FXpansion releases Cypher2

[Bandaide]

I may be in the minority here, but I rather like the Rozmix theme, especially with the multi-colored knobs. I doubt I'll tinker with skins.

That said, Stefken's idea to enlarge the cutoff knob is excellent.

No back to playing TX Lifeform Simulation 5D . . .

[fisherKing]

stefken, skin looks really good here (mac, logic X); for me too, some adapting to new placements. but am gonna stick with it for a while, see how it goes. please keep us posted if you update/fix things! but it's a good look...

Thanks . Keep me posted on your observations.

Myself, i'm going to read the manual and use the synth and the skin.
And see how some design decisions work out. Because the proof is ...in the eating.

will do (keep u posted). and yes, now to eat this entire DAW, plugins & all...

[Ou_Tis]

Their use of Lift is brilliant---that parameter has been very underutilized in Equator and Noise.

The sheer quantity of sounds is a tremendous improvement over Equator, though not over Noise.

However, some of the 5D presets don't map Press as well as Equator and Noise do, making them significantly less expressive. Hopefully there's a way to fix that.

And standalone Cypher2 is consistently giving me a crackling sound after just a few minutes of playing.

The synth emulations of plucked string instruments are some of the best I've heard---though I've stuck to sample-based or physical modelling programs in the past for that.

In general, lots of good sounds. However, even though I really wanted to use some of them in a recent project... I ended up deciding my other synths just had similar sounds that I like slightly better. But Cypher2 has the advantage of greater Seaboard compatibility.

Thank you for your comments.

I thought that I'd try to address your observation about the use of 'pressure' and 'LIFT'.

Cypher2 5D presets are tuned to the continuous pressure response of the Seaboard RISE. This means that pressure is 'scanned' or 'active' the second you touch the silicone surface. This allows certain sounds to be extremely expressive. As you gently touch the keywave, you get to play with a deep modulation range via pressure (or 'PRESS'). 'Wind' sounds benefit from this the most, as continuous pressure can mimic the response of breath, which can also be continuous. Here's one such hybrid 'wind' preset from Cypher2:

https://soundcloud.com/fxpansion/wi-tiny-reed-5d

However, such continuous expression is not suitable for all sounds. In fact, it can destroy many sounds we know and love. For example, take a typical, classic analogue bass pluck. One which is tight, and plummy. Think of a funk Moog bass. If I create such a bass with continuous pressure expression, then what will happen with each key press, I will loose the 'pluck', the 'decay' stage of the bass as I play and trigger 'pressure', which in turn will modulate various parameters and alter the main 'shape' of the bass. Now, this may or may not be what I want. If I want that classic tight, 'pluck' response, then continuous pressure modulation/expression will spoil it. So what to do? There are a couple of remedies. One is not to use pressure on sounds that may not benefit from it, but another is to use the 'Expression Curves' and create specific curve shapes which 'delay' the onset of modulation assigned to pressure. Coupled with the 'slew' parameter (which by the way, Equator does not have) the modulation assigned to pressure (or any other 'dimension') can be nicely tailored to every sound.

If you inspect many of the bass sounds, you should see various shapes, none of them linear. Instead you will see variations of exponential shapes. And it's this deeper exponential shape, mixed with a higher 'slew' value, which alters how you perceive pressure to be. How sensitive it is. So, still thinking of this bass sound and why it may be limited in its pressure response, there will be many similar sounds which are 'controlled' in this manner. For example, Leads also need this specific 'tuning' of pressure. Some key-sounds too.

Without limiting pressure in this manner, we would find ourselves unable to make certain sounds as illustrated above, and I can assure you that the same technique is used in lots of Equator presets.

You also mention LIFT.
Equator has many sounds with LIFT, maybe not as many as Cypher2, however Cypher2 has many more 5D sounds than Equator anyway, so it may be just this difference. I don't know as I've never checked.
Make sure that you download all Equator presets since by default, Equator does not provide all the presets that are available, and you need to download them (you can do it in the Equator browser by downloading extra 'Playlists'). Having said this, we did pay a lot of attention to make sure that LIFT is used in pretty much all 5D Cypher2 presets.

Now, there is a trick to actually hearing what LIFT is doing in each preset, or what is assigned to LIFT (note-off velocity in standard MIDI speak). I don't know if you are familiar with this already, if yes, then I will outline it for the benefit of others. Many sounds are designed to prevent LIFT getting in the way and so to hear LIFT, we need to perform a quick 'press&release' gesture. Without this, you won't hear LIFT.

Again, there is a reason why this is done like this. If we assign LIFT without any specific tweaks (which I will explain below) what will happen is that whatever we assign to LIFT will be triggered as you play. We will hear LIFT all the time, which can be extremely distracting, and certainly not what is needed in the majority of cases. So, in order to prevent LIFT getting in the way like this, we need to use those expression curves which helped us so much in the above example with pressure. So, again like with PRESS, we need to create deep exponential shapes, which will prevent LIFT from firing off on every key release. In fact, with the LIFT expression curve, there will be many examples where the curve has a totally 'flat' shape at the start, only rising sharply in its later part.

So, this is more or less how PRESS and LIFT are used in both, Equator and Cypher2 (and Strobe2).
Hope this helps.

While I'm here, take your time when exploring 5D presets, there is so much going on sometimes, especially when you tweak the presets with the 3 faders and the XY controller. Some presets will be completely transformed into totally new sounds. I think this needs some audio demos, since the changes can be extremely deep.

Thanks for the response. It makes sense that some sounds aren't suited for continuous pressure. I guess part of the issue is that, for fast and expressive playing, I like using Press for rhythm instead of Strike---not having to raise my finger off the Seaboard and bang it down for every instance of the same note seems faster and more expressive. It's still possible in those presets but requires releasing all pressure between notes.

On Lift in Equator---I just scrolled through the presets' descriptions and only noticed one that mentioned a Lift effect. Then again maybe it's that Cypher 2 is better at documenting Lift.

[cthonophonic]

How do others feel about the contrast balance between the fader heads / knobs and the background? It's a little low for my taste (not so easy to instantly eyeball values), but may be OK under low light?

I would say (with the caveat that I haven't tested Stefken's version yet) that the low-contrast aspect is one of the biggest improvements over the original. I found the bright, saturated colors of the default rings pretty distracting, but that's a matter of taste, obviously. The fader heads could probably use a little more contrast with the background though, yes. Maybe bring up the brightness of the lower half of the fader until it's noticeably brighter than the top half of the background?

Making all the knob rings for the osc mods the same color is visually pleasing, but it does have the disadvantage that if you are using the diagrams in the visualizer pane for reference, you lose some of the information that those colored mod arrows provide (cyan is FM, purple is ring mod, etc.). Of course, in a few of the included skins, the pane background color makes the mod arrows nearly illegible anyway, so...

Anyway, great job, Stefken! It's a really nice skin.

Also on the subject of themes/skins, is it possible to modify the graphical elements of the knobs? For knowing what's going on at a glance, I think a short line segment might be more useful than a dot as an indicator of knob position, but I don't know if that's something that can be easily modified in a skin.

[cthonophonic]

I'm kind of curious about the "powering down" of the Cypher 2 oscillators, because after installing the demo on a crappy HP all-in-one machine this weekend to fiddle around a bit while out of town, I noticed that not only was the performance terrible while playing (which I kind of expected from this laptop-on-a-stick), but it was also super CPU-hungry even when silent. On this machine, the init patch takes 20-30% of a core when idle, and for more complex stuff, it's much worse. The DR Gongstar patch, for example, hits 100% without playing a single note. I can't tell whether this is indicative of a bug, or just a lousy computer. I mean, I know it's a lousy computer, but if the oscillators are powered down, what's causing the more complex patches to be so hungry?

[Stefken]

How do others feel about the contrast balance between the fader heads / knobs and the background? It's a little low for my taste (not so easy to instantly eyeball values), but may be OK under low light?

I would say (with the caveat that I haven't tested Stefken's version yet) that the low-contrast aspect is one of the biggest improvements over the original. I found the bright, saturated colors of the default rings pretty distracting, but that's a matter of taste, obviously. The fader heads could probably use a little more contrast with the background though, yes. Maybe bring up the brightness of the lower half of the fader until it's noticeably brighter than the top half of the background?

Making all the knob rings for the osc mods the same color is visually pleasing, but it does have the disadvantage that if you are using the diagrams in the visualizer pane for reference, you lose some of the information that those colored mod arrows provide (cyan is FM, purple is ring mod, etc.). Of course, in a few of the included skins, the pane background color makes the mod arrows nearly illegible anyway, so...

Anyway, great job, Stefken! It's a really nice skin.

Also on the subject of themes/skins, is it possible to modify the graphical elements of the knobs? For knowing what's going on at a glance, I think a short line segment might be more useful than a dot as an indicator of knob position, but I don't know if that's something that can be easily modified in a skin.

I plan on revisiting the knobs when i've read the manual. I might have missed some clues.
I would also prefer a line segment instead of a dot for the knob position. Is that possible Angus?

[Angus_FX]

@cthonophonic is that an Atom-based machine? And are you looking at the DAW CPU meter or the Windows task monitor?

The reason I ask is that there's a fair amount of GUI running at low priority in the main thread - it will use CPU when the machine is idle (and task monitors will report it), but it doesn't affect DAW load & will get out of the way (by dropping frame rate) when the audio is working harder.

Also, the FX chain is active even when the synth is idle, and can eat up a fair amount of resources on slower cpus especially at 88 or 96k base sample rate or with oversampling >2x.

@stefken you can try customDrawProc="S2ModKnobDrawer" instead of customDrawProc="S2ModKnobDrawer2" on the mod knob styles. This gives you a stylistically different mod knob widget (it's the one from Strobe2) but I'm not sure how well you'll get it to work visually.. TBH, we tried line segments early on (and indeed Strobe2 still uses them) but on Cypher2, the UI is busy enough already that they made the whole thing hard to read.. lots of different lines pointing in different directions.

[himalaya]

Thanks for the response. It makes sense that some sounds aren't suited for continuous pressure. I guess part of the issue is that, for fast and expressive playing, I like using Press for rhythm instead of Strike---not having to raise my finger off the Seaboard and bang it down for every instance of the same note seems faster and more expressive. It's still possible in those presets but requires releasing all pressure between notes.

What I would recommend is, when you have a 5D preset which you like, one where pressure is controlled in the manner I have explained in my previous post, where a deep Expression Curve is used and limits pressure response on purpose, simply edit the expression curve and reset it to its default, 'linear' shape. To do it, select the PRESS modulation window in the central, visualiser window (look for a 'dot within a circle' symbol). Right click on the curve and select 'RESET'. This will reset the shape and hopefully give you deeper pressure response. Of course, it may not entirely work, since this curve may be assigned to various parameters in small amounts, so simply resetting it, may sometimes not 'deepen' it's response.

There's another tweak you can do. Just below the PRESS curve is a dial named 'SLEW'. Turn it anticlockwise. The further left you turn it, the more immediate pressure response will become.

On Lift in Equator---I just scrolled through the presets' descriptions and only noticed one that mentioned a Lift effect. Then again maybe it's that Cypher 2 is better at documenting Lift.

I wouldn't use the Equator preset descriptions (in the Player) to see if LIFT is used or not. If you want to check if LIFT is definitely used in a preset then check if the LIFT modulation window has a yellow outline after you load a preset. If, yes, then it's assigned. Then, after that you need to play the preset and have a feel how LIFT is assigned, some presets will have a very obvious sound assigned to LIFT, some others will have much more subtle sounds. Always remember to perform a quick, sudden, 'press & release' gesture.

However, I just thought of another reason why you may not have LIFT on the Equator presets that you are trying out: make sure that you are actually using the RISE presets, and not the GRAND presets which do not have LIFT (nor SLIDE). The easiest way to make sure that you are playing the RISE-tuned presets is to select 'RISE' from the DEVICE menu in the browser (left side of the Equator browser). If you don't select this option, you will have all the presets for the RISE and GRAND listed one by one ( note the R and G letters next to each preset in the browser) and if you select a GRAND preset, LIFT will not work (because the GRAND does not work with LIFT or SLIDE).

[cthonophonic]

@cthonophonic is that an Atom-based machine? And are you looking at the DAW CPU meter or the Windows task monitor?

The reason I ask is that there's a fair amount of GUI running at low priority in the main thread - it will use CPU when the machine is idle (and task monitors will report it), but it doesn't affect DAW load & will get out of the way (by dropping frame rate) when the audio is working harder.

Also, the FX chain is active even when the synth is idle, and can eat up a fair amount of resources on slower cpus especially at 88 or 96k base sample rate or with oversampling >2x.

It's an AMD A8-7410 - better than an Atom, but not by much. I used the CPU monitor in Buzz, and this was at 44.1k, 2x oversampling. It looks like the Effects section is what's eating up the CPU (all patches seem to return to about 20% when idle with FX off), so that solves the mystery. Thanks! And thanks generally for Cypher 2 - it's really fantastic!

[aMUSEd]

I've made a NKS version of Cypher 2 if anyone wants it - in the NKS User Library (in my sig) - no presets yet, just the controller template and integration files.

This is 'komplete' now - a friend on the NI forum (Christos Adamos) used my template to batch import the Cypher 2 presets to nksf format and added audio previews, then I added further detailed tagging of all patches, database integration files and thumbnails.



Download from the NKS User Library (in my sig - check out the info.txt if you are not used to integrating user made NKS plugins for details of where stuff goes)

Also updated the Strobe 2 template to bring it inline with the latest MPE updates and added the MPE patches (again credit goes to Christos for the batch conversion).

[Stefken]

Update theme StefkenDark to 0.2

I did some tweaks to the skin.

* I reverted the envelopes to their original place. Visibility aside, I prefer to envelopes in close proximity of the filter section as you tend to tweak them together > less mouse movement required.

* I upped the readibility/contrast of several items: the fader heads, the real time modulation, knob position indicator, P1-P3 labels

* Some placement tweaks in the bottom bar

Download:

StefkenDark_0.2.zip

Cypher-skin1c.png

[fisherKing]

Update theme StefkenDark to 0.2

I did some tweaks to the skin.

* I reverted the envelopes to their original place. Visibility aside, I prefer to envelopes in close proximity of the filter section as you tend to tweak them together > less mouse movement required.

* I upped the readibility/contrast of several items: the fader heads, the real time modulation, knob position indicator, P1-P3 labels

* Some placement tweaks in the bottom bar

Download:

StefkenDark_0.2.zip

Cypher-skin1c.png

ha, i'd better not get too used to where things are... thanks for staying with this, will update my cypher2 today.

[fluffy_little_something]

It's an AMD A8-7410 - better than an Atom, but not by much. I used the CPU monitor in Buzz, and this was at 44.1k, 2x oversampling. It looks like the Effects section is what's eating up the CPU (all patches seem to return to about 20% when idle with FX off), so that solves the mystery. Thanks! And thanks generally for Cypher 2 - it's really fantastic!

That legacy APU chip is not exactly made for demanding applications like modern synths

[cthonophonic]

That legacy APU chip is not exactly made for demanding applications like modern synths

Heh. Tell me about it. It actually did alright with Repro-5 and LuSH-101, but only because they have options to farm voices out to multiple cores. Thankfully, I'm back to civilization now and can use Cypher2 without worry.

[fluffy_little_something]

civilization = i9?