One Synth Challenge #109: Fathom Synth by Seaweed Audio (mmGhost wins!)

[Darksynth FX]

My submission. A mixture of Italo-Disco and Synthwave, I call it "Italowave". Title is very fitting to the weather here in Vienna, Austria. It's getting unusual cold this weekend and beyond, just look at the forecast link! I can't wait for spring to finally come!

https://at.wetter.com/wetter_aktuell/we ... 10678.html

https://soundcloud.com/darksynth-fx/dar ... -on-spring

DAW: Ableton Live 10 Suite
12x Fathom
14x Ableton EQ8
3x Ableton Utility
1x Ableton Drum Bus
2x Voxengo Stereo Touch
1x Ableton Compressor
1x Xfer OTT
1x Ableton Simple Delay
1x Ableton Auto Filter
1x TAL Reverb II
1x Ableton Gate
2x Ableton Glue Compressor
1x Voxengo Tube Amp
1x Ableton Limiter
1x Ableton Reverb (Send)
1x Ableton Simple Delay (Send)

[Local Man]

My submission. A mixture of Italo-Disco and Synthwave, I call it "Italowave". Title is very fitting to the weather here in Vienna, Austria. It's getting unusual cold this weekend and beyond, just look at the forecast link! I can't wait for spring to finally come!

https://at.wetter.com/wetter_aktuell/we ... 10678.html

https://soundcloud.com/darksynth-fx/dar ... -on-spring

DAW: Ableton Live 10 Suite
12x Fathom
14x Ableton EQ8
3x Ableton Utility
1x Ableton Drum Bus
2x Voxengo Stereo Touch
1x Ableton Compressor
1x Xfer OTT
1x Ableton Simple Delay
1x Ableton Auto Filter
1x TAL Reverb II
1x Ableton Gate
2x Ableton Glue Compressor
1x Voxengo Tube Amp
1x Ableton Limiter
1x Ableton Reverb (Send)
1x Ableton Simple Delay (Send)

Very nice.

[Local Man]

Local Man, No you're not going crazy, it crashed for me once when I hit play after loading your project into Logic Pro, but after I edited Fathom I could never get it to crash again.

Try the Mac Beta and tell me if it fixes your problem.
It is the first Mac release actually built in Sierra.

Though there are some improvements here, unfortunately it did not fix the crashing problem for me. Same thing. Create a new patch, add some modules, add some modulation, tweak some parameters, hit record, play a chord, boom instant crash.
On the bright side though there are some things working now that weren't before. Clicking on a module to bypass and block now works (didn't do anything before). Also there is a lot less noise and distortion when navigating the UI (still some but much less), which is very nice!

On another note I would like to point out a different issue that I'm not sure affects others or not. I use the apple magic mouse and the controls on Fathom are hyper sensitive to the scroll surface, making it very difficult to precisely adjust controls (one tiny finger slip and the dial sweeps wildly out of control). I don't know if those using a scroll wheel mouse are experiencing a similar issue or not. With a few exceptions (notably Dexed) most plugins I use have a more controlled response when scrolling knobs with the magic mouse. Just thought I'd put that out there in the interest of providing user feedback.

Anyway, I don't want to keep cluttering up this thread with issues that look to be unique to my setup. Most others seem to be doing just fine so I think I will bow out of this month's competition gracefully (for now at least). If I have any other feedback to add I will address it in the main Fathom thread. This I feel should be left more for people sharing their awesome tracks!
Thanks for your help in trying to address my issues and good luck to everyone in the competition!

[Local Man]

Hey, nice vids Functionform! Especially the more on wavetables one. Thank you.

Don't thank me, thank Scrubbing, who is apparently so humble he didn't post them himself! I found them very helpful.

Hey your welcome guys,

I did post those on the Fathom thread when I uploaded them.
There are a few in there that may shed some light and speed some things up for you. Fathom is very deep.
I hope to up load one this week on wavedraw and biezer. I just now figured out to use biezer correctly and I swear I have read the manual 10 times.
But it is like walking into a candy store......so much sweetness I forget what I came in for.
The manual is very well done and updated as fast as the Synth itself.....freakin amazing!

Wait, so there is a manual? On the website I only saw a quick start guide.

[doctorbob]

Okay - let's keep 'em coming in ... here's my bit of an epic ( PH ) track for your delictation. 7 minutes long - the WIP section you might have heard earlier appears around 4:10! A bit of a departure from my last few entries but remember I am from 60's onwards music-wise and played support (well, mixed my band!) to bands like Caravan etc).

Of course, subject to change up to the deadline ... remix and/or additional elements etc ...

Patches from scratch or stonkingly modified from preset ideas ... love the sounds this beast of a synth can make. In the end I had to call upon all my years of listening to how sounds fit together to make this big wall of sound - but this was immense fun. It did start to push the PC though

DAW: Reaper
Track details
64 * Fathom Synth
70 * reaEQ
4 * TDR Kotelnikov Feedback Compressor
2 TAL Reverb 4
1 * TAL Reverb II
1 * epicVerb
6 * LFX-1310 (autopan)
1 * Twin Delay
3 * Pecheneg Tremolo
2 * Bass Professor
Master
TDR VOS SlickEQ
Ferric TDS
Voxengo MSED
Limiter No.6

DR: 10

Please enjoy the journey, and I hope you like it and appreciate the work which went into this one.

https://soundcloud.com/doctorbob/doctor ... 109-fathom

[Carl_saved]

64 * Fathom Synth

Woooo That kills every CPU and RAM my dear!

However, polyphonic voices are automatically reduced if CPU load goes high, so theoretically you can have 256 voices * oscillators, but in reality it would never let you get up that high. The algorithm is pretty smart so it will only reduce polyphony as much as needed each time a note is hit by stealing the voice from the oldest note.

A-Ha! I would not expect a synth to be so smart and was really concerned about the voice stealing. I hope it doesn't happen while the engine is "offline" (i.e. when I render the song). I think it should be mentioned in the quick start guide under "polyphony".

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

Hey, nice vids Functionform! Especially the more on wavetables one. Thank you.

Don't thank me, thank Scrubbing, who is apparently so humble he didn't post them himself! I found them very helpful.

Hey your welcome guys,

I did post those on the Fathom thread when I uploaded them.
There are a few in there that may shed some light and speed some things up for you. Fathom is very deep.
I hope to up load one this week on wavedraw and biezer. I just now figured out to use biezer correctly and I swear I have read the manual 10 times.
But it is like walking into a candy store......so much sweetness I forget what I came in for.
The manual is very well done and updated as fast as the Synth itself.....freakin amazing!

Wait, so there is a manual? On the website I only saw a quick start guide.

Yeah, one and the same. quick start guide is a bit of an understatemaent kinda like basic waveform oscillator.

[doctorbob]

64 * Fathom Synth

Woooo That kills every CPU and RAM my dear!

I needed something to stress my i7 8700K + 32Gb Ram!

To be fair though, perhaps 25 maximum simultaneous synths. and of course, I could feeeze tracks once the synth was no longer active in the later parts of the track.

Quick check ... 23 active Fathoms was taking 17% overall cpu task manager reading, and in reaper RT cpu 1.6%, FX cpu 14%. Windows was up to 7Gb RAM use out of 32Gb.

dB

[bluerobot]

@FathomSynth... thanks... just figured out how to load wavetables, so that issue is resolved.

I'm not seeing whether the 'mute' feature is fixed on Mac in the beta you just announced, but I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

I'll PM you for the password.

[Local Man]

Hey, nice vids Functionform! Especially the more on wavetables one. Thank you.

Don't thank me, thank Scrubbing, who is apparently so humble he didn't post them himself! I found them very helpful.

Hey your welcome guys,

I did post those on the Fathom thread when I uploaded them.
There are a few in there that may shed some light and speed some things up for you. Fathom is very deep.
I hope to up load one this week on wavedraw and biezer. I just now figured out to use biezer correctly and I swear I have read the manual 10 times.
But it is like walking into a candy store......so much sweetness I forget what I came in for.
The manual is very well done and updated as fast as the Synth itself.....freakin amazing!

Wait, so there is a manual? On the website I only saw a quick start guide.

Yeah, one and the same. quick start guide is a bit of an understatemaent kinda like basic waveform oscillator.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[teilo]

I'm not seeing whether the 'mute' feature is fixed on Mac in the beta you just announced, but I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

Modules have three modes: On, Bypass, and Mute. Bypass skips that module routing input directly to output, Mute stops the signal flow entirely. This is mostly useful for sound design.

You change the mode by clicking on the module in the Signal Flow screen. It goes from gray (on), to green (bypass), to red (mute).

This wasn't working on Sierra and High Sierra. Now it is.

[FathomSynth]

Voice stealing is disabled if the transport is rendering or exporting.

There is a host VST interface call that most hosts use to tell the plugin that it is not rendering in real time and Fathom answers this and goes into maximum quality mode which includes playing all voices without any stealing.

Local Man, I’ll try it again in sierra before I do the build and try to make it crash.

Just out of curiosity, does it crash if you remove steps: add some modulation, tweak some parameters. And just do: Create a new patch, add some modules, hit record, play a chord, boom instant crash?

I know this is extra work for you, but if the bug is in Fathom and it is due to something bad like a memory leak or bad pointer, there is probably one particular type of gui edit or dial that is putting into the state where it crashes on record, so trimming it down to the guilty operation is time consuming but necessary in this case. I will also try this on my end, though it is not crashinig for me on record.

[functionform]

Ahh highlighted modulators are awesome, thank you!

[bluerobot]

Thanks, teilo!

I'm not seeing whether the 'mute' feature is fixed on Mac in the beta you just announced, but I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

Modules have three modes: On, Bypass, and Mute. Bypass skips that module routing input directly to output, Mute stops the signal flow entirely. This is mostly useful for sound design.

You change the mode by clicking on the module in the Signal Flow screen. It goes from gray (on), to green (bypass), to red (mute).

This wasn't working on Sierra and High Sierra. Now it is.

[Local Man]

Local Man, I’ll try it again in sierra before I do the build and try to make it crash.

Just out of curiosity, does it crash if you remove steps: add some modulation, tweak some parameters. And just do: Create a new patch, add some modules, hit record, play a chord, boom instant crash?

When I get a chance I'll try to mess around further to see if I can isolate anything.