PLASMONIC - A new synth from Brian Clevinger

[Whywhy]

Out now:
Plethora Beta For Plasmonic: 50 Presets made by Yuli Yolo:
Format: Plasmonic: 50 Presets MPE & 50 Presets Standard.

[simmo75]

Out now:
Plethora Beta For Plasmonic: 50 Presets made by Yuli Yolo:
Format: Plasmonic: 50 Presets MPE & 50 Presets Standard.

Beautiful!
Simply stunning

[Friendly Noise]

Thanks for your kind words.

[Whywhy]

Thanks Simmo75 !

[Gosh]

I might buy this even before i buy Plasmonic...

[fisherKing]

New Yuli Yolo sound set will be release tomorrow.

and tomorrow is finally today.

purchased, thanks! am looking forward to exploring the sounds (& further mangling them).

EDIT: any macusers know where this goes? there's no "My Preset" folder on my mac; if i save a custom preset, it saves in whatever folder was last open. and nothing shows up in the "My Presets" browser window. hmmmmmm.....

yuli's soundset is (as usual) awesome, and will keep me busy (and out of trouble) for some time to come...

[fisherKing]

...and the official answer (for mac users), is to create these folders (if not already there); i did this, and all is well:

/Users/(yourUserNameHere)/Library/Audio/Presets/Rhizomatic/Plasmonic/My Presets

[ScrLk]

This is on my long term wish list

[Cinebient]

Randomize and key track the trigger pulses and some other parameters is really fun with Plasmonic. First I found it a bit strange but now I begin to really love the way modulation works here. Its super fast to come up with interesting and moving timbres.
Just playing here some random chords with fixed velocity, no MPE at work too. Now if you start to add that its even more fun. I have to take my Seaboard Rise again (did not use it much lately).
https://soundcloud.com/user-790535032/p ... eys-pianos
...and 3 Plasmonic presets played together
https://soundcloud.com/user-790535032/plasmonica

[Cinebient]

I also like these hybrid keys with a mixture from piano flavour, harps, tuned percussion etc.
The sympathetic resonance in spaces is very nice here as well and also very great to tune and edit.
Just scratched the surface from Plasmonic but its now already my favourite synth so far.
https://soundcloud.com/user-790535032/p ... ybrid-keys

[J1000]

My response to Plasmonic is bittersweet. I've eagerly awaited it, offered my help to developer as a beta tester, but it was already in final stages so no help was needed. After the release I installed and uninstalled demo in a matter of hours. Later I gave it a second chance and bought it, also to give support to forward-thinking ideas so lacking in current synthesizer world. But still, I couldn't cope working with this interface. For me it really lacks on UX level and here is why:

- Dual coarse/fine control is annoying and clumsy. It appears over most elements (but not all!?) as you move mouse and distracts. It offers no advantage over standard slider control (shift+mouse is almost standard for fine adjustment), but has big disadvantage as you always think where to click for which type of adjustment. It's a attempt to revolutionize where revolution is not needed, same could be said for ADSR controls. Visually it just makes clutter.

- Buttons and sliders share almost the same visual language - gradients of same color, only difference one is single sided (sliders) other is dual gradient (buttons). Never seen that before.

- Black background for GUIs is rarely used for a reason.

- Too many outlines, lines, gradients, overlays, proportionally small font sizes with different typefaces for headers and functions... I would call it dated if these were ever good UI/UX practices. Being fully duochromatic makes it all harder to differentiate. Neutral dark grayish background with color accents here and there is most user-friendly, this is not.

- Modulation screen is overwhelming all the time, even for simple modulations. Pop up elements also (Gears, Arrows, Dots and such).

You may ask why I fuss so much about UI when it's an instrument to be played? I like to build my own presets and this interface really puts me off of doing anything with it other than playing factory presets.

All that's the bitter part, because sound engine is so sweet, THE BEST one I'm aware of, completely in line with my own ideas how modern synth should be structured (without tiresome unisons, arpeggios, layers, piles of oscillators etc.). I really hope developer hires a UI/UX pro to fix all those problems. Until then I really can't force myself using it, YMMV.

[pdxindy]

- Dual coarse/fine control is annoying and clumsy. It appears over most elements (but not all!?) as you move mouse and distracts. It offers no advantage over standard slider control (shift+mouse is almost standard for fine adjustment), but has big disadvantage as you always think where to click for which type of adjustment. It's a attempt to revolutionize where revolution is not needed, same could be said for ADSR controls. Visually it just makes clutter.

I found it confusing at first... bit by bit it has become comfortable and my hand (using the mouse) starts to know where to go without thinking about it. Not my favorite choice, but it no longer feels like an impediment, just a quirk.

So perhaps if you keep using it you will adjust as well.

[Cinebient]

My response to Plasmonic is bittersweet. I've eagerly awaited it, offered my help to developer as a beta tester, but it was already in final stages so no help was needed. After the release I installed and uninstalled demo in a matter of hours. Later I gave it a second chance and bought it, also to give support to forward-thinking ideas so lacking in current synthesizer world. But still, I couldn't cope working with this interface. For me it really lacks on UX level and here is why:

- Dual coarse/fine control is annoying and clumsy. It appears over most elements (but not all!?) as you move mouse and distracts. It offers no advantage over standard slider control (shift+mouse is almost standard for fine adjustment), but has big disadvantage as you always think where to click for which type of adjustment. It's a attempt to revolutionize where revolution is not needed, same could be said for ADSR controls. Visually it just makes clutter.

- Buttons and sliders share almost the same visual language - gradients of same color, only difference one is single sided (sliders) other is dual gradient (buttons). Never seen that before.

- Black background for GUIs is rarely used for a reason.

- Too many outlines, lines, gradients, overlays, proportionally small font sizes with different typefaces for headers and functions... I would call it dated if these were ever good UI/UX practices. Being fully duochromatic makes it all harder to differentiate. Neutral dark grayish background with color accents here and there is most user-friendly, this is not.

- Modulation screen is overwhelming all the time, even for simple modulations. Pop up elements also (Gears, Arrows, Dots and such).

You may ask why I fuss so much about UI when it's an instrument to be played? I like to build my own presets and this interface really puts me off of doing anything with it other than playing factory presets.

All that's the bitter part, because sound engine is so sweet, THE BEST one I'm aware of, completely in line with my own ideas how modern synth should be structured (without tiresome unisons, arpeggios, layers, piles of oscillators etc.). I really hope developer hires a UI/UX pro to fix all those problems. Until then I really can't force myself using it, YMMV.

While I agree on many points you made (and that was the reason I thought its not for me too) I also agree that the sound engine behind it is much better as someone might think. It took really some time to oversee the GUI and some of the workflow I do not like and focus on the sound but once you accept it, its awesome.
Its not to replace things like Chromaphone, Pianoteq, Sculpture, Prism, SWAM-engines etc. which all have their own special great thing but so far I find now Plasmonic is the most interesting physical modelling tool when it comes to hybrid/experimental organic sounds. The resonator is really great and works really well with the provided impulses and OSC´s. I think its even the most versatile and advanced single resonator I ever used yet. Spaces is unique and awesome as well and is perfect for this kind of tool.
Add MPE and microtonality, I could not ask for more (...of course I could).

[J1000]

...and I understand both your arguments. After a while I would surely adapt to it's quirky controls, but it's the type of adjustment that's unpleasant, not just usual learning curve of new plugin. There are some synths with mediocre engines and perfectly intuitive layouts&controls that are pleasure to work with, lacking "only" in sound quality. Plasmonic looks like opposite example.

I use Chormaphone and String studio (as a support for Falcon), but their physical modeling engines often sound... maybe plasticky, without enough grain or texture, and generally speaking they feel more fun and less seriously experimental instruments. Although I'm not into emulating real instruments, that's not interesting to me, just wanna create synthetic sounds that have body and some acoustic properties. Plasmonic is exactly like that soundwise.

[J1000]

Here are few more strange things:

- Anyone noticed upper-frequency distortion introduced by multimode filter? Try passing a pure sine through it and playing some higher notes. If you can't hear it use FFT analyzer to see when and where it happens, but I think it is easily audible.

- Saturation introduces harsh "digital" distortion at lower gains. All three modes do that, in different amounts. If you push gain higher that distortion lowers and normal harmonic saturation gradually takes over. As far as I understand concept of audio saturation, shouldn't lower gains saturate less and don't introduce any nasty inharmonics?

- Oscillator Fold destroys waveform instantly, without gradual "activation". Minimum Fold position is 1.0, see what it does to a poor sine.

- Spaces should not be considered a reverb and to me it doesn't sound like one. In FDN mode, which is closest to reverb-like, it's still clearly just a bunch of delay taps that are opposited-phased and channel-delayed. It instantly creates super wide stereo signal from mono, and since you don't have internal width control you're stuck with unfocused stereo image. Sometimes you need that, most of the time don't. At least there should be internal side-channel HP filter to anchor the bass in the middle.

Use dry classic saw oscillator and transpose it to the minium -48 and hold a lower note to get LFO clicks. Activate Spaces and you can hear all those separate delay taps trying hard to created illusion of space, but it's just multitap delay (or Feedback Delay Network, as the label says). Then try for reference ValhallaRoom after the same dry signal to hear the difference. Personally I would never use Spaces instead of good reverb. I must praise the Sympathetic mode though, it's really a great idea and sounds musical whatever you do with it. Chorded pitch-tuned waveguides are always fun!

- How come that some controls have both the label and current value, and most others have just name that switches to show current value when you hover it? You have to move mouse cursor away to remind you what you're adjusting. There's enough empty space for all of them to have name AND value written all the time. Also, some don't have coarse/fine, like HF Damp, Saturation, Crossover Hz (I wish all were like that). What's the logic behind that, I'm not seeing it? Even if there's is any it's counterintuitive in basic usage.

I could go on...

To summarize, this instrument has great potential and is certainly done by someone who knows sound synthesis inside-out. It's just not polished yet, both from technical and UI/UX point of view. I really wish it does, since a lot of us musicians are probably yearning for something this contemporary-sounding to work with.