Modular Hybrid Synth (modular 3.0), who would be interested?

[Tj Shredder]

All the description I have read so far sounds like the Grid with a nice MSEG. I bet by the time its ready the Grid will have one…
But there are other targets than Bitwig users. As you start fresh, you can create it based on CLAP and with MPE in mind. For that though you need an APDSR envelope (independent modulateable peak value). All those AHDSR or DADSR envelopes are pretty useless for expressive playing…
And it has to be cross platform (including Linux) of course…

[SamDi]

My five cents:
1.) Modular market is pretty saturated. Just another modular environment wouldn‘t be the game changer. You could try to take the best from all worlds: easiness and MPE from Bitwig Grid, Sound Quality from Voltage Modular and extensibility from VCV. But to be honest, I am not sure, if the world really needs another modular environment.
2.)I think the classical modular approach, to connect pins from boxes to boxes is kind of anachronistic. It‘s the little brother of skeuomorphic interfaces of soft synths. Phase Plant shows pretty well, that with an semi-modular approach you can get already pretty far. I ask myself, why one didn’t yet have the idea to extend such an approach to a fully modular concept. It would be be so much nicer to drag and drop modules in an audio path of serial and parallel routes. And then afterwards you can apply additional modulations also via drag and drop.

I do not use modular any often, because for complex stuff Phase Plant covers this for 98% (when you can live with proudly digital).

But if you really want to offer something new, you might think about to evaluate in this direction, Phase plant like interface to full-modular with analog sound quality (and maybe an opportunity to extend it with external modules). This could then also be a great platform for third party developers, which you could license then. This would be a gamechanger in my eyes.

[MegaPixel]

My five cents:
1.) Modular market is pretty saturated. Just another modular environment wouldn‘t be the game changer. You could try to take the best from all worlds: easiness and MPE from Bitwig Grid, Sound Quality from Voltage Modular and extensibility from VCV. But to be honest, I am not sure, if the world really needs another modular environment.
2.)I think the classical modular approach, to connect pins from boxes to boxes is kind of anachronistic. It‘s the little brother of skeuomorphic interfaces of soft synths. Phase Plant shows pretty well, that with an semi-modular approach you can get already pretty far. I ask myself, why one didn’t yet have the idea to extend such an approach to a fully modular concept. It would be be so much nicer to drag and drop modules in an audio path of serial and parallel routes. And then afterwards you can apply additional modulations also via drag and drop.

I do not use modular any often, because for complex stuff Phase Plant covers this for 98% (when you can live with proudly digital).

But if you really want to offer something new, you might think about to evaluate in this direction, Phase plant like interface to full-modular with analog sound quality (and maybe an opportunity to extend it with external modules). This could then also be a great platform for third party developers, which you could license then. This would be a gamechanger in my eyes.

That's the whole point of this, I've got phaseplant, falcon, dune, serum etc and there's never enough LFOs or ENVs or they don't work in the way you want, cant put them where you want, cant link things up the way you want, this is what I will be aiming to solve, BUT, not in a classic modular way, no voltages, none of the wire madness etc. It may look like a classic modular wire diagram and it is, but it's not a classic modular synth like the rest of them. It's modules are all from classic vst synths that we all know and love (serum etc), each of which can be added as many times as you want. It oddly makes things crazy simple, add 1 osc, add 1 env, filter and your done, no working out why my note is constantly playing, or why I can't hear anything, playing trace the cable etc.

eg






So you can get a matrix for each module which eliminates the wire mess and to prevent wire mess even further, there is the "linker" module, which can be any module you have added to your patch so you can put it next to something to prevent wires going everywhere.


Recently I done a little experiment between sylenth, phaseplant, serum, synthmaster one, zebra, hive, ana2, falcon +, I created a saw patch with a delay in sylenth then tried to re-create it in the others, the others got close but not quite. The one that couldn't get it right ironically was phaseplant it was unable to reproduce the echo correctly (dot and no trip), I had to use snapheap to get close but still didn't quite get it, the daw echo could. But each did have a slightly different sound coming from their osc's also.

[audiojunkie]

Hi,

I'm testing the waters so to speak, putting some feelers out there...

Everyone has their idea of the dream synth for them, what would be perfect for one person is often not perfect for someone else but being modular allows you to make it what you want.

But modular is a bit daunting to many, some think that the modular scene is a bit too complex (voltages and what not) and are driven away and some are love it and are fanatical about it all the way to the hardware side of things...

Me being someone who loves falcon, serum, cherry audio, parts of kontakt (lol) etc etc, you get the idea. I too have my dream synth in mind and I think others might want it too (also open to others ideas)...

So... How many of you would be interested if I built a hybrid modular synth (modular 3.0?), which doesn't go as far as cherry audio or cardinal but is a cross between them and falcon, rapid, serum, phaseplant, rapid etc etc and has some features that no synth has (I have many ideas and open to others ideas also)?

No voltages, no racks, all will be done in vector scalable graphics, each module can be added as many times as you want (or as many times as your computer can handle), it will be fully multi core and be what I think (at the time of writing this have all the components from the best out there all wrapped up in a node editor that actually looks good, handles like a normal synth and most of all is easy to use.

Think vital / phase plant / rapid meets, unreal engine's & blender's node editor crossed with modular synthesis capabilities from cardinal to bitwig's grid, that looks good and is easy to use.

If there's enough interest in this I will see what I can do about building it.

I use Linux. I would be interested if it supports linux and uses nothing more than serial or keyfile copy protection.

[SamDi]

My five cents:
1.) Modular market is pretty saturated. Just another modular environment wouldn‘t be the game changer. You could try to take the best from all worlds: easiness and MPE from Bitwig Grid, Sound Quality from Voltage Modular and extensibility from VCV. But to be honest, I am not sure, if the world really needs another modular environment.
2.)I think the classical modular approach, to connect pins from boxes to boxes is kind of anachronistic. It‘s the little brother of skeuomorphic interfaces of soft synths. Phase Plant shows pretty well, that with an semi-modular approach you can get already pretty far. I ask myself, why one didn’t yet have the idea to extend such an approach to a fully modular concept. It would be be so much nicer to drag and drop modules in an audio path of serial and parallel routes. And then afterwards you can apply additional modulations also via drag and drop.

I do not use modular any often, because for complex stuff Phase Plant covers this for 98% (when you can live with proudly digital).

But if you really want to offer something new, you might think about to evaluate in this direction, Phase plant like interface to full-modular with analog sound quality (and maybe an opportunity to extend it with external modules). This could then also be a great platform for third party developers, which you could license then. This would be a gamechanger in my eyes.

That's the whole point of this, I've got phaseplant, falcon, dune, serum etc and there's never enough LFOs or ENVs or they don't work in the way you want, cant put them where you want, cant link things up the way you want, this is what I will be aiming to solve, BUT, not in a classic modular way, no voltages, none of the wire madness etc. It may look like a classic modular wire diagram and it is, but it's not a classic modular synth like the rest of them. It's modules are all from classic vst synths that we all know and love (serum etc), each of which can be added as many times as you want. It oddly makes things crazy simple, add 1 osc, add 1 env, filter and your done, no working out why my note is constantly playing, or why I can't hear anything, playing trace the cable etc.

eg






So you can get a matrix for each module which eliminates the wire mess and to prevent wire mess even further, there is the "linker" module, which can be any module you have added to your patch so you can put it next to something to prevent wires going everywhere.


Recently I done a little experiment between sylenth, phaseplant, serum, synthmaster one, zebra, hive, ana2, falcon +, I created a saw patch with a delay in sylenth then tried to re-create it in the others, the others got close but not quite. The one that couldn't get it right ironically was phaseplant it was unable to reproduce the echo correctly (dot and no trip), I had to use snapheap to get close but still didn't quite get it, the daw echo could. But each did have a slightly different sound coming from their osc's also.

Your mock-up looks very cool. I'd prefer a phase-plant-like surface more, but it seems you pretty worked out this stuff already.

That phase plant is not able to do a good delay job is no surprise, because the delay snapin is underwhelming - you can't get any Fx in the feedback path, even no filters. I don't understand why they do not offer this TBH.

It's strange: Phase Plant is one of my favorite synths, because it offers much flexibility, easy to handle. But the sound of the single modules could be better IMHO (e.g. filters). A filter sweep on phaseplant just doesn't sound as nice as a filter sweep on Sylenth. Phase plant is good at heavy modulation stuff, making impressive sounds, based on FM, EQing, Multiband-Compression, etc. But it's not good at getting a nice sound out of the basic modules.

[MegaPixel]

Your mock-up looks very cool. I'd prefer a phase-plant-like surface more, but it seems you pretty worked out this stuff already.

That phase plant is not able to do a good delay job is no surprise, because the delay snapin is underwhelming - you can't get any Fx in the feedback path, even no filters. I don't understand why they do not offer this TBH.

It's strange: Phase Plant is one of my favorite synths, because it offers much flexibility, easy to handle. But the sound of the single modules could be better IMHO (e.g. filters). A filter sweep on phaseplant just doesn't sound as nice as a filter sweep on Sylenth. Phase plant is good at heavy modulation stuff, making impressive sounds, based on FM, EQing, Multiband-Compression, etc. But it's not good at getting a nice sound out of the basic modules.

That's one of the issues with phaseplant, the 3 channels to the right, while this is great it's actually quite limiting in various ways, being sequential is one of them, which is why I think they created snap heap. If I want to create a left right echo in phaseplant to match sylenth I can't do that without snap heap and splitting left and right channels. But it's still more freeing than most other synths. But only plug and play modules in a node editor is actually full freedom, even though many don't like node editors. I've found once I got used to a node editor going back you feel very constrained with what you can do eg. Blender textures, Unreal Engine Blueprints, Davinci +.

Re: PhasePlant and the missing filters etc, it is a bit odd I agree.

As for what I'm going to try get built, the concept designs have a lot of thought and functionality in them, but their design is far from anything that will be final. I will be doing some full vector based mockups and a Web based simulation (no audio), in December, to really see if I can get people behind it. I will be keeping in mind, "if I wouldn't use it, then why would anyone else".

While creating various early concerts it has shown me how simple a patch could be, just 2 modules and done. I also like someone's suggestion that a custom skin can be created by users and just map buttons, dials and sliders from the node view to that, which will allow anyone to turn it into anything for their own patches but that would come later, the foundations first.

[SamDi]

If there's enough interest in this I will see what I can do about building it.

Any news on that?

[MegaPixel]

Any news on that?

There was virtually no interest from anyone, it's on the shelf for the foreseeable future...

[zerocrossing]

Any news on that?

There was virtually no interest from anyone, it's on the shelf for the foreseeable future...

An informal question on a forum with very little to actually show isn’t going to really spark fervor, especially with capable plugin modulars about. Something like that needs to have a pretty impressive alpha demo version to start sparking interest. If you make it, they will come.

[MegaPixel]

Any news on that?

There was virtually no interest from anyone, it's on the shelf for the foreseeable future...

An informal question on a forum with very little to actually show isn’t going to really spark fervor, especially with capable plugin modulars about. Something like that needs to have a pretty impressive alpha demo version to start sparking interest. If you make it, they will come.

I took it further than just on KVR... I went down the partners and angel investors path also, no interest...

The music industry is in a state with the £0.000001 per a stream BS, which has had quite the impact on the audio software market in turn. Things which used to cost a lot more are now in easily in reach of the average person (everything is nearly on sale all the time), there are few exceptions. The cost of a c++ developer full time to what someone makes on selling a synth doesn't add up, it's more like, don't give up your day job and do that on the side. There is money on initial launch but after saturation there's a huge fall off and your back to relying on your day job.

I also have other work which is keeping the lights on at the moment, so I'm focused on that, I can cook up a visual (no audio) demo of the application in a fairly short period of time (not using c++), but laying down something as per my designs with functioning audio which are very rough not so quick. What I had in mind was: think bitwig modules, phaseplant, serum, rapid, vps avenger, just modular. Each module duplicatable anywhere at any time, draggable and connectable via wires, which would break away from all of their limitations. Full modular meets classic synth, without the complexity of full modular. If I see someone using Voltage Modulator I'm like, I'm lost wondering what the hell is going on within the first 30 seconds usually. lol. Building this solo is a lot of work for 1 person, many many software revisions will be required, not to mention PC only till I get my hands on an M1 mac and then discover all the BS that comes with the mac programming ecosystem (graphics pipeline (metal?), saving locations, protected and public dirs etc), then same again for linux (if I even bother with linux)...

[VariKusBrainZ]

Make it all ‘voltage’ based so anything can be wired to anything

[MegaPixel]

Make it all ‘voltage’ based so anything can be wired to anything

https://vcvrack.com/

https://cherryaudio.com/products/voltage-modular

etc

[zerocrossing]

Any news on that?

There was virtually no interest from anyone, it's on the shelf for the foreseeable future...

An informal question on a forum with very little to actually show isn’t going to really spark fervor, especially with capable plugin modulars about. Something like that needs to have a pretty impressive alpha demo version to start sparking interest. If you make it, they will come.

I took it further than just on KVR... I went down the partners and angel investors path also, no interest...

The music industry is in a state with the £0.000001 per a stream BS, which has had quite the impact on the audio software market in turn. Things which used to cost a lot more are now in easily in reach of the average person (everything is nearly on sale all the time), there are few exceptions. The cost of a c++ developer full time to what someone makes on selling a synth doesn't add up, it's more like, don't give up your day job and do that on the side. There is money on initial launch but after saturation there's a huge fall off and your back to relying on your day job.

I also have other work which is keeping the lights on at the moment, so I'm focused on that, I can cook up a visual (no audio) demo of the application in a fairly short period of time (not using c++), but laying down something as per my designs with functioning audio which are very rough not so quick. What I had in mind was: think bitwig modules, phaseplant, serum, rapid, vps avenger, just modular. Each module duplicatable anywhere at any time, draggable and connectable via wires, which would break away from all of their limitations. Full modular meets classic synth, without the complexity of full modular. If I see someone using Voltage Modulator I'm like, I'm lost wondering what the hell is going on within the first 30 seconds usually. lol. Building this solo is a lot of work for 1 person, many many software revisions will be required, not to mention PC only till I get my hands on an M1 mac and then discover all the BS that comes with the mac programming ecosystem (graphics pipeline (metal?), saving locations, protected and public dirs etc), then same again for linux (if I even bother with linux)...

Musicians spending many orders of magnitude more on their gear than they take in with their music isn’t new. I’m in my late 50s and only now am I making enough to cover my expenses and have enough left over to cover decent lifestyle expenses.

Even though they don’t admit it, people don’t really buy hardware or software expecting to be able to live off the proceeds of what they make with it. You’re also right in thinking that writing plugins isn’t the best way to make a living. You’re better off writing stock market prediction algorithms. I suspect a lot of developers have alternate money sources and mostly do it for the love of it.

[audiojunkie]

Agreed. I have NEVER made enough money from my music to bother with it as an income source. Nevertheless, I've purchased gear and software almost yearly since the 1990s. Some of us are no longer even thinking of what we do in terms of making money from it--it's for the love of it (and some days, it's not even for that).

[MegaPixel]

I agree from a customer perspective
I will never make enough money from audio work that it will ever come near to paying for the software and hardware I've purchased over the years. TBH I've never expected it to, it's a small part of my skill set, of which there are many better than me out there at it, and few jobs I get require audio work to be done alongside programming. I sometimes get jobs to create desktop/online demos/presentations, animations, slide shows in 2D or 3D which can be interactive or non-interactive, which require non obtrusive subtle background audio combined with UI and object interaction SFX (still hasn't and probably wont ever pay for the amount of software and hardware I've purchased over the years for audio production, but it's nice I can use something which is a hobby of mine in my work).

From a software developer, company owner and ROI perspective
Software has gotten cheaper and plugins are here, there and everywhere for very low prices these days (eg plugin alliance, melda etc). Then there's the sales, summer sale, winter sale, labour day, thanks giving, black november, xmas, and xmas pre and post sales, jan sales, cyber monday sales etc etc... Few never have sales. This only serves to show me that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I understand subscription models, as it keeps money coming in and allows you to keep active development and support instead of doing this usually on your own in your spare time. However I do hate subscription models, and they are often over far over priced.

I pref' version purchases, if a new major version comes out you get to upgrade for cheaper if you own a previous version (within 1 or 2 versions).

For a collection of £30 plugins (smaller plugins) this can add up to a lot of work, especially when something big changes like when the M1 chip was released. Which is a much larger challenge when dealing with a much more complicated piece of software as a full fledged hybrid modular synth of about £150. People will expect support, bug fixes, updates, for all PC and Mac, this then becomes a huge amount of work, unpaid.

Which brings me to major version release changes and sales (the paid upgrade).
I've noticed a lot of software companies / developers doing this for small quality of life/use changes that in no way deserve a major version bump. It's one way to get some money to keep the development going but it goes against my software development knowledge to bump the major version up for things which are not a major change, large enough feature addition or something that impacts the whole application on a large scale.

Building it
I would enjoy building the synth idea I have, I know I would use it, it could potentially replace most if not all my other synths, it think it would easily take on serum and phaseplant with its functional capabilities.

But trying to build it while doing my day job (running a business & lead developer) will burn me out and if I do manage it, it will take a good few years, I got to keep food on the table and the lights on first and foremost.