G2500 Virtual Analog - a virtual ARP 2500

[EvilDragon]

32-bit fp precision (usually meaning - at best - the 10-12 bits in knob settings you mention) settings in most virtual instruments adds up to steppy, imprecise crap.

Well no, because most good plugins do smoothing internally. u-he plugins have no problems with this, for example.

[mrdoghead]

As I said differently, the sound is smooth, the settings not. More, and worse, sometimes knobs settings step in inconsistent ways - even within apps.

The MIDI relationship to setting states dictates how fine the grain will be, but just for MIDI - and the implementation of this is up to each developer and it varies, again, sometimes within applications. Leaving aside MIDI (of whatever flavor) for a moment, the implementation of smooth controls, with fine resolution and numerical repeatability, is desirable for control-freak reasons. That software makes a sweep sound good despite giving 127 stopping points on a MIDI knob is the minimal expected behavior in modern software. For tasks other than running under MIDI controllers, however, having as many stopping points as possible along the range of knobs and sliders is very desirable (and too often we don't get the benefit of that kind of control). To me it is desirable, at least, and it seems the developer of this app takes a similar view.

[EvilDragon]

As I said, u-he problems don't have problems with this, and their controls have way more than 127 steps usually. And many other plugins are the same in this regard.

I don't buy the "millions of values" argument. Are you telling me you will hear a difference of 0.000001 in parameter value? Of course you won't. Repeatability is a good argument, but you don't need millions of available values for that. Analog pots of yore had tolerance of 10-25%, that is a LOT of room to make repeatability nigh impossible.

[Geomol]

I don't buy the "millions of values" argument. Are you telling me you will hear a difference of 0.000001 in parameter value? Of course you won't.

Of course, you can. And you can proove it to yourself.

- Launch G2500
- Send two 1004-T oscillators sine output to speakers, and set their coarse frequency to 8000 Hz
- Listen
- Now change one of the two's fine frequency from x1 to x1.000001
- Listen (you might have to wait a little to hear the difference)

This may be seen as an extreme but simple example, and you can probably find other situations with frequency interference (I'm danish, so not sure about the term in english, "beating together"?), where subtle differences can be heard.

[Geomol]

For tasks other than running under MIDI controllers, however, having as many stopping points as possible along the range of knobs and sliders is very desirable (and too often we don't get the benefit of that kind of control). To me it is desirable, at least, and it seems the developer of this app takes a similar view.

I have done a lot of research about this. I almost made controllers in G2500 64-bit, but ended up with 32-bit, and that might be good enough for most or all situations. I would love to be proven wrong.

As I also do a bit of electronics, I try to find ways to create hardware controllers for G2500. I need an A/D converter with good resolution, so you can control a dial knob in G2500 with precision. I can find not-too-expensive ones for max around 20 bit resolution. To get better than that, and it would end up as expensive as the original ARP 2500 (the cost of a small house). This is quite a challenge, and I would like to have good precise control, as you do.

[Teksonik]

What does whether you move your mouse up and down or in a circle make any difference in "resolution" ? Yes you might have to cover more screen territory moving linear but I find that it's preferable to circular. I find circular movement a bit fiddly. To each his own and all......

[Geomol]

What does whether you move your mouse up and down or in a circle make any difference in "resolution" ?

There are a couple of differences.

If you really want precise control, you can do this:
If you e.g. drag the GUI, so your dial knob is out in the left side of your screen, you can click it and move your mouse pointer all the way to the right side of your screen. Now moving the mouse back and forth, you have 1-2-3,000 different positions (depending on screen resolution) within a small range of the dial knob full range. Move controller to different parts of your screen to control other small ranges.

With circle control, you can also change the dial knob values over its full range with little mouse movement, when you keep the mouse pointer close to the knob. With linear control you would have to move the mouse a lot to access the full range, wouldn't you?

(I need to create a video about this.)

[Teksonik]

I've never had to move the mouse over an uncomfortable range to control any of the dozens of synths I own and they're all set to Linear Movement either by default or by choice in the options.

There is usually Shift+Mouse Movement for fine control.

[Geomol]

There is usually Shift+Mouse Movement for fine control.

You have Shift+Mouse in G2500 aswell, so that will be familar.

When developing G2500, I first tried with the "common" way of linear control. I ended up switching to circular, because I found, it gave me better control. It may be hard to judge between the two, if one have only tried one of the ways.

G2500 has only been public a good month, so it is still young. There might come options for different ways to control the beast along the way. I just also have to be carefull not to bring in so many options, it become a nightmare to choose, as is seen with some modern software.

It is a fine art to Keep IT Simple.

[Teksonik]

Just don't keep it so simple that people lose interest and move on to using something else.

Ok good luck with your project. I'm out.......

[Geomol]

I just realized, I did not mention how to change values in the smallest steps in the post above:

- Now change one of the two's fine frequency from x1 to x1.000001

In G2500, you can toggle tooltips with F2. A press on F2, hovering the mouse over the "freqeuncy fine" control will show:

1.000000 X

Now press Enter on the keyboard to enter values, and change it to "1.000001 X". Sorry about leaving this part out. I hope, it makes sense.

[Geomol]

NicomSoft Updates G2500 Virtual Analog to Version 1.1 adding two new modules

G2500 Virtual Analog is a recreation in software of the classic ARP 2500 from 1970, one of the first synthesizers - and using modules.

The new modules also found in the original ARP 2500 are

- 1004-P Oscillator
- 1046 Quad Exponential Envelope Generator

Download free trial and buy G2500 v. 1.1 from the homepage:

G2500 Virtual Analog

[deskew]

A VST version of this would be really worth something

[Russell Grand]

Looks cool but the price is too steep for me to even demo right now. I don't want to like it and not be able to purchase!

[Tj Shredder]

When developing G2500, I first tried with the "common" way of linear control. I ended up switching to circular, because I found, it gave me better control. It may be hard to judge between the two, if one have only tried one of the ways.

It is a fine art to Keep IT Simple.

I also tried both, circular is slow the opposite of fine control and drives me crazy. There is a reason why 100% of successful commercial software does it linear, or at least give a choice for the minuscule part of users who think circular is better...
All your users who have also more than a single soft synth are simply used to linear.
If you want to keep it simple do it linear, if not give an option...
You might not be aware that this small detail can be a deal breaker...
Btw. if a precise setting is wanted, nothing can beat a numerical input...
And of course, if you would invest into the effort to do a vst version, you would sell more than 10 times more and this thread would have more than 50 pages...