Falcon and Phase Plant comparison

[functionform]

It can be modulated by lfos and msegs, but they will running by themselves, and will not be able to respond to keytrigger and will be running constantly (synced or not). Each keygroup has its own envelope. A trick you can use (for example when you have a few keygroups in one layer) is to select the keygroups and change the ADSR (so long as they have the same ADSR type) at the same time. Another way is to create macro mappings for each step of the envelope and bind all approrpiate params to them if you want to go that route. For a layer percussive sound, they would most likely have their own subtlely different envs anyway so probably not the best use case, but yes, no midi trigger modulation at the layer or higher levels.

[chagzuki]

Wow, that seems ludicrous. Unless I'm missing something... surely that level of control is the reason for seeking out more modular, customizable environments... which is what Falcon is supposed to be.

[functionform]

Yep. It's probably the major disappointment new users to Falcon encounter since it's a very reasonable expectation. Some of the other stuff are nice to haves or cool upgrades and like I said there are workarounds you discover.

[chagzuki]

My brain was trying to run through the ramifications of this and I was realising I need to go back over all the videos that explain workflow. It's looking to me that, let's say I want several keygroups to act as a unit in how they modulate each time a note is played, that's fine for a set of basic parameters such as DADHSR, pan, volume etc: one would just assign the same modulator to all of them. But then for something as basic as a filter where the cutoff changes each time a note is played, that looks to me as though that requires the keygroups to be on a layer, and the filter applied to the layer, and if that's the case then the filter note-on modulation isn't possible. Unless there's a way to route the keygroups to a filter without them needing to be on a layer? Or do they require an individual filter for each keygroup, which are then assigned to the same modulator?

Edit: I see that 'filter' is an available effect as keygroup level, but even so, to have to run individual filters for each keygroup just so that they can be controlled by midi events seems awkward.

[chagzuki]

I just happened to stumble upon a YT video that deals with the exact issue (around the 4 minute mark):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-BF26sxus

So the 'keygroups multiple selection' option is how you apply a global filter. But I'm just wondering how this plays out if you have an instrument with lots of samples; it would appear then that your poor computer is having to run 20 instances of a filter, which might make it way too heavy on the CPU.

[functionform]

On some level all synths do this - you can think of it as a polyphonic filtering. I have no doubt this is highly optimized since Falcon's tech is the engine behind their Kontakt alternative, UVI Workstation.

[chagzuki]

Yeah, actually, having thought about it more I'm on the other end of the seesaw, now I'm thinking the general architecture will probably serve me really well.

[spoontechnique]

I've used Falcon for a few years now, and been using PP since the beta. I have a lot of thoughts here. I don't really think they're directly comparable, even. Falcon acts more as an Omnisphere competitor, whereas Phase Plant stacks up better against Serum, Massive, etc.

Falcon does have more content by a large margin. It has a bunch of different sampling engines, and of course you can load UVI sample libraries into Falcon. It has every effect you could want, and some that genuinely stand out: Sparkverb, Phasor, Thorus, etc. Falcon also has a few types of synthesis engine that PP doesn't, like an additive and a Klarpus-Strong section.

For all that, PP is so much more usable than Falcon. The modulation system is just better, not only because the modulators are more flexible and straightforward, but because it uses the correct paradigm for visualizing and applying modulation (IMO it's a solved problem---the "Massive" visualization style just works). It's finicky to see how much you're modulating and in which direction on Falcon.

And some of the PP oscillators are simpler than Falcon's, and no additive, no granular, no physical modelling is all a shame. But they're so much more flexible. You can modulate anything to anything, with AM/PM/linear FM/exponential FM. The wavetable editor is better because it has one, unlike Falcon. Also, now you can put Multipass (a crossover FX module) and Snap Heap (a serial/parallel FX module) inside Phase Plant. A crossover FX module is absent in Falcon, and parallel FX are a pain to set up and use. Phase Plant also has much more accessible and useful unison options. Unison in Falcon is very limited with oscillators that don't have it built in.

Phase Plant (or rather the KHS bundle as a whole) certainly doesn't stack up in terms of FX overall. The KHS effect philosophy is restrained and relatively simplistic, so individual effects usually don't stand out that much. PP is very limited in terms of filters, distortions, mod FX, and delays/reverbs compared to Falcon. Granted, you can use all their effects outside of their synth, so that's a bonus over Falcon. I actually find myself reaching surprisingly often for their effects when I want something quick and straightforward.

Overall, I'd say Falcon rewards basic patching that sounds good. You can't do much with the oscillators, you can't do much with the modulation, but you can do enough for the effects to make it sound nice. It has a low floor and a low ceiling. Phase Plant doesn't have that same "oscillator + effect = done" effect, but you can get so much more out of the effects and oscillators it does have. Higher floor, higher ceiling.

Hope that helps. Worth noting though: Falcon appears to have been designed block by block, so the structure is arcane, messy, and often a huge pain to navigate around. PP was clearly designed with usability as a primary concern, and its interface and experience reflects that.

[chagzuki]

Thanks for your response. Funnily enough I made the decision about a week ago to buy Falcon, and I've had a mixed response to it so far. Initially the general power of it lived up to expectations and it seems that it will indeed solve many of my issues in terms of how to organise projects, but many things about the interface struck me as poor. After using it for about a week I've come to regard some of the interface implementation as ridiculously bad, hopelessly bad. Instead of a Rolls Royce many aspects of the GUI seem more like a Kinder Egg toy, and this surprised me as none of the many youtube videos I watched mentioned any of this. Looking at some of them again it seems to me rather likely that UVI are affiliated with those channels, at least to the extent of giving them free copies of their products, and I guess it was naive of me not to assume this.

I'm still hoping that I've not discovered a few shortcut keys which will make using it easier. Is there really no way to reorder things in the tree hierarchy? The only way to change the order of layers or keygroups seems to be by duplicating them in the list view, which is extremely messy. I can't rename things in the tree view, I seem to have to figure out which keygroup is which in the tree view, then go to the list view to rename... peculiar. I've already ranted about the ludicrous sliders in another thread... don't think I can repeat all of that, but really, creating decent sliders would probably take a day, and yet the ones they've created appear to have been designed by a moron.

At the end of all that, for the most part all the positives about the capability of the engines and effects are true, and it will serve me well. I'm just disappointed by shortcomings which they could probably fix very quickly.

Phase Plant might be a purchase at a later date... I think I'll hold off from further purchases for a while... the wallet needs to recover.

[chagzuki]

I'm confused as to why I'm not seeing other people complain about the comedy slider design. The best option for controlled adjustments seems to be the mouse scroll wheel, and indeed it's the only method whereby the numeric value is visible during adjustment (!?). I have a few mice, all cheap and with the typical notched scroll wheel design that clicks as it rotates, and moves in increments. This means that the slider value within Falcon jumps in quite large increments, making it a rather clunky way to adjust values, but not as clunky as dragging the mouse. I wonder if a mouse with a different scroll wheel design would solve the problem, some variety of Logitech?

But really, how does something that's been in development for half a decade have basic controls where you can't see the values as you adjust them, and where the method of adjustment is so poor? It's not even that the value appears once you stop moving the slider, you have to reinstitute mouseover by moving off and back over the slider. That's why the scroll wheel works better: the mouseover function persists.

Unless I'm missing something about workflow, or this is something to do with the DAW and it's mishandling of plugins, which seems extremely unlikely?

I've realised I can rename keygroups/layers etc. in the Inspector panel, so I don't have to jump back and forth between tree and list view to rename as I thought I did; that's a big relief. So I'm still learning the workflow and hopefully the awkwardness I'm experiencing is still largely dependent on not knowing certain things.

Edit: So when adjusting the sliders in the tree view I can click on the parameter and adjust the value not with the slider, but with the Inspector panel numerical value. This definitely helps. That probably accounts for quite a lot of workflow situations... but not for adjusting values on oscillators. Unless there's a different way to access them?

[wombat778]

chagzuki: I'm not an expert with Falcon, but I'm not having problems with the sliders. On my PC at least, clicking on the slider or using CTRL does not seem to cause the mouseover value to disappear. More importantly, if I double click the slider, I get an input box where I can just type in the value. Maybe we are talking about different sliders?

[chagzuki]

On my PC at least, clicking on the slider or using CTRL does not seem to cause the mouseover value to disappear. More importantly, if I double click the slider, I get an input box where I can just type in the value. Maybe we are talking about different sliders?

Yes, the double-clicking option is obviously extremely useful, but not suitable for fast on-the-fly tentative adjustments. Wow, so let's just isolate the aux send sliders in the tree view (though I'm experiencing the same thing for all): if you move over one, first the value box appears, then when you left-click it remains there? For me, as soon as I left-click or ctrl click, or middle mouse click it disappears. This seems to be the same both on PC and Mac, with Waveform as the host.

[chagzuki]

Aha, so using the standalone version of Falcon isn't something I'd tried as I would never use it that way for any practical purpose. But opening it now I see that it does indeed maintain the values while moving the sliders, unlike the way it's behaving for me within Waveform. So the next question is whether this is an issue with Waveform, or the VST plugin version in general.

[chagzuki]

Damnit, it was the 'plugin sandboxing' function in Waveform. I apologize for insults towards the UVI team... it did seem strange that no-one was chiming in with similar criticisms.

Disabling plugin sandboxing appears to change Falcon's behaviour so that it's the same as the standalone version.

[wombat778]

Excellent! Glad at least one issue is nailed down