Phuturetone GR-8 V/A Synth (KVR Dev Challenge)

[AnX]

if he/they dumped the fx and added more features, it might be worth trying

Like what? It's got everything you could possibly need already.

as it is, it's far too simple to even consider downloading (i mean, its not going to replace anything I already have....)

Why would it need to? To me it seemed strikingly similar to Invader but when you listen to them side by side, they each have their own sound. They are really nothing alike, even though they have pretty much exactly the same feature set.

That said, I can see this replacing DUNE in a lot of places for us. It has a similarly bright, aggressive sound without all the bloat.

cant see either of them replacing Dune here.... infact, i know they wont

im still gonna try them tho, just out of curiosity when and if I have time

[Andywanders]

After playing with it for an hour or so, these are my impressions.

Positive:
Great GUI. One of the best looking synths I've seen in a while.
The effects are all good apart from the reverb.

Negative:
CPU load is way too much.
The presets are uninspiring.

Suggestion:
Optimise it! For these kind of sounds I'd expect the CPU load to be 1/3 of what it is currently.

Finally:
GR-8 is a well-thought-out , good-looking synth and deserves a vote. This synth will surely attract a lot of fans. However, it's not for me. I have other, better synths that already cover this ground and more with a fraction of the CPU hit. Having said that, I wish Phuturetone good luck in the dev challenge.

[BONES]

What ground? What synths? I'd be interested in something that was as good as this with 1/3 of the CPU use but the only thing I can think of is Invader, which has quite a different character.

[wwjd]

gotta admit, I enjoy it. Sounds jumped out at me like a commercial synth. Shocked from the diversity of sounds from such a simple looking interface. My bass excitr kicked it up a notch.

Am wishing the GLIDE, DETUNE and SPREAD worked on POLY mode.

[BONES]

How would spread work in poly mode?

[wwjd]

How would spread work in poly mode?

maybe just PAN the voices out? I don't know what it does in MONO mode

[BONES]

But if you are only playing one voice at a time, it means that the first note in a riff or melody will sound in one place, the next note another, etc. and it would be affected by the way the voices are allocated. I think it would be weird.

[ecristian]

heavy on cpu but the sound is very good

[JerGoertz]

heavy on cpu but the sound is very good

Yes, thanks for this Phuturetone!

[NikkiA]

I still use Phutura for that kind of sound anyway, and it uses practically 0.0% cpu here.

[pc2000]

My impression... this was thrown together, ( like a lot of the entries seem to be) probably a project that was an experiment that sat around.

Are you f**king kidding me!?! Have you bothered to listen to it? It sounds great, easily able to compete with $200 ubersynths on sound quality. And its FREE! If it wasn't for the CPU hit - which is only a problem on the Surface we use live, it's barely a blip on my studio laptop - I could see this becoming my go-to synth. You don't throw something of this quality together overnight. That it was done within the 3 months time limit of the Dev Challenge is extraordinary. Yet all you want to do is have a whinge.

SynthEdit might have been used to put it all together but I daresay the developer has done his own coding on it, too. Remember that Sylenth 1 started out as an SE synth, although Lennard only ever used it for the GUI, all the guts were hand-coded. It means nothing.

No... I'm not f*cking kidding! As for your whinge comment, I made one comment until now, so I don't get what I'm constantly complaining about. That seems to be the lane you drive in from what I've seen. Adding some clarity to my previous statement_when I said it seemed thrown together (meaning perception, not fact) my point was about the performance, not the sound. Yeah, I obviously heard how it sounds. I didn't state the sound was bad.

This is an entry to a cash prize contest. It's presented to be judged against other entrants. Overall performance and usability has to be taken into account, not just sound. It means nothing if it's barely usable due to CPU drain or possibly the GUI is causing issues with certain graphic cards. Maybe the GUI plays well with your graphics card and you have no issues. Most folks that create music- start a number of projects or ideas that get saved for a later visit...maybe. I'm certain developers start many projects that they throw to the side to maybe revisit them later. This was my reasoning as well.

The FX in this synth is the star of the show! They're really top notch. When you bypass them, the synth sounds are very basic fare. The synth isn't using multiple synthesis engine types, so the CPU drain is far too high for what it does. The FX in this can make a fart sound impressive. The Dev could win the contest off the FX alone. Would be nice if they were released as separate or muli-FX plugins.

[BONES]

This is an entry to a cash prize contest. It's presented to be judged against other entrants.

Not here in the Instruments forum it's not. But even if it was, It stands head and shoulders above anything else in the contest in every way that's actually important.

It means nothing if it's barely usable due to CPU drain

If I can use it on my 5 year old laptop with a processor that is five generations old, and I can use it with half-a-dozen other VSTi in any song, then CPU use is not an issue. Seriously, it's no worse than Thorn or a dozen other synths I use every day, synths that cost serious money (for a VSTi).

Maybe the GUI plays well with your graphics card and you have no issues.

I have Intel on-board graphics from 2016. Basically, krap graphics. And GR-8 is fine. Again , better than a number of instruments I paid good money for. Changing from the SYNTH panel to the FX or PRESET panels is instantaneous, as is response from individual controls. It literally couldn't be any faster or better.

You seem to forget what the purpose of a synth is and, instead, concentrate on shit that doesn't really matter. Yes, CPU use is a little on the high side but for the sound quality and ease of use on offer, it is more than acceptable.

[EdSfer]

Having some fun with this synth right now and I must say it does sound really good, best of the KVR dev challenge so far (have also tested Reducktion and WhispAir). Congrats to the dev!

I tend to think, as pc2000, that a big part of the sound lies in the FX's (which is not a bad thing, FX's are part of any synth). They make me think of Tranzistow's FX actually, kind of subtle, not in-your-face FX, yet they do a very nice thing on the stereo image.

One little thing doesn't seem right to me though, and it is the filter envelope's range : you just can't do a full filter sweep with an envelope, because, even when turned all the way up, the envelope won't fully open the filter, it goes only halfway (by ear, I think it is PRECISELY halfway, filter envelope amount would need a 2x range to work properly). I don't think I know a lot of synths which behave like this, so I would consider it as a bug.

[BONES]

I finally got around to voting last night and gave GR-8 five votes, Whispair 4 and Reduktion 3. I honestly couldn't find anything else worth voting for.

[Tj Shredder]

This is an entry to a cash prize contest. It's presented to be judged against other entrants.

Not here in the Instruments forum it's not. But even if it was, It stands head and shoulders above anything else in the contest in every way that's actually important.

Nettle beats it easily. But I know your taste is limited to classic VA synths with simple waveform oscillators and filters we have heard a zillion times…
(A little mirror for biased posters can’t hurt I guess…)
But that is just my taste and you give Björns synth also 4 points maybe too much variation in the sound is scary but still not that bad?