FXpansion releases Cypher2

[Whywhy]

Great synth. Awful interface. (to me)

Can someone explain how unison works? If I assign 'Unison+/-' to a nob, do the voices get spread over the range applied to said nob? (e.g pan). If not, how does it work? Also what is the Unison Index applicable to?

Yes, unison 2 bipolar have a nice distribution for pitch use, unison can be uni or bi polar and spread the destination across the voices.
32 voices available, and all synth destination are possibles!

[Stefken]

Also, how about giving classic mod sources like envelopes and lfo's a fixed position in the transmod?

the sound designers I work with express a strong preference for assignable. The other issue here is that every TransMod source adds some cpu overhead, it's not practical to go past 24 at this stage.

I understand that sound designers that know the synth in and out, and have designed a lot of presets have different needs than the casual user. Sounddesigners that have many hours of experience with a tool can be categorized as superusers and they often want advanced features at the cost of more complexity.
But let's face it, the common KVR member has a shitload of vst's so their knowledge of an individual vst will not be on that level. I'm quite confident that these users will benefit from a fixed positioning of important sources. Considering the limit of 24, I'm guessing you should at least be able to give env1, env2, env3, lfo1 and lfo2 a fixed place (hint: top left) as they are used a lot.

I'm certainly very 'happy' with the fixed position (and colour assignments) of the sources in Pigments.
It creates a 'stable' user interface and that in turn optimises perception and usability for the common user.

I like your idea around the consistency of double-clicking.. slightly slower than the current single click, but very preferable to those modal "close" boxes in Pigments, I think.

I think it's a nice idea to explore.

Some interesting points:

* Use visual clues. Pigments uses the "+" sign and highlighting of the header to show "that there is further functionality there".

* Being able to go for one mode straight to the other mode can speed up the workflow. But it has to be clear how to exit these modes too when you want to go from an modulation assignment mode to plain manipulating controls. That is e.g. going from painting in the modulation in source mode to just changing the value of a control.

[nordickvr]

...Also, how about giving classic mod sources like envelopes and lfo's a fixed position in the transmod?

Would prefer having this happening within the default/init preset and keep the thing full open for any further user's prefered customization.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Where I think the Pigments approach works great is that:

1. Every mod source is visible at once. So you get an overview of everything available.

2. The ones that are doing something have a color assigned to them so when combined with #1 you can see exactly which are in use.

3. If you want to see what it's doing, you just click on it.

4. They show a visualization of the modulation. Some people find the animating distracting, but I actually find it helpful.

Transmod has never been the most user-friendly system, whereas Pigments' mod system seems to have been designed with ease of use as the top priority. Pigments isn't perfect though and could be improved upon. A Pigments-style system with one click drag and drop assignment to create a new modulation connection would be one way. The ability to minimize the "modulation overview" (whatever that strip in the middle is called) to turn off distracting visualizations would likely be welcome by those who find it distracting. An Onisphere-style matrix/table view off in a different tab would probably be welcome by the more nerdier programers who want an overview of everything. Unlike Omnisphere though, don't go show me blank pages of modulations with things hidden on pages 3 and 4, sort the modulations so everything's on a single page.

Not sure how that type of feedback could be applied to Transmod, without a rethinking of the entire GUI, but honestly, a rethinking of the entire GUI may be in order. There's much more attractive vector based GUI's out there, and BFD2 was probably the last Fxpansion product that seemed to even attempt a "sexy" GUI. I'm of the belief these products would be more broadly appealing if they 1) looked better, and 2) were made much easier to use as part of a GUI redesign, while 3) still being scalable. I'm not saying ditch the vector based GUI necessarily, but I've seen some very good looking vector-based GUI's, and I personally feel like the newer FXPansion products have actually gotten further away that (e.g. Bloom looks better than Strobe2 or Cypher2).

Speaking of Bloom, that mod-system was much closer to Pigments in terms of implementation. Maybe look inward to that and ask, "how can we take what we started wtih Bloom and fit it into a synthesizer, while further improving the ease of use?"

[Angus_FX]

Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:

Speaking of Bloom, that mod-system was much closer to Pigments in terms of implementation. Maybe look inward to that and ask, "how can we take what we started wtih Bloom and fit it into a synthesizer, while further improving the ease of use?"

That's an excellent idea, but it wouldn't be Cypher2. Actually a more fundamental issue is that the type of wave-intermodulation oscillators Cypher2 uses require a greater understanding of what's going on (and are in some ways more difficult to control) than wavetable or other semi-preset oscillators, where a lot of the hard work of getting interesting, harmonically-complex and musically related timbres has been done already, and you can just sculpt as you see fit with envelopes, table-position and filters.

Btw - Bloom isn't a vector GUI, it's almost entirely bitmaps. Ditto Etch, Maul and Tremor. BFD3 and Geist2 are hybrids, Cypher2 and Strobe2 are pure vector.

[MrGetDown]

Angus_FX You do an excellent job of being patient and talking people through things. I'm just a music-noob, forum, backseat-driver, absorbing and enjoying your answers. I'm appreciating your knowledge and perspective of what your share. Keep on, keeping on!

[machinesworking]

Love Cypher 2. I really really wish it had a universal undo. Lost everything I was working on because I hit the arrow key and it changed patches tonight.

[himalaya]

I can sympathise, lough and cry with you, as it has happened to me too. In my example, i hit the program change button on the Seaboard Rise, and lost an unsaved patch. Needless to say, since then I save every few edit moves. Saving is second nature by now.

[Angus_FX]

If you:
- hit the up/down arrow key
- accidentally send a Program Change
- accidentally click on a preset in the Browser
.. just hit the CANCEL button which will have appeared in the Browser (before making any edits to the newly loaded patch) and your work will be back.

If you hit left/right arrow key, that's just selected a different one of the 8 quick presets (think of these like multiple active edit buffers), and if you go back to the previous one, again your work will still be there in the old slot.

Hope this helps!

[machinesworking]

If you:
- hit the up/down arrow key
- accidentally send a Program Change
- accidentally click on a preset in the Browser
.. just hit the CANCEL button which will have appeared in the Browser (before making any edits to the newly loaded patch) and your work will be back.

If you hit left/right arrow key, that's just selected a different one of the 8 quick presets (think of these like multiple active edit buffers), and if you go back to the previous one, again your work will still be there in the old slot.

Hope this helps!

It will in the future!
Did not make the jump from searching for undo in the manual to cancel.

Thanks, this is a fantastic synth. I never owned the original, but the way it works with MPE is just lovely!

[Angus_FX]

Yes, it's not a full Undo - more of a "cancel last load operation" sort of a thing. I don't know if you remember GURU with its browser in-place previews, anyway it's based on that. The newly loaded preset doesn't overwrite the edit buffer until you actually start to edit it.. so up until that point, even if you load more than one preset, you can back out to whatever you were last working on.

As to the Quick Presets - they're so called because they load in a fraction of the time.. the idea is that you can, for example, have 8 snapshot variations of the same patch and switch between them on the fly. Nice for complex-electro genres that were in a couple of years ago.. handy for sequencing different LFO states and suchlike, so rather than setting up those variants on an MSEG you can do so with active variations on the same patch and trigger them. I guess Waves' Flow Motion and NI's Rounds cover similar ground there, albeit with different synthesis genres.

[machinesworking]

Yes, it's not a full Undo - more of a "cancel last load operation" sort of a thing.... [other good info snipped]

You know the only thing Gearslutz has over KVR IMO is the 'thumbs up' feature, you pretty much have to quote and edit to say "thanks for that info"... mostly we just leave the pages a mess!

Anyway thanks for that info. It will save my brain next time!

[Tj Shredder]

[DavidCarlyon]

How is everyone getitng on with this synth? Had my eye on it for a while.
I already have a ton of synths (actually thinned it down a bit to just the best of the best though i think this one is exceptional from what i have heard.
Looks like i am narrowly going to miss the sale...was hoping to pick up both Cypher and Strobe.
I am wondering how 'worth it' it is going to be for me to shell out full price (or try and find used) just after the sale ends.

These two seem like a nice blend of analog vibe and super modern features. I like that kind of synth (though i have a number of them already!)

[Dasheesh]

for me personally, you won't come across much better in software. it should be paired with a sample based instrument tho. something like blue2 would work brilliantly.