Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[codec_spurt]

I've done a sort of euro-techno one synth demo with it in Ableton, including drum sounds. All from other's presets of course. It's hardly the Pet Shop Boys, but I don't mind putting the live pack up for download. It sounds great considering there are absolutely no FX at all.

Might you have a SoundCloud link for this? Would be interesting to hear.

https://soundcloud.com/codex_pert/surge-mix


8 instances of Surge synthesizer in Ableton Live 9, providing all sounds, including drums, totally unprocessed.


I have all the stems for each of these loops as a unique ableton file. About 30 in all.

I'll make up a live pack and give it to you if you want to see what patches I used and how I tweaked them.

I know it's a bit ropey (mixed on laptop speakers), but the entire track is nothing but Surge straight out of the box. Sounds not too bad on headphones considering.

[Autobot]

I miss one feature request (at least I didn't find it here or on GitHub) ... Undo and Redo ... No hurry but it would be nice to have ... Anyway a big thank you to everyone involved in keeping Surge alive and for the enhancements ...

[layzer]

here is a short test song i made using the VFX transwave WT
and also a VFX attack wav to create a guitar sound.
the guitar has a very detailed attack from careful velocity
modulations.
https://app.box.com/s/qtl47ofa8gf89tdum8g9g6cr04xzgn72

oh, and i just gotta give Synth1 credit for the free BRASS sound

[Autobot]

Had a bug since the first re-release and hope it will be fixed ... however now and then when I load Surge there is just one heavy clicky sound far over 0db - like you see in the screenshot - the preset is still audible but whit this heavy attack sound ... it's no DC I think because the sound is still there with a DC remover. And the sound is there with all presets (use just my own though). Actually a workaround is to reload the project or to reload the Surge instance. I wonder that nobody else discovered this.

Win7 64-bit
Ableton Live 10.04 64-bit
Surge-1.6.0-beta-6

[ENV1]

amused has confirmed that the mac build does pick up the
.wav files in the drop menu, but refuses to actually load and use them.

This may sound like a dumb question, but do these WAVs load in the Windows version?

(I assume that they do because youve probably tested them, just making sure.)

The reason why im asking is because i have discovered that Surge doesnt load just any WAV, even if it is in a valid format. Simply put: Length matters! While trying to figure out why some WAVs of the same format would load just fine whereas others would not, i have discovered that there is a point where the plugin (talking about 1.5.2 now) considers a WAV 'too long' (so to speak) and therefore doesnt load it even if the format itself is supported. I have tracked this point down to the following values:

Seconds: 2.728 (2.728005 shown in the more precise display)

Samples: 120,305

Bytes: 962,440

(Note: Seconds, Samples and Bytes all represent the same thing, i.e. they are merely different ways of indicating the length of the file.)

With a length of 2.728 seconds a WAV still loads fine.

With a length of 2.729 seconds a WAV is considered too long and will not load.

The threshold therefore seems to be 2.728 seconds, which means any sample not exceeding that limit should be fine.

Formats tested:

- IEEE float signed 32 bit, 44100 Hz, 2822 kbps, stereo
- IEEE float signed 32 bit, 44100 Hz, 1411 kbps, mono
- PCM signed 16 bit, 44100 Hz, 1411 kbps, stereo
- PCM signed 16 bit, 44100 Hz, 705 kbps, mono

All of these formats worked fine as long as the WAV remained within the limit of 2.728 seconds max.

Anything longer than that did not load regardless of the format used.

Method used to load the WAVs was via drag&drop from Windows Explorer to Surge.

(Which BTW switches to Wavetable Osc automatically when a WAV is dropped onto its window.)


Not sure if this helps any in this particular case, (probably not), just thought id mention it because this length-limit is not documented in the manual and thus a potential source of confusion when 2 WAVs are exactly the same format, yet only one of them loads. (As was the case in my case.)

[baconpaul]

amused has confirmed that the mac build does pick up the
.wav files in the drop menu, but refuses to actually load and use them.

This may sound like a dumb question, but do these WAVs load in the Windows version?

So here's the deal with wav file loading in surge 1.6.* (which is basically the same since it was open sourced)

First: It is all windows only right now. The code just doesn't exist on mac and linux. I have versions starting to get there but it is tricky in one particular way.

It is weird because: wav files are loaded to create wavetables. So they are parsed to be a collection of (n) tables of size (2^m). So like "17 tables of length 512" or "9 tables of length 1024". Basically this is the same thing that is in a wt file (outlined https://github.com/kurasu/surge/blob/ma ... format.txt) but put in a wav file. Since wav file doesn't naturally represent windows, the code uses header information from wav file extended headers to figure out the WT length and count; and absent the information makes an assumption that, basically, you have a wave file with is 1024-sample-long wave tables.

Moving that odd header parsing code over to mac and linux and - most importantly - finding examples of wav files which have headers to represent their wt nature which work on surge windows is most important.

But wav file parsing on surge is *not* load 4 seconds of guitar and turn the oscillator into a sampler. It is load 0.4 seconds of guitar and turn that into 17 tables.

The issues to get wav file back to life on mac and linux are all tagged 'path to wav' in the GitHub. Take a look here: https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/su ... +to+wav%22 if you want to follow along or if you have things which you think can help.

Again most appreciated things is: Wav files which have header modifications to act like wt files and work with windows surge in the expected fashion.

(Anticipating an inevitable question: Yes an extended one shot oscillator is possible I suppose but would need to write that; our goal with 1.6.0 stable is to not add new audio features or graphics features beyond zoom but rather get the code in a stable all platform space).

[baconpaul]

I miss one feature request (at least I didn't find it here or on GitHub) ... Undo and Redo ... No hurry but it would be nice to have ... Anyway a big thank you to everyone involved in keeping Surge alive and for the enhancements ...

Good idea. I added it as an issue but tagged it for after the 1.6.0 release.

https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/694

[baconpaul]

Had a bug since the first re-release and hope it will be fixed ... however now and then when I load Surge there is just one heavy clicky sound far over 0db - like you see in the screenshot - the preset is still audible but whit this heavy attack sound ... it's no DC I think because the sound is still there with a DC remover. And the sound is there with all presets (use just my own though). Actually a workaround is to reload the project or to reload the Surge instance. I wonder that nobody else discovered this.

Win7 64-bit
Ableton Live 10.04 64-bit
Surge-1.6.0-beta-6

You are not the only person to see this. We can all wedge surge into a click state sometimes and we don't know why. On mac I do do it reliably by changing sample rates around and sometimes just at startup too. I think it is some uninitialized memory but we haven't found it yet.

Here's an issue to follow if you want. https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/662

We have to find and fix this bug for sure.

[PietW.]

Why does Surge necessarily load wav files? There is a program that converts Wave to the format for Surge.
It will also be a problem if only one wave is loaded. if played this will play higher which sounds bad or Surge will support multisamples.

[Autobot]

Why does Surge necessarily load wav files? There is a program that converts Wave to the format for Surge.
It will also be a problem if only one wave is loaded. if played this will play higher which sounds bad or Surge will support multisamples.

Do you mean Audioterm or another tool?

[layzer]

Why does Surge necessarily load wav files? There is a program that converts Wave to the format for Surge.
It will also be a problem if only one wave is loaded. if played this will play higher which sounds bad or Surge will support multisamples.

i don't like how long wav files get shorter as you play it up higher on the
midi keyboard without multi sampling, but i'm loving the little short
"attacks" i sampled from my VFX
when the wav is that short you really can't hear anything but the attack.
it just adds that little bit of realism to the plucky patches
so, i don't mind surge not being a full blown sampler/wavetable synth.

[PietW.]

Why does Surge necessarily load wav files? There is a program that converts Wave to the format for Surge.
It will also be a problem if only one wave is loaded. if played this will play higher which sounds bad or Surge will support multisamples.

Do you mean Audioterm or another tool?

Yes. I mean our tool Audioterm. I have already made some videos (also for Surge) and it's really easy to make Surge with Audioterm Wavetables.

[PietW.]

Why does Surge necessarily load wav files? There is a program that converts Wave to the format for Surge.
It will also be a problem if only one wave is loaded. if played this will play higher which sounds bad or Surge will support multisamples.

Do you mean Audioterm or another tool?

Yes. I mean our tool Audioterm. I have already made some videos (also for Surge) and it's really easy to make Wavetables with Audioterm

[esaruoho]

btw, baconpaul knocked up a python script that can create a .wt file out of a folder containing input001.wav - inputxxx.wav - and it is now merged into master. i just tried it, and got 87 wavefiles (cut to length of 1024 samples each) into becoming a surge-readable .wt.

the script can also expand a regular surge compatible .wt into wavefiles that were contained within it.

i'd love to know more about what should be done with wavetable files, like overall dB / RMS, anything at all. anyone willing to help us out on Slack - now would be a great time to update the documentation re: wavetables.

[layzer]

btw, baconpaul knocked up a python script that can create a .wt file out of a folder containing input001.wav - inputxxx.wav

ugh, but...python. this would be a nice little windows .exe utility