here because i bought it on Spitfire Audio's reputation because there is No demo.
Really disapointed.

With the content included it couldn't sound terrible, but what were they doing in the years this took to develop you have to wonder. Not having a scaleable GUI these days is a bad oversight, even a small/medium/large. No internal preset browser !! A lot of users use more than one DAW. You have to wonder sometimes about not having a demo, I like to think the positive about people and Spitfire create brilliant sample libraries. Let's see how quickly they fix this, or not.

[bluebox]

I'm an admitted sucker for experimental synths, and the first truly convolution-based example was not about to escape my gaze, so there's that.

My first impression follows much of what everyone is saying here, with the exception that I didn't expect it to work perfectly out of the box; may new synths rarely do even after much QA testing. It *is* the first stand-alone synth Spitfire has attempted, thought technically they've had the Kontact-based eDNA Earth *synth* for a while now.

— Install: I had no problems with download/install in Logic X, even into a secondary HD through their library manager.

— GUI: agreeably much smaller than expected; on a 2K monitor it's ridiculously tiny. Time to break out the old HD res second monitor. Re-scaling it needs to be a priority for next update. Patch selection needs a static library lister (unless I missed it; who has time for manuals? ) I dislike multiple sub-menu traversal in mostly anything, too easy to mouse outside and lose the whole path on the small GUI. Also, ALL CAPS FOR NAMES ARE ANNOYING AND DOESN'T IMPRESS. (Spitfire is a bawdy gang — lots of f'ing and sh*ting in those names, too — no wonder there's a parental advisory on it!)

— Sound: I'm running an old (2008) Mac Pro octocore w/24GB RAM, stuck forever on OSX 10.11, now waiting on the modular Mac Pro coming next year! It is however perfectly capable of handling this synth; I've had other plugins more CPU/resource-hungry that all play without a hitch. Phobos CPU usage is low when playing. However, I noticed quite a few patches were producing terrible audio breakup, most part-way through the start of playing, regardless of gain adjustments anywhere. Some devolved into total digital noise, completely unusable...

— Rompler! Perhaps Spitfire has plans on selling additional sample content someday, but everyone's expectation these days is, and the trend has been for, waveform-based synths to allow import of user sounds.

For a $206 entry price (you did complete the dossier for an additional 10% off? ) it's not bad, but I'd hesitate to cough up $300 later on. In that Spitfire gave us pre-order folk the $239 N7 Vintage Keys* free for having to wait only another week is "saying something". Paul and Christian appear to have have high expectations of their efforts, so when they fall even slightly short somewhere, this may explain the "something". I'll wait for the (free) dot-one update to judge sound quality if the problem is with my system specs, but for now it's a decent/"ok" start.

(* N7 being a relatively new library, it's not some old unsold cruft laying around unloved for years. The "Spitfire EP" really is wonderful. Arguably it sounds to be a Rhodes Mk1 IMHO, perhaps explaining the lack of attribution — either licensing reasons, or a pride thing that it's not a Brit keyboard. )

[jobinho]

— Sound: I'm running an old (2008) Mac Pro octocore w/24GB RAM, stuck forever on OSX 10.11, now waiting on the modular Mac Pro coming next year! It is however perfectly capable of handling this synth; I've had other plugins more CPU/resource-hungry that all play without a hitch. Phobos CPU usage is low when playing. However, I noticed quite a few patches were producing terrible audio breakup, most part-way through the start of playing, regardless of gain adjustments anywhere. Some devolved into total digital noise, completely unusable...

Exhaustive review but you don't actually mention how it sounds - just how it affects your CPU.

[hyperscientist]

On macOS+Live I had zero problems so far. Sound quality is magnificent and some patches are crazy good - some feel like a complete tracks (!). Unfortunately it's a complex beast to tame. I feel like it is possible to get what you need when you need it from it, but to control it this way… will certainly take some time. I should be able to tell more about it after couple weeks with it, especially once I'll hook Seaboard RISE to it.

[simmo75]

On macOS+Live I had zero problems so far. Sound quality is magnificent and some patches are crazy good - some feel like a complete tracks (!). Unfortunately it's a complex beast to tame. I feel like it is possible to get what you need when you need it from it, but to control it this way… will certainly take some time. I should be able to tell more about it after couple weeks with it, especially once I'll hook Seaboard RISE to it.

Interesting... Do you use Komplete Kontrol by any chance?
edit: Did it install into the usual plugin directory or did it put it in the user directory?

[hyperscientist]

Interesting... Do you use Komplete Kontrol by any chance?
edit: Did it install into the usual plugin directory or did it put it in the user directory?

Sorry simmo75, I don't use Komplete Kontrol (yet). Throughout whole installation process I settled on default settings - basically I was just cliking "next". Good luck with your issues!

[bluebox]

Exhaustive review but you don't actually mention how it sounds - just how it affects your CPU.

True — I wanted to try some things to figure out what was causing the digital garble when I had time. Next day I started with an init project with only Phobos loaded, and everything was fine. I had originally loaded it into a template project I use that has all my synths on tracks just for monkeying around, and realized I hadn't restarted Logic before doing so. Big no-no.

So, sound-wise: overall quality is wonderful, there is a breadth of palate you don't find in any other synths. Omnisphere may be the closest thing that can do something close to Phobos, short of Omni's FX and some layering capabilities (I don't own Omni but certainly know what it can do, I just can't bring myself to jumping that shark. Yet. )

Just the sound from one osc sample and one convolution can make for some incredible and very different things compared to any other synth I've come across. Modulating between three of them is just wow-factor, let alone blending all four osc's into the mix. I don't feel you can approach this like waveshapers or "resynthesis" models, it's a bear of an entirely different color.

Stock patches lead you to believe Phobos was made for sci-fi cinema-style tracks; most of them are on the dark/haunting side, even ones from the Spitfire gang. Not too many bright/happy things, but there ought to be no doubt about the possibility of making whatever your imagination can come up with.

I'm sure there will be more video/audio reviews and samples to hear just what this thing is capable of. Frankly, I'm quite enthused about it like I haven't been with any other synth, virtual or physical, for years. Even if it is a "rompler" model... for now.

[krankyone]

I don't own this and only have looked at some of the videos. The best I can figure out is that this is 4 sample playback engines routed to three convolution engines. I assume that most people know that you can use any sample file besides impulse responses to do creative sound mangling of another another sample. That triangle-like thing in the middle is basically a nice little submixer, right?

If I added 4 Simplers to Ableton Live and created 3 return channels, each with it's own convolver, I could basically do the same thing, I think. I certainly might be missing something. The 22Gb of samples might be special in some way, but I've got a lot of loops. These days with Max 4 Live you can modulate almost anything. There might be some creative preset creation that I couldn't really do on my own without a lot of work - I'm a sucker for presets.

Just my thoughts.

[spektralisk]

If I added 4 Simplers to Ableton Live and created 3 return channels, each with it's own convolver, I could basically do the same thing, I think. I certainly might be missing something. The 22Gb of samples might be special in some way, but I've got a lot of loops. These days with Max 4 Live you can modulate almost anything. There might be some creative preset creation that I couldn't really do on my own without a lot of work - I'm a sucker for presets.

Just my thoughts.

I had similar thoughts about this. I even tried this with one convolution in Live. You get really good results when you feed rhythmic material to convolution with some sustained material (I tried some drum/melodic loops that goes into convolution with some live recordings like motors, water etc. - really nice results - you have to tweak decay and size). However I didn't have much success when convolution contained rhythmic loop and I fed some sustained material into it, like pads. So I wonder how this second case is working in Phobos (as far as I know you can load into convolver the same sounds that you have available in sources). If anyone tried this in Phobos, let us know.

[hyperscientist]

I'll copy-paste my post from some other forum as I find it relevant:

I just connected Phobos to Bitwig (I wish I could do it over Live…) to Seaboard RISE… OH MY GOD! This is pure unadulterated MADNESS! I can load just about any sample as source, add a random convolver (I didn't even get to layering yet), setup mapping to slide, glide or X-Y pad… it's just insane how flexible and unique sounding instrument I have at this point and how natural to control it is with Seaboard.

To me Phobos is a better fit for Seaboard than ROLI's own Equator or bundled Strobe2 - much more so. I somehow never "clicked" with that software, I was disappointed with it, felt I could do everything with oldschool keyboard with mod wheel and expression pedal. With Phobos it's different - exciting opportunities throw themselves at me I think it's due to the structure of this synth - all the layers naturally map to all 5 dimensions of touch Seaboard interprets.

I haven't been this excited with Seaboard ever, not even when I first bought it.

[woodsdenis]