One Synth Challenge #100: Lord of the Springs (Taron Wins!)

[Taron]

Depends on what you're doing with it, actually. At full tilt it has 88 * 4 + body range(normally also 88) springs, making it 440 springs swinging. If you add LFO you'll have another 88, raising it to 528. Then add 88 * two ramps, so, yeah, it can get heavy, if you were to play all notes in a biiiiiiiiiig glissando, hahaha!
But see how it idles! Should go down to nearly 0. I haven't capped the echo and filter, yet. Then it would be virtually 0 at idle.
What I'm saying is, if your machine gets a bit exhausted, watch how many notes your holding, watch the sustain pedal and decay times!

I sure am curious how many instances people manage to run, hahaha.

Anyway, I apologize, if it's too hungry, of course. It's meant as an actual instrument, which would not suffer from common voice limitations. That doesn't quite make it ideal for our purposes, but I'm already impressed with what's coming in!

[Markku]

So far no luck running this in linux/wine

Not via Wine or via Vestige (in LMMS). No go in Linux. Pity, seems to be interesting synth.

[Taron]

Have you guys looked into this:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... n&iId=5766

Not sure, if it makes a different, but I wouldn't be too surprised. Sometime win users take those runtime libraries for granted!

[rghvdberg]

Have you guys looked into this:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... n&iId=5766

Not sure, if it makes a different, but I wouldn't be too surprised. Sometime win users take those runtime libraries for granted!

Which runtime does it need?

[Taron]

I would go for Visual Studio 2013. It's what I'm using.
I can't tell, if it will make any difference, but it's not entirely impossible. I was searching for a specific aspect that I believe might be the issue. I think, it's all the bitmap stuff, but can't know for sure. Google spat out the runtime library links as first finding, so...that seemed interesting!

[Taron]

Keep noodling around on this as I test new compiles, hehe.
https://soundcloud.com/taronium/lotsv2demo01

I've noticed one weird thing that happened to me. I've added an instance of LotS and Spring B wouldn't run?! Deleting the instance and adding one again solved the matter and the project always loads up fine. No idea what could've happened there, but be warned: If you somehow don't hear the high part of the Init sound, likely Spring B couldn't kick in for some yet unknown reason. I'll keep investigating, of course!

[574X]

This synth is unusable

*throws tomato*

It actually has a really great sound,
over the lawnmower in here. Wait..
That's my laptop.

LotS is kinda CPU intensive...

Yeah, the original title must've been shortened from LotS of CPU use

The physique of it is incredible, not just the amazing, evolving artwork, but you can tell by how hungry it is. Like when you lift weights and gain a huge appetite
- it's buff.

Come on, Taron, spill the beans. Where's the $#!!!y switch, for lower quality and cpu.
(I can make do, if it comes to that, but I'll cross my fingers and keep ironing out my own synth for a bit to bide the time. )

When I first tried it, it seemed like a clever, unique FX synth.
It's totally different than I remember, and far more capable!
(I believe this was over a year ago, before I had met Taron and several lengthy conversations with him, every time refraining from sending him a novels-worth of text, which he could realistically immediately publish. )
I quickly realized that Taron is clearly a genius and makes legendary things, so surely he belongs on the OSC list.

Yes I was just about to say

very nice to see the developer is involved

Here's to looking forward to the new versions - and isn't it great to have the dev right here, improving it as we work! It's like the Reaper forums!
Glad that you're a much better dev than me and don't nullify every preset with every update

[Taron]

Yeah, I'm always scared about the preset evolution. I've added version numbers and have reserved a fair amount of slots just in case, hehe.
Things right now went very quickly, simply because I somehow dropped into a low, two months ago, and only about two weeks ago came crawling back out of it. Since then I've added all the new features: GUIs for the big LCD section, delays, sand, lfo, env, noise and right now the big preset gui.
But adding so many DSP features into something that used to be nice and tight can create a bit of a mess. That's also why I'm making this cute little test doodle to see what's happening, and there is something happening that shouldn't. Besides the weird Spring B surprise failure, something keeps it from idling, which means that something keeps spilling. I'll have to track that down. I noticed a tiny DC offset, too, which didn't use to be there. So...pffff....got my work cut out for sure. I mean, it all works and the general sound seems "normal". It's just some minor technicalities that snug in.
I should really take a real nice and long sleep...then pull my focus together for all that stuff. But I'm so close with the preset GUI. It's already so fun to use, too. You'll see soon, I hope!

Anyway, in the meantime, go easy on poor little LotS, it just kinda jumped out of its chrysalis for its New Powers and still has them gooey wings and all, you know...

[generaldiomedes]

I am getting some interesting sounds, buts it more by random chance. Some knobs don't do a whole lot, other knobs do a *lot* at a certain setting.

The sliders on the keyboard are a neat little tool .. I mapped them to an X/Y pad and just started noodling.

[doctorbob]

Got a nice tune going ... might run it past you Taron via a PM. Might not make it as an entry ... but you never know ... my number one critic likes it ... so, maybe ...

I noticed the glitch whereby I actually got no sound until I re-loaded the instance ... only once! That's with the 32-bit in Reaper 32-bit, on my 7 year old win7 machine.

dB

[Mechanought]

I like the synth, but I have no idea how to make the sounds I want to make. The style of synthesis and GUI are completely foreign to me. It's fun to mess around with but difficult to just get to work on a tune. I've had a theme for a few days but haven't finished a single instrument.

Anyone have any tips on how to wrap my head around this thing?

[wagtunes]

I like the synth, but I have no idea how to make the sounds I want to make. The style of synthesis and GUI are completely foreign to me. It's fun to mess around with but difficult to just get to work on a tune. I've had a theme for a few days but haven't finished a single instrument.

Anyone have any tips on how to wrap my head around this thing?

Just dive in. Turn knobs. Forget about all your preconceived ideas of synth programming. It's ultimately what I did to get what I got out of it, which wasn't much but it was enough to do a song.

Be like a kid. Let your mind go crazy.

Kids are still the most creative beings on Earth.

We've forgotten how to be kids.

[Frostline]

@Taron
Please don't take this post the wrong way. Though bits might appear negative overall I am really very impressed with LotS and find the sounds it can make amazing.

A. No need to add instant color changes for me. Adding a .5hz lfo sine to a color makes very pretty changes in real time.
Before it crashes anyway.

The wee beasty uses enough CPU for me as is. Not sure the cause on CPU, using it today on Init patch, no notes playing no sound showing on any meters at all CPU bounces between 4-5%. Playing a little arp pattern of triplet 8ths the CPU drops to around 3% and then stopping the pattern it is <1% CPU. Odd.
I know I saw 10%+ several times last night when designing sounds but it also often crashed so I don't have the patches that were hitting so hard.

B. GUI issue. I like how you kept the aesthetic of the GUI clean by not using labels for the knobs but instead had one of the 4 displays update on mouse hover as to the value and use of the individual knobs. I found it an elegant solution to keep the clean GUI look.
However this breaks when opening an automation envelope in Reaper.
Say I open an automation envelope of the Rise of Spring A. Now that is all that will display on the GUI in that 1st box. If I then hover over the decay of Spring A the little display cycles too rapidly to read between the Rise value and the decay value. It always wants to display the one with automation on it.
And the more automation envelopes added the more the flashes between them.
While looking for a couple of parameters that I think might have errors I opened envelopes for all the Body parameters and the GUI just went crazy. And it just crashed doing that little test.

On reopen it is using 0.3% CPU (awesome) played a single note of init and its idling 2-3% long after note stops, weird.

C. Body decay values seem odd in automation. On GUI range is from 0.00 to 1.00(like many of the other parameters ). But in the automation envelope it will only be either .999 at the absolute low end (which is 0.00 on the other parameters that share this range) or 1.00 at all other points.
I found this while looking for another parameter that I noticed last night(but have forgotten and it crashed before I thought write the parameter down) which looked like it should also be a 0.00-1.00 but instead at each end it had a values of a couple of hundred at each extreme of range instead of 0 or 1 but had the expected decimals in the range in between. But now I can't find it.

D. Automation available to host. First big props to you for making most of the names logical,easy to understand and grouped in good order.
And I assume the ones with a "-" instead of a name are spacers incase you want to add more controls or something.
But what are the 4 parameters that are all labeled "BOW temp"?

E. Got your presets to work. Was curious how you managed pads.
But now curious how to get them to stop without needing to automate the decay down?
After a few notes that never release the sound space gets a tad cramped. And automating decay will kill all the notes whereas I would really like only the earlier notes to end while continuing to sustain the more recent notes. I have attempted playing around with Rise and Decay but can't find a happy medium. It seems very pitch dependant where if I finally get low notes the way I want the high notes were either much shorter or longer (I forget which) and fixing the higher notes made the duration of the low notes wrong.

Anyway that is all I can think of right now.
And again I am not trying to pick this synth apart. I really really love how it sounds. It is just a bit quirky(and crashy) for me so far.

[e@rs]

It crashed my Studio One 2 yesterday when I tried to remove a track along with its instrument. It's a first, never happened to me before with a synth.

[Taron]

Oh, joy.
I just woke up to all the despair here. I'm so sorry guys. I have to figure out what went haywire like that. It will be one scary day and possibly more than that, of course.

I wrote about the strangeness with idle, right?
Before my last bit of changes, idle would go down to 0.3% completely reliably. So, something broke and I'll need to track it down. And I will! It ain't that much, really.

Now, hanging notes? That's almost funny and a clear sign something must've totally gotten bent, because that's virtually impossible! Only a decay of 100% and sustain pedal on could create that impression, but technically it just cannot hang. Only possibly the noise, that would have that power, but nothing else, really.

As for showing you how it works: Let me finish the preset GUI, then have a look at the idle issue, which may be the source of most grief among you, and then I'll record a video (again) to give you clarity. It really is not hard at all, just unusual. Consider the nature: No Sound Generator, Just Reacting Springs. The first set(A) is being hit by you. The second set(B) is being vibrated by set A. That's all. Now you get to adjust how the springs behave (tuning, decay, release, diffusion, overdrive, crush and not a whole lot more.). I'm sorry it's so overwhelming for some of you.