The State of Serum in 2017

[snigelx]

Ingo: try some alchemical symbols and see if you can extract the golden frequency

[emef]

wow, that pack sounds amazing, will have to buy that, cheers for posting

Had some fun today watching this review of Coda, a symphonic preset pack for Serum.

[Ingonator]

Ingo: try some alchemical symbols and see if you can extract the golden frequency

Hi,

i just imported the Alchemists symbol for gold as a Serum wavetable.

This is how the 3D display of the wavetable looks like:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/532 ... import.png

[sfxsound3]

gold

https://www.textures.com/

[Ingonator]

Ingo: try some alchemical symbols and see if you can extract the golden frequency

Hi,

i just imported the Alchemists symbol for gold as a Serum wavetable.

This is how the 3D display of the wavetable looks like:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/532 ... import.png

Here is a download for two Serum wavetables based on the alchemists symbols for gold and lead:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/532 ... ls%201.zip

[Chris-S]

Are the spikes which you see at both edges (yellow waveform line) also in the audio?

[Ingonator]

Are the spikes which you see at both edges (yellow waveform line) also in the audio?

I guess what you call "spikes" are the left and right borders of the single cycle waveform and those are in the lower half of the waveform (below the zero-crossing).

Here is a combined sceenshot of 3 single ones with the original wavetable (the first waveforms) at the top, using "Remove DC Offset" in the editot as the second and using "Shift horizontal to Zero-Crossing" in the last one (only for teh fisrt waveform):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/532 ... enannt.png


Using both edit features might work but first but would destroy the imported "picture" and second t could make teh wavetable sound different and/or adds "jumps" when scanning trough the table compared to the non-edited wavetable.
If you feel you have t further edit the 2 wavetables i provided you are of course free to do that.

If you try to edit one of the waveforms using the additive partials that waveform will be automatially edited with "Remove DC Offset". Again if editing is necesary or not is up to you.

If you only use single waveforms of the wavetable editing the way mentioned above should not be a bigger problem.

[snigelx]

Ingo: Re: Alchemical wt...ha! you struck Gold buddy ; ) nice ...were you able to create the Philosopher's stone while working your way to 'gold'?

What are your fav functionalities of this synthesizer over all of your other WT synthesis capable instruments? Thanks for any info

[Ingonator]

What are your fav functionalities of this synthesizer over all of your other WT synthesis capable instruments? Thanks for any info

Only owned it since a short time but the favorite feature is the wavetable editor i guess.
The wavetables could be also used in other wavetable synths like e.g. Icarus, Synthmaster One, Avenger and Falcon.
Overall icarus is still my favorite and it could load Serum wavetables directly without having to use the resynthesis.
Icarus has a nice wavetable editor too but does not have all the options in serum like e.g. formula editor or image resynthesis. Also the "Sort" options in Serum to sort waveforms by their harmonic content is interesting.

Icarus has the "Fade" parameter in the OScs that offers an adjustable amount of interpolation/crossfading for wavetable scanning. This even wit ha few waveforms could allow smooth wavetable scanning. In Serum such parameter seems to be missing and you only get smooth wavetable scanning by adding more waveforms to the wavetable (also using "corossfading feature" in the editor which adds additional waveforms).

Sound wise Icarus and Serum are different (even wit hteh same wavetables used) while i mostly i like the the sound of the filters in Icarus IMO, especially the analog models. Besides that Icarus has more than 60 modes and has a full featured dual filter with serial or parallel routing. Serum has a second filter in the FX section but without routing options.

Anyway i do not say that Serum is "bad" sound wise, just different. A lot of times here at KVR there is a wrong use of those terms.

The super clean oscillators in Serum could be a big advantage while i also love PPG Wave 3.V where aliasing is part of the sound and/or it's character. Actually i love the sound of all the Waldorf synths and i got all of their plugins and also a Blofeld..

The drawable LFOs in Serum which are usable as MSEGs are very nice and the Step LFO in Icarus (16 steps) is indeed limited in comparison.
The LFOs in Serum could be also used to draw waveshapes that could be added to the current waveform in the wavetable by drag & drop.

Serum has the nice drag&drop modulation system and in one of the last updates such features was also added to Icarus. In both synths this feature is very nice and teh corresponding modulation also automatically appears in the mod matrix.

Concerning Unison modes i love teh "Stereo Hypersaw" modes in Icarus but with the advanced unison options in Serum you coud get comparable results. Both also offer a dedicated JP-8000 inspired Supersaw mode while that in Serum might be more versatile when using the advanced features.
The standard Hypersaw modes in Icarus (wthout stereo spread) are similar to those in Electra 21 whiel in

Icarus they do work for all waveforms, not just Saw. Before i sold my Virus TI Mk I desktop back in 2015 i compared the Hypersaw to taht in Electra 2.1 and this indeed nailed it. Same seems to be true in Icarus while there it is not limited to a Sawtooth wave.

[snigelx]

Ingo: Thanks a lot for that detailed response. Curiosity was piqued about Serum after recently getting eyes on an interview with Duda about how it came to be. I have pretty much cinched the knot on my pocket book as it concerned purchasing new utilities/instruments a couple years ago. (partly why I haven't appeared here in a long while). Nevertheless, I was intrigued by his story and so I thought I might demo it sooner or later. I own only Saurus and RB from T2 and I have to say that, although I do very much at times like their respective unique characters,...I notice that -something- about the timbre of more involved aggressive patch design on these two gets irritating (a bit brittle?) after some time. I think I prefer the sound of something like ACE by U-he to Saurus's. I'm also unfortunately not the biggest fan of the ergonomics surrounding setting up modulation..arp...etc. Hmm, I have never even looked at Icarus honestly...or Electra for that matter, I suppose I may soon-ish because of your mention of the SOUND and features. Sound quality is of A1 importance for me...and by quality I don't mean how clean or analog it comes across standing still. I mean 'clean' sound when one is intensely modulating and using a lot of interoperation between modules (IF I WANT TO). Bazille by U-he comes to mind in this respect (disregard the fact it is a modular design...I'm solely talking the clean I like. You can do whatever you want to those modules and still get something usable)... Annnnyway,... neither here nor there. Duda claimed in the talk that Serum uses the Xfer LFO Tool code inside of it so I suppose that is what you are speaking about there as it concerns LFO drawing. He also says that the filters used are college projects of Andrew Simper...hmm... so I am left wondering if that is good/bad... because I am assuming they are 'old' algos in that case and that Simper has greatly improved things even in the Ableton and DCAM algos... anyway, The editor functions sound interesting the way you describe and from what I see here...but I maybe image re-synthesis is going a bit far? for me anyway, after a certain amound of WT timbres begin to sound very similar unless one is using smooth modulation for a bunch of pad-like patches. The modulation ergonomics of the synth definitely attract me. If I can patch FAST (software I mean) then this is GOOD. I want to get the idea down FAST and if Serum is efficient in this regard, like say... Massive or Zebra... (recall, I haven't tried the T2 WT synths) then I'm down with checking into it. No routability is a downer, but a great section of patches can get by without that if everything elses falls into place. I am to understand however that the sub can go straight to the output bypassing the filter module and so that's good. I like Codex by Waves as well for some things but for certain patches it too sounds brittle...and 6 mod entries -sometimes-gets to be limiting. I like some of the uniqueness I can get from it against the others mentioned. I also have a blofeld but it is buggy as hell and now mysteriously does not output an audible signal. I've had multiple problems with that board and even opened and doctored some pots myself to no avail. blah.. glad YOURS is working ; ) ... it was fun while it lasted. Speaking of sound, I'm a huge fan of the sound of Palms own software projects like Wavegenerator Thanks again for your infos. I've got an idea how to proceed now.

PS. haven't got ears on Largo yet but I assume it's same code as Blofeld? Since I miss my Blo... I may investigate that at some point as well.

[foosnark]

Aside from the fantastic wavetable editor, I really like the morph modes in Serum (which can also be baked into a wavetable, I only realized this week), the unison features, the separate noise sample oscillator (which is used by some of the morph modes), and even the multi-FX section which can operate as a separate VST. Setting up modulation assignments is easy (I don't have the concerns that some do over the LFOs), and overall I can build a patch from scratch in very little time.

[Ingonator]

Aside from the fantastic wavetable editor, I really like the morph modes in Serum (which can also be baked into a wavetable, I only realized this week),

FWIW Icarus has more Morph modes (around 63) and those could be rendered to a wavetable too using "Apply Morph To Wavetable" in the "Tool" menu.
I nIcarus those Morph modes are also available in the wavetable editor so you could also apply different ones to different waveforms in the table and not just one to the whole wavetable which is possible too.

Now that i got both Icarus and Serum i could do all kinds of crazy stuff with those. The wavetables are compatible so it is possible to easily exchange them between both synths.

[snigelx]

Aside from the fantastic wavetable editor, I really like the morph modes in Serum (which can also be baked into a wavetable, I only realized this week), the unison features, the separate noise sample oscillator (which is used by some of the morph modes),

What do you mean that the noise module is used by some WT morph modes? I didn't follow that part. Yes, Duda talked highly of the highly customisable noise/sample module in that talk i watched. Sounds like a built-in sampler really. I'll have to dl the manual and check this thing out I suppose

[Ingonator]

Aside from the fantastic wavetable editor, I really like the morph modes in Serum (which can also be baked into a wavetable, I only realized this week), the unison features, the separate noise sample oscillator (which is used by some of the morph modes),

What do you mean that the noise module is used by some WT morph modes? I didn't follow that part. Yes, Duda talked highly of the highly customisable noise/sample module in that talk i watched. Sounds like a built-in sampler really. I'll have to dl the manual and check this thing out I suppose

With the Render/Resample features in the main menu of Serum you could apply the Warp/morph modes like e.g. FM to a waveform or wavetable to receive a new wavetable where this feature is rendered in the waveforms.

As just mentioend above this is also possible in Icarus.

[snigelx]

Ingo: Thanks for that. Intriguing! Hmmm,... I like the sound of that actually. Especially if the synth has as clean a sound as I'm hearing from various sources.

However, I just read it has a time-limited demonstration time. God I sincerely hate when devs do this. BIG turn off right there out of the gate. Now not so sure I will demo it. That's just not good. There are so many ways to get around that anyway for someone wanting to use patches in their projects... for one, they can simply resample the instrument. I just want to dabble with good patching for 45min or so... bleh why...especially with such an involved instrument. These things take time, but I'm not keen to mess with a series of reloads for it all.