One Synth Challenge #108: Diodow by HrastProgrammer (Schiing Wins!)

[doctorbob]

Yup Taron --- RTFM!

Lots of gotchas, but once you know - lots of saving and building up your patch library (hehe!).

Enjoy it I will probably going for another "band sound" - quite likely this synth hasn't been used in this way before.

Quite a challenge to get just the right sounds. It's great for making lots of wonderful esoteric sounds - but melding it to exactly what you actually want things to sound like is really hard. I'll get there though. Might be a pretty standard (in musical terms) track, but hopefully, interesting to listen to.

dB

[Taron]

There I could've chimed in right away without having read the manual, because I beg to differ: It's pretty fantastic to create controlled sounds, alone for the envelope sloping functions (logs and exps = incredible), needless to mention the unorthodox use of decay and sustain, which offers one more extra distinction in the envelope, making it even more playable.
Add to that the interesting waveshaping options and 'voila' you have amazing control over designing rather natural and unique sounds that are quite down to earth! If only you wouldn't accidentally lose your patches (GRRRRRR)... well, well, the upside I mentioned already: I finally save them for you to have. Normally I'm just to busy to go through my whole song and save them out. With all my automation they also often don't translate easily out of my song into generic use.

Anyway...GOT IT! Thank you all!

[ENV1]

it doesn't save Host internal FXPs??? Instead it secretly saves files? That would be pretty aweful indeed.

It wouldnt help you any even if it did because the only 2 parameters that are being saved into .fxp/.fxb files are MIDI Channel and Polyphony. (Which again are omitted from internal .hp presets.) In other words the actual sound parameters do not go into a .fxp/.fxb anyway, what Diodow does instead is writing the (absolute) path to an internal .hp preset file into the .fxp/.fxb which it tries to load when the .fxp/.fxb is loaded. (Which includes your projects.) This will work fine as long as you never move or rename the dir containing the referenced .hp preset, but when you do it must fail since Diodow wont be able to locate the file. Same thing when you try to take your project to another computer or share it with somebody else. It will fail unless the paths to the .hp presets stored in the project file (most hosts use the .fxb format to store plugin settings) are exactly identical to what they were on the machine where the project originated from because otherwise Diodow wont be able to locate the files.

So yeah, its a bit of a 'walking-on-eggshells' situation. You have to be very careful dealing with the presets, not only with regard to location, but also because Diodow overwrites a preset without confirmation prompt when you click the Save button on the UI. (You have to hold ALT and click to get a 'Save As' prompt.) The advice to use a new preset for each and every sound you make should therefore definitely be heeded because one wrong move by accident and potentially hours of work will be shot to hell. I would also strongly advise to decide on a final location for everything before you really get started (i.e. the presets and samples if you use any) because once the paths to your presets are written into your project file it will be a nightmare to straighten this out again should your path structure change.

[doctorbob]

@T: Didn't say it wasn't possible to design great sounds - just that I am finding it hard to get exactly what I want - yes, the uniqueness of slopes and unorthodox envelopes is crazy interesting. I'm sure I will get there, just will take a bit longer ... gotta dash, lunchtime!

Save and save again!

dB

[Taron]

It sure is a different experience. I felt a little dumb, when I found out about the .ini file, long after bitching about lack of automation, and this feeling keeps continuing through the patch saving ideology of it and who knows where- or if- it will end making me feel that way, haha. But all this leads me to the conclusion that maybe I'm not "dumb", but it's a bit weird to stray that far from the norm, regardless the explanation. As much as I actually do like this synth, I wished it was a wee bit more "normal". Shouldn't be a massive change to allow fxp saving as virtually every vst worth it's weight and known to men does, as well as a simple "Overwrite existing patch?" prompt.
I think, right click on save will also bring up "save as", by the way.

Anyway, all in all, consider the waste amount of possibilities with it, it actually does not feel overwhelming, which is AWESOME! And I do love what I'm already getting out of it, while I feel I know possibly half of what it can do (well, maybe more). So, yeah, HUGE POTENTIAL and good fun besides the silly management nonsense. +

[ENV1]

I think, right click on save will also bring up "save as", by the way.

It does indeed.

Nice twist, i wasnt aware of that.

[Guenon]

Nice twist, i wasnt aware of that.

It's one of those "make sure you read through the thread" synths for sure.

[EvilDragon]

(You have to hold ALT and click to get a 'Save As' prompt.)

Any Alt+click combinations are also available on a right click.

[bryemye]

Has anyone figured out how to sync the envelope loops so that they always get to the end? Trying to do a drum roll and sometimes it gets to the release I want and sometimes it just seems to cut out mid loop. I hope that makes sense.

[toonertik]

Has anyone figured out how to sync the envelope loops so that they always get to the end? Trying to do a drum roll and sometimes it gets to the release I want and sometimes it just seems to cut out mid loop. I hope that makes sense.

The "Stage" sections allow for looping, see Env_1

Unfortunately in Diodow you cannot tempo-sync envelopes, but you can loop them however you want. You would just go through the segments in order then loop back to the segment you want to loop from. Here's an example, try applying it to filter cutoff:

Hey what's with all the underlines?

It_helps_me_to_have_joined_up_thinking >>>

[TheNeverScene]

I feel like the envelopes may be more along the lines of a DX-7

Does anyone know of a good graphic representation of what the various slopes look like?

[EvilDragon]

Log are convex (fast uptake then slower to reach the final value), Exp are concave (the reverse of log), 1 to 10 is the amount of curvature. Tanh is a mild S-curve. Tranzistow has MANY more curves to choose from (including actual sound from oscillators you can pass through the envelope stage!), plus it also has a simple graphical envelope editor.

Envelopes are more along the lines of Roland D-50 (time/level), DX7 uses rate/level which is a bit different.

[TheNeverScene]

Thank you!! I feel like I should have known that, but I didn't. Should help with some of the guesswork and help get me away from log5.

[toonertik]

Tranzistow has MANY more curves to choose from (including actual sound from oscillators you can pass through the envelope stage!), plus it also has a simple graphical envelope editor.

Yes... many more of everything... I had Tranzistow downloaded a few weeks before Diodow... what a monster synth.. what joy when discovering the "hidden" pages!
A challenging beast to tame indeed!

[TheNeverScene]

I finally got the declicker to declick