Fathom Synth Development Thread

[FathomSynth]

OK, Thanks all who signed up, here's the current Beta list:

RPH, Nordickvr, akeia, jmg8, martinjuenke, Bftucker, Subterfuge, Goldenanalog.

Also a few from gmail.

Nielzie, I will include you also, but your not under any obligation to do heavy testing.

[RPH]

Everett,

Please include a checklist of what you want tested primary, and what information you need ( e.g. system specs / DAW ).
Secondary, do you want video's or screenshots displaying bugs? Or is a description enough?

Think that will help you ( and us ) make most of the testperiod.

[FathomSynth]

Good question: In most cases just using the synth as you normally would for a couple days is all that is needed.

People tend to use the synth in different ways so this will provide some good test coverage.

For those of you who have some extra time for a more disciplined approach, here is a list of functional areas with code that was touched:

Sound quality of note starts and stops
Report detailed steps for any clicking
Saving and loading of all settings parameters
Detune general sound quality
Detune changing number of voices
Detune moving individual dials
Modulation of oscillator and filter parameters
Host automation of oscillator parameters
Modulator envelopes and ADSR
Wave table oscillator, drawing, loading, saving, multiple waves

Sound quality is the biggest thing for this release, since I rewrote a lot of the processor code for the CPU efficiency, helping to make sure nothing was broken is the biggest help.

Feel free to report any bugs directly in this thread, so others know what has already been reported.

[FathomSynth]

2.12 Beta is Out, Check your in-box.

If anyone else would like to be included sign up here.

I'm shooting for a full release of 2.12 Friday for another Fathom Friday Sale.

[Nielzie]

Very nice update! Works great here. CPU usage improved a lot, like you said it would

Idea to improve cpu usage even a little further: Maybe have an option to turn of the realtime spectrum/osc animations in the signal flow window?

I really like the flexibility of being able to change the backgrounds of the different panels. I already liked the default knob and the new industrial knob is a very nice addition. Somehow, for me personally, the hifi knob seems a bit out of place. Probably because it looks a little too 3D-ish and shiny in the flat/matt GUI style for me. A matter of taste though.

The Hifi knob is now loaded as default, but shouldn't the "Default" knob still be loaded as default?

Would love to be able to have a little more colour accents in the GUI besides or instead of the blue. Maybe some more orange would fit in there too? I don't mean a whole orange background (probably a little too much), but smaller details like knob rings, faders, etc.

And maybe someday a light GUI to choose from, in white or really light grey?

So far this beta works like a charm here on Windows 10 64-bit in Reaper 64-bit.

Next thing that would be really helpfull is some improvements in the general workflow. For instance, why not use right mouse buttons menu's? Let's say we want to delete a component. Right click the component, slect "delete" from the menu -> Done. Alternatively also being able to use the delete knob on the computer keyboard would be nice.

Perhaps adding modulations via right mouse menu would be a nice addition too. Right click filter cuttof knob -> select modulation source -> ADSR -> Done

Same with saving a preset. Right click the Programs area in the main window -> select save preset -> select destination -> Done

[FathomSynth]

Nielzie

Hi. Thanks for testing and detailed comments. Huge help.

Glad to hear the CPU improved on your system like it did mine.

You can turn off the center view animations completely so no CPU time is spent on anything in the main view. On the bottom right of the global panel there is a dial “Panel Mode” in the second position “No Overlay” it will disable both the spectrum graph and the midi note invaders.

Good idea on the colors, in a future release I plan on adding a color picker which the user can use to actually set the background color of any panel to anything they want.

I’m sorry to say that there are no context menus anywhere on the interface and this is by design. Several of the synths I used extensively before creating Fathom relied heavily on conext menus and I discovered a pet hatred for them. I always seemed to miss them with the mouse. Operations which could have used a single button press or scroll, such as playing through presets or waveforms, required multiple context menu steps for every iteration, and it drove me to never use that synth again even though it had a great sound. So when I created Fathom I decided I would never use them.

However, if your suggestion could be translated into a needed button press somewhere, then I’m open to it.

[Nielzie]

I’m sorry to say that there are no context menus anywhere on the interface and this is by design. Several of the synths I used extensively before creating Fathom relied heavily on conext menus and I discovered a pet hatred for them. I always seemed to miss them with the mouse. Operations which could have used a single button press or scroll, such as playing through presets or waveforms, required multiple context menu steps for every iteration, and it drove me to never use that synth again even though it had a great sound. So when I created Fathom I decided I would never use them.

Well, do not see it as a requirement, but as an alternative I and probably quite a few other new users had the opposite experience with Fathom. It took me quite some time to learn (or extensively search for buttons) how to do simple things like removing an object or saving a preset, because I was used to the workflow of the many other synths I have used and still use Maybe it's a Windows user thing, I'm not familiar how it is on the Mac OS.

Thanks for the tip on the Panel Mode knob, I totally missed that one there!

[tonedef71]

I’m sorry to say that there are no context menus anywhere on the interface and this is by design. Several of the synths I used extensively before creating Fathom relied heavily on conext menus and I discovered a pet hatred for them. I always seemed to miss them with the mouse. Operations which could have used a single button press or scroll, such as playing through presets or waveforms, required multiple context menu steps for every iteration, and it drove me to never use that synth again even though it had a great sound. So when I created Fathom I decided I would never use them.

Well, do not see it as a requirement, but as an alternative I and probably quite a few other new users had the opposite experience with Fathom. It took me quite some time to learn (or extensively search for buttons) how to do simple things like removing an object or saving a preset, because I was used to the workflow of the many other synths I have used and still use Maybe it's a Windows user thing, I'm not familiar how it is on the Mac OS.

Thanks for the tip on the Panel Mode knob, I totally missed that one there!

Well if you ever decide to go the context menu route for Fathom, for the Windows version, please do not make the pop-up menus modal. Modal pop-ups can sometimes cause problems in plugin hosts that enforce the "always-on-top" windowing behavior. I recall a certain DAW appearing to be frozen because the Kontakt virtual instrument plug-in's "Reset Multi?" confirmation dialog box was trapped behind another modal window.

[jmg8]

Loving the new look, good work. When the mouse is near the control it glows, nice touch.

Capture 1.JPG

A few things I would like to see added.
In the image here you can see that I have the "Parameters" tab enabled. However, there is no visual feedback to show this. I would suggest that the button is highlighted to more intuitively show where you are.
Also, I think it would look nice to have orange accents. I do not mean the background panels. Take a look at the line that draws the waveform shape, this would look great in bright orange. Also not just the waveform line but also the lines for drawing, envelopes, analysers etc.

[subterfuge]

Ok, some initial 2.12 beta tests done....
Test setup:
Intel i7-4770k @ 3.5GHz CPU, 16 GB RAM, RME 9632 interface
Windows 10 Home x64

*Sound quality of note starts and stops - ok, didn't notice anything bad at first run.
*Detune general sound quality - good.
*Detune changing number of voices - small glitch when changing the number of voices live, which I imagine would be expected, otherwise fine.
*Detune moving individual dials - no glitches when doing live adjustment of detune controls.

Test project with three heavy instances of Fathom. Total CPU usage went down about 2% (max. settings on beta) while Real Time CPU went down about 10%. I could also half the host ASIO buffer (to 512) on beta with only occasional glitches.

Detune and audio interpolation to lowest settings, Fathom sample block size to 512:
Host ASIO buffer 512 and I got Total CPU 8% and Real Time CPU 63.5% (over 20% better than 2.11). Significant change to previous versions and to my ears audio was fine.

I didn't pay too much attention to the GUI changes yet, but there's something which has been mentioned earlier and I'd like to reiterate. I think that the icons on top bar bar should be more visible, especially now that the settings icon is there too. They light up when mousing over, but that effect could be a bit faster too.

[pekbro]

2.12 Works great, looks great and sounds great. CPU seems noticeably improved,
and it's functioning perfectly across every host I've tried it with. The new UI options
are a welcome addition as well. I am having difficulty finding any bugs to report
though, will keep looking.

Great job Everett!

-Cheers

[subterfuge]

Audio interpolation, Detune interpolation, Detune precision and Audio buffer size. It seems these settings don't save with the host projects? I used exactly the same test project otherwise but saved it with few different settings of those parameters. Host (Reaper) recalled all the projects with the last used settings (for each Fathom instance), not the ones they were saved with. Just an observation, not a complain.

---
Trying to use Reaper's own preset management system with Fathom will cause a crash. This is not regression, 2.11 seems to have the same behavior, so I've just lost track of when did this actually work the last time. Again, just FYI.

[pekbro]

Oh one thing, Reaper does not distinguish between the different versions for me.
E,g, HS, MT, Plain. Maybe a setting I have somewhere, I couldn't find anything.
Or maybe I'm not supposed to use them at the same time.

[pekbro]

Trying to use Reaper's own preset management system with Fathom will cause a crash. This is not regression, 2.11 seems to have the same behavior, so I've just lost track of when did this actually work the last time. Again, just FYI.

Confirmed...

[bftucker]

2.12 Works great, looks great and sounds great...

Great job Everett!

-Cheers

Haven't gone as deep as I should or hope to but I agree with pekbro. So far, so good.

Don't like to comment on GUI since most problems are solved with familiarity but I also agree that the icons on the top row should be more clearly defined. They are almost invisible on my laptop and only slightly more visible with mouse-over.