Xhip Synthesizer v8.1 (alpha & RC)

[aciddose]

Is there an empty bank available (or is there a way to make our own) ? I'd like to do some patches and share them.

Sorry I didn't get back to you on this sooner!

To clear the bank, hold shift while clicking the menu. You will get a "bank" entry with "clear bank" options. Select the preset you want to fill the bank with and name it as desired (for example category = "", name = "init") and use "bank -> clear -> selected".

For the more insane of us (are you re-wiring Xhip internally all mad-scientist-like?):

You can also hold control while clicking to access the "sequence" menu options which can load adxs (xhip tracker) and ahx (amiga highest xperience tracker) sequence + preset modules. This is a pure "for fun" feature and you can crash the synth by switching polyphony while playing a sequence. Loading a sequence will also overwrite your presets, so make sure you save everything first.

[aciddose]

Preset categories.

If a category has more than 16 entries it'll get divided into multiple rows. So 16 "init" category will be listed in "init", but 17 will have 16 under "init 1" and 1 under "init 2".

It's also possible to use "" as the category in which case it'll show up in the main part of the menu directly up to 16 entries, then it'll use "no category 1", "2", and so on since the menu will become too tall.

[aciddose]

The background color and size is not remembered (saving a custom state file didn't work)

That is very strange. The state file does include the background color and works for me. Can you link a xhipstate file? I'll be able to tell you if it contains the color information. It should of course since it shouldn't be possible for it not to... Why it wouldn't load is hard to come up with an explanation for.

Are you talking about the init state though? You'll need to hold shift and select "save -> init -> state" to write the init state to the correct location to load on init. You can also use "load -> init -> state" by holding shift to test it.

and it's not possible to use capital letters in patch or bank names.

Another very strange problem. I use custom text entry widgets and shift is detected directly. This works fine on my system but may not work on yours. If so I'll need to figure out why (can you verify with v8?) and fix that since to my knowledge it should be impossible.

If shift is not working you may not be able to access the extended menu options either.

The Unison settings don't seem to be recalled in a Preset either.

Presets don't contain anything but the main synth parameters. They do not include the control section (including unison), route or effects pages. See the Xhip Manual from http://xhip.net/synth/ for details about these features and more.

[aciddose]

Just a suggestion : could we have a white on black menu instead of black on white ?

Definitely. This will be a feature of the skinning system. For now however I find the defaults work well although the contrast is a little lower: a black bg with white text is very high contrast and bothers my eyes. I'll try to get the basics of the skinning system implemented so you can at least configure options like this as needed though on a case-by-case basis.

The configuration will be something like:

Code: Select all

menu {
 background { color = black; }
 text { color = white; }
}

Very clever idea, this "round-robin" switch allocating voices differently for new pending "route" features like voice pitch randomization and drift. Excellent !

Xhip originally used round-robin in the first few versions and I had always intended to implement the "route" page but never got around to actually doing it. Since then "oldest" voice stealing has been implemented and the allocator then always allocated from voice 1 any free voice, then stole the oldest released voice, then the oldest active voice if no others were available.

If you're using tuning drift and hit the same note with "recycle" disabled normally it'll only activate voices 1, 2, 3, 4, ... up to the point where the voice has released fully, then it'll start back at 1 again.

With "round-robin" it increments the starting offset each time a note is added, so it'll always allocate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 up to the number of voices even if lower voices become available in the meantime. Since each voice will "drift" individually that'll provide more variation in the timbre.

Other synthesizers like the jupiter/juno series didn't allow voice stealing, so that is another option I'd like to include as a switch to disable it. Then if you play 4 voices using 4 note polyphony, playing additional voices will have no effect as long as you hold the keys. I believe the jupiter/juno then stole released voices using round-robin and did not use voice age.

So these features are useful to mimic very specific features of different voice allocators on different synthesizers. At some point I'll be adding additional sources to the route page such as "note on -> random" and "voice -> drift 1, 2, 3 (?)" as well as destinations like "key" (glide applies) and "oscillators pitch" (glide does not apply), "osc 1 pitch" and "osc 2 pitch".

That stuff is a bit far off though and likely won't make it in to 8.1. For 8.1 I only want to cure any remaining bugs, get everything finalized and then make the release so people new to the synth get to play with the "factory bank" presets right away without having to read the manual or learn how to use detailed features of the menu.

[Teksonik]

The Unison settings don't seem to be recalled in a Preset either.

Presets don't contain anything but the main synth parameters. They do not include the control section (including unison), route or effects pages.

What ? Why would a Preset not contain all the parameters used to make the sound ?

Ok I don't think Xhip is for me. Good luck with it though.

"Preset (.xhippreset)
Xhip presets contain the value of all of the main synthesizer parameters. Additional global settings from the control section and other data such as PCM are not stored in Xhip format presets".

[aciddose]

The reason unison, route and effects aren't stored by default is actually a bit complicated.

1) I hate synthesizers that have presets with effects applied to everything... although the best ones have a button like "disable all effects" so you can page through presets without them.

2) Xhip is a multi-timbral synthesizer, so each individual voice would need its own effects and route configuration allocated on the fly as any preset can be applied to any voice at any time.

It is possible to dynamically handle routing which will be a feature of v9. It's a bit expensive and complicated in terms of writing the source-code to make it work which is why it's a planned v9 feature and not implemented yet.

It isn't possible to handle dynamic effects. So while it will be possible to save effect configurations in a preset it won't be possible to use the synth in multi-timbral mode and have the effects work. Instead you'll need to load the preset you want including effects and those will apply to all the sounds you use multi-timbral.

In addition you will be able to associate any global parameters (unison, polyphony, ...) with presets and have that dynamically adjusted as you browse through them. At the same time it will be possible to "lock" those parameters so while paging through pads you don't get all different annoying polyphony settings where you just want polyphony to stay set to 6 or whatever.

3) I don't view those settings as part of the sound because they aren't at all. They're control parameters: unison is like stacking 4 or 8 or whatever number of the same sound (instances) with the same preset and other settings and playing them all at once.

I feel the same way about unison: when I'm looking for a wide stereo sound I enable unison, I set the unison voices and I want to browse different presets with those specific settings.

4) Unison is actually a simpler form of layering where you layer multiple detuned versions of the same sound. The current "unison" in Xhip will eventually become a layering feature where each layer can have its own preset (sound), routing, effects (sends and inputs, future features) and so on.

5) There are many similar things about Xhip and its design: this is the whole reason I made Xhip. It wasn't to duplicate other designs, it was to create my own design that didn't suffer from the problems that make other synthesizers undesirable for me. So I can very well understand if you disagree with some or many of the features, especially if you're used to most of the products out there which are nothing like Xhip in many ways.

That said I can't be flexible on issues like this. I'm going to do things "the right way" which is in my opinion better. If I wanted to do things like other designs, I wouldn't be making my own software.

[AnX]

So does it save the whole state in a project? When you open up a song will all parameters be as you left them when you closed it?

[aciddose]

Yes that's what a "xhipstate" is which includes absolutely everything, even the GUI scale and background color.

One recommendation is that you can use your .fxb preset management in your host (for example cubase, reaper, etc) and stick mostly to user bank preset #1, since the entire bank (128 presets) is stored in the state/fxb.

Each .fxb contains the complete plug-in state (saved in projects) and so using your host's preset management will allow you to set up presets complete with routing and effects configurations.

[AnX]

Ok cool.

[BlackWinny]

Just a suggestion : could we have a white on black menu instead of black on white ?

Definitely. This will be a feature of the skinning system. For now however I find the defaults work well although the contrast is a little lower: a black bg with white text is very high contrast and bothers my eyes. I'll try to get the basics of the skinning system implemented so you can at least configure options like this as needed though on a case-by-case basis.

The configuration will be something like:

Code: Select all

menu {
 background { color = black; }
 text { color = white; }
}

Very clever idea, this "round-robin" switch allocating voices differently for new pending "route" features like voice pitch randomization and drift. Excellent !

Xhip originally used round-robin in the first few versions and I had always intended to implement the "route" page but never got around to actually doing it. Since then "oldest" voice stealing has been implemented and the allocator then always allocated from voice 1 any free voice, then stole the oldest released voice, then the oldest active voice if no others were available.

If you're using tuning drift and hit the same note with "recycle" disabled normally it'll only activate voices 1, 2, 3, 4, ... up to the point where the voice has released fully, then it'll start back at 1 again.

With "round-robin" it increments the starting offset each time a note is added, so it'll always allocate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 up to the number of voices even if lower voices become available in the meantime. Since each voice will "drift" individually that'll provide more variation in the timbre.

Other synthesizers like the jupiter/juno series didn't allow voice stealing, so that is another option I'd like to include as a switch to disable it. Then if you play 4 voices using 4 note polyphony, playing additional voices will have no effect as long as you hold the keys. I believe the jupiter/juno then stole released voices using round-robin and did not use voice age.

So these features are useful to mimic very specific features of different voice allocators on different synthesizers. At some point I'll be adding additional sources to the route page such as "note on -> random" and "voice -> drift 1, 2, 3 (?)" as well as destinations like "key" (glide applies) and "oscillators pitch" (glide does not apply), "osc 1 pitch" and "osc 2 pitch".

That stuff is a bit far off though and likely won't make it in to 8.1. For 8.1 I only want to cure any remaining bugs, get everything finalized and then make the release so people new to the synth get to play with the "factory bank" presets right away without having to read the manual or learn how to use detailed features of the menu.

Hmm, when I wrote "White on black" it could be thought as "pale grey on dark brown" or something of that kind. But if you plan to make Xhip skinnable by scripts, it is of course 100 times better!

[BlackWinny]

Just a suggestion : could we have a white on black menu instead of black on white ?

Definitely. This will be a feature of the skinning system. For now however I find the defaults work well although the contrast is a little lower: a black bg with white text is very high contrast and bothers my eyes. I'll try to get the basics of the skinning system implemented so you can at least configure options like this as needed though on a case-by-case basis.

The configuration will be something like:

Code: Select all

menu {
 background { color = black; }
 text { color = white; }
}

Very clever idea, this "round-robin" switch allocating voices differently for new pending "route" features like voice pitch randomization and drift. Excellent !

Xhip originally used round-robin in the first few versions and I had always intended to implement the "route" page but never got around to actually doing it. Since then "oldest" voice stealing has been implemented and the allocator then always allocated from voice 1 any free voice, then stole the oldest released voice, then the oldest active voice if no others were available.

If you're using tuning drift and hit the same note with "recycle" disabled normally it'll only activate voices 1, 2, 3, 4, ... up to the point where the voice has released fully, then it'll start back at 1 again.

With "round-robin" it increments the starting offset each time a note is added, so it'll always allocate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 up to the number of voices even if lower voices become available in the meantime. Since each voice will "drift" individually that'll provide more variation in the timbre.

Other synthesizers like the jupiter/juno series didn't allow voice stealing, so that is another option I'd like to include as a switch to disable it. Then if you play 4 voices using 4 note polyphony, playing additional voices will have no effect as long as you hold the keys. I believe the jupiter/juno then stole released voices using round-robin and did not use voice age.

So these features are useful to mimic very specific features of different voice allocators on different synthesizers. At some point I'll be adding additional sources to the route page such as "note on -> random" and "voice -> drift 1, 2, 3 (?)" as well as destinations like "key" (glide applies) and "oscillators pitch" (glide does not apply), "osc 1 pitch" and "osc 2 pitch".

That stuff is a bit far off though and likely won't make it in to 8.1. For 8.1 I only want to cure any remaining bugs, get everything finalized and then make the release so people new to the synth get to play with the "factory bank" presets right away without having to read the manual or learn how to use detailed features of the menu.

These projects of voice allocations by very clever methods are wonderful, and I'm pretty sure that even yourself you take a blast by developing for years all these original features of Xhip !

[aciddose]

I'm guessing nobody has been able to find any issues?

[marzelli]

I'm guessing nobody has been able to find any issues?

had the same problem as Teksonik: presets were not sounding the same after switching them due to unison and so on. i thought this was a bug too but you said it is intentionally. decided to not spend anymore time on it then since this doesn't make much sense to me. i don't get the point of a state instead which is saving also the whole bank within it.

something that happened to me after moving a preset from windows to mac is that it couldn't be loaded. xhip just became unresponsive and i had to kill the daw process...

[FrettedSynth]

Sorry so long to get to this, been playing for about five hours and all seems to be great. Win7 64bit running Reaper 32bit and 32bit xhip

[aciddose]

something that happened to me after moving a preset from windows to mac is that it couldn't be loaded. xhip just became unresponsive and i had to kill the daw process...

Loading and saving fxp or fxb on MacOS works fine for me, so I'm not sure what might have caused your problem there. I'm planning to update it to match the features of the latest version once the Windows/Linux versions go through the RC stage and are released as v8.1 but I will upload the latest version to the alpha page once I do a bit more testing. I've already compiled it and it all seems to be working fine.

One change I could make is to make .fxp files store only the current preset + control section by default without other information. Currently they store the preset only which is a bit redundant. That would solve the issue, although I don't plan on storing that information in .xhippreset and .xhipbank files until it is finished fully.

Likewise, PCM (.wav files) aren't stored in presets or banks but they're stored in the state. The reason for this is that the complete bank in a multi-timbral synth (key mapped presets + layers/stacks + unison + effects) can't associate settings with just one preset without over-ride of every other preset.

This is because each preset can be played with any other preset at any time. Most synthesizers are mono-timbral and you can only adjust the settings to one sound at a time, which is probably why a lot of people find the multi-timbral features confusing.

It's like trying to play a monophonic lead on a polyphonic synth. Obviously you'd say "whoa, what the?"

It's far more featured and way more capable than mono-timbral synths though. Mono-timbral synths can't do complete drum sets, layering or any of that stuff.