Tone2 I2 vs Trueno Analog

[bharris22]

Is there a US distributor for these yet?

[EvilDragon]

No, first run is for Europe only.

[fluffy_little_something]

Guinea pigs from the old world. And once the product is mature, Europeans will be sitting on their faulty products while Americans get the new version and don't even have to pay VAT

[ZaBong69]

Here's a first mess around with it.

Thank you. Mine should arrive in a few days as well.

This sounds good. Is there a way to do a pitch envelope? It seems to me that the envs can only work on the fine part of the OSC tuning, which would be regrettable...

[afta8]

How is the latency?

Pretty good, I can't tell it apart from other VST's..

CPU usage is interesting though, without any of the effects enabled it hovers around 9%, with all 3 FX enabled it jumps to 22% and if the Chorus8 is selected it is around 44%.

By comparison Monark is around 11% on my system, Massive around 8% and Bazille is around 50%. Clearly the FX processing is on the host CPU and not on the USB stick.. Not sure what then the point of having the FX in the plugin is given that I can't modulate any of the FX parameters, might as well stick other VST FX after the plugin.

[aciddose]

I'm pretty sure the analog waveforms are analog oscillators + waveshapers, and then digital waveforms are a secondary part to the VCO. With high level of integration it's certainly possible to cram that in a chip, ALONG with the digital part, converters, you name it.

Well that isn't possible though unless there are in fact six oscillators. In order to play sampled data without aliasing you can't re-sample the data, so instead you must generate the clock for a DAC directly at high rates like 1 MHz and either divide it (digital) or have a UHF (technically speaking, MF or HF) VCO that can tune accurately over more than an octave and then divide only by octaves to increase the range.

A fully analog oscillator however runs at exactly the output rate: for 200 Hz the oscillator is 200 Hz and analog oscillators tend to track reasonably well over 10 octaves or so by using a very complex temperature compensated exponential current source. It simply isn't possible to generate both at the same time or even both from the same oscillator circuit.

It is possible however to sample a ramp oscillator and use that value to index a wavetable exactly: with the consequence that the oscillator clock becomes digital because the digital ADC clock is then the sync source, not the analog oscillator which is merely sampled to produce the index. Therefore aliasing is generated even if the ADC clock is at a high rate like 1 MHz: the oscillator can not be considered analog at that point after it has passed into the ADC.

So it's an issue of either/or, it isn't possible to have both a fully analog oscillator (clock) and fully analog waveshaper AND at the same time produce digitally sampled waveshapes with a fully analog clock from the same source.

It's entirely possible that all the digital waveshapes are not analog and that the device in fact includes more than 3 oscillators if the additional clock sources are counted. The digital waveshapes may also be clocked by the main system clock and so therefore fully digital rather than analog.

[afta8]

As someone said, most of the signal is on the left side.

Does the USB pen become hot after a while?

Not sure why the sound is stacked on the left side, it doesn't sound like that when recording, I'm guessing something to do with my screen recording setup (Quicktime with audio looped back on an iConnect Audio)

Yes it does get quite hot, was also quite flakey on my USB hub and works much better plugged into the native USB port.

[afta8]

This sounds good. Is there a way to do a pitch envelope? It seems to me that the envs can only work on the fine part of the OSC tuning, which would be regrettable...

Yeah the envs can only be assigned to the fine tuning section however the modulation range is far greater than what can be achieved by the fine tune dial itself so I don't think you will have an issue..

The only thing bugging me at the moment is the lack of a preset browser, don't really like using host based preset handling

[EvilDragon]

It's entirely possible that all the digital waveshapes are not analog and that the device in fact includes more than 3 oscillators if the additional clock sources are counted. The digital waveshapes may also be clocked by the main system clock and so therefore fully digital rather than analog.

This is exactly what I'm saying. Analog waveforms are VCO. Digital waveforms are fully digital.

[aciddose]

Oh, well that would ruin the ability of the device to produce anything to be considered analog from wavetables which would then make them very boring and sterile to the point that I might not even consider them as a notable feature at all.

... which to be honest does help to explain how the demo managed to sound so "generic juno polysynth".

[ZaBong69]

Oh, well that would ruin the ability of the device to produce anything to be considered analog from wavetables which would then make them very boring and sterile to the point that I might not even consider them as a notable feature at all.

... which to be honest does help to explain how the demo managed to sound so "generic juno polysynth".

I think they are just in love with their vanilla analog waves. The demo from a KVR member shows some potential for the digital waves, especially when you mix the digital with the analog waveforms, and besides, everything goes through an analog filter.

Similar to a Waldorf rocket, which also sounds pretty analogish for something that does not even have analog oscs.

I have seen that you can set velocity, aftertouch and CC 0 (Modwheel) as modulation source to any round knob and the env sections. That's a lot of possibilities. Three OSCs, an analog multimode filter, audio rate modulation, 4 envelopes and 4 LFOs - what's not to like? Sadly, the LFOs can not modulate each other it seems, but that is nitpicking.

[Highvoltage]

Oh, well that would ruin the ability of the device to produce anything to be considered analog from wavetables which would then make them very boring and sterile to the point that I might not even consider them as a notable feature at all.

... which to be honest does help to explain how the demo managed to sound so "generic juno polysynth".

From the site:
"Trueno’s oscillators are able to output at an endearingly lo-fi 22.05kHz in 8 bit, with plenty of aliasing! We think this brings back some of the magic of those early machines that’s often missing from today’s high fidelity recordings."

The digital osc's are very deliberately digital.

[EvilDragon]

So that indeed means there are 6 oscillators in there, not 3.

[Ingonator]

Similar to a Waldorf rocket, which also sounds pretty analogish for something that does not even have analog oscs.

My Korg DW-8000 that originally was created around 1985 could do very nice and convincing analog sounds even if it has fully digital oscs. Besides that it has an amazing real analog filter and VCA (Korg NJM2069 VCF/VCA chips for each of the 8 voices).

Same is mostly true for the Ensoniq ESQ-1 i got here too which has fully digital oscs and an analog filter. It's closer to a 3 Osc VA synth than a "ROMpler" and it even offers Osc Sync and Ringmod in the Osc section. With 4 enveleops and 3 LFOs te modulations could be quite complex. Each of the 3 OScs has it's own dedicated Amp besides the main VCA so each Osc could use it's own Amp envelope (and another envelope for the filter). If you want to keep it more simple you could only use a single Amp envelope with the main/global VCA.

[Ingonator]

Trueno looks quite interesting indeed but for me it would need to have at least 4 voices of polyphony and an option to use it as a standalone hardware synth to make it really interesting. Programming patches with it could be still done with software so the hardware would not need a full featured interface.
For that it would not really matter to me if it would need a bigger size than an USB flash drive. Opposing to some other people this is is not really a point that would make me buying this aynway...

So either theý would offer a proper hardware synth (one that could be also used without a computer) or they do a plugin that sounds similar with properly modeled components (without the USB stick needed). As recent plugins like e.g. The Legend, Repro-1 and now Repro-5 do show it is possible to get the sound of real analog synths (both mono- and polysynths) done properly in pure software.

The wavetable part in Trueno maybe looks interesting but i would need a polyphonic synth (at least 4 voices) to make this really useful for me. FWIW even if i love Waldorf synths (both softwrare and hardware) i am not really interested in their Eurorack wavetable module (or Eurorack modules in general) as it is "just" monophonic...

Speaking about analog monosynths it also does not look like it could really replace my Novation Bass Station 2 or Waldorf Pulse 2 for me where the features in the Bass Station 2 would be more difficult to replace by Trueno (especially the multimode filter with 7 modes).

Trueno also does not offer all the advantages of native plugins so like with monophonic hardware synths you have to render audio tracks for each instance in a track where you use it.