Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[baconpaul]

So i grabbed the latest nightly and heres the feedback.

When a slider that already has a mod amount set is rightclicked, Edit and Clear show in the context menu even when Surge is not in mod assignment mode. This is rather convenient, so i was wondering if Add could be added to that menu so you can assign the currently highlighted modulator without going into mod assignment mode first. (If thats technically possible.) Of course this would just be a 'icing-on-the-cake' kind of thing, but operationally it would again speed things up so i thought id suggest it.

I really like this idea

Here's the GitHub issue for it

https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/2428

[EvilDragon]

And here it is implemented.

[baconpaul]

And I just merged it. Should be in the nightly within an hour! Awesome idea!

[layzer]

Yeah just drag and drop them onto the oscillator @layzer, or load them with the menu if they are wav files with no metadata. (We try to identify if a wav file has serum or NI or so on metadata when we load it; if not its a one shot)

thanks BP! well then, if i move on from WINXP, this very well MAY be
the push that makes it happen. I'll wait for it to mature a little more
and give you guys some time to iron out all the kinks and solidify it
before i say bye to v1.5

[EvilDragon]

It's already quite mature and much more solid than v1.5 You're missing out on a looooot of new things.

[grandmasterbird]

No stability issues here on mac, seems rock solid.

Still can't believe this is free. It's become one of my go to synths

[ENV1]

Wow, you two are like lightning!

At first i meant to suggest making it exactly like that, (i.e. having all mod sources directly in the menu so they can be direct-selected regardless of which one is currently highlighted), but i didnt want to push it because i already felt half-guilty for suggesting this at all since youve implemented the other suggestion so quickly.

So great to see youve ultimately had the same idea. Functionally this seems to be just about perfect, but i think for tidyness sake some grouping is in order, also to keep the menu-height as short as possible so it wont become an issue at lower screen resolutions. So my suggestion would be this:

Group stuff into sub-categories wherever it makes sense. E.g. put all Macro items in a sub-category named 'Macros', all Voice LFO items in a sub-category named 'Voice LFOs', all Scene LFO items in a sub-category named 'Scene LFOs', and so forth. See z3ta+ for example.

z3ta+ModSourceList.png

Also i think (and thats of course just my personal opinion) that the whole mod assign system might benefit from making things a bit clearer in general. (If you want to take this further.) It was always a bit strange to have everything as 'LFOs' even when EGs or StepSeqs were used, so separating EGs and SteqSeqs from actual LFOs in the newer builds was definitely a great step. However in general, in my view, the modulators might be better presented (at least in the new menu) as Modulator # + Type, like for instance 'Per-Voice Modulator 1 - LFO' or 'Per-Voice Modulator 1 - EG' and 'Scene Modulator 1 - StepSeq' etcetera because this would make it 100% clear which and what kind of modulator youre actually assigning. But thats of course something you will have to decide.

As always, thanks for all the work youre putting into this, will download the latest nightly later this evening and post some feedback.

[Hez]

@ the whole Surge team, I noticed that Audio Vitamins have just open sourced their semi-generative sequencer Stochas a few days ago:

https://github.com/rudeog/stochas_open

I bought it when it was released and have used it a fair bit, it's a fun little tool. I don't know if it's of interest to any of you, but if it is, it could be a nice little companion sequencer for Surge - it's similarly unique!

[EvilDragon]

Group stuff into sub-categories wherever it makes sense. E.g. put all Macro items in a sub-category named 'Macros', all Voice LFO items in a sub-category named 'Voice LFOs', all Scene LFO items in a sub-category named 'Scene LFOs', and so forth. See z3ta+ for example.

This is exactly what I thought at first, too (and exactly used z3ta+ as an example), but this WOULD slow things down UX-wise.

So maybe we leave this one for the case when we have more modulators than what would sanely fit on that menu?

Another idea I had was to try a multi-column menu here, VSTGUI supports that, but I am not sure if that works on Mac and Linux...

[ENV1]

This is exactly what I thought at first, too (and exactly used z3ta+ as an example), but this WOULD slow things down UX-wise.

You mean due to having to hover into the sub-category?

Maybe a little, but given the choice i would prefer that in favor of the tidiness.

So maybe we leave this one for the case when we have more modulators than what would sanely fit on that menu?

Ultimately i can live with either solution. As someone who doesnt shy away from using a hosts generic UI to control/setup plugins i certainly wouldnt complain because the main thing is the fast direct access to the modulators and that is there.

[ENV1]

By the way, ive heard youre looking for someone who can make installers.

Does it absolutely have to be Inno for some reason or will any solution do?

In the latter case i could have installers for regular and portable setups ready by the end of the weekend...

[EvilDragon]

Inno is what we use for Windows, and is one of the more robust solutions out there. But NSIS would be fine too as far as I'm concerned - if that's your "latter case"?

To be honest, we should probably spend some more time with Inno documentation and figure it out somehow

[baconpaul]

I have not particular commitment to inno. It is what Claes used when he open sourced it. The one thing is if we use a different tool we need to be able to run it in our pipeline (so it needs a command line version and needs to either be in a stock MSVC build or installable via nuget). All ears on what to do though.

[baconpaul]

@ the whole Surge team, I noticed that Audio Vitamins have just open sourced their semi-generative sequencer Stochas a few days ago:

https://github.com/rudeog/stochas_open

I bought it when it was released and have used it a fair bit, it's a fun little tool. I don't know if it's of interest to any of you, but if it is, it could be a nice little companion sequencer for Surge - it's similarly unique!

Thanks! I dropped a note on their github introducing the team and saying hi.

[ENV1]

I have not particular commitment to inno. It is what Claes used when he open sourced it. The one thing is if we use a different tool we need to be able to run it in our pipeline (so it needs a command line version and needs to either be in a stock MSVC build or installable via nuget). All ears on what to do though.

Well, ive worked with Advanced Installer in the past, (among others), but the latest version made my AV go haywire on like 7 of the installed files, (all flagged as Trojans of a specific sort), so i didnt even run it. So i looked for an alternative and found that CreateInstall was suitable. The free version really is free, i.e. no popups or nags or anything, (only feature-reduced), so as a free solution for free software it would definitely work.

But as i suspected, it may not meet your additional requirements. For instance i would have to check whether it supports commandline. Maybe you can take a look yourself, if its something you can work with then i will glady do the work, in fact i have a setup 90% done for the 32bit portable already.