Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[FrogsInPants]

I actually think the critique that the UI is kinda clunky looking is a valid one and it is definitely daunting to newcomers. We have plans to fix that one day, but we are volunteers you know! And it's really really actually very hard work.

No doubt, especially if keeping tabs to an absolute minimum is a high priority. I understand that a lot of people prefer a single-page synth because everything is accessible at once, and if that's what you want to strive for that's up to you. Personally, I think that's at odds with trying to provide as many features as possible. Splitting the interface into a few judiciously chosen screens to reduce the clutter can be a real benefit. It makes it easier to see the elements on screen and keep a mental map of where to find them.

In Surge, we already have to select each oscillator and LFO to view and edit its parameters. Do single-page folks find that irritating, since not everything is visible and editable at once? Would switching between, say, a main voice parameters tab and an effects tab be significantly more disruptive?

[baconpaul]

Yeah there are “like for like” tabs everywhere (scene, osc, fx, lfo) and expansions and tear outs (tuning mseg modlist) - it’s a super hard problem. The synth has nearly 1000 params and has potentially hundreds of mod sources

Hard

[EvilDragon]

Has anyone successfully ever made a plugin in Qt. If Qt was a viable option I don't think frameworks like JUCE and iPlug would be built.

More recent NI plugins are done with Qt handling graphics (Mod Pack, Crush Pack, Massive X, GR6...)

[baconpaul]

Has anyone successfully ever made a plugin in Qt. If Qt was a viable option I don't think frameworks like JUCE and iPlug would be built.

I specifically remember (but my memory is nothing to make executive decision on) reading somewhere that Qt's event loop might be a can of worms in an audio plugin context.

Making QT and the VST3 event loop work on linux is tricky. Some CLAP example plugins use QT but they actually run their UI in a separate process space. QTractor is an entire hosting app written in QT and I think that involves some LV2 plugins also.

It's not widely used because the things it gives you (standard sliders, buttons etc...) are not idioms which are widely used in plugins. And it is a rather heavy library. Same reason people don't write plugins with MFC or Cocoa that much; NSSlider sort if is not what you want in the skeuomorphic over designed plug world often.

You may be thinking of GTK which has a different problem, that it is not in-process compatible between versions and Ardor uses GTK2, Reaper GTK3 and Zynthian GTK4 or some such.

[aMUSEd]

I made a Komplete Kontrol NKS template for Surge XT which works now the VST3 support has been released:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6n6xl65ln70xe ... S.zip?dl=0

[baconpaul]

We released Surge XT 1.1.2 this morning.

The primary change is working around a behavior that is either a bug in Surge XT or recent versions of Live which made Surge XT sliders jittery or snap to zero in Ableton.

There's a collection of other small changes and improvements also, which you can read about here, https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/cha ... index.html, including a set of new MPE patches from Roger Linn and the Linnstrument community and some smaller quality of life things.

Enjoy!

[mabian]

Thanks!

- Mario

[oddy.o.lynx]

if I may interject, we (meaning baconpaul) literally moved the UI from VSTGUI to JUCE... which was not trivial by any means

why on earth would anybody want to port it over again to another UI platform which imo would be no less complex and (as a Linux user here) of all things Qt? not to mention redoing Surge from the ground up sounds like an exceptional undertaking

we are not perfect but we are a community and if anything we are open and welcoming, I am dubious to think if Claes open sourced Surge code, that any individual could do it alone and by all indications they don't seem to be particularly inviting

this may sound harsh or diplomatic, you decide, but this Surge Pro idea sounds more like a vanity project

[baconpaul]

We released the SurgeXT Rack Modules today

Here's a video from Omri



and here's the announcement

https://community.vcvrack.com/t/surge-xt/18631

If you use VCV Rack and you use surge, these might really be exciting for you!

[audiojunkie]

Cool! Will these also work in Cardinal?

[aMUSEd]

If anyone (like me) is unsure of how to install these:

https://vcvrack.com/manual/Installing

[Mutant]

Cool! Will these also work in Cardinal?

Same question.

[Tj Shredder]

Anything Cardinal is baked in. If its not there, ask for including it. As Surge and Cardinal are open source, you could do it even yourself (theoretically…)

[GaryG]

Surge is on the list of possible modules to add and it's license seems compatible so guess it's likely they will be added.

[audiojunkie]

Anything Cardinal is baked in. If its not there, ask for including it. As Surge and Cardinal are open source, you could do it even yourself (theoretically…)

Very theoretically! I wouldn't be able to program even if a gun was to my head.