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

[opdobqo]

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.

Thanks both. Yeah, it's Sinmad. It has nice distortability...

[ELEX]

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
...

Same here. 2-3 cents with consonant ( harmonic ) intervals. Only situation I can really detect smaller intervals is when tuning FM, AM, RM etc. and beating can be heard at high pitches. Interesting to see those wiki tables showing both the pros ( just thirds ) as well as cons ( G-D being a whopping 22 cents off, for instance ) There's always a price to pay for just intervals in a single scale. Which is why I find Sinmad's tuning options to be such a great asset.

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

If at all possible: please !

[AlienXXX]

Really busy month at work and travelling today, so only time for a rushed submission and an even more rushed post.
Loved the synth, though

https://soundcloud.com/alienxxx/sinmad-the-sailor

Made in Reason 11 with Sinmad and only basic effects (compression, distortion, delay and reverb). No modulation effects used.

[FrogsInPants]

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.

Along those lines, another use of microtuning is detuned pairs of instruments to adjust the beat frequency between them as with various Indonesian instruments. But in this case, an octave repeating tuning means you can't set a consistent beat frequency across octaves. Limiting the resolution of the tuning to 1 cent gives you a resolution of about .25Hz in the beat frequency at 440Hz, which would prevent you from dialing in precisely the same beat frequency for every note, but is probably good enough most of the time.

[Leonard Bowman]

adding to the microtuning discussion: since we're talking about changing scales over a piece (something I am quite interested in), support for MTS-ESP would be above and beyond awesome.

Microtonality involves a broad spectrum of use cases. This implementation is a great addition to the synth and people will make good use of it. It just doesn't do the things I want.

My main desires are, in order:
• the ability to arbitrarily tune every note to any frequency. this can be achieved with MPE but there aren't any good MPE editing tools for this on the market yet...
• barring that, the ability to have an arbitrarily large number of notes in an arbitrarily small space, even if it requires several instances of the synth. if I can't choose exactly how to tune each note, I want at least enough resolution to choose between a few different tunings of a major third
• alongside those, the ability to specify very precise pitches. This doesn't matter for most things but it certainly helps the effect of just intonation systems like primodal scales like I was trying to use in my piece.

Oh, and

Along those lines, another use of microtuning is detuned pairs of instruments to adjust the beat frequency between them as with various Indonesian instruments. But in this case, an octave repeating tuning means you can't set a consistent beat frequency across octaves. Limiting the resolution of the tuning to 1 cent gives you a resolution of about .25Hz in the beat frequency at 440Hz, which would prevent you from dialing in precisely the same beat frequency for every note, but is probably good enough most of the time.

you can get a consistent beat frequency across octaves by changing the reference tuning away from 440hz. You can't set a different beat frequency for different notes in the scale but you can at least make the Risset Harmonic Arpeggio with it

[FrogsInPants]

you can get a consistent beat frequency across octaves by changing the reference tuning away from 440hz. You can't set a different beat frequency for different notes in the scale but you can at least make the Risset Harmonic Arpeggio with it

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but how does changing the reference tuning from 440Hz help? Whatever the reference tuning, the beat frequency between detuned notes will still double every octave with an octave repeating tuning, yeah?

That Risset Harmonic Arpeggio thing is interesting, and I hadn't heard of it before. What do you think I'm here for, to have fun and learn things? Oh, right. I am.

[emikaela]

most important for me regarding tuning would be the ability to quickly load a tuning across several instances of the synth. .scl would be great. a step that might be easier to implement could be to allow for loading just the tuning info and nothing else from a different patch (since that data is already saved for each patch anyways).

[ontrackp]

Hey Liqih --

Thanks for Sinmad. I found making sounds a little frustrating at first but over time using it became more intuitive. Ultimately I got some really satisfying sounds from it and by the end of the month definitely enjoyed it more. Good luck with it's continued development and I would be glad to send presets if you're collecting them.

Steve G (ontrackp)

[Ah_Dziz]

Gonna give it another go tomorrow, but once the feedback network breaks then there's no way to bring the sound back even by reloading my host. So I had a good rithm section going and now all those presets just output almost purely silence. Haven't found a way to repair them unfortunately.

That's strange, I had crashes in Reaper up to Sinmad 0.9.8, but it always recovered on reloading.
BTW Reaper DAW works best with "smooth seek" enabled, in Seek settings.
Please send me more details about your setup if you wish.

I guess I missed the deadline. So I'll look back into the synth once it's fully released

[liqih]

Hey Liqih --

Thanks for Sinmad. I found making sounds a little frustrating at first but over time using it became more intuitive. Ultimately I got some really satisfying sounds from it and by the end of the month definitely enjoyed it more. Good luck with it's continued development and I would be glad to send presets if you're collecting them.

Steve G (ontrackp)

Hi Steve, I'm very interested of knowing more about your first impressions with frustration.
Please tell me more by e-mail if you wish/can. Thanks.

presets: Yeah! Everybody please I will enjoy to see your work on Sinmad and include some in the factory bank if you allow that.

[doctorbob]

@liqih

Presets in a PM

Enjoy (or not!)

dB

[Leonard Bowman]

you can get a consistent beat frequency across octaves by changing the reference tuning away from 440hz. You can't set a different beat frequency for different notes in the scale but you can at least make the Risset Harmonic Arpeggio with it

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but how does changing the reference tuning from 440Hz help? Whatever the reference tuning, the beat frequency between detuned notes will still double every octave with an octave repeating tuning, yeah?

That Risset Harmonic Arpeggio thing is interesting, and I hadn't heard of it before. What do you think I'm here for, to have fun and learn things? Oh, right. I am.

Oops, you're definitely right. guess we'll just have to get creative with tuning automation.
or for a different effect, use a frequency shifter

[FrogsInPants]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but how does changing the reference tuning from 440Hz help? Whatever the reference tuning, the beat frequency between detuned notes will still double every octave with an octave repeating tuning, yeah?

That Risset Harmonic Arpeggio thing is interesting, and I hadn't heard of it before. What do you think I'm here for, to have fun and learn things? Oh, right. I am.

Oops, you're definitely right. guess we'll just have to get creative with tuning automation.
or for a different effect, use a frequency shifter

Or use separate instances per octave.

[baalisoda]

This is not a submission!

Just an extra track that I have made using 5 instances of SinMad (all factory presets with a very slight modifications to suit my track's needs)

https://soundcloud.com/baalisoda/village

@Liqih - Feel free to use this track in your site for promotional purposes, if you want to.

[synthgeek]

@liqih

I have also sent a pm with some patches. Cheers!