One Synth Challenge #132: ToneZ by t0nit0rmx (MrKarollus Wins!)

[Taron]

Yeah, we decided never to fix our cats, which is...uhm... dumb. They never got jumped, luckily, but the behavior is very different from what I had expected. Unlike Tone Z T1, hahaha...behaves very well as expected.
But, yeah, not sure what to do with it now? ...do I pass this around for us here, suggest it to Toni? It's just a first go at it and I could imagine I might find a bunch of things to clean up or possible streamline, especially once I figure out more about the language and CSound. took me almost 30 minutes to figure out how to deal with variables there (Until I chose to check the docs, hahahaha... ). But, yeah, it's simple and terribly oppressive, considering how little access one has to the goings-on. But, who knows, maybe there are just many unexplored things that lead down a more exciting rabbit hole?!

[zarf]

But, yeah, not sure what to do with it now? ...do I pass this around for us here, suggest it to Toni? .... But, who knows, maybe there are just many unexplored things that lead down a more exciting rabbit hole?!

Sounds very interesting what you've done there Taron. If Toni and all happy, would be really cool to see it. I've been wondering about using this OSC as an excuse to look at cabbage a bit more closely (curious about c-sound forever), this might just be the thing that prompts me to make the time for it

I'm quite enjoying ToneZ by the way, even though it's a pretty weird UI design with the envelopes in particular (I keep raising the red triangle alarm, it doesn't work the way my brain expects it too, but that's fine of course). Wish there were modulation targets to play with inside the synth! It's cool to have distortion on hand for a change, and I always appreciate onboard delay...

[Taron]

Yeah, it doesn't like to have two envs on the same subject.
Well, I was just gonna edit my post a little since I wrote it before my first coffee and smoke, which I just now had... .... ... I'm good now!

SO, yep, CSound, hmmmm...I cannot really judge it, yet, because I've only looked at it for the first time yesterday and I'm always paranoid, when it comes to "new" languages for me. There are things to learn and with CSound it looks like it's not too much at all, which is cool. I just prefer to have more control and cringe at having to rely on somebody else's core. I guess, it's all about really understanding the purpose of it, whether it's for actual productions or rather testing and exploring ideas?! ...anyway, the IDE alone is a bit weak regarding editing and navigation. I mean, alone the "find" function really should be called the "search" function, HAHAHA, because if you try to find a keyword in a massive salad of text, you almost can't. Marking is like form 1988 and...wait, maybe I should have another smoke and coffee?!

BUT it leads to very quick results and it hasn't crashed on me, yet (in the 2 hours I had it up between working on other things). Not sure about the deployment, as I had to copy dll and csd into a folder and dropped in the img and preset folder for good measure, hehe. Seems like Toni's dll did get away without them there, making me wonder where the rest went?

However, HOW EVER, to get it all running from scratch has never been so easy with anything else I know of. And that's very cool. Download and install cabbage, load up the source and off you go!
I'm wondering, if I could somehow hook up Sublime Text as IDE for it? That would be too awesome!

Above all else: Respect to Toni for putting this together. Please, don't get me wrong, when I'm ranting a little here and there and sound like a know-it-all. I don't! But I'm thrilled to learn more and am already having some good fun with this. Thank you very, very much for sharing it all and I'd be thrilled to be of use for its evolution.

[OllyAudio]

I used Riper's built-in plug-ins for processing. Equalizers, compression and reverb. Master channel processed by Sender Strike plugins. In the archive settings for Tone Z. I could not put all the sounds used in the archive.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ja9dv ... iI_5LUTLAb
https://soundcloud.com/user-765307497/o ... ith-tone-z

[Taron]

Quick tip on the Cabbage IDE: First thing you should do is go into the settings, go to Colours, scroll down to Editor and change "Selected Text Background" to some color you can spot very easily while still somewhat being able to read it, hehe. Just select some text before you go into the settings so you can see.

Hey Olly, properly aggressive sounding, hehe!
With "Riper" you mean "Reaper", right? For a moment I thought you were talking about Cabbage stuff like a pro, haha. I'm stupid!

[Tj Shredder]

SO, yep, CSound, hmmmm...I cannot really judge it, yet, because I've only looked at it for the first time yesterday and I'm always paranoid, when it comes to "new" languages for me. There are things to learn and with CSound it looks like it's not too much at all, which is cool. I just prefer to have more control and cringe at having to rely on somebody else's core. I guess, it's all about really understanding the purpose of it, whether it's for actual productions or rather testing and exploring ideas?! ...anyway, the IDE alone is a bit weak regarding editing and navigation. I mean, alone the "find" function really should be called the "search" function, HAHAHA, because if you try to find a keyword in a massive salad of text, you almost can't. Marking is like form 1988 and...wait, maybe I should have another smoke and coffee?!

Just in case not all know that already. CSound is probably the oldest still in use and active developed music language. Its (sort of) the successor of Music V. Mainly used for academic avant-garde experimental music, Its background is non-realtime audio processing. Back then computers were not fast enough to even dream of real time processing... And the computers used had been very expensive machines needing extra rooms ... They would need some hours to process a few minutes of sound...
Until today a pretty nerdy tool...
There is a decent Wikipedia article about it...

[IV!]

However, this is a very confusing and unpredictable synthesizer... At first I thought that ENV1=ENV2=ENV3=ENV4, it would be logical, just duplicate blocks, which extends the capabilities of the synthesizer. I created a short sound with OSC1=>ENV1 and a longer sound with OSC2=>ENV2. Then I reassigned OSC1=>ENV2 and OSC2=>ENV1 (since I have an ENV1 attack starting from 0.07 s, and an ENV2 attack starting from 0.01 s ), completely transferring all the parameters along with it. After that, I got a ABSOLUTELY different sound, as if ENV1 and ENV2 were working on different algorithms.

P.S. Perhaps I am describing something that has been discussed for a long time here, after the Google translator, this whole topic looks to me like: "- Hmmm, guys, it seems that these ENVs are not all right! "I agree with you, they're acting strangely!"... in General, I think that the essence can sometimes escape me...

P. P. S. On the contrary, I liked not quite adequate filters, they are fun to make different sound artifacts, especially with a volume of 0-500% and a compressor on board!

P. P. P. S However, Taron, I am one of the people who are grateful to you for your work on the synthesizer and waiting for the opportunity to see and hear it!

[Taron]

OH, that's some neat info, TJ! Thanks!
IV! Oh, I have it work quite nicely now. Just took another look into it and made it ramp down to naught perfectly for amp and filter. Best test is cranking up saturation and- YES- it stops where the sound stops and does so smoothly! No clicks, no freakouts, all perfect. I'm sure, if I spend some more time with it, I will discover more fun things to optimize or play with, but this is very promising!
Not any big changes either, actually. Just split off volume envelopes, gave their direct values into the SuperOsc and MultiFilter to check if the env output is above 0.002 to do the processing and if it goes under 0.02 I do a soft ramp down so it will always end without a surprise. Works brilliantly!

[OllyAudio]

Quick tip on the Cabbage IDE: First thing you should do is go into the settings, go to Colours, scroll down to Editor and change "Selected Text Background" to some color you can spot very easily while still somewhat being able to read it, hehe. Just select some text before you go into the settings so you can see.

Hey Olly, properly aggressive sounding, hehe!
With "Riper" you mean "Reaper", right? For a moment I thought you were talking about Cabbage stuff like a pro, haha. I'm stupid!

Yes. You understood correctly. I used the reaper plugins.

[exponent1]

I used Riper's built-in plug-ins for processing. Equalizers, compression and reverb. Master channel processed by Sender Strike plugins. In the archive settings for Tone Z. I could not put all the sounds used in the archive.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ja9dv ... iI_5LUTLAb
https://soundcloud.com/user-765307497/o ... ith-tone-z

Are you the same Olly Audio from the Mix Challenge? Nice track there

[IV!]

I feel that ToneZ inspires you enough to dig into it, even though you said at first that you might miss this contest! Stockholm syndrome or something else... But it's great to see such passion!
I don't think I could figure out how to do it on my own. But I successfully turn all the shortcomings of the synthesizer into advantages! Well, almost everything... I think I will have to render a lot of tracks this month, as some sounds eat up to 50% of the CPU in one sitting It's not forbidden by the rules, is it? I wouldn't want to make a track out of two sounds!

[doctorbob]

You can render/freeze a whole tracks and then mix them into the final mix. The caveat is that it must be the WHOLE TRACK, and you must not cut/paste/chop the audio up further. If you need to change the sound you must go back to the original, modify the MIDI/sysnth, and re-freeze/re-render that track again.

Hope that makes sense.

dB

[IV!]

It's makes sense, thanks for response! I think this will be the only way for me to create a full-fledged track

[doctorbob]

@IV! I've had to do this when I was using a 10 year old quad core with 4 gigs. It's a pain coz a track nearly always fails to sit in the mix on first (or many) freezes. What I did was to load up the track with all the FX after the synth I was going to use (EQ, Delay etc). See how that sounds and sits in any prelim mix. Then, I would disable the FX, freeze, and then slide the FX over to the new frozen audio track. To my mind the audio coming out of the bottom of the frozen track is just the same as the track with midi->synth->FX … this helps a little if you need to play with the FX applied to the track, not the audio generation from the synth. Hope this makes sense and is still within the "rules" …

Will be watching out for the track!!

My Polka is coming along … did have an issue when half my percussion tracks all suddenly wanted to load my "kick" patch … not all the tracks, and the instrument tracks are fine. If I find out why, I'll post.

dB

[Taron]

Wehehell, I can't promise that I'll be making a track, but I am having fun noodling around with the code and possibly a few bars. Maybe I'll have something at the end, who knows, but we shall see!
...still, I'm having fun, thus I'm grateful!