Cytomic Synthesizer

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Andy, any chance for pre and post filter distortion (various types)? I think most of synths on the market lack these options.

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There's quite a number that do have those options, tho. But yeah, can't hurt to have them. :)

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HcDoom wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:04 pm Andy, any chance for pre and post filter distortion (various types)? I think most of synths on the market lack these options.
I plan to have a diode clipper with unbuffered high and low pass capacitors with parallel mix knob and variable hardness. This will get you the same basic tone as a TS-808 or an MKR Distortion+. All the modules have arbitrary routing, so you can put the drive post oscillator, post filter, or post amp, or even on the audio input or LFO or Env etc. There will be no distinction between control signals and audio signals, everything will be at audio rate, just like in eurorack land. (edit: for processing dc coupled control signals I'll have to add a bypass for the high pass filter)

I'll also have some basic math waveshaping and maths functions, which I always planned for Synth Squad but the project wasn't long enough to do. These will have optional anti-aliasing. Functions will include things like sin, cos, tanh, arctan, abs, min, max, clip, dc offset, quantise, wave bender, and modulo (wave wrapper), sample and hold, some fractal noise generators and a few more, but the final list will have to wait till I've actually played with things and decide what is useful. I'll check through the list offer by the Kurzweil K2000 series synths, I had one of those and remember they had some useful "Funs", and I may even call my Funs as well since Maths sounds boring but Funs sounds fun!
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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That does indeed sound exciting now :hyper:

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 3:21 pm
I don't know if you feel this way personally, but I think another potential lesson learned from the original DCAM release should be the importance of some traditional (or "bread and butter") presets. From my perspective, the original release's presets skewed very heavily towards modern EDM and generally harsher sounds. Electric Himalaya put out some great presets after the fact, but prior to that, DCAM wasn't a product where I'd scroll through presets and find a ton of musically appealing sounds (realize my own taste is a very large factor int hat). And while the existing presets may may have done a great job of showing off the modulation capabilities of the synths and appealing to the EDM or even modular-synth crowd where audio-rate modulation is a turn on, I'm sure I wasn't the only user who was looking for more old school basses, leads, brass, and the like. The new v2 releases seem to do a better job on that front.

Still, Synth Squad has held up all these years later, and that's a great testament to the raw sound quality.
I agree that our initial presets weren't ideal. It was only later on when we got better preset designers on board doing packs that we filled out the solid bread and butter sounds, and Electric Himalaya was largely responsible for this.

Another large problem with initial launch was that FXpansion insisted upon disabling oversampling by default. During preset design and testing the synth ran at x2 realtime (so at least 88.2 kHz) and x8 on render. For release this changed to Off by default (so no oversampling) and the entire synth sounded dull since the oscillators and filters could not reach high frequencies. There were many other situations like this were I felt pretty helpless since these sorts of decisions were taken without my consent, which ultimately led to me leaving and setting up Cytomic, which I am very grateful for since I make much more money on my own than I ever did work for FXpansion!
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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As i am sure you are aware the version 2's start with 2x oversampling until some people give scenarios where the no oversampling was optimal for them and it was introduced in cypher 2 :)
And yes I echo FB and your comment about the initial presets.
rsp
sound sculptist

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Gee Andy, it's up to you but after you finish the Scream could you start work directly on this synth until it's finished instead of more stompboxes because otherwise this is thread is a huge tease!
:hyper: M O N O S Y N T H S F O R E V E R :hyper:

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spunkmuffin wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 2:31 am Gee Andy, it's up to you but after you finish the Scream could you start work directly on this synth until it's finished instead of more stompboxes because otherwise this is thread is a huge tease!
The distortion stage in the new synth relies on the MD "low and fixed cpu" mode I'm adding to The Scream right now. I think in terms of time it may be quicker to do the HD mode for The Glue first, and then turn my attention to the synth. I like having a diverse set of plugins, and I want each to be the best in class for what it does, and currently The Scream and The Drop are that, but The Glue is 10 years old now!
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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This will be a marvel of a synth ...can't wait
Eyeball exchanging
Soul calibrating ..frequencies

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andy-cytomic wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 2:01 am
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 3:21 pm
I don't know if you feel this way personally, but I think another potential lesson learned from the original DCAM release should be the importance of some traditional (or "bread and butter") presets. From my perspective, the original release's presets skewed very heavily towards modern EDM and generally harsher sounds. Electric Himalaya put out some great presets after the fact, but prior to that, DCAM wasn't a product where I'd scroll through presets and find a ton of musically appealing sounds (realize my own taste is a very large factor int hat). And while the existing presets may may have done a great job of showing off the modulation capabilities of the synths and appealing to the EDM or even modular-synth crowd where audio-rate modulation is a turn on, I'm sure I wasn't the only user who was looking for more old school basses, leads, brass, and the like. The new v2 releases seem to do a better job on that front.

Still, Synth Squad has held up all these years later, and that's a great testament to the raw sound quality.
I agree that our initial presets weren't ideal. It was only later on when we got better preset designers on board doing packs that we filled out the solid bread and butter sounds, and Electric Himalaya was largely responsible for this.

Another large problem with initial launch was that FXpansion insisted upon disabling oversampling by default. During preset design and testing the synth ran at x2 realtime (so at least 88.2 kHz) and x8 on render. For release this changed to Off by default (so no oversampling) and the entire synth sounded dull since the oscillators and filters could not reach high frequencies. There were many other situations like this were I felt pretty helpless since these sorts of decisions were taken without my consent, which ultimately led to me leaving and setting up Cytomic, which I am very grateful for since I make much more money on my own than I ever did work for FXpansion!
Yeah, I was really baffled by the oversampling thing too. You didn't even need to do any modulation or anything to hear the difference. Just the init presets sounded way duller, and it wasn't subtle. Real night and day stuff. I never measured it, but I'd guess the roll-off started way below 10kHz at 1x, whereas 2x and above were indistinguishable on init to me. No idea what they were thinking with that one.

Interesting to hear that sound/preset design was done at 2x. Cypher sounded noticeably different at every level of oversampling (due to audio rate modulation detuning) so I'd often wondered what the 'correct' setting was with regard to the presets. The rest of your post gives me a good idea of why that was never fixed: presumably you were no longer there to do it! When I originally reported it circa 2014, they said they had an internal build that fixed it but CPU hit was unacceptable. I'm guessing this was actually an early Cypher 2.

Still though, DCAM, what a collection of synths they were. Amber and Strobe in particular for me. Amber is still one of my favourite synths today, and I don't even use the Transmod functionality (that got a lot more use in Strobe from me). Unbeatable for bread and butter pad sounds.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

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i miss vReorder. would pay for it if i could get it on OS X. it had such a great feel to it.

you've made a lot of great stuff Andy. i'm looking forward to what's coming!

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andy-cytomic wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 2:55 ambut The Glue is 10 years old now!
Yeah, I'd be well keen on updates to The Glue.

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andy-cytomic wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 12:59 pmI designed and coded all the synths in Synth Squad.
And I suspect that's why the new versions are missing some mojo.

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sleepcircle wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 5:59 pm
andy-cytomic wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 2:55 ambut The Glue is 10 years old now!
Yeah, I'd be well keen on updates to The Glue.
just curious.. is there a feature you think it's missing or is it a 'sound' issue?

i think it's sorta perfect. i use it on the master of every track when mixing. i have zero complaints. it does what it does really really perfectly. i always know what i'm going to get w/it and it's super satisfying.

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dayjob wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:28 pmi think it's sorta perfect. i use it on the master of every track when mixing. i have zero complaints. it does what it does really really perfectly. i always know what i'm going to get w/it and it's super satisfying.
i ENTIRELY agree, but if he thinks he can make it even better, who am i to stop him?




(also he mentioned he might add a model of the pre-amp circuit)

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