One Synth Challenge #146: Sinmad by NUSofting (Double Tap Wins!)

[RichardSemper]

Just 30 mins to go....

[IV!]

Well, this is becoming a habit of mine - all month long, sluggishly digging into the synth, gradually making presets and not having a single idea in my head, and on the last night, instead of sleeping, creating " A Masterpiece for all time!", hehe) I must breaking this habit, but... not today.
https://soundcloud.com/user-5930296/iv- ... sinmad-osc
13x Mad SinMad v0.9.9
1x Kjaerhus Audio Classic Master Limiter (on the master, of course )
That is all) Another track that may not sound polished, but without embellishment shows the sound of a synthesizer (the one that I was able to get, of course. By the way, all the presets except one are obtained using the Random function and are deeply upgraded - I found this method the most inspiring for SinMad). I will be glad to hear opinions - do you like such rough tracks or do they infuriate you?)

IV's Presets for SinMad.zip

Separately to Mr. Liqih: thank you so much for the opportunity to play with a beautiful instrument, I love such original and unlike anything else things, although his character is not easy! I will try to leave my report in the appropriate branch in the near future. Also my track and my presets are at your disposal. Did you mention that each participant must send you an email with permission? In this case, I would like to have a sample or instructions for writing.

[EscapeControl]

https://soundcloud.com/escapecontrolsou ... ments-demo

my (very short) submission for this month!
Sinmad was a lot of fun to play with, it's well tailored to recreate real instruments, which I set out to do with the patches i used here.

I spent too much time designing patches and didn't have a lot of time left to compose something... so look at this as more of a sound demo and less as a full fledged composition :S

DAW used: FL studio
Plugins:
Sinmad x9
Epicverb x3
Fruity keyboard controller
Fruity limiter
Fruity EQ2
Wave candy

I hereby give permission for the developer to use the track for promotional purposes, if they want.

[FrogsInPants]

Entry - The Secret Society of the Pepper Berry Field

The frogs and faeries of the pepper berry field gather for a celebration of life and magic.

https://soundcloud.com/user-768555121/f ... erry-field

Reaper 6.28

Sinmad x12
ReaControlMIDI x2
BlueArp x4
Custom MIDI delay JS x1

YouLean Loudness Meter 2
JS Master Limiter
JS Soft Clipper/Limiter

[Juergen]

Unfortunately, this time I couldn't finish anything to use as an entry for this month
Good luck to all who participated.

[ELEX]

some thoughts re: Sinmad's microtuning. I like that it's there, but I don't like the implementation. it's limited to 12 note octave repeating scales, it doesn't show more than 1 cent resolution, and it's finnicky to get input things if you're aiming for a particular scale. compound that if you want to retune several different instances to a new scale.
at a bare minimum, I would love to see a few decimal places in the display so I can have precision when I want to. bonus points for loading .scl files so I don't have to do it all by hand, and even better if you can find a nice UI that doesn't restrict you to 12 note scales that repeat at a 2/1 octave.

Many thanks for your comments.

The Sinmad microtuning is "octave repeating" because
so far I wanted the possibility to quickly create ethnic instruments.
As per Hindustani, Carnatic, African and Arabic music mostly relies on
variations of the diatonic scale.
And a variation of more that 1 cent hardly matters in this context.

For full compositions in microtonality the best would be indeed
the ability to load Scala files. I may add that feature later.

The ability to change the tuning of notes through automation is really great, though. It allows for really fine tuning a whole composition, which is impossible with a single tuning , even one not restricted to repeating octaves. I'd very much like to see this feature remain.

[liqih]

some thoughts re: Sinmad's microtuning. I like that it's there, but I don't like the implementation. it's limited to 12 note octave repeating scales, it doesn't show more than 1 cent resolution, and it's finnicky to get input things if you're aiming for a particular scale. compound that if you want to retune several different instances to a new scale.
at a bare minimum, I would love to see a few decimal places in the display so I can have precision when I want to. bonus points for loading .scl files so I don't have to do it all by hand, and even better if you can find a nice UI that doesn't restrict you to 12 note scales that repeat at a 2/1 octave.

Many thanks for your comments.

The Sinmad microtuning is "octave repeating" because
so far I wanted the possibility to quickly create ethnic instruments.
As per Hindustani, Carnatic, African and Arabic music mostly relies on
variations of the diatonic scale.
And a variation of more that 1 cent hardly matters in this context.

For full compositions in microtonality the best would be indeed
the ability to load Scala files. I may add that feature later.

The ability to change the tuning of notes through automation is really great, though. It allows for really fine tuning a whole composition, which is impossible with a single tuning , even one not restricted to repeating octaves. I'd very much like to see this feature remain.

As you say, of course that will remain, in any case. That's what I wanted so far (for instance having all 'A' notes a little sharp or a little flat, wherever you need through the track, by automation or MIDI CC via DAW).

[ELEX]

Great ! I'd like to to do some exploring with tuning, and Sinmad is the perfect synth to do it with. Personally, I'm fine with tuning in cents, btw. Any resolution good enough for tuning frequency multiples should be OK, shouldn't it ? Speaking of frequency multiples: it would be rather nice if the FM knob would allow for more ratios.

[doctorbob]

Yeah, sorry, it was bad with Reaper, fortunately now I think I fixed that and make it compatible even with Reaper (and its own bugs). I hope you will enjoy Sinmad 1.0+

Have you also emailed Justin at Cockos describing the Reaper bugs so he can fix them? [So long as he then doesn't break your Sinmad code!]
dB

[liqih]

Great ! I'd like to to do some exploring with tuning, and Sinmad is the perfect synth to do it with. Personally, I'm fine with tuning in cents, btw. Any resolution good enough for tuning frequency multiples should be OK, shouldn't it ? Speaking of frequency multiples: it would be rather nice if the FM knob would allow for more ratios.

About tuning resolution as I tried myself I can hear a 2 or 3 cents of semitone difference, not less.
Cents integer is usually standard, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy%2 ... onic_scale
However, as Leonard says, when you use Scala files for non tempered tuning you have mathematically a finer resolution, that come from the formulas, but the acoustic impact depends on the sound used and it's obviously also subjective I think.

For the FM I could add a switch to change the knob steps.

[liqih]

Yeah, sorry, it was bad with Reaper, fortunately now I think I fixed that and make it compatible even with Reaper (and its own bugs). I hope you will enjoy Sinmad 1.0+

Have you also emailed Justin at Cockos describing the Reaper bugs so he can fix them? [So long as he then doesn't break your Sinmad code!]
dB

Not yet, I wasn't sure if it was only Sinmad fault.

[doctorbob]

Fair enough. In general Reaper has been pretty good handling VST's, often faring better than others with "problematic codes"! But, as we know, most software is not bug-free! Often described as "not, a bug, but a feature"!!

dB

[] Peter:H []

Evening all,
[...] It contains mild/moderate distortion at around the 2:00 mark, so watch your levels if that's not your kind of thing.

Just skimmed through the tracks and stumbled over your "distortion" warning. I don't know whether you have done the distortion with Sinmad alone ... anyways, please review the OSC rules about plugins that alter the "character" of the synth sound. If you feel all is fine, then all is fine...

[] Peter:H []

Please Richard/bjporter - don't forget my submission on page 6. It was quite early this month: viewtopic.php?p=8074687#p8074687

[SeBaer]

Just skimmed through the tracks and stumbled over your "distortion" warning. I don't know whether you have done the distortion with Sinmad alone ... anyways, please review the OSC rules about plugins that alter the "character" of the synth sound. If you feel all is fine, then all is fine...

Sinmad is capable of pretty gnarly distortion. I also used pretty distorted sounds, but pulled them back a little in the mix, so it's not that obvious. But @opdobqo's sound didn't strike me as improbable.