One Synth Challenge #159: Surge XT (j5v Wins!)

[BrainBeatMusic]

Hi guys I am hoping someone might have an idea on how I can easily change the duration of a note. I know how to do it in other synths to go from a pluck to a sustained note but I can't seem to make some of these presents do it. I am guessing I can only do it in the synth too as I am not sure if there is such a thing as inverse reverb or something?? I think if I programmed in each note, I could do it too, but I am using an arp, which makes things more tricky.

[EvilDragon]

You would adjust the sustain and release parameters of amp and/or filter envelopes.

[baconpaul]

And if the gradual release isn’t what you want you can model a different release in the mseg and apply that to the amplitude.

As to reverbs, the fx section has 2 reverbs built in through the surge fx (reverb 1 and reverb2) and another 4 or 5 in the airwindows ambience category and nimbus also has loads of reverb among the other granular madness (but as mentioned the nightly has a nimbus bug fix that matters in a couple of modes)

[BrainBeatMusic]

I think I have sort of got it working but not the way I am expecting it to. Maybe I need to do an update and see if I am experiencing a bug

[bmanic]

Anybody noticed how much some patches in Surge change with samplerate of the DAW? I was thinking of doing this project in 96kHz as I need a bit of high frequency stuff that is aliasing quite a bit.. but the pad I made completely changes it's sound from 48kHz to 96kHz.

Is there any planned support for higher sample rates in the future or is this a no-go?

Some features - especially the string oscillator - are quite samplerate dependent yes, especially with noise sources. Alias is, less so. There's some other edge cases too and, of course, feedback based patches can change with SR too. But if you have a particular patch which you think is inexplicably SR dependent would love to poke at it.

If you are using 1.0.1 rather than the nightly also, the SR is a global so changing (or mixing) SR in session can be tricky. We've fixed that for the next release we think.

I'm running the yesterday's nightly build. I'll send you a few presets over PM.

[] Peter:H []

Here's a first patch. You can have it. It's a taiko kind of sound.
It uses maths, the integrated lua interpreter, amplitude modulation and some brains...
... the same technique that got me disqualified in the tal noise maker round ...he he he.... so use wisely.

This is an interesting approach, although ambiguous, but it seems to me that it is within the rules as long as you use mathematical functions and do not upload scanned wave tables there. In this thread on the second page, the topic of wavetables has already been discussed - personally, I think that it has not yet been disclosed and the rules about WT are imperfect. Your approach allows you to do a lot through MSEG, including forbidden things with WT. I don't remember the whole story with NoiseMaker and I'm not the kind of person who likes to stifle someone's creative impulses. When you made NM say "Zombie", it was incredible, it was like I saw the most difficult trick of an illusionist, and thank you for that! But for the OSC track, this probably won't allowed yet. I feel like this gray area is very blurry, but so far it is.
Someone has to manually enter a vocal sample into MSEG with the mouse, then this will change everything...

Indeed, this was an illusion. What he did with noisemaker was to use the LFO as a sample playback oscillator, and imported samples to it, including the vocal phrase you mention, the kicks and other percussions. This contravened the OSC rules regarding use of samples. It has nothing to do with the method, or the capabilities of the synth.

All this was explained to him in detail, but he refused to accept it and still believes it was his 'clever' technique which was disqualified. He got aggressive and abusive in private messages, and I refuse to engage him further on these issues as a result. But he still continues to push this on the forum whenever possible, with such disinformation as in the above quote.

By all means, the capabilities of the synth may be used - except for import and playback of samples and phrases generated elsewhere.

Sorry, you know you are lying. why do you do it? The Vocal Phrase was a sample, IT WAS NOT included in the OSC track. Percussions was Maths using sines and Nosie. Thanks Richard, you're not able to read the code I have published back then, but are able to "tell the truth" ... man this sucks big deal.

[RichardSemper]

Sorry, you know you are lying. why do you do it? The Vocal Phrase was a sample, IT WAS NOT included in the OSC track. Percussions was Maths using sines and Nosie. Thanks Richard, you're not able to read the code I have published back then, but are able to "tell the truth" ... man this sucks big deal.

I do not appreciate the accusation of lying!
For the final time: The percussion sounds were generated outside of the synth whatever method and other software you may have used to do it. They were brought into the LFO as sample code, and played back there as straight samples. If the code had been used for modulation purposes there would not be a problem. If the synth had the built-in maths capability it would be a different matter.
This has all been explained before, I am sorry you are unable to understand or accept it.

The argument is over. I am not prepared to discuss further with you following your attitude and language used by pm. The only reason I mentioned it here was to try to allay fears of other people, following your posts containing misinformation.

[Boy Wonder]

I think I might indulge myself with this challenge. We'll see.

[BrainBeatMusic]

Is there a functional difference between Surge and Surge XT? It would seem I just realised I made my whole track in Surge

Assuming I have to change (which I think I should) is it possible to say transfer user presets from Surge to Surge XT?

UPDATE: It would seem it is possible to copy user presets from Surge and use the in Surge XT. I wonder what I was missing out on between the 2 versions?

[MilksterX]

Holy Maths, Batman!
There's a LUA interpreter built into the Modulator-Section ... on first contact I only came up with

Code: Select all

modstate["output"] = sin(2*math.pi*modstate["phase"])
 

Thats gonna be funny, because I can revive my code from the TAL NoiseMaker Round ... and translate it into Lua ... watch out Richard ... dicussions coming on discord ... ha ha ha.

I don't understand this. If you know it's forbidden then why push it? and why this passive aggressive tone about discord discussions? You don't chat to us on there so why intentionally admit to lurking?!

We're not against you, so don't become the next Putin! put the maths down and step away from the code!

[ElVincente]

Hi guys!
Really, I'm deeply Impressed by surge ! Can't thank you enough for the time and love you've put into it , what a freaking sound machine !
Hope I'll be able to finish my track in time...

Does someone knows a way to achieve that :
I wan't to use a macro to control the amount of velocity action on the filter envellope.
But we can't target modulations with modulators, can't we ?

[ELEX]

Is there a functional difference between Surge and Surge XT? It would seem I just realised I made my whole track in Surge

Assuming I have to change (which I think I should)...

You can keep the old Surge if you like. It already came up:

RULES question: Must I use current surgeXT, or are earlier Surge VST allowed (say 1.6)?
I have some work in progress from earlier unsubmitted attempts and not sure if can use it without converting to new version?

Thanks!

Using an earlier version is totally allowed, no probs.

[BrainBeatMusic]

I was chatting on the Discord also and can say for sure you can move user presets from surge to XT and have managed to do so for 12 of my tracks so far. I am making the changes one at a time keeping the old one to compare against before deleting it and moving on. A few have had different volume levels I may have adjusted the surge volume which may not be stored in the presets? It also does not manage to keep the automation which sucks having to rebuild it but given I still have the template to copy off it is not too bad.

[emikaela]

A few have had different volume levels I may have adjusted the surge volume which may not be stored in the presets?

it is indeed not. best not use it when designing patches, to avoid unpleasant surprises later.
https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/man ... bal-volume

looks like you could have saved a lot of work by waiting just a couple of hours for a response to your question, consider doing so next time...

[BrainBeatMusic]

While I probably would have gotten away with using just Surge non XT I felt to be right I needed to do the fix and update it and so the only way to do so is to do what I have been doing as far as I can see. I have only had 2 instances where the volume was slightly higher and was easy to rebalance given I had something to compare to. I did have responses straight away on Discord too but given my timezone and that I was in the zone to work on it waiting would not have helped. Anyway, my issue is nearly solved just about 10 more minutes of work to do the last few instances and my track will be about done.