Thorn: Dmitry Sches' new synth!

[chk071]

Good call. A laptop helps too. When there's a power outage, it will run on the battery instead. I'll probably do the drive to drive backup on the laptop now, really can't afford to lose that data.

[Touch The Universe]

Yes, I have 5 external hard drives that I use as backup. Each one of them has all the songs I've ever made and all the project files. I just didn't find the time to backup the last year's worth. I also burn 25 gigabyte Blu-rays as backup as well. Even external hard drives can fail so it's best to spread out on as many mediums as possible. All this on top of a Cloud Drive would be a safe bet, for me I think. At the same time though, a Cloud Drive is nothing more than backing up my data on somebody else's hard drive, cuz in the end that is what it is.

I consider it a lesson learned, so from now on always backup my important information. Funny thing is, a few days before it happened it occurred to me that I should backup my computer. Funny.

Back on topic, Thorn is a really nice synthesizer. I really like the interplay Between the filter, the drive, and the resonance. To me it is an interesting combination between diversion, Tantra, and garbage. Lovely.

[foosnark]

The scaling feature seems to cause trouble (in with Maschine 32 bit at least). Sometimes the wave displays for the oscillators were blank, and other times it would crash while turning the wavetable position knob which updates them. It crashed a few times in a row, then after I reset the scale to 100% (in Intermediate size) it was fine.

[Andywanders]

Spent more time on the patch than the demo...but oh well..I had fun

https://soundcloud.com/bryan-lake/thorn-demo-trinkets

Trinkets is a nice patch.

[Stefken]

Hey guys!

And here is my THORN improvisation of some 'Blade Runner' capabilities (from lead UI designer of THORN). I see most of you like the UI but if you have a feedback - share it, I read this topic carefully

Cheers,
Nick Moritz (VOGER Design & BicubicAudio)

This puppy is so well made it's pretty hard to find flaws !!! I just bought the synth.
But since you asked here are some changes you might consider.

* The preset browser is functional but quite simple. A more elaborate browser with a possibility to mark favorites would be nice.

* An aspect that is quite underdevelopped is visualisation. In Serum you see the movement of the oscillators, lfo's, envelopes, filters and such. This is absent in Thorn. I do realise you went for a one page synth and you can't cram all this on this page. But you could introduce a different "mode" or such where you visualise things.
I also realise this is quite a big thing to implement and it takes resources you can't use for soundgeneration. Yet, we humans think a lot in terms of visuals. Like they say: a picture is worth a thousand words.

* Is there a way to lock the entire arpeggiator and effects section when switching presets. Didn't find it. Say you made a nice arp and effects implementation and want to check it with different presets. How would you do that?

* ! nitpicking ! The "PHS" effect in the oscillator section was not intuitive for me. When you see "sub1" or "env1" the meaning is pretty clear. But with "PHS" is wasn't clear to me that this is a dropdown with effects that also holds FM and such until I read the manual. I do realize that you do not have a lot of free space there.

* Icarus has some freerunning lfo's you can use to create subtle drift in the oscillators. That would be a nice thing to be able to use that in the mod matrix.

* The color scheme is nice and classic. Nothing wrong with it; it's very well made. Some extra skins would be nice (but certainly not necessary).

[Harry_HH]

Hey guys!

And here is my THORN improvisation of some 'Blade Runner' capabilities (from lead UI designer of THORN). I see most of you like the UI but if you have a feedback - share it, I read this topic carefully

Cheers,
Nick Moritz (VOGER Design & BicubicAudio)

This puppy is so well made it's pretty hard to find flaws !!! I just bought the synth.
But since you asked here are some changes you might consider.

* The preset browser is functional but quite simple. A more elaborate browser with a possibility to mark favorites would be nice.

* An aspect that is quite underdevelopped is visualisation. In Serum you see the movement of the oscillators, lfo's, envelopes, filters and such. This is absent in Thorn. I do realise you went for a one page synth and you can't cram all this on this page. But you could introduce a different "mode" or such where you visualise things.
I also realise this is quite a big thing to implement and it takes resources you can't use for soundgeneration. Yet, we humans think a lot in terms of visuals. Like they say: a picture is worth a thousand words.

* Is there a way to lock the entire arpeggiator and effects section when switching presets. Didn't find it. Say you made a nice arp and effects implementation and want to check it with different presets. How would you do that?

* ! nitpicking ! The "PHS" effect in the oscillator section was not intuitive for me. When you see "sub1" or "env1" the meaning is pretty clear. But with "PHS" is wasn't clear to me that this is a dropdown with effects that also holds FM and such until I read the manual. I do realize that you do not have a lot of free space there.

* Icarus has some freerunning lfo's you can use to create subtle drift in the oscillators. That would be a nice thing to be able to use that in the mod matrix.

* The color scheme is nice and classic. Nothing wrong with it; it's very well made. Some extra skins would be nice (but certainly not necessary).

All very good points. The visualization could include also the modulation, it would be great to see the knobs moving which the modulation affect, too. More presets to the arpeggiator/sequencer, and the editing of arp/seq could always be more easy and versatile.
But as the Thorn is now, there will be enough to learn and find out even without any new feature, for a long time.

[greedy.mf]

Hey guys!

And here is my THORN improvisation of some 'Blade Runner' capabilities (from lead UI designer of THORN). I see most of you like the UI but if you have a feedback - share it, I read this topic carefully

Cheers,
Nick Moritz (VOGER Design & BicubicAudio)

This puppy is so well made it's pretty hard to find flaws !!! I just bought the synth.
But since you asked here are some changes you might consider.

* The preset browser is functional but quite simple. A more elaborate browser with a possibility to mark favorites would be nice.

* An aspect that is quite underdevelopped is visualisation. In Serum you see the movement of the oscillators, lfo's, envelopes, filters and such. This is absent in Thorn. I do realise you went for a one page synth and you can't cram all this on this page. But you could introduce a different "mode" or such where you visualise things.
I also realise this is quite a big thing to implement and it takes resources you can't use for soundgeneration. Yet, we humans think a lot in terms of visuals. Like they say: a picture is worth a thousand words.

* Is there a way to lock the entire arpeggiator and effects section when switching presets. Didn't find it. Say you made a nice arp and effects implementation and want to check it with different presets. How would you do that?

* ! nitpicking ! The "PHS" effect in the oscillator section was not intuitive for me. When you see "sub1" or "env1" the meaning is pretty clear. But with "PHS" is wasn't clear to me that this is a dropdown with effects that also holds FM and such until I read the manual. I do realize that you do not have a lot of free space there.

* Icarus has some freerunning lfo's you can use to create subtle drift in the oscillators. That would be a nice thing to be able to use that in the mod matrix.

* The color scheme is nice and classic. Nothing wrong with it; it's very well made. Some extra skins would be nice (but certainly not necessary).

I'll second that, especially Favorites marking. It's not so hard to remember coolest patches, but it's mainly because total amount is not that big. Judging by warm reception of users and sound designers alike there will be vast number of 3rd party soundsets, so preset management could be an issue.

Serum-like running circles displaying realtime modulation would also be beneficial. Yes, it's not hard to right click to see how many sources are contributing to parameter change. Just a point in a wish list.

Thorn is great "out of the box", with few improvements it could easily be best all round modern synth.

[sqigls]

visualisations and 'watching knobs move' will mean more CPU tax. NO THANK YOU.
use your fecking EARS, or go use Serum.

kids these days

[recursive one]

visualisations and 'watching knobs move' will mean more CPU tax. NO THANK YOU.
use your fecking EARS, or go use Serum.

kids these days

[wagtunes]

Oh, and while you're at it Dmitry, could you also have it make my breakfast, walk my dog and take out the trash?

Thank you kindly.

[Synthman2000]

I quite like the 3D WT profiles and also 2D ones in Rapid and Serum. I find it
can give you some idea of what a WT might be about other than a name like...

"HornMazaaga456A"

Yes ultimately use ears, this is why some synths I never use, but I have never not used
a synth because of the 0.05 pct extra cpu use brought about by a moving image and my CPU is ancient by todays standards.

Each to their own though.

[Harry_HH]

visualisations and 'watching knobs move' will mean more CPU tax. NO THANK YOU.
use your fecking EARS, or go use Serum.

kids these days

How it is affected to the CPU depends on the implementation/coding.
There are much worse pontial CPU hogs than some moving knob. Getting an instant visual picture what´s going would be a big plus, and is present day. This feature could be optional in the settings, for those who don´t like it.

[recursive one]

I quite like the 3D WT profiles and also 2D ones in Rapid and Serum. I find it
can give you some idea of what a WT might be about other than a name like...

"HornMazaaga456A"

Yes ultimately use ears, this is why some synths I never use, but I have never not used
a synth because of the 0.05 pct extra cpu use brought about by a moving image and my CPU is ancient by todays standards.

Each to their own though.

For me it's more about the dev's time and effort wasted to make these unnecessary but the pretty looking things.

I can harly imagine where a traditional 2D representation of a waveform might be not enough.

[Synthman2000]

For example when using NI Massive or Virus I feel I am flying blind a bit when scanning WT's.

I like seeing Rapids knobs scanning back and forth etc. Can also give an immediate idea of how complex a sounds modulations are without resorting to Matrix etc.

It seems to be a personal like/dislike thing.

[Stefken]

visualisations and 'watching knobs move' will mean more CPU tax. NO THANK YOU.
use your fecking EARS, or go use Serum.

kids these days

How it is affected to the CPU depends on the implementation/coding.
There are much worse pontial CPU hogs than some moving knob. Getting an instant visual picture what´s going would be a big plus, and is present day. This feature could be optional in the settings, for those who don´t like it.

I would certainly consider it a plus. That's why I mentioned it.
But I wouldn't underestimate the amount of coding that goes into it.

Yet, Dmitry seems to be working in a "modular way". I suspect a lot of the effects come from the Tantra code. So maybe he can get his hands on a few visualisation libs.