A brief update on the future of Variety of Sound plugins

[rasmusklump]

Synthedit and flowstone are completely independent from each other

[TIMT]

As far as i recall he only used Synth Maker/Flowstone to wrap the plugin code with the GUI. his models were all his own and didn't use the quite frankly rubbish internal Synth Maker modules. well, they was rubbish back then, they may have improved now

[lobanov]

He/she confused SynthMAKER with SynthEDIT. Flowstone was SynthMAKER.

[cprompt]

He/she confused SynthMAKER with SynthEDIT. Flowstone was SynthMAKER.

I've never been called "he/she" before but at my age, I'm past caring

[pekbro]

Yeah I never said using flowstone meant it wasn't his own code. Flowstone is just a visual toolkit he used to save time no doubt. Anyway, things like juce and other's were not available back then. He's a smart guy, using something like juce (which is likely more efficient than flowstone) should only be a matter of the time and interest.

[metalifuxx]

The only thing outdated about these plugins is the 32bit only thing.

[rafa1981]

My guess is that he will, as a first step, compile them on flowstone 64 bits, using the minimum amount of effort, and improve from there. Porting the GUI and boring parts to something else (and debuging again) is a boring chore for a dev. Let's see.

Very good news in any case.

[ghettosynth]

Hmm, I wonder if he's going to update them in what was it, Flowstone? or if they will be re-written.

I think they were originally Synthedit or something like that, but Flowstone is the new name for it now. Much as Synthedit/Flowstone looks like making a plugin out of Lego (a compressor module here, an eq module there, a dash of hi/low pass filters, ta-daaaa new plugin) I've read of many devs who use/used that technology as a framework and hand-coded the actual DSP in C++.

Well, let's see.

Several people have corrected this, but, let's make sure that everything is clear.

SynthMaker used to be Flowstone. They changed their name some years back and in the process made significant changes to the update/purchase model. They have been very slow to implement 64 bit and only now have an alpha out. It is not an open alpha and you have to request access, however, reports are that it does create workable 64 bit plugins and, I may be wrong, but I believe that some people are distributing 64 bit plugins with this. Up until recently you could not implement your code in C/C++ and link in as an external DLL. However, AFAIK, it has always had a built in DSP scripting language with the ability to optimize to a low level DSP assembler. The community is very active and shares ideas openly. In other words, even with SynthMaker you were never limited to the built in modules if you wanted to implement your own algorithms. Now that you can implement you own DLLs, you can program your synth model in C/C++ if you wish. FlowStone has always been a windows only product and, AFAIK, this will not change.

SynthEdit has always been a different product. It was also 32 bit for the longest while but has had a 64 bit version out for some time. The current (64 bit) version can also make plugins for OS/X. SynthEdit has had the ability to use modules that you write in C/C++ for as long as I can remember. So, as with SynthMaker/FlowStone, you were never limited to implementing your algorithms only with the built in modules.

Like Reaktor, SynthEdit and FlowStone have something of an underserved perception that they aren't able to create plugins with high quality DSP algorithms and that C/C++ are some kind of magic bullet. Neither is true and the quality of the audio is much more a product of the dev's capability. For small devs creating free products for fun, I think that either of the above choices, or even BlueCat's Plug-n-Script can be much better than spinning all of the detail in a lower level language.

[ghettosynth]

Yeah I never said using flowstone meant it wasn't his own code. Flowstone is just a visual toolkit he used to save time no doubt. Anyway, things like juce and other's were not available back then. He's a smart guy, using something like juce (which is likely more efficient than flowstone) should only be a matter of the time and interest.

JUCE is not efficient from the perspective of developer time. It is generally more efficient from a runtime perspective. However, if he has the plugins already written in Flowstone then it's just a matter of loading, testing, and exporting.

[codec_spurt]

45

[pekbro]

[lobanov]

He/she confused SynthMAKER with SynthEDIT. Flowstone was SynthMAKER.

I've never been called "he/she" before but at my age, I'm past caring

But who are you? Man? Woman? How can I determine it?

[FFHKVR]

For real.

[MFXxx]

VoS plugins 64bit public beta 1
by Variety Of Life

Until around mid July you can grab here the VoS plugin 64bit public beta package. Included are epicVerb, BaxterEQ, preFIX, NastyDLAmkII, NastyVCS and DensityMkIII in both 32 and 64 bit, VST 2 and 3 for Windows PC.
Please be careful using them since they are beta. Eventually they might crash, generate loud noises and things like that. Also do not use them in real productions since parameters and settings might change until release and break compatibility.
To report issues just create a comment right to this post and please include detailed information about the issue, which plugin is actually affected and in which host and version.

Please respect the license agreement provided within the package and do not redistribute but just share the download link as follows:

>>> DOWNLOAD HERE <<<

[s28]

Excellent news - these plugins are great, I just couldn't be bothered with the weird latency I got with jbridge. Installing now, nice.

I love the baxter eq, that thing does some lovely shaping on busses.

Edit - on first use they seem pretty high cpu for me. I'll leave them until they are out of beta, great to see them brought to 64bit after such a long time.