An Invitation to Soundpaint

[medienhexer]

I really don't get KVR.

This thread, like almost all threads about a product I might be interested in, reliably turns into 99% Kardashian-like reality TV and I have to sort through to find the 1% useful information. Ain't nobody got time for that!

Seriously, is there anything we, as a community can do to turn this ship around? I always thought that having a common interest automatically means that you have some sort of common ground to talk. But increasingly, I don't get that impression anymore.

I find the videos very informative and entertaining. I'm interested in demoing the product once a demo is available. If I like what I see, I might give them my money. No product is the best in everything. I'm interested to see if it does something significantly better than something I already have or something I have been looking for and not found. If so, I might sell that other thing. If not, I will not buy the new thing.

My evaluation of the product will be guided by my personal taste. If I don't think it does anything I want, that doesn't make everyone else wrong who likes it. Nobody can WIN a discussion like this, nobody is objectively RIGHT.

I can tell you what is WRONG - creating pages and pages of negative or misinforming content about a new developer. Anyone who is not part of KVR and does not "get" the way discussions derail here, may actually find this thread on Google and get the impression that the developer did something wrong. Perhaps even maliciously. And that is not the case. They just happened to announce a product too early for some and not early enough for others.

[starflakeprj]

They will have a bundle for $300 that includes all instruments and requires over 280GB.
I assume that means just all the instruments available at launch, otherwise with about 100 due in all the price would be insanely low.

To me, based on what I've seen/heard in this thread so far, a better value than Omnisphere. Looking forward to the release.

[noiseboyuk]

I really don't get KVR.

This thread, like almost all threads about a product I might be interested in, reliably turns into 99% Kardashian-like reality TV and I have to sort through to find the 1% useful information. Ain't nobody got time for that!

Seriously, is there anything we, as a community can do to turn this ship around? I always thought that having a common interest automatically means that you have some sort of common ground to talk. But increasingly, I don't get that impression anymore.

I find the videos very informative and entertaining. I'm interested in demoing the product once a demo is available. If I like what I see, I might give them my money. No product is the best in everything. I'm interested to see if it does something significantly better than something I already have or something I have been looking for and not found. If so, I might sell that other thing. If not, I will not buy the new thing.

My evaluation of the product will be guided by my personal taste. If I don't think it does anything I want, that doesn't make everyone else wrong who likes it. Nobody can WIN a discussion like this, nobody is objectively RIGHT.

I can tell you what is WRONG - creating pages and pages of negative or misinforming content about a new developer. Anyone who is not part of KVR and does not "get" the way discussions derail here, may actually find this thread on Google and get the impression that the developer did something wrong. Perhaps even maliciously. And that is not the case. They just happened to announce a product too early for some and not early enough for others.

Yeah, it is kind of nuts here quite often. For example I seem to have acquired a rather bitter and angry stalker that has started following me around threads and yelling at me - not sure what set him off (I'm willing to bet money that it's a He), but the noise pollution is kinda overbearing. Added him to the foe list (that list is a bit of necessary evil).

On the plus side, there was post by Michael L at the top of the previous page that was very helpful as a brief description of what on earth this is. I'm still struggling to get a sense of what it means in practice - I see lots of long videos with lots of noodling, a simple 5 minute intro video saying "this is what it can do and basically how it works" would be welcome.

I still don't know what's happened with the release though - they've been trailing 21st October for ages and now it's just vanished, but taking a quick scan of the thread I think it did appear for a bit. I'm sure it'll all come clear in the end.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of 8dio based on past performance, lots of hype but disappointing in the end with real QC problems, so I'll be wary. But this does look to be a new kind of thing, I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

[Hink]

once again, lets stay on topic please...no offense, I get your frustration but it's just going to continue to derail the thread with everyone wanting to chime in...we are watching this, please report what we might miss...but lets stay on topic please

[agharta]

The overview video is worth a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD4CuAw4Qe0&t=768s

Here's one on the effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ObjI5Fqrck

A new one on the ARP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW3bQ-IhtCE

[BenfordLaw]

As one of the few lucky people to have a working copy of SoundPaint, with the free piano sound, I can say that it doesn't seem to have the synthesis ability I was hoping it had. It's a perfectly nice piano, but unless there are things hiding somewhere in the interface (and there well could be), I don't see how you can radically change the sound of the samples themselves very much. I don't think there is resynthesis involved, because the piano patch download was 7.5GB.

These are the sounds that I presume I should be able to load, they are in the main folder 'Piano - 1928 Vintage Grand Steinway':

Piano - 1928 Steinway 12 Bit Tonky MS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Arp Forever Held TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Banjo Like TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Bowed Piano TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Chill and Versed DC.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Digital Heartbreak MS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Dreamy Android NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Fairies NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Firefly Piano TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Forest Piano TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Fuzzy Morph GA.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Ghost Pub TM.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Good Dreams NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Haunted NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway IceLush Pad PD.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Intimate PitzDuo PD.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Lo-Fi DC.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Lost Lands TM.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main 2 Mic TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Arp Jam TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Arp Me TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Cinematic TM.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Closely NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Dark TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Drake TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Mic Morph TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Mic Swirl TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Natalie TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Octaves TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Player TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Rain TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Reverse DC.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Snappy TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Sustain TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main VHS Vibe NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Vintage TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Mic Rev TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Moody Reverse NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Painter Piano TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway PianoString SwellPad PD.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Plastic Piano TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Popcorn Piano NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Reverse Echos GA.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Reverse! Reverse! DC.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway ReversePad Glitter PD.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Sleeping with The Ghost MS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Spirit WrapPad PD.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Staccato Banjo ARP TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Staccato Jammer TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Storm Piano TF.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Tremolo NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway TremoVerb NS.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Who Is There TM.p8x
Piano - 1928 Steinway Zilbel Mallet Piano TF.p8x

But I can only load
Piano - 1928 Staccato
Piano - 1928 Staccato Player Mic
Piano - 1928 Sustain
Piano - 1928 Sustain Player Mic
which are the names of the folders with the samples (?) inside.
Has anybody else who has been lucky enough to get the free version managed to load up the 56 presets I listed above?

I don't like the 'flat' interface. There are too many 'buttons' that look like title text, so you have to mouse over every part of the interface in order to find out whether it's a button or not. For example, under the 'Master' button (which clearly IS a button) there are two horizontal lines, but as far as I can tell, they don't do anything - but it isn't obvious, because of the 'flat' interface.

[BenfordLaw]

I've worked out where I was going wrong - I had to go to the hamburger menu in the top left, and use the Library Management again, and rescan the folder it had installed the piano library to.

[BenfordLaw]

It sounds like Soundpaint is a sample-based synth where the samples are not just re-pitched but are fully resynthesized, then algorithms extract a large set of audio features so the 'playback' interpolates smoothly between sampled notes and velocities. This feature extraction then allows filtering of those audio features separately so you can tweak each of them (eg. frequency, envelope) in detail to significantly change the sound, perhaps allow feedback to create convolution effects, and of course other possibilities. If I am correct, doing this with minimal latency would be a major achievement.

From playing with the piano demo, I don't think this is the case (I don't think the samples are resynthesised - because the download is 7.5GB - but I could be wrong- here's why:
There are four folders in the download:

Piano - 1928 Staccato (1352 objects)
Piano - 1928 Staccato Player Mic (1352 objects)
Piano - 1928 Sustain (506 objects)
Piano - 1928 Sustain Player Mic (506 objects)

Piano - 1928 Staccato and
Piano - 1928 Staccato Player Mic
contain files with the same names, but most of the duplicate files in the second folder are a kb smaller or larger in size than the original file in the first folder.

Here are the names and sizes of the first six files in 'Piano - 1928 Staccato':

Staccato_A#0_M1_V1_R1_X1.8dio 831 kB 20/09/2021 06:07:46 8DIO File
Staccato_A#0_M1_V1_R2_X1.8dio 880 kB 20/09/2021 06:07:46 8DIO File
Staccato_A#0_M1_V1_R3_X1.8dio 751 kB 20/09/2021 06:07:46 8DIO File
Staccato_A#0_M1_V1_R4_X1.8dio 645 kB 20/09/2021 06:07:46 8DIO File
Staccato_A#0_M1_V1_R5_X1.8dio 803 kB 20/09/2021 06:07:46 8DIO File
Staccato_A#0_M1_V2_R1_X1.8dio 602 kB 20/09/2021 06:07:46 8DIO File

(obviously I won't list all 1352!) So they are quite small files if they are normal samples, and there are, for example, 240 note 'A' files (labelled as A#0 to A#6), and so on - so I wonder if they ARE resynthesised by Soundpaint, to make much longer samples in a much smaller space than was otherwise possible. And in the 'info.json' file within each of the four main folders, it has the following line:
"longestDuration": 42.77391815185547,

So presumably it can play a note for 42.77 seconds! I can't see an 800kB sample producing that - so the more I think about it, the more I think it must be resynthesising somehow, which really would be a breakthrough, because the piano sounds fantastic, and SoundPaint says it's only using 168MB of RAM when the 'Piano - 1928 Sustain' patch is loaded. In the interface, the maximum I can set the release to is 10 seconds, not 42.77, but it sounds perfect.

So far I can't find much in the way of synthesis in the interface, but if I use the 'Search' box, I can see a list of 'Instruments' you can highlight (Alt.Ensemble, Brass, Custom Design, Guitar, Percussion, Sound Effect, Voice, Ambience, Chiptune, Drum, Hybrid Cinema, Percussion Tonal, String, Woodwind, Bass, Choir, Epic Ensemble, Keyboard, Piano, Synth, World', and a load of 'Emotions' you can select - 'Acceptance, Admiration, Aggressive, Alien, Amazed, Anger, etc.' 49 in total (I think), and 'Genres' (35 in total), 'Sound Techniques' (77, I think), 'Room' (reverb options, 8 in total) and 'Microphone' (6 in total).

But there really isn't much in the interface that I can see that would allow you to actually change much about any of the presets. So hopefully I'm missing something deep inside the interface and all will be revealed! Regardless of that, the free piano sounds great and the included presets sound great too.

I can also confirm that the presets load instantaneously - the 'Piano - 1928 Sustain' part loads in a fraction of a second, it's only 120MB according to the bottom of the Soundpaint window. A patch such as 'Piano - 1928 Steinway Main Octaves TF' loads four parts and takes 406MB, but loading is instant. So I think something very clever is going on...

[noiseboyuk]

Thanks agharta. Looks like some good ideas from the 24 min intro video, but the most seemingly unusual - the morphing - didn't sound that exciting from those examples. The general stretching sounded really good though.

Unless I missed it, he didn't really explain the basics of how it works (as Michael L explained it), so I don't really understand the underlying basics beyond Michael's description. From that video I'm coming away from it thinking it's a slick sampler with some potentially good tricks.

[fairlyclose]

Thanks agharta. Looks like some good ideas from the 24 min intro video, but the most seemingly unusual - the morphing - didn't sound that exciting from those examples. The general stretching sounded really good though.

Unless I missed it, he didn't really explain the basics of how it works (as Michael L explained it), so I don't really understand the underlying basics beyond Michael's description. From that video I'm coming away from it thinking it's a slick sampler with some potentially good tricks.

It will hopefully (for me anyway), be more interesting than just a platform for 8dio to repurpose their vast legacy of samples. I can understand the larger devs wanting to control their production more and move away from Kontakt tho - makes sense

[agharta]

This will be version 1, so let's be realistic about what to expect.
It's a free Engine with a free piano, so you get a chance to play around with no financial commitment.
The instruments so far announced for it are relatively inexpensive which is good.

They have mentioned that they seemingly have a deep road map for it, let's see where it goes.

[toitoi]

can you use your own samples in Soundpaint or it's just an ipad interface to sell sample libraries that tries to double your DAW functionality?

[agharta]

can you use your own samples in Soundpaint or it's just an ipad interface to sell sample libraries that tries to double your DAW functionality?

Scooby Doo says *********

[Dirtgrain]

can you use your own samples in Soundpaint

Not yet, but it was said to be in the plans for future iterations.

[Caine123]

can you use your own samples in Soundpaint

Not yet, but it was said to be in the plans for future iterations.

Hmmm i dont like plans you never know if they will be true