Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[baconpaul]

How does it now support MPE?

one guy is looking at MPE support now:
https://github.com/kurasu/surge/issues/93

Hey. I’m that guy. The mpe support is actually very good and after the patch we put in last week works with roli seaboard in Logic Pro with no problem.

[Spitfire31]

Great work! I think that you just persuaded me to get a Seaboard Rise 25 (budget constraints, y'know…).

/Joachim

[aMUSEd]

Based on the 64bit Mac VST build I have made a NKS version for use with Native Instruments hardware and together with a friend over on the NI user forum (Christos Adamos) we have converted and tagged the entire factory bank and all the third party ones available from the Github site. Christos also generated audio previews for each patch. So now Surge is pretty much fully 'NKS Ready'

The Dropbox link includes all the required user files, audio previews, NKS database integration files and image thumbnails for the Maschine/Keyboard screen browsers.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2gm4jtv6i101 ... 7axOa?dl=0

General setup and install info for NKS integration is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpb5s3g52kjyeil/Info.txt?dl=0

btw it works with the 64bit Windows VST2 version too.

[mutantdog]

Nice one. I'll try this one out on Windows within the next few days. Will it be compatible with future builds or is it something that will need updating?

[aMUSEd]

I guess that depends on whether the future builds mess with automation assignments.

[JamminFool]

Based on the 64bit Mac VST build I have made a NKS version for use with Native Instruments hardware and together with a friend over on the NI user forum (Christos Adamos) we have converted and tagged the entire factory bank and all the third party ones available from the Github site. Christos also generated audio previews for each patch. So now Surge is pretty much fully 'NKS Ready'

The Dropbox link includes all the required user files, audio previews, NKS database integration files and image thumbnails for the Maschine/Keyboard screen browsers.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2gm4jtv6i101 ... 7axOa?dl=0

General setup and install info for NKS integration is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpb5s3g52kjyeil/Info.txt?dl=0

btw it works with the 64bit Windows VST2 version too.

Thank you!!!

[planetearth]

So is this now its own fork of the source code? I assume that since it's being offered via Dropbox (and not from the Github site), it's its own version. And other than the NKS and other NI/Maschine-specific updates, were any of the existing issues fixed?

Steve

[aMUSEd]

So is this now its own fork of the source code? I assume that since it's being offered via Dropbox (and not from the Github site), it's its own version. And other than the NKS and other NI/Maschine-specific updates, were any of the existing issues fixed?

Steve

No NKS isn't a plugin format in its own right, it uses the VST2 but provides a means of integrating it tightly into NI keyboards and Maschine. So there are no binaries here, just support files (database entries, images, .json scripts, .nksf format presets and previews).

If and when other issues are fixed hopefully those changes will also improve the NKS version, provided no one makes fundamental changes to the architecture that alter automation IDs.

[baconpaul]

And other than the NKS and other NI/Maschine-specific updates, were any of the existing issues fixed?

Steve

If and when other issues are fixed hopefully those changes will also improve the NKS version, provided no one makes fundamental changes to the architecture that alter automation IDs.

Steve: are all the issues you know about issues on the github or do you have bugs you don’t see over there?

Amused: what constraints are you assuming will be unchanged for this to work between builds?

Thanks!

[aMUSEd]

And other than the NKS and other NI/Maschine-specific updates, were any of the existing issues fixed?

Steve

If and when other issues are fixed hopefully those changes will also improve the NKS version, provided no one makes fundamental changes to the architecture that alter automation IDs.

Steve: are all the issues you know about issues on the github or do you have bugs you don’t see over there?

Amused: what constraints are you assuming will be unchanged for this to work between builds?

Thanks!

As long as from the hosts POV it still appears as the same VST and the automation IDs are all in the same order it should retain param mappings and won't need redoing each time (in other words pretty much the same constraints that would affect project recall in hosts). Obviously if any new automatable features get added then I might have to remake the template but I don't expect that to be happening in the near future at least. Things like MPE and resizing should make no difference.

Would be nice if saving user presets was fixed though.

[baconpaul]

Yeah there’s a github issue for user presets - thanks for the report. They save in ~/documents/surge but the rest of the bugs need debugging. Having it on the list is useful.

I’ve never used nks- how is it usually packaged and distributed? Can you hop onto the issue on GitHub for this work and offer some comments on what it might mean to check in those assets and put them in the installer or some such?

[aMUSEd]

Yeah there’s a github issue for user presets - thanks for the report. They save in ~/documents/surge but the rest of the bugs need debugging. Having it on the list is useful.

I’ve never used nks- how is it usually packaged and distributed? Can you hop onto the issue on GitHub for this work and offer some comments on what it might mean to check in those assets and put them in the installer or some such?

I have found one of the user presets I saved in that folder in documents but it doesn't show in Surge and I can't see any way to load it. I think different versions seem to be saving into different locations as well. The AU is saving somewhere else for example.

Not sure how NKS is packaged - this is really user developed unofficial NKS support, in most cases when a plugin developer becomes part of NI's NKS developer ecosystem they get access to the full SDK, but us users have managed to figure out how 95% of it works ourselves, we don't have the official support from NI though.

[planetearth]

And other than the NKS and other NI/Maschine-specific updates, were any of the existing issues fixed?

Steve

If and when other issues are fixed hopefully those changes will also improve the NKS version, provided no one makes fundamental changes to the architecture that alter automation IDs.

Steve: are all the issues you know about issues on the github or do you have bugs you don’t see over there?

Amused: what constraints are you assuming will be unchanged for this to work between builds?

Thanks!

I haven't stumbled across any bugs, but I know that when this was originally made "open source" a few months ago, people were talking about fixing some things, making the GUI bigger, and maybe making an OSX version. Since then, I haven't heard much about it, so I'm not sure how much was done. A quick check on the Github page shows many outstanding bugs, with some as recent as earlier this week.

I was only asking because if the installer and associated files were put into a Dropbox folder, they're no longer really available to anyone who was using Github to keep up with the synth. That's why I was asking if this was going to be a separate fork of the project. Now that Vember Audio's site is gone, the Github repository is going to become more difficult to find. And if this "NKS-ready" version (for want of a better way to describe it, since no one assigned it a version number) is only available via Dropbox--and only if you find the link here on KVR--it could be more difficult for others to find out what's going on.

For what it's worth, I have nothing against an "NKS-ready" version of the synth. I'm simply more interested in making sure the open source ethos is maintained, and that the synth--with all of its updates and/or forks--is available to all, and remains easy to find.

Steve

[aMUSEd]

The NKS files can't have a version number as they are not a version of the plugin, just additional support files to integrate it into the NI hardware ecosystem. There is no source code etc to add either. I've nothing against this going up on Github though but I don't personally have an account or know how to use it and me not being able to access it on Github is going to make it harder for me to update. Maybe a link could be placed on Github to the NKS files, just as one may make links to things like third party banks etc, consider it more like that than as a new 'fork' in the codebase.

[MattmaN]

Any word on a Energyxt gui fix for windows vst2?