UVI Falcon - hybrid instrument - version 3.01 released - rumors, ads, praise, mud wrestling and off-topic inside!
RELATED
PRODUCTS Alive - UVI Falcon Expansion Ambient Strings for Falcon / MachFive 3 Falcon Falcon AIR Falcon Singles - Acoustic E-Bow Falcon Singles - Ambient Piano Falcon Singles - Bass Flute Falcon Singles - Celtic Harp Falcon Singles - Crotales Falcon Singles - Falcon Scapes Vol.1 Falcon Singles - Falcon Scapes Vol2 Falcon Singles - Falcon Scapes Vol3 Falcon Singles - Frame Drums & Friends Falcon Singles - Glockenspiel Falcon Singles - HANG Falcon Singles - Oud Falcon Singles - Stick Cello Falcon Singles - Water Bells Falcon Singles Singing Bowls & Friends NOIZE Textures (Wav/Dune Presets) Scattered Entity Vol. 1 for Falcon/MachFive 3
PRODUCTS Alive - UVI Falcon Expansion Ambient Strings for Falcon / MachFive 3 Falcon Falcon AIR Falcon Singles - Acoustic E-Bow Falcon Singles - Ambient Piano Falcon Singles - Bass Flute Falcon Singles - Celtic Harp Falcon Singles - Crotales Falcon Singles - Falcon Scapes Vol.1 Falcon Singles - Falcon Scapes Vol2 Falcon Singles - Falcon Scapes Vol3 Falcon Singles - Frame Drums & Friends Falcon Singles - Glockenspiel Falcon Singles - HANG Falcon Singles - Oud Falcon Singles - Stick Cello Falcon Singles - Water Bells Falcon Singles Singing Bowls & Friends NOIZE Textures (Wav/Dune Presets) Scattered Entity Vol. 1 for Falcon/MachFive 3
-
- KVRAF
- 2313 posts since 20 Oct, 2014
Oh, ok, it's soft-ilok.
-
- KVRian
- 855 posts since 15 Jul, 2016
Seriously, open a technical support ticket at https://support.uvi.net/hc/en-us/requests/new you can provide all the information in a nice, clean manner. I had my share of support contact with UVI and there's so little they can do in this thread but so much they can do when you contact them directly.
♫
-
- KVRAF
- 2313 posts since 20 Oct, 2014
Reinstalling v1.64 fixed it!
-
- KVRAF
- 1736 posts since 26 Feb, 2013 from Sweden
Is there a way (or workaround) to turn down multi envelope ratio to zero without loosing sync?
-
- KVRAF
- 23102 posts since 7 Jan, 2009 from Croatia
v1.6.5 released.
I was hoping I woudl see a fix for Falcon standalone not opening maximized correctly on Windows, alas, it's not happening
It really is very annoying - and it used to work before, for sure.
I was hoping I woudl see a fix for Falcon standalone not opening maximized correctly on Windows, alas, it's not happening
It really is very annoying - and it used to work before, for sure.-
- KVRist
- 67 posts since 9 Mar, 2017
Is there a really good comparison anywhere between Falcon and VPS Avenger? Lack of demo makes it hard to compare. Raw oscillator sound, filters, FM quality, granular quality, timestretch/pitch shifting, speed of working etc.
I really like the presets of the Avenger and I've found it quick to conjure up some really interesting new sounds but I've heard anecdotally that Falcon sounds better but the sounds examples on the site haven't impressed me as much as Avenger. I'm interested in creating my own sounds so presets themselves are not the main consideration but can be reflective both of sound quality and also suitability of built in wavetables and samples. I'm definitely more interested in techno oriented sounds than cinematic/film.
Anyone here using Falcon for techno using it in preference to Avenger and happier as a result?
I really like the presets of the Avenger and I've found it quick to conjure up some really interesting new sounds but I've heard anecdotally that Falcon sounds better but the sounds examples on the site haven't impressed me as much as Avenger. I'm interested in creating my own sounds so presets themselves are not the main consideration but can be reflective both of sound quality and also suitability of built in wavetables and samples. I'm definitely more interested in techno oriented sounds than cinematic/film.
Anyone here using Falcon for techno using it in preference to Avenger and happier as a result?
-
- KVRian
- 855 posts since 15 Jul, 2016
Before reading my whole post, see what kind of producer you are. If A, you'll be a match for Falcon read the rant. If B, stay with Avenger and get inspired from the presets:
A. Falcon/UVI philosophy (aswell as u-he Zebra) is rather on the side of "pure synth" presets: they exploit the synthesis capabilities at max and rarely mix layers of sampled attacks and synthesized tails.
B. Avenger/Manuel Schleis' is the Roland way: most of the presets are a blend of sampled sounds and synthesized tails. This often gives a "nicer" sound (because of the familiarity - guitar attack layered with a piano and a decaying sine tail or whatever) but it also limits how you can alter that sound. This is one of the reasons he can release monthly preset packs, is so damn hard to change sample-based presets.
Now the rant:
I'm always confused with this "sounds better" thing. You play a saw in 10 synths - it may sound "different" but I'd never say that one of them sounds "better". Why is one of them "better"? More bass? Boost the lows. More highs? Boost the highs. Does it have more "depth" and "width"? Then increase the depth and width. As owner of both I would not say that one sounds better than the other.
However, feature wise you can design Avenger inside Falcon but you can't do the other way around. You have a larger filter selection in Falcon, better featured sample playback engines, granular (this one arguably sounds good in Falcon and you can also tweak it to sound like a badly encoded mp3 as Avenger's does), FM & wavetable modules.
Also, drones are quite important in techno music and what you can achieve with Falcon's granular or sample manipulation plus the built-in FX is waaaay beyond anything Avenger can do (or you will spend a lifetime routing things in that microscopic modmatrix).
The advantage of having as many macro knobs as I want (in Falcon) was vital in making my own "analog" synth with front panel control for various drifts (pitch, lfos, tremolo-style fx). Granted, I spent hours making the preset, routing knobs & stuff, but definitely worth it. Basically you can make your own templates with various osc types and filters then is quite easy to dial new sounds.
Avenger is only speedy when you work with 1-2 oscillators. After few modmatrix entries, that thing is so small to scroll, it takes longer and longer to find and tweak stuff. I'm using it mainly as a preset machine for background sounds or pianos, guitars. Also I find Avenger a big resource-hog compared to Falcon, I can go almost double the number of Falcon instances for the same amount of voices compared to Avenger before CPU overload.
Rant over.
A. Falcon/UVI philosophy (aswell as u-he Zebra) is rather on the side of "pure synth" presets: they exploit the synthesis capabilities at max and rarely mix layers of sampled attacks and synthesized tails.
B. Avenger/Manuel Schleis' is the Roland way: most of the presets are a blend of sampled sounds and synthesized tails. This often gives a "nicer" sound (because of the familiarity - guitar attack layered with a piano and a decaying sine tail or whatever) but it also limits how you can alter that sound. This is one of the reasons he can release monthly preset packs, is so damn hard to change sample-based presets.
Now the rant:
I'm always confused with this "sounds better" thing. You play a saw in 10 synths - it may sound "different" but I'd never say that one of them sounds "better". Why is one of them "better"? More bass? Boost the lows. More highs? Boost the highs. Does it have more "depth" and "width"? Then increase the depth and width. As owner of both I would not say that one sounds better than the other.
However, feature wise you can design Avenger inside Falcon but you can't do the other way around. You have a larger filter selection in Falcon, better featured sample playback engines, granular (this one arguably sounds good in Falcon and you can also tweak it to sound like a badly encoded mp3 as Avenger's does), FM & wavetable modules.
Also, drones are quite important in techno music and what you can achieve with Falcon's granular or sample manipulation plus the built-in FX is waaaay beyond anything Avenger can do (or you will spend a lifetime routing things in that microscopic modmatrix).
The advantage of having as many macro knobs as I want (in Falcon) was vital in making my own "analog" synth with front panel control for various drifts (pitch, lfos, tremolo-style fx). Granted, I spent hours making the preset, routing knobs & stuff, but definitely worth it. Basically you can make your own templates with various osc types and filters then is quite easy to dial new sounds.
Avenger is only speedy when you work with 1-2 oscillators. After few modmatrix entries, that thing is so small to scroll, it takes longer and longer to find and tweak stuff. I'm using it mainly as a preset machine for background sounds or pianos, guitars. Also I find Avenger a big resource-hog compared to Falcon, I can go almost double the number of Falcon instances for the same amount of voices compared to Avenger before CPU overload.
Rant over.
♫
-
- KVRist
- 67 posts since 9 Mar, 2017
Hi sircuit. Thanks for your response and rant 
"Sound better" is obviously subjective.
There is quality of raw tone.
- I have various hardware including oberheim xpander, behinger model D, some eurorack. If I just have one Saw wave oscillator of my model D turn the filter down and add a bit of filter envelope I get a fat bass just like that. The raw oscillators have a roundness in the bass and a fizziness in the top end that isn't quite there in software (Pulsar p900 probably has the best raw oscillators I've heard in software). If I take one of my eurorack analog oscillators, add a little FM, pass it through an analog filter and then modulate that filter at audio rates, I get some really nice tones that are almost impossible to achieve in software. Most vst synth oscillators don't respond as nicely to audio rate modulation. The oscillators, filters, vcas and envelopes and output stages all contribute to this. The pure analog modelled synths tend to do better in this category than most. It's not really possible to add this with EQ. Sure you can boost or saturate to add bass or cut through but you can't really make the raw tone better.
There is quality of content. This includes both presets, samples and wavetables. Presets are useful, particularly as a starting point but if, as you say the Avenger presets are harder to manipulate because they are more sample based then their usefulness is significantly diminished. Having said that, if the sample quality is high and they are inline with what you need then they can still be useful. The choice and selection of provided wavetables is also going to determine suitability.
There is usability which allows one to manipulate sound without restrictions. Tone control, Envelope control and shape, interesting modulations, modulation of modulation itself (eg modulating the amounts of modulation). Thanks for pointing out the small matrix. In my demoing of it I hadn't considered how well it would scale.
I'm mostly interested in usability and raw underlying osc/filter signal path, unaided by additional processing, a good balance of sweet spots and width of experimentation. I want to hear a lively raw sound that doesnt sound lacklustre. Interesting that you mention Zebra because that is a synth I've not found to sound particularly good from the demos and flicking through the demo presets. It's all subjective - I like the richness of Moog and Dreadbox synths and find DSI synths sound a bit flat.
So I'm curious on thoughts of raw oscillator and filter quality of Falcon, how does it compare with the better analog modelling synths like Pulsar Modular, Repro, Softube Modular and The Legend?
How does the granular part of falcon differ from Avenger? I'm less interested in the FX section as I have wide range of VST fx already.
How well does it play with Ableton Push or Maschine/NKS?
"Sound better" is obviously subjective.
There is quality of raw tone.
- I have various hardware including oberheim xpander, behinger model D, some eurorack. If I just have one Saw wave oscillator of my model D turn the filter down and add a bit of filter envelope I get a fat bass just like that. The raw oscillators have a roundness in the bass and a fizziness in the top end that isn't quite there in software (Pulsar p900 probably has the best raw oscillators I've heard in software). If I take one of my eurorack analog oscillators, add a little FM, pass it through an analog filter and then modulate that filter at audio rates, I get some really nice tones that are almost impossible to achieve in software. Most vst synth oscillators don't respond as nicely to audio rate modulation. The oscillators, filters, vcas and envelopes and output stages all contribute to this. The pure analog modelled synths tend to do better in this category than most. It's not really possible to add this with EQ. Sure you can boost or saturate to add bass or cut through but you can't really make the raw tone better.
There is quality of content. This includes both presets, samples and wavetables. Presets are useful, particularly as a starting point but if, as you say the Avenger presets are harder to manipulate because they are more sample based then their usefulness is significantly diminished. Having said that, if the sample quality is high and they are inline with what you need then they can still be useful. The choice and selection of provided wavetables is also going to determine suitability.
There is usability which allows one to manipulate sound without restrictions. Tone control, Envelope control and shape, interesting modulations, modulation of modulation itself (eg modulating the amounts of modulation). Thanks for pointing out the small matrix. In my demoing of it I hadn't considered how well it would scale.
I'm mostly interested in usability and raw underlying osc/filter signal path, unaided by additional processing, a good balance of sweet spots and width of experimentation. I want to hear a lively raw sound that doesnt sound lacklustre. Interesting that you mention Zebra because that is a synth I've not found to sound particularly good from the demos and flicking through the demo presets. It's all subjective - I like the richness of Moog and Dreadbox synths and find DSI synths sound a bit flat.
So I'm curious on thoughts of raw oscillator and filter quality of Falcon, how does it compare with the better analog modelling synths like Pulsar Modular, Repro, Softube Modular and The Legend?
How does the granular part of falcon differ from Avenger? I'm less interested in the FX section as I have wide range of VST fx already.
How well does it play with Ableton Push or Maschine/NKS?
-
- KVRAF
- 23102 posts since 7 Jan, 2009 from Croatia
Falcon is not going to be the analog modeling heaven if you're looking for that, otherwise you wouldn't be able to get more than a few voices of polyphony with the complexity that you can achieve in it regarding different synthesis types, etc. This is why you have dedicated analong modeling synths, as you mentioned a few already. Falcon is not that. It's a synthesis toolkit, almost modular but not quite - really great flexibility in combining different synthesis types, FX inside are excellent quality for the most part, and modulation is extremely flexible.
Granular in Falcon is great, it's only bested by HALion 6 IMHO. No NKS support.
Also you need to dig into Zebra more. It's a synthesis chameleon and sounds excellent.
Granular in Falcon is great, it's only bested by HALion 6 IMHO. No NKS support.
Also you need to dig into Zebra more. It's a synthesis chameleon and sounds excellent.
-
- KVRAF
- 35292 posts since 14 Sep, 2002 from In teh net
There isn't built in NKS support but I have personally converted all my third party content to NKS (mapping macros) and there is an unofficial conversion of factory content here:
https://freelancesoundlabs.com/index.ph ... l-maschine
https://freelancesoundlabs.com/index.ph ... l-maschine
-
- KVRAF
- 5691 posts since 24 May, 2004 from []1
midi to outside world:
avenger yes
falcon no
avenger yes
falcon no
-
- KVRian
- 855 posts since 15 Jul, 2016
That's pretty much irrelevant (also pretty much useless as a "feature") since it does not work in Ableton Live or Logic Pro X.
♫
-
- KVRAF
- 5691 posts since 24 May, 2004 from []1
for you
-
- KVRian
- 855 posts since 15 Jul, 2016
There is no synth out there that does this except for Avenger in a very small list of hosts.
That means that none of us have the workflow adjusted for this kind of gimmick so the value of it is zero. Also is not a deal breaker kind of feature since I can simply place a midi region to play the notes in other synths (d’oh) without routing through Avenger.
You can mention Avenger fixed architecture as a workflow enhancer relative to Falcon’s “modular” approach, fine, it completely makes sense for everyone’s workflow. But midi output? Lol. Even skins make more sense to mention.
That means that none of us have the workflow adjusted for this kind of gimmick so the value of it is zero. Also is not a deal breaker kind of feature since I can simply place a midi region to play the notes in other synths (d’oh) without routing through Avenger.
You can mention Avenger fixed architecture as a workflow enhancer relative to Falcon’s “modular” approach, fine, it completely makes sense for everyone’s workflow. But midi output? Lol. Even skins make more sense to mention.
♫
-
- KVRian
- 591 posts since 10 Nov, 2005 from New York City
As a Pro Tools user, I got Falcon for free recently. I’m not sure I would’ve bought it on my own. Avenger is MUCH faster to work with and program in my opinion - and is extremely deep and sounds amazing.
Having said that, Falcon is very powerful and if you can get your head around the structure, it has a lot of potential. I think it sounds quite good as well.
Having said that, Falcon is very powerful and if you can get your head around the structure, it has a lot of potential. I think it sounds quite good as well.
