Vital - Released

[MRT]

So is it just the free version that has the logon screen or do the paid version have this also?

This is a fantastic piece of work but logging in or clicking past a splash screen is (insert favorite profanity here). If it's just for updates put a little indicator that an update is available.
And is the default install location actually intended to be "One Drive" cloud storage?

Not an angry troll just want to know if you can do away with the splash/logon. Or should I just accept the near future where all of your plugin's ask you to login before using.

Regardless it really is a great synth.

[revvy]

So is it just the free version that has the logon screen or do the paid version have this also?

This is a fantastic piece of work but logging in or clicking past a splash screen is (insert favorite profanity here). If it's just for updates put a little indicator that an update is available.
And is the default install location actually intended to be "One Drive" cloud storage?

Not an angry troll just want to know if you can do away with the splash/logon. Or should I just accept the near future where all of your plugin's ask you to login before using.

Regardless it really is a great synth.

I did it once, first time of use to get the associated DLs.

Subsequent times, no splash, no logon, nothing.

My version is free but I imagine all versions have the one-time action.

[Held]

So is it just the free version that has the logon screen or do the paid version have this also?

This is a fantastic piece of work but logging in or clicking past a splash screen is (insert favorite profanity here). If it's just for updates put a little indicator that an update is available.
And is the default install location actually intended to be "One Drive" cloud storage?

Not an angry troll just want to know if you can do away with the splash/logon. Or should I just accept the near future where all of your plugin's ask you to login before using.

Regardless it really is a great synth.

All versions have the login screen, but it is planned to be removed, and hopefully soon.

Edit: @revvy the login information is supposed to be saved so you don't have to login everytime, but it doesn't work for everyone.

[revvy]

^ Yes i gathered that, just wanted to state that the multi-logins are a bug, not a feature.

[Jkist]

(take this as a "raises hand in class and asks the teacher" rather than "WTF would you...?"):

What's the purpose of having hundreds of wavetables? I own some wavetable synths and I'm still somewhat noobish, but I've noticed experimenting with a lot of presets that I can often swap out wavetables in the same family and hear little difference - especially with spectral, organ, etc.

It seems like more than a 100 or so and you'd almost be lost in experimentation. I'm looking at Vital and the completionist in me is thinking "gotta have 400 wavetables" in the Pro version as opposed to the 75 with the Plus version version, but I wonder how much I'd utilize them.

And if you're making your own, what are you usually trying to achieve?

Again - my tone here is legitimate curiosity, not "defend yourself, idiot"
Shame I need the disclaimer, but that's the default on KVR lately.

Wavetables can basically be samples, so rather than spend forever trying to model a bell sound through FM synthesis or something, you can essentially just use a sample, and tweak it from there. But the beauty is that it doesn't have to behave like a sample, you can scroll through the table and use whatever parts you like at will.

But thats why it can be helpful to have a large number of them, because they do give you good starting points for different sounds. Its similar to why someone would need so many sample libraries, just different sounds for different situations. And true, most probably dont need as much as they have

The above broadly gets it across, but worth bearing in mind that there are limitations here. One of the reasons you'd look to model a bell with FM synthesis is because bell tones contain inharmonic partials and FM synthesis is great at kicking those out. Wavetable synthesis can't produce inharmonic timbres.

Ooh didn't think of that! For curiosity's sake, say you had a synth that only did wavetable synthesis, but you wanted the FM bell synth sound. Is there a way to emulate that using effects or other types of modulation?

[AJYoung]

My only real bugbear with it is that, like Serum, there's no wavetable interpolation. The wavetables themselves seem to have more frames which mitigates the issue somewhat, but you'll still hear 'stepping' on slower modulations and/or the tail end of long, logarithmic envelopes.

There is wavetable interpolation. Open the editor and there is an option there for a number of interpolation options

I mean at the oscillator level. Even with line sources rather than audio, as you scroll through or modulate the wavetable it 'clicks' over to the next frame whenever you reach a certain point. There's nothing meaningful 'between' frames. Presumably it's a trade-off to save CPU. In practice it just limits the complexity/rate of change you can feasibly use in your wavetables before 'steps' become obvious with slower modulations or noise creeps too high on faster modulations. Things like, say, the original Massive's 'Carbon' wavetable where every frame is a distinct timbre are off the cards. Carbon was really nice for jumping around inside and modulating between adjacent timbres - like having 50 wavetables in one.

Yeah, at the Osc level... you can draw 2 waves and it interpolates between them... it defaults to no interpolation. In the editor is the option for interpolation. There are 4 different interpolation options.

Am I missing something here? I only get those interpolation options with audio file sources, and they still produce the same behaviour when I use them. They're missing from line source and wave source which also show the same behaviour. The interpolation options will blow up any audio source to 256 wavetable frames, but there's still no interpolation between those frames in the oscillator. You can play back frame 250 or frame 251, but you won't get a blend of the two if you set the wavetable position to 250.5

So there's a button for "Hi-Res Wavetables" in the Advanced tab that's supposed to do that (interpolate in-between frames), but testing it I think it might be broken right now. I mentioned it in the Discord beta group, but you might want to write-up an issue on the forums:
https://forum.vital.audio

[Teksonik]

Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to shrink the Patch Description area at the top and increase the size of the Bank Display area so more banks could be viewed without scrolling ? I'm not sure any patch needs that much text information to justify such a large area.

Vital 112720-4.png

[revvy]

* WT noob question *

That TTWT feature of Vital - is this a common feature of other synths? Absolute blast for veteran Arman Van Heldon fans such as myself.

[Teksonik]

I'm not aware of any other synth that connects to a high quality online text to speech service to create wavetables.

[revvy]

Me neither.

I know it's marginal in terms of how much I'd actually use it but so impressed with that particular feature I might even go for the Pro for umlimiyed TTWT and the other goodies.

[muki]

Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to shrink the Patch Description area

yes
good idea imho

[exmatproton]

* WT noob question *

That TTWT feature of Vital - is this a common feature of other synths? Absolute blast for veteran Arman Van Heldon fans such as myself.

No. Quite unique. And fun

[revvy]

TBH the subs deal looks good. Can use it as rent to own, get free packs, stop or continue after full payment and keep the Pro version and whatever else you accrue either way.

Unless I'm misreading.

[exmatproton]

So I found a fun thing. Turns out the Analog filter can oscillate pretty will as long as there's at least a tiny bit of signal. If you turn the OSC level all the way down to 0.001 (but not off). Can be super interesting coupled with the Filter FM.

Filter FM?? Where?

So fun fact: The LFO's are audio rate. Instead of "straight", "dotted", or "triplet" you can change it to "Keytrack". Then you get essentially an extra oscillator you can you use to modulate. Not every parameter is sample-perfect, but Phase, Volume, and Filter cutoff are.

So you can use an LFO for FM, AM, or Filter FM.

Great find! Thanks!

[mahaya]

Does anybody know why Vital seems to connect to vital.audio, account.vital.audio and securetoken.googleapis.com (maybe more but these URLs did rather clearly not origin from Windows)? In a quick test I sometimes also saw new traffic to said URLs when opening the user interface but after closing and reopening the DAW it seems to cease until restarting the machine.

This might be for copy protection as well as for analytics but I wasn't able to find any further information on vital.audio regarding the copy protection or possible analytics.

Connects to vital.audio for a Vital update check. account.vital.audio to see if there are any preset packs for download and securetoken.googleapis.com to refresh the authentication token (which is used to check for bought packs and use for text to wavetable). I don't use any google analytics in Vital or on the vital.audio site.

This *should* only happen once per session though it might happen if you start a single Vital instance, delete it and add it again.

Thanks for the fast reply and clarification. I did only use one instance which I removed and inserted again.