One Synth Challenge #138: Surge (MrKarolus Wins!)

[EvilDragon]

As for the synthesizer itself, I hope that one day it will be possible to pass the signal of each oscillator through both filters

This is already possible, either serial or parallel.

[Taron]

Hey, IV!
Making breaking glass...that's a fun idea!
As with every sound you wish to recreate, listen carefully and break it into individual tones. Analyzing the snare is a great example for that. Roughly speaking, you will have to listen to the top membrane, the rim and the snare strings separately in your mind.
With glass, well, each shard has a crack sound when breaking off and resonating glass like sound in frequency relative to its size and thickness, roughly speaking again. The impact itself likely has a bit more bass, like a tight thump. Then the crackles, which could be achieved with...hmmm... I should look into it. It's a bit like sequencing, either using the LFO or Steps or repeated Envs. I have to see again.
Anyway, you'd use FM2 and/or FM3 for most oscillators, if not all.
It's DEFINITELY a challenging sound you've picked there. Maybe I'll give it a try.

[doctorbob]

Like others ... here's a small Work in Progress for my drone/ambient + melody track I am working on ... hope you like it so far!

https://soundcloud.com/doctorbob/ambient-wip

dB
PS. This time I am NOT trying to emulate real instruments, but want a decent set to create the soundscape I want ...

[Taron]

Very, very sweet, Rob! I think, you should still watch the peaks, because some of it is again a bit piercing. Maybe because of the overall balance, though.
Still, very, very sweet!

[IV!]

As for the synthesizer itself, I hope that one day it will be possible to pass the signal of each oscillator through both filters

This is already possible, either serial or parallel.

Oh, I thought I'd deleted that part! Yes, I already found this in the detailed manual, sorry!

Hey, IV!
Making breaking glass...that's a fun idea!
As with every sound you wish to recreate, listen carefully and break it into individual tones. Analyzing the snare is a great example for that. Roughly speaking, you will have to listen to the top membrane, the rim and the snare strings separately in your mind.
With glass, well, each shard has a crack sound when breaking off and resonating glass like sound in frequency relative to its size and thickness, roughly speaking again. The impact itself likely has a bit more bass, like a tight thump. Then the crackles, which could be achieved with...hmmm... I should look into it. It's a bit like sequencing, either using the LFO or Steps or repeated Envs. I have to see again.
Anyway, you'd use FM2 and/or FM3 for most oscillators, if not all.
It's DEFINITELY a challenging sound you've picked there. Maybe I'll give it a try.

Thank you for your answer, Taron! Physical analysis is simple for human understanding, but difficult for synthesis implementation. Basically, I want to make a snare with a sound like this to trick the ears into thinking it's breaking glass. It is unlikely that this will be an imitation of each individual piece of glass) It is unlikely that I will get anything out of this at all However, I will try a few variants.

[Taron]

Hahaha, not really good, yet, but totally cool, too... been a while since I just tried to do some effect.

Try to "Strum" those! Somewhere from C3 to C5 or so... big intervals as a strum.

[IV!]

This is very good!!! I also thought about using S&H modulation, now I have a good example to compare, thanks Taron!

[Taron]

You're welcome!
There are endless ways to make this cooler and, of course, wholly different approaches. But one interesting improvement is to use F2 on feedback only and tune it to your liking. Gets more aggressive, but also more glass like.

[doctorbob]

Very, very sweet, Rob! I think, you should still watch the peaks, because some of it is again a bit piercing. Maybe because of the overall balance, though.
Still, very, very sweet!

Thanks T, yup, I know about the peaks ... have to play with the keytracking etc to help smooth that out. May fiddle with octaves as well ... EQ dulls the impact too much I'm afraid this time ...

A reasonable start though ...

dB

[Taron]

...absolutely!

Here's a cute little Smash-Snare test:
https://soundcloud.com/taronium/quicksu ... aftMJUIFDJ

Just some nonsense... used two presets, too, which are surprisingly cool!

[schiing]

The crash happens after closing MuLab, not during playing or cycling through the Surge windows. I haven't encountered any problems yet while working with the project. It's really only after closing MuLab.
Also, I've established that it has nothing to do with the GUI of Surge.

Specs: windows 7 pro 64bit, Xeon dual 6core, Nvidia GTX970, onboard Realtek High Definition Audio (latest drivers), not running ASIO, though, but on MME.

When Asio crashes, well... that would be a blue screen. ... so for the sake of my sanity I don't for now.

Yeh I could close MuLab without any issues... I'm wondering if MME+Realtek might have some problems somehow.

Is there any chance you could borrow a proper audio interface that has its own ASIO drivers rather than the kludget that A4A is?

You could also try disabling the Nvidia audio drivers, if you haven't yet. It seems to have solved my latest problem: Different DAW and specs, but my DAW froze every time I tried to close my new project - which contains Surge instances.

I didn't automatically link my problem to Surge, because I used a template with about a million effects, but reading this, I guess it might have been.

[Aro]

@Taron. Cool glass breaking sound. I had a brief look at your patch but will look further into later.

[Taron]

@schiing: Ah, hmmm...not like I'm using them, but just them being active could cause the troubles? Interesting. Thanks!
@Aro: So much fun to make some effects. It's like painting with sound somehow... often it's about how them play them, too, though!

[doctorbob]

@Taron, I too have lots of sounds to create/paint to add into my track ... first I'm gonna be quite predictable and add a seashore ... a few more little motifs here and there - what they will be ... well, we shall see

dB

[functionform]

I am *in love* with Surge currently. All the oscillators really produce some great fierce sounds, I totally don't miss the "bend/morph modes" of typical wt synths.