u-he Colour Copy - public beta!

[Urs]

The saturation needs a boost... I find I'm struggling to get some crunch and only get it with max feedback (regen). This can be a very useful setting on a delay plugin (please release the beast - more saturation please).

Hmmm, it wasn't really meant to be crunchy or overdriven (in Repro we have a separate distortion unit for that). The feedback was meant to be reminiscent of delay units like the good old Carbon Copy, but without exploding all too quickly. It's all about a nice progression or evolution in sound with each feedback loop; one which is not just your typical damping filter or your typical waveshaper (hence the name and the logo).

Jumping directly to colours is on our list. Unfortunately the internal changes between the 5 models are so vast that we had to smooth the parameter a lot to avoid zipper noise (see my previous post). Maybe we can improve on this during the beta phase, or in an update.

[geronimo]

Pitch bend working fine here.

Yes, me too with VST format under SIERRA Mac OS X : but not with the AU version for Colour Copy .

[sleepcircle]

I made this to test it out. I have no idea if you will think it is music or just noise but it was a lot of fun to make. It's about 10 different tracks, all of which have an instance of Colour Copy on them, and most of which instances had their settings nudged around by automation.

https://soundcloud.com/john-fraser-15/moon-watcher

the synth i used is repro-5 ayyyy *two finger-pistols and a wink*



edit: i should mention that i thought there was quite enough saturation for the purposes of making this track. i never really expected it to be a CRUNCH BOX. satin is very smooth and clean and in-good-repair and i like that i can turn it up without everything immediately falling apart—I feel the same about Colour Copy so far.

[shane sterling]

I absolutely love the subtlety of this delay. Since Echo was released in Live 10 Ive been making use of some long dub style delays. I have noticed Echo doesn't always sound the best with really long regeneration times, maybe just too much saturation and no way to control it. I instantly noticed how beautiful and characterful this sounds with the long regeneration times. Very subtle and evolving in a musical and pleasing way. I wasn't sure if I needed another delay but this is exactly what I needed and didn't even know it!!!

[sleepcircle]

I have noticed Echo doesn't always sound the best with really long regeneration times. I instantly noticed how beautiful and characterful this sounds with the long regeneration times.

yeah, i like that with long delays it evolves instead of stagnating like so many delay plugins do.

[shane sterling]

I have noticed Echo doesn't always sound the best with really long regeneration times. I instantly noticed how beautiful and characterful this sounds with the long regeneration times.

yeah, i like that with long delays it evolves instead of stagnating like so many delay plugins do.

Exactly! The rest of the features make for some beautiful effects as well. Really digging this plugin.

[groovyomega]

The lock function on nearly every control is pure gold! I don't understand how there are still many delays whose mix controls can't even be locked.

[EvilDragon]

Dunno if u-he implemented sample accurate automation in their VST3s - that's something one of u-he peeps can reply to.

No, we didn't. Because to by far the majority of users it is seen as a bug

Remember 2004, 2005? When a new VST came out, you could be sure one of the first things that came up in a thread was "does it have zipper noise when I turn a knob?".

Every developer added parameter smoothing to their stuff. "Dear God Of Compilers, don't let them hear any zipper noise!!!". That is, there's typically a filter or some kind of ramp which drags the parameter change out to around, dunno, 20 or 50 milliseconds, or a bunch of hundreds, if not a thousand samples.

Sample accurate automation only makes sense without such filtering. Without such filtering, people will come back being annoyed about zipper noise. No zipper noise beats sample accurate in my books.

That said, there are concepts for adaptive filters. Those can react a bit faster on sudden changes while smoothing out slow changes. I'm a bit on the fence with those because they need to smooth much more than linear interpolation to avoid audible zipper and they are a lot more expensive on CPU. Latter is difficult for a company with plug-ins that have many hundred parameters.

Doesn't hurt to provide an option to disable smoothing altogether in order to enable sample accurate automation for hosts that do support it? Or just leave the smoothing in but still allow sample accurate automation. Adaptive filters also sound good...

In any case sample accurate automation is more about timestamping the automation events within a single audio buffer (so that automation changes can happen within the audio buffer, rather than being limited TO one audio buffer size in rate of change) rather than being able to do a parameter change on each and every sample in the project...

[ThomasHelzle]

Dunno if u-he implemented sample accurate automation in their VST3s - that's something one of u-he peeps can reply to.

No, we didn't. Because to by far the majority of users it is seen as a bug

Remember 2004, 2005? When a new VST came out, you could be sure one of the first things that came up in a thread was "does it have zipper noise when I turn a knob?".

Every developer added parameter smoothing to their stuff. "Dear God Of Compilers, don't let them hear any zipper noise!!!". That is, there's typically a filter or some kind of ramp which drags the parameter change out to around, dunno, 20 or 50 milliseconds, or a bunch of hundreds, if not a thousand samples.

Sample accurate automation only makes sense without such filtering. Without such filtering, people will come back being annoyed about zipper noise. No zipper noise beats sample accurate in my books.

That said, there are concepts for adaptive filters. Those can react a bit faster on sudden changes while smoothing out slow changes. I'm a bit on the fence with those because they need to smooth much more than linear interpolation to avoid audible zipper and they are a lot more expensive on CPU. Latter is difficult for a company with plug-ins that have many hundred parameters.

Thanks Urs, good to know.
Would be interesting to play with this and see if it would be worth becoming an option. I personally love the modulators in Bitwig being at audio rate and polyphonic, since it allows me to overcome the limitations of at least the factory synths and effects. That and being able to put effects into for instance the feedback loop of a delay is something missing from the VST world.

Is zipper noise only a problem when turning knobs in the GUI because of the limited parameter resolution or does it also affect automation/modulation? Could the plugin differentiate between the two?

Thanks and cheers,

Tom

[spunkmuffin]

I made this to test it out. I have no idea if you will think it is music or just noise but it was a lot of fun to make. It's about 10 different tracks, all of which have an instance of Colour Copy on them, and most of which instances had their settings nudged around by automation.

https://soundcloud.com/john-fraser-15/moon-watcher

the synth i used is repro-5 ayyyy *two finger-pistols and a wink*

sleepcircle that track sounds fantastic. hehe creepy and spooky. Made me go listen to your other soundcloud things your 'Wii snorkelling' track made me involuntarily smile couldnt stop, i felt kind of childish and thought 'should i be liking this? lol beautifully mixed. too cute in a good way

[daily patcher]

I made this to test it out. I have no idea if you will think it is music or just noise but it was a lot of fun to make. It's about 10 different tracks, all of which have an instance of Colour Copy on them, and most of which instances had their settings nudged around by automation.

https://soundcloud.com/john-fraser-15/moon-watcher

the synth i used is repro-5 ayyyy *two finger-pistols and a wink*

sleepcircle that track sounds fantastic. hehe creepy and spooky. Made me go listen to your other soundcloud things your 'Wii snorkelling' track made me involuntarily smile couldnt stop, i felt kind of childish and thought 'should i be liking this? lol beautifully mixed. too cute in a good way

That Wii Snorkelling track is a repost lol, he didn't make it his posted track is indeed great though.

[EvilDragon]

Is zipper noise only a problem when turning knobs in the GUI because of the limited parameter resolution or does it also affect automation/modulation? Could the plugin differentiate between the two?

If code is done well (and with u-he we know that it is ), both GUI parameter change and host automation will trigger the same function to update the parameter value, so it's the same - but the plugin can still differentiate between the two.

[ThomasHelzle]

Is zipper noise only a problem when turning knobs in the GUI because of the limited parameter resolution or does it also affect automation/modulation? Could the plugin differentiate between the two?

If code is done well (and with u-he we know that it is ), both GUI parameter change and host automation will trigger the same function to update the parameter value, so it's the same - but the plugin can still differentiate between the two.

So that could maybe lead to a solution - have (optional) audio rate automation/modulation and only smooth the GUI interaction and the coarse Midi values.

Cheers,

Tom

[todd_r]

Didn't think I needed another delay, apparently I was wrong!

[Urs]

If code is done well (and with u-he we know that it is ), both GUI parameter change and host automation will trigger the same function to update the parameter value, so it's the same - but the plugin can still differentiate between the two.

In VST2, yes, in AAX, AU, VST3 - no, IIRC the DSP part has no means to distinguish between parameters changed by user interaction or automation. That is, of course, if things have been written by the specs.