Hive 2 is coming!

[pdxindy]

I never said Dune 3's WT Editor is superior. I only said that I can and have made WT's using it while I have no idea how to make them using Hive's scripting engine.

Well, Dune 3's WT editor is superior because Hive has no editor at all.

[pdxindy]

There's been this recurring argument since Hive 1.2 came out that just doesn't make sense to me. I'm paraphrasing, but what I've basically seen variations of is this:

1. I like Hive because it's simple
2. I don't want to learn a scripting language
3. I know I don't need to learn scipting to benefit from it
4. But because I know Hive has scripting I feel like it's complex now
5. ...even though I know I don't have to learn how to script to benefit from it

Just doesn't make sense to me.

I've played around by editing scripts other people have created, and importing .wav files into Hive via the scripts, but honestly, I just stick to the excellent, built-in wavetables. No need to do anything but treat them as extra oscillator waveforms with some unique features not available in the standard osc's.

You can also just drop Serum or Icarus WT's into the Hive Wavetable folder and they then available in Hive... no need to touch scripts at all.

[BONES]

Or maybe they're so busy using the Wavetable Editor they don't have time to talk about it on the forums ?

Well, it is so fiddly that it would definitely suck up all your free time. Kind of makes Urs's point for him.

Really Chris ? Certainly you know the difference between playing a single waveform and sweeping through a table made up of several waveforms.

With an additive oscillator, you'd modulate different parameters to do pretty much exactly what you get when you sweep a wavetable. His point is completely valid.

I use "Sweeping" as a rather generic term. It could mean using an LFO or MSEG to sweep though the table over time or simply using Random to WT Position to trigger a different waveform in a table each time a key is pressed and many other things in between.

The same can be done to an additive osc, you just modulate different things. There is nothing at all special about wavetable synthesis.

Some of the sounds I got out of it were amazing but I don't even have it installed anymore.

I'm pretty sure Ultran is the same, it just uses soundfonts as wave sources. It has 4 of those oscillators and Rich's awesome filters, so it's an amazingly good thing.

The day I feel my time would be best spent creating my own wavetables is the day I give up music. Seriously, what utter tedium that would be. I would never consciously choose a wavetable oscillators in either Hive or DUNE. They just don't do anything interesting enough, especially when I can replicate the functionality perfectly in a $200 hardware analogue synth (Uno) just by turning a knob. I might be de rigour at the moment but it's a fad that will pass, hopefully soon. We've had one in Orion since forever, and I've collected more than 100 wavetables for it, but I only ever use it when I want the 3 oscillators it has, never for its wavetables, most of which sound the bloody same anyway.

[JunSev]

BONES, not only you like to talk too much and loud, but a lot of things without sense and very wrong.

For you it seems that is almost enough with some virtual analog synthesis and that is everything... just the sine, saw, square... where with a wavetable synth you can have thousands of different forms and unique tones, there is way more possibilities, flexibility and quite straightforward way to emulate or get some sounds from it, including resynthesis and easy sample import, imagine you want to resynthesis a oboe sound, or a flute, a guitar, an harp, a shakuhachi, speech...

No that VA Synthesis is useless, but is nowhere close to what a wavetable synth can do. And I do think that people that think like you are only trying holding us back in limitations of old units, you're quite wrong indeed.

With all respect.

[JunSev]

Concerning a wavetable editor in a synth; I do think that there is a lot of usefulness on it, and a lot of technical reasons when dealing with some wavetables and waves.

If would like to reduce or change considerably the sound, or make more soft the sound of the waveform/wavetable I can apply the configuration, I can saturate, make it more clean, make it more warm and remove the noise from it and a lot of more little details if I want to; all of that thanks to a wavetable editor.

It might be possible that some people can't appreciate or understand how useful a wavetable editor actually might be, but is indeed useful sometimes.

All of this according to my experience with all I can do with tone2 Icarus.

[AnX]

I'm pretty sure Ultran is the same, it just uses soundfonts as wave sources.

no, told you this before. all it does is volume crossfade wav files (osp) You can actually use the samples in the Sampler too

if you want WT, then its Wavefusion synth

[EvilDragon]

Regarding scripting:
It's of course a personal point of view that I don`t like scripts and scripting in a vsti. Therfore I have converted all scripts with Hive into .wav files and deleted all scripts.

You made a mistake there. .uhm scripts sound different to WAV files you make from them, they are much cleaner and smoother. Leave them in and just use them as if they are any other wavetable!

[Urs]

Regarding scripting:
It's of course a personal point of view that I don`t like scripts and scripting in a vsti. Therfore I have converted all scripts with Hive into .wav files and deleted all scripts.

You made a mistake there. .uhm scripts sound different to WAV files you make from them, they are much cleaner and smoother. Leave them in and just use them as if they are any other wavetable!

Uhm, no, they should sound exactly the same.

In fact we're thinking of caching uhm scripts as .wav files to reduce loading times of scripts with complex calculations.

[drzhnn]

Uhm, no, they should sound exactly the same.

Interesting. I too used to think they sounded different. Probably because I haven't really played with WAV wavetables too much and was focused on UHMs. But now that I'm comparing UHM and their WAV exports, they are indeed sound exactly the same. And that specific "UHM" mojo is still present in WAVs as well

[Urs]

I think there's sometimes the misconception that uhm scripts are somehow calculated in realtime. They are not. They are a bunch of quite simple commands which can Load, Save, Attenuate/Normalize, Copy, Cut, Mix, Merge, Overlay and Interpolate wavetables. Up to there, uhm are as simple as it gets, there's no voodoo.

Additionally there is a formula parser which is similarly complex or simple as the one built into Serum. But because the formulae can be split up into several lines, it's actually easier to do a lot of things than typing it into Serum's single input line. One can build wavetables step by step, line by line.

And also, because one can combine what I laid out in the first paragraph and the second, uhm scripts can be used to stitch, filter, manipulate, improve, edit, prepare, mangle and warp any existing wavetable .wavs and .uhms (yes, you can import an uhm into an uhm as well). So a script can be written once and applied to many wavetables much like a batch script (we might even add batch functionality some day).

Just recently we had an uhm script in one of the threads in our forum where someone was able to improve the sound of his "samples imported as wavetable into xxx", which he could then apply to his whole collection of wavetables. So these scripts have a lot more to them than just being "some fancy way to do what is easier done in an editor".

The point is, if you wish to create your own wavetables and you spend quite some time in visual editors, you know how tedious it is. How long does it take to import a sample, clean up some edges, delete some frames, smooth out some parts, undo redo ad nauseam until it sound good? On hour? Two? - You can learn all uhm basics (no fancy math required) in that time. You can take existing scripts, change some parameters and get new, interesting wavetables in next to no time. The longest I ever spent on an uhm was fifteen minutes. The learning curve may be steep, but one thing it is not: It is not tedious. It's actually quite quick.

We surely need to add more documentation. We need to add a library of useful snippets, e.g. Spectrum lowest=0 highest=0 "0" to remove DC offset. We also learn new tricks and get new ideas from many user posts out there, and from our own experience. So we're not done yet with uhm, we just got started.

Anyhow, back to Hive 2. A new beta has been seeded, we're homing in on a final verison in the next few weeks. Can't wait to release this thing!

[cytospur]

It won't be a surprise to those that know me, but I'm having loads of fun with uhm scripting. For someone, who uses Mathematica in a similar way, the uhm approach is even easier in many respects, which is saying something (to me anyway)!

For certain synthesis paradigms such as Yamaha FM and Casio CZ, it certainly is a lot easier than Mathematica, and one can program pretty much a whole synthesis engine in a few lines of script. For instance, I knocked up <my interpretation of> two of the algorithms of the Casio VZ1 in less than 10 minutes.

One thing that I think could make the scripts more accessible for the many is to have access to variables that could be placed at the top of the script. Variables for things such as oscillator coarse tuning or envelope values that are referred to in the main body of the script, e.g.:

Code: Select all

//Oscillator coarse tunings
Var "o1=2" "o2=3"
//Amplitudes
Var "amp1=0.75" "amp2=0.25"
Wave "amp1*sin(o1*2*pi*phase)+amp2*sin(o2*2*pi*phase)"

EDITS = hate typos!

[Ploki]

There seems to be a missanderstanding !
I have not suggested sample import but resynthesizing
samples into wavetables like in Icarus or Serum.
I have very good results with Serum even with problematic
high frequence sounds but it could be easier to use and sometimes better results.
Therefore an aproach from an other company like U-He could maybe offer even better results.
Also Avenger, as far as I have read, will offer an 1.5 Update with a reworked resynthesis engine and a wavetable editor.
So it's on the road by many companies.

Regarding scripting:
It's of course a personal point of view that I don`t like scripts and scripting in a vsti. Therfore I have converted all scripts with Hive into .wav files and deleted all scripts.

Why is using a resynthesis method better than editing a sample and preparing it as a WT and using it as such?

[Urs]

One thing that I think could make the scripts more accessible for the many is to have access to variables that could be placed at the top of the script. Variables for things such as oscillator coarse tuning or envelope values that are referred to in the main body of the script, e.g.:

This is something I have been thinking about. That, and arrays of numbers.

Also, giving the envelope feature a secondary dimension.

[dioxine]

Hello everyone! Urs, what about adding LFO or Envelope movements as variables to that wavetable creation scripting engine in realtime ?

[cytospur]

One thing that I think could make the scripts more accessible for the many is to have access to variables that could be placed at the top of the script. Variables for things such as oscillator coarse tuning or envelope values that are referred to in the main body of the script, e.g.:

This is something I have been thinking about. That, and arrays of numbers.

Also, giving the envelope feature a secondary dimension.

If I might push it a bit further then what about functions?

e.g.

Code: Select all

//Oscillator coarse tunings
Var "o1=2" "o2=3"
//Amplitudes
Var "amp1=0.75" "amp2=0.25"

//General sine oscillator
Func "osc(a_,b_,c_)=a*sin(b*2*phase+c)"

//Simple DX 2-op FM
Wave "osc(amp1,o1,osc(amp2,o2,0))"

I'm guessing that's pushing it a bit too far