Fathom Synth Development Thread

[FathomSynth]

lol, yes, right clicking is a war crime.

The two malevolent inventions of the 20th century were the Atomic Bomb and the Right Click.

[bmanic]

@Bmanic

Exactly,
there are things about the gui that are unique. Such as by positioning your mouse just above or below a parameter knob you can fine tune it with the mouse wheel....really cool!

You call it unique but I'd call this particular example quite typical compromised UI design. A much more intuitive way would be the way FabFilter does it, which is velocity based. Move your mouse wheel fast -> large increments. Move it slowly -> Fine adjustment.

The browser itself is a bit unique.

The browser is indeed nicely done. It's definitely fully featured and interesting in the way you can write in the categories and comments section directly in the browser. That part is indeed unique as far as I know.

Modulating a modulator is also one of those things that would not be intuitive.

This is definitely not at all unique and has been available on many many many synths for decades. This is how most common expressive playing things are done. Velocity to cutoff envelope amount is about as basic as it gets. That is modulating a modulator.. so not sure why you think this is unintuitive or unique. It's extremely common.

Sometimes things seem a bit clumsy ( to me) but that is that is where Everett's vision kicks in and we adapt. Some of the things I used to think were combersome turned out to be quite fluid. Ex. the way you can load wave index 1 skip to index 16 and add another. Then hit fill and generate a table that morphs between the two. This has to be done quite precise or it doesn't work.

This isn't at all cumbersome but rather a necessity if you want a smooth wave table. A nice function to have for sure.

I still do not quite have my head wrapped around the LFO with all the parameters over time. But if I remember right if you leave the main period set to one some of the others have no effect.

I haven't found anything confusing about the LFO section at all. This part makes perfect sense to me.

Be awhare of the mix knob of the 2nd stage in the distortion section it is zctuslly a balance between the two stages.

This too makes perfect sense and is pretty obvious in my opinion.

Always feel free to ask about things. There are several folk who have dug deep into Fathom and have a head start on you. Most of which are eager to share.

Thanks. I will when I get stuck. I rarely do get stuck when it comes to synths as I have over 30 years of experience with virtually all kinds of synthesis. I've done my share of ridiculous menu diving on various complex digital hardware synths and multi-effects from yesteryear.

This is probably why I am so adamant about good UI design. I'm at the point in my life where I can quite confidently create almost any sound I have in my head, at least to a certain degree, but that inspiration sometimes gets cut short due to this: "damn.. this will take a lot of mouse clicks and work-a-rounds.. do I bother?" Instead I just open up another tool that does it quicker. The dilemma occurs when one product clearly does something quicker and better but actually doesn't sound as good. That's when a cumbersome user experience starts hurting.

There are a few rules in UI design that I think should be followed by everybody.

1) Less mouse clicks is always better than more mouse clicks. There are no exceptions to this rule as far as I know. If you get the exact same results with 2 mouse clicks instead of 5 then the former is a better design.

2) Simple is beautiful. A lot of complexity can be put into simplicity when proper thought is put into the design. Example of unnecessary complexity that could be vastly simplified: The LFO Draw module. Why on earth are some nodes possible to move sideways while others are not? Why do we actually need bezier "node handles"? Why can't we simply drag on the actual wave form and double click anywhere to create new nodes (and these should be possible to move around freely).

There are many examples of these kinds of unnecessary complexities in Fathom that could be vastly simplified while not losing any features. Many mouse clicks become a few and much more intuitive to use.

Another example: Why do I have to actually open the modulator panel just to be able to delete it? Why can't a simple mouse click select and highlight the modulator in question (or any item in the mod matrix) and allow me to delete it? Now when I open for instance a LFO Draw modulator only because I want to delete it, my overview of what I was looking at earlier, for instance an Oscillator's parameters, gets taken away. I then delete the modulator and am returned to the default view. Thus I now need to make another mouse click to get back to where I was before. This is a prime example of completely unnecessary complexity and illogical workflow.

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

@bmanic
I was speaking of HOW things were done from a gui perspective not that they could be done. Example...clicking on the little dot of the modulator amplitude to assign a modulator to it.

It seems that you are a knowledgeable chap. Please continue to hang around as it seems Fathom is entering another phase of intense development and could always use good ideas.

Anyway, welcome to the table. I am sure you will enjoy the ride.

[bmanic]

bmanic,

Hi. Thanks for your comments. Your attention to detail above is the kind of feedback that helped me a lot in the past.

Good to hear. I will definitely make a proper write up of things that could be improved from a usability standpoint once I get more familiar with the synth. I'm thoroughly liking the possibilities of this beast and extremely pleased with the possible maximum sound quality that it provides (it sounds ridiculously good even with extreme things going on! Well done on this front!).

Actually the manual does tell you how to delete a modulation (as opposed to a modulator). Section 6.4.4 “Deleting a Modulation”.

However, your point still stands because if I had added the section “Deleting Modulations” right after “Adding Modulations” like any sane person instead of burying it mysteriously in the next section, then you probably would have spotted it, so I will make that change in the manual now.

Duh! You are right. I missed this part. Yeah, it's probably sensible to have everything laid out in the same section. Keep in mind that it's not at all bad etiquette to repeat things! Native Instruments way of making PDF manuals is a very good example (for instance the Reaktor manual where things are repeated as "hints" or "tips" all over the place where relevant).

I personally don’t find it confusing to use the “Delete” button to delete things, but in all fairness many people have made the same comment you did, so I will put a big red Delete “X” button on the expanded mod slat to delete the modulation. Sorry I cannot put it on the top of the mod slat since there is simply no space.

It's not confusing really but it's counter intuitive considering how the rest of the world operates. We are so used to some common window elements. The 'x' being one of those. Even if sometimes standards are not all that good, if they prevail these standards should then be followed. This minimizes confusion and makes the whole thing more intuitive for new users.

You can also objectively calculate that a Delete button that is 'x' pixels away from where you were with the mouse originally is inferior to simply having the option to do your delete action with something that is closer. This kind of brutal objectivity in all forms of UI design is usually good to keep in mind. Mouse travel distance is a real thing. It may sound petty but these small distances "travelled" can get annoying for a person who does things over and over again or is in an inspirational mode where you are physically trying to keep up with the mind.

I tried to explain this concept to the guys at FXpansion about Cypher 2 as well. Anything that causes extra "stress", that is in the form of extra concentration, is bad UI design. Small hard to hit UI elements for instance fall under this category as it takes extra mental fortitude to make sure the mouse cursor hits the target. These are small nitpicky things but these do add up in the long run. A superb UI design has the user never thinking about the user interface at all.

I can tell from your phrase “mask a destination as identical to source” that you are accustomed to using a Synth that provides the modulation matrix level of indirection using “Sources” (modulators) and “Destinations” (modulations of a target dial).

The point being that you want a single modulator capable of hitting multiple dials with some characteristics of the modulation changed such as add, subtract or multiply.

Fathom provides the exact same indirection but with different terminology. Modulators are connected to target dials using “Modulations” where multiple modulations can use the same Modulator.

Despite the difference in terminology, this should provide you with the exact same capabilities. I pride Fathom on being an advanced synth for modulation, so if this is not giving you what you need please be specific and I will try to add the feature.

Indeed, I know this is provided.

So for your list of 12 LFO’s, it looks like you were adding LFO’s without being aware of the Existing Modulator section. If you want to use a single LFO to modulate different modulations then you can select it from the Existing Modulator list.

I made that image only as an example of what you very quickly can end up with while experimenting with complex sounds.

Also, I’m not sure why you are having trouble deleting modulators. I just tried it myself to make sure and it is working great. It works just like any other delete, just click on the modulator under Existing Modulator and hit the Delete button.

Ah yes, not sure what I did wrong but now it works. This actually demonstrates just how cumbersome the delete button combined with a confirmation prompt is. It now takes 3 mouse clicks to delete a clearly unused modulator.

May I suggest that this whole confirmation prompt thing should be a user selectable option in the preferences? I can understand why the confirmation is there but the need for it has arizen due to UI confusion. As it's not always clear what you are actually deleting (and there's no working undo!! Not even the DAW built in undo works) it's a necessity.

Ask yourself this: How can I make sure people clearly know what they are deleting? This is where the little 'x' is also superior to the delete button.. it doesn't rely on something being highlighted, thus minimizes wrong action taken by the user. A delete button necessitates the users full concentration of first checking what he/she selected and then actually performing the action (further double checking during the confirmation prompt). So yeah, if ever there was a Red Flag for sub-optimal UI design, this is it.

But again, to your point, I will add a dedicated Delete “X” button on the modulators also.

May I suggest that any component that can be added anywhere should always also be able to be deleted easily with a simple icon? This means all elements in the signal flow view as well. Here it doesn't necessarily need to be a delete button though, in case it becomes too crowded. It could be a simple drag and drop action as well. Simply moving the element "off canvas" would remove it (or just dragging it back into the left side panel). This is a fairly common way of deleting modular objects in various software.

We will be making a major marketing push for Fathom early in 2019 after the GPU high speed CPU processing is complete, so if you can define in more detail what you mean by “Polished” there is a good chance those features will make it in very quickly.

Glad to hear that! Your creation definitely deserves it's spotlight in the mainstream as I think it has the potential to be absolutely awesome! I do think it has quite a way to go still if you want to compete in the mainstream market and in this case actual graphics will make a difference. I highly suggest you contract a 3rd party to make the final graphics for the whole synth (mainly the knobs, shaded back panels etc). At the moment Fathom looks a bit 90's. It definitely doesn't scream cutting edge or modern which I think would suit it much better.

In regard to “Meat and bones comprised of very common elements.”
Original Features?

Most users would probably not agree. This is proven by the upgrade downloads being almost always equal to the total number of purchases.

The whole reason I created Fathom is because for years I did my own music and went through about 15 soft synths, spending $500 on at least two of them, and literally none of them could do what I wanted for truly original sound design.

This is why I added features such as the following.

1. Open signal flow, 2. Unlimited audio units. 3. Unlimited modulations. 4. Full screen wave draw. 5. Full screen Bezier waveforms. 6. Bezier envelopes. 7. WAV import/export. 8. Double sided wave tables. 9. Wave table math functions. 10. Wave table skip cycle processing. 11. Non-linear detune. 12. Separate control over all detune channels. 13. Real time noise math. 14. Multiple zero delay filter algorithms. 15. Zero delay partial filters. 16. Modulatable modulator periods. 17. Modulatable mod amounts. 18. Continuously resizable GUI. 19. Configurable GUI panels and backgrounds. 20. GUI color pickers for all graphs, lines and fills. 21. Multiple GUI dial options. 22. Center view overlays. 23. Ability to superimpose spectrum graphs and note roll below the signal flow. 24. Twelve band graphical EQ with click and drag points. 25. Multichannel Phaser. 26. Multichannel Digital Delay with channel routing. 27. Fractal Delay with variable reflections and micro-chorusing. 28. Built in multi-mode filters for Phaser, Delay and all Reverbs. 29. Real time 3D graphs. 30. Frequency domain distortion. 31. Tunable noise generators. 32. Connectable FM and AM for any oscillator. 33. Microtuning. 34. Per sample modulation for all modulators (not per block). 35. Wave buffer spline interpolation.

Could you easily find one synth with each of the above features. Yes, of course.
Could you find one other synth with ALL of these features in one synth?

Good luck!

This is indeed a very thorough all-in-one package. There is a slight risk of becoming a jack of all trades tool though. For instance as far as I know, while your delays seem very thorough and comprehensive they lack some pretty basic things.. like being able to modulate the delay time.. or ANY delay parameters for that matter. At the very least one should be able to modulate the wet/dry knobs of the delay, no?

The current preset library that comes with Fathom (I bought the full Fathom Pro Ultimate Bundle as I thought it would get me started the quickest) does not really reflect this complex beast of a synth all that well. A huge portion of the sounds in the library are extremely simple. Like, extremely simple. A vast majority of the sounds could very easily be done on any other fairly basic VST plugin (except perhaps the actual sound quality if you get nitpicky but most users are not) with vastly less CPU usage.

Complexity of the synthesis itself is not in my opinion what makes a synth great. The real magic in how "complex" a synth feels for the end user (the people simply playing presets) comes from how flexible the modulation is and how many tiny nuances the sound designers can add so that the presets feel organic, rich and rewarding to play.

Complex synthesis in itself, no matter how you look at it, isn't all that interesting by itself. It's how you get the end user to interact with that complexity. A mangled rectified saw + square wave provides tons of weird overtones.. as does FM synthesis very quickly when you go into inharmonic territory and use something else than a sine wave. Complexity of the synthesis is only relevant, in my opinion, when you get to use that complexity to morph throughout a full spectrum of timbres in a way that is intuitive for the input device in question (for the vast majority of users this would be keys of some sort). This means the very basics, Velocity, Note range (keyboard range), Pitch, Modulation wheel and aftertouch should be as complexly definable and modifiable as possible. The basics of playability and interesting sounds starts here.

.. and this is an area where Fathom could be more refined. For instance, Note On Velocity is quite simplistic. You have a few math functions but that's it. There's no way to map the actual velocity range. What if I want a velocity range of 80 to 110 to trigger something specific, like introducing an additional oscillator? What if I want the modwheel to introduce something new after the CC value of 75 has been passed? None of this is currently possible.

There are a few ways this could be done. One would be to provide a spline interface just like the keyboard tracking one does.. but instead the X axis would of course be 0 to 127 input and Y axis 0 to 127 output. Thus the user could completely freely scale the modulator. A much more flexible and ultimately much better way would be to have a separate "modulation mapper" object that simply translates incoming ranges into outgoing ranges where the user has 100% full control. This can then later be expanded for special cases like quantizing incoming notes to specific ranges or a tempo map for manipulating the incoming LFO modulation signal etc. By far the best implementation of this concept can be found in Logic Pro X Alchemy 2 synth (and a more rudimentary version in the original Camel Audio Alchemy synthesizer).

Also, the best feature of Fathom is actually none of the above, it’s user feature requests that actual go directly into regular product releases.

This is indeed a very good "feature", if you can keep it going.

Few if any major synths do this. For example the best sounding soft synth ever made is probably Sylenth.

Let's agree to disagree on that point.

Fathom has had 24 software releases in 2018.

That's awesome to hear!

Just to be completely clear: I'm not at all disappointed by Fathom. I know fully well what I got myself into and the on-sale price I paid was more than fair. I would never even bother writing all of what I've done if I didn't like the product. I think it has great potential but I also think it has a very long way to go to actually compete with other products in the mainstream market. We'll see.. I'd be happy to be wrong.

Cheers!
bM

[FathomSynth]

Bmanic,

Well, I may have drastically underestimated your level expertise to begin with, and there are several really good ideas you have mentioned so far. Such as dragging an audio unit outside the view to delete it, brilliant, I will add that.

The balance between power and simplicity is a constant battle.

You are not the first person to complain about having to move the mouse down to hit the delete button, I think in the next release I may just take your advice and put delete buttons on everything.

I stand by the fact that Fathom has several unique features, for instance if there was another single synth on the market which provided a full screen wave draw with Bezier interface for creating waveforms, then I probably would not have even created Fathom in the first place. This was the one big feature that I felt the world needed, and so far surprisingly no one seems to have copied it.

Also, if you play with the waveform Bezier curves you will notice a sin accelerator segment in addition to the standard exponential and Bezier segments. You can use this segment to create your own voltage ring within a waveform. This for sure does not exist in any other synth on the market.

That being said, I have to totally agree with you that in terms of actual sound, Fathom has yet to deliver a truly unique knock out punch in terms of original audio synthesis techniques. I will be addressing this in 2019 with Spectral Morphing and my own algorithm for Analog Emulation which has not yet been released.

However, both these features will require GPU processing so that has to be done first.

But I want to take full advantage of your experience for a moment and ask you the critical question (apart from some wonkyness in the UI) what is the one fundamental audio feature which if added to Fathom would make it your primary Synth???

Also, just out of curiosity, what are you currently using as your primary synth?

[bmanic]

I'll get back to you about your first question. Right now my gut reaction says "Mod Mapper!!". If I could freely map any input values to any output values that would already immediately cover a vast array of possibilities.

As for primary synth.. I have no "primary" synths. I love a lot of them. My first love was the Kurzweil K2000 but could never afford one in the 80's or early 90's as I was just a kid/student at that time. I now have one in the studio of course.

Later I fell in love with the Roland JD/JV line of synths, starting with the JD 800 which I could not afford either.. but I did purchase a XP-50 later on when it launched and made a lot of sounds and a few parody tracks with it. I also became really familiar with the JV-2080 and the XV incarnations as they could be found almost in every studio in one form or another.

I just recently got myself a Behringer Neutron and have made some crazy stuff with that. I just recently posted a little 11 minute clip of a very basic sound and arp pattern showing the flexibility for "ordinary" synth tones by manipulating the sound in real time over those 11 minutes. A bit boring but shows some capabilities for textural changes by modulating the oscillators in various ways.

In the software realm there are so many awesome ones to choose from. Here are the ones I've used the most and/or recently re-discovered.

1.) Apple / Camel Audio Alchemy. This is the beast I've definitely spent the most time with as I've done quite a bit of sounds for it over the past few years. I know it almost completely inside out, warts and all. It's an extraordinarily capable synth on almost all fronts. Here is a little demo of what I did last time for Alchemy.

2.) Vengeance Sound Avenger, an absolute powerhouse of synthesis. A bit of a jack of all trades kind of deal though and some basic functions missing (like the ability for the LFO to be triggered from the DAW.. you either have to manually trigger it with a note or get it stuck to a drum sequence/arp which in turn yet again requires a note-on message of some sort). I also thoroughly dislike the small modulation matrix window. This is how my relatively simple bass/pluck sound looks like.

3.) Image-Line Harmor which I just recently rediscovered and noticed that it finally doesn't go all wonky with it's UI in Reaper (my main DAW). This one is a true powerhouse of synthesis. There's virtually no limits to what this one is capable of. From the truly bizarre to the mundane. This is a pad sound I made in a few hours last week.

4.) FabFilter Twin 2 is a very basic synth but for some reason I just gel with the workflow and sort of like it's complex simplicity. This is my now perhaps infamous piano sound that uses up every single modulator and mod target slot in the whole synth. I could still have used a few more to get it more realistic over the full keyboard range.

This preset was inspired by the long running Sound on Sound Synth Secrets series where later on it was discussed if it's possible to create a realistic piano sound using a basic analogue synthesizer if given enough modulation possibilities, even with rather simple starting waveforms. I explored that concept.

5.) OhmForce Symptohm:Mellohman is an absolute favorite of mine. It's thoroughly unique sounding and very quirky. It has a single envelope and LFO for every single knob of the whole synth. It also has a weird delay/final filter section which is monophonic. This allows you to get some strange complex monophonic textures triggered on top of a polyphonic background. The oscillators are also very unique and that whole morphing thing, while tedious to setup, can be exploited for interesting results. It's unfortunate that this thing never gained any real tracktion. It's an inspirational synth which was thoroughly let down by it's factory presets so nobody really realized how powerful it was. I still use this synth at least a few times per month and make new sounds for it when I'm bored.

6.) UVI Falcon is a mystery to me. I have this strange desire to learn it thoroughly as I can see it's potential and know just how powerful and capable it is.. yet I just can't seem to grok the interface and am thus taking this very slowly. One day I'll master this beast.

7.) Native Instruments Reaktor. This one I mainly use for the modular stuff in it's "blocks" mode. Mainly for fun musings when I'm bored and for creating sample material that I then feed into other synths. Haven't really built anything coherent of my own yet.. mainly bolted bits and pieces together from already existing stuff (there so much!!).

8.) Tone 2 Electra X and Gladiator 2. These two I dabble with every once in a while. Mainly Electra X for it's meager CPU footprint (I have an old laptop at home so I'm at the mercy of it's bad performance) yet powerful synthesis and layering capabilities. Gladiator 2 mainly for the awesomely potent and weird oscillator section that is an endless source for inspiration and exploration. It's one of the few oscillator systems where I can't at all predict the results.. thus I just randomly tweak things and sometimes get positively surprised. Both of these synths unfortunately have very limited modulation matrices. They simply have too few slots and it's sometimes cumbersome to remember what modulates what.

9.) Reveal-Sound Spire is used when I need something quite typically bread and butter and need to create it fast. Don't get me wrong though, this is a very capable synth for other tasks as well but I rarely explore beoynd the ordinary with this one. Not sure why that is.. I should probably give it a bit more effort. It's a great sounding synth!

10.) U-he ACE is my go-to quick and dirty modular when I want that typical "simple" modular madness.. that is audio rate modulation of things so that they break up and instantly transform into 1960's and 70's sci-fi clichés.

11.) Various synths included in Ableton Live 10 suite. Due to getting the Push 2 in the summer I've started exploring these. The wavetable one is quite elegantly designed. It can be amazingly good sounding and I really like the wavetables they've chosen as they cover a wide and very pleasant range of textures and tonalities.

Of course I have a ton of more synths but it'd be silly to list all of them. The ones above are those that I have used recently and are in fresh memory. For sampling I of course use NI Kontakt 5 (haven't seen any reason to upgrade to Kontakt 6 yet).

[zzz00m]

zzz00m,

As long as the GPU chipset is made by NVidia we should be able to use CUDA, if not I will do my best to provide another option for laptop owners and other small form factor PC’s to get the same parallel processing power.

Thanks for the info Everett.

But just to be clear, I want to make sure that you have not overestimated the computers that your average user is running audio applications on. Sure, there are those that run gaming capable rigs, but I doubt that is what the majority of your customers are using.

I could be wrong about that, so maybe a survey might be fun to see what type of hardware that Fathom is running on.

I saw the results of a DAW survey a while back that informed the product development team that a majority of their users were using laptops with ASIO4ALL as their audio driver ( a wrapper for the Windows audio system). That means that the users were not even investing in a pro audio interface with decent ASIO drivers, and were relying on the onboard sound chip in their system. I'm not critiquing ASIO4ALL, which I have used with success on a laptop, just pointing out the general market factors.

I am not running a laptop as my DAW, or a small form factor PC. Rather it is a custom built PC, that I deliberately omitted a GPU from. I think that the consensus of custom DAW builders is that a GPU is not an essential ingredient for success. I would rather spend my DAW computer budget on base CPU frequency and number of cores, or maybe an extra SSD drive. Brute force!

I have been a PC builder for almost 20 years, and I have been using DAWs for that long as well. I was excited when soft synths and samplers became available and then went mainstream years ago. That was my main motivation to learn more about building a PC that could handle digital audio and virtual synthesis, rather than just using MIDI and external hardware synths, which is what I started out with.

Like gamers that focus on frame rates and popular GPUs, and build computers to get the best benchmark in games, I was looking to reduce latency in digital audio processing by eliminating bottlenecks for audio processing.

So I'm all for adding GPU enhancements to Fathom, as I'm sure there are a few enthusiasts that will appreciate that, but am only here to suggest knowing your potential market first before you expend too much effort going down that path. IMHO universal CPU enhancements should be a top priority.

[glokraw]

When U-he first started releasing linux ports, the people who had
video cards, as opposed to motherboard video chips, had better
success. I think partly because u-he have complex gui's,
and used vst-shell technology in Zebra, Uhbiks, and Filterscape,
all of which was a new task for linux daw coders to deal with,
and Alexandar Bique, x42, and others, unmasked some very flawed
coding practices in linux gui-making.

Captain Fathom, if you could mention the video-card (s) used in
your project, perhaps some of us could get a matching card
to aid in tests. I know I could put my current card in another
computer, and (oh-the-suffering) install some new
fire-breathing beast in my main rig.
Of course, for the chilllllddddddrrrrrreennnnnnn

Also, working with a video card that properly supports
multiple monitors could be lucky. I would imagine
a mod-matrix system wholly on a second monitor
could invoke some singing and dancing down in the village

Merry Christmas!

[CHOOS]

1.) Apple / Camel Audio Alchemy. This is the beast I've definitely spent the most time with as I've done quite a bit of sounds for it over the past few years. I know it almost completely inside out, warts and all. It's an extraordinarily capable synth on almost all fronts. Here is a little demo of what I did last time for Alchemy.

The sound @ 1.11 is awesome. Could you recreate this in Fathom? or maybe even another synth?

Cheers


P.S. That piano sound is impressive too!

[FathomSynth]

I build my own systems and I think my video cards are NVidia GTX 970’s and are fairly old.

zzz00m, I hear you.

Most users with a PC running Windows will have an NVIDIA video card, and the model or age is not that important since CUDA has been around a long time.

There are ways to querry the video card and see how many CUDA cores it has available. So I don’t think anyone should worry even if they have an old system.

I will do my best to do SIMD Vectorization in the CPU as well as CUDA so everyone can enjoy the CPU benefits.

Bmanic,

That’s a great synth list. I also have VPS Avenger and it is indeed a great instrument. Spire as well I have and often use.

I’m a little surprised that uHe Diva is not on your list, that is suppose to be the best of the best currently.

I use to do the same thing you did except my list was Omnisphere, Sylenth , SynthMaster, VPS Avenger, Spire, Alchemy, Legend and Zebra. More or less in that order. If I had the time I would also buy Serum, Thorn and Diva.

I know my opinion here is biased, but the last couple songs I did, I used only Fathom. Not because it’s better but because it enabled me to use only one synth and I can use the waveform editor to get any waveform which I can in any of the other synths.

Today’s release is just a few bug fixes. But very soon I will be starting a new phase of major features such as Spectral Morphing and Analog Emulation.

So the next couple weeks will be a good time for you to post what major features you really want to see in a synth.

[Cinebient]

I just read this thread after long time and realized i bought the full version over a year ago (trough KVR) and never updated since then.
I never get any mails or so. Is there something to subscribe? And how do i update?

[zzz00m]

I build my own systems and I think my video cards are NVidia GTX 970’s and are fairly old.

zzz00m, I hear you.

Most users with a PC running Windows will have an NVIDIA video card, and the model or age is not that important since CUDA has been around a long time.

I am sure that is absolutely correct from a gamer's perspective.

A survey from last year: https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-survey-sh ... vidia-gpu/

I guess my point was actually how many hard-core soft synth users are NOT hard-core gamers???

Carry on then .. your plan sounds fine!

[FathomSynth]

Cinebient, I sent you a PM with the update information.

A lot of people have been asking for a regular email update list, and I have been negligent in that regard.

However staring in January of 2019 I will be using a new automated email update list employing the full list of Fathom purchasers.

The emails will only be once a month for major releases and will never contain marketing material of any kind. It also goes without saying that the list will never be shared. Recipients will all be BCC so that all emails remain strictly private.

Obviously there will be an option to disable this for users who do not want regular emails.

[glokraw]

I guess my point was actually how many hard-core soft synth users are NOT hard-core gamers???

In terms of practical reality, (as opposed to semantics)
you can't be haaaarrrrrrrrdddd-core in more than one arena,
and still maintain a healthy life. One might appear to excel
beyond the median in several, or even all aspects of life,
being that the bar of the median is set so low...
one might fail in the puplic eye, and yet be so enthralled
amidst the hard-core attempts, as to never notice or care.

Attempts at multi-hard-cor-ism (tm ) make war with a
lard-based society which largely aspires to dozing off on a couch,
with a TV on, snacks spilled, and an i-fone misplaced behind
the cushions, drones well sated with entrenched mediocrities.

The wilder ride is ever compelling,
and unforgettable, life lived never dreading
the calendar or clock.

(well, it helps a little to take down
the mirrors )

[zzz00m]

The wilder ride is ever compelling,
and unforgettable, life lived never dreading
the calendar or clock.

Well I think you may have a good start on a lyric there!