Korg Modwave Native (VST3)

[emasters]

I purchased it ($934 for the HW on Amazon versus $149 for the SW - not bad...) and have not been able to get CC to control the KAOSS pad. CC data controls the performance knobs fine. The manual says the KAOSS pad CC data is meant to integrate with the actual Modwave controller (on the synth itself). Makes me wonder if there's system exclusive midi data being used for this? Haven't played around with it enough, so perhaps there's a way to get standard CC controls to work with it? If you figure it out with standard CC data, let me know....

The settings page has a choice of CC's for "Kaoss Physics". I am not in my studio, so cannot check this, but maybe these work for controlling the XY?

I tried using those listed controllers and changing them around - no luck here. The manual indicates one needs to match the choice of CC's in the plugin with the choice of CC's on the synth for the HW synth to control with the plugin's KAOSS pad. It is a really cool pad, though. Very flexible in terms of movement with the sounds.

[EnGee]

I have demoed it on both Windows and Mac. In Windows, horrible performance especially when changing presets! Ableton Live behaves strange! The CPU jumps to 4000+% then goes down gradually when changing presets! In Cubase almost the same!

On Mac (Logic and Live) it barely reaches 12% CPU!! Changing the presets is so smooth. Great performance on Mac M1! I'm not sure of buying it because this is about NZ$ 234 which is too much especially that I've got several great Wavetable synths. If it is $99, I would consider buying it.

Ableton Live is slow with VST3 program changes, unfortunately - and not just with our products. See the FAQ article below. There will be a CPU hit when a new sound is selected, as it generates the wavetables, but that should go away quickly - and shouldn't be "4000%!" I'd be curious to know what hardware you're using.

https://support.korguser.net/hc/en-us/a ... leton-Live

Thank you Dan for your reply.

I did another go on Windows 11 now and I believe now it's not Modwave's fault or my hardware fault. It's just Ableton Live and Studio One are not usable in Windows! I tested today with FL Studio, Reaper and Cubase (32 bit, 44.1 khz and 128 buffer). It runs almost as smooth as on my mini mac! It took on FLS and Reaper a glimpse of a second to change presets without clipping the CPU! In Cubase it's not that smooth but acceptable (Cubase anyway, is not that efficient with CPU).

My hardware on Windows 11 is Ryzen 5800x, SSD m.2, 32GB, nVidia RTS 3070, Tascam US 4x4 HR.

I think I will switch to FLS and Reaper on Windows as S1 and Ableton Live are really shit in stability/performance!
On Mac M1 there is no problem with Modwave or any other instrument in Logic and Ableton Live. Also Cubase runs great there

[trusampler]

Korg normally releases a quick bug fix for performance , rest assured you are in good hands, they actually care about their customers.

[danatkorg]

I have demoed it on both Windows and Mac. In Windows, horrible performance especially when changing presets! Ableton Live behaves strange! The CPU jumps to 4000+% then goes down gradually when changing presets!

OK, I see what this is now. You're looking at the "Current" CPU meter in Ableton Live. I see the same thing on the Mac. The "goes down gradually" is the result of the *meter* in Ableton; it has nothing to do with the actual CPU usage. (There's a lag filter on their meter, like ballistics in a VU meter.) If you look at an actual CPU meter, such as in Activity Monitor on the Mac, you'll see...nothing at all. There's a very brief burst of multi-threaded activity when the Performance is selected, in order to calculate the wavetables. In Digital Performer on the Mac, this doesn't show up on the meters at all.

If you note any actual problems that result from this, please let me know! For now, though, it looks like a quirk of Ableton's CPU metering.

[danatkorg]

I did another go on Windows 11 now and I believe now it's not Modwave's fault or my hardware fault. It's just Ableton Live and Studio One are not usable in Windows! I tested today with FL Studio, Reaper and Cubase (32 bit, 44.1 khz and 128 buffer). It runs almost as smooth as on my mini mac! It took on FLS and Reaper a glimpse of a second to change presets without clipping the CPU! In Cubase it's not that smooth but acceptable (Cubase anyway, is not that efficient with CPU).

My hardware on Windows 11 is Ryzen 5800x, SSD m.2, 32GB, nVidia RTS 3070, Tascam US 4x4 HR.

In Ableton's defense, I would guess that normally Live works well on Windows. What buffer size were you using there? (128, same as you note above, or something else?) With Live, we've seen that high buffer sizes (2048, for instance) can cause the UI to be slower. We also had one user who noted that changing to a different audio driver solved problems with a slow UI in Live. I'm sure that their tech support could help you to work this out!

[danatkorg]

Ok, maybe not with a single layer, but for most presets, a single instance of modwave takes up 12-22% (or sometimes a little higher) on my AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (16 GB RAM) when Serum uses 5-17% while Icarus 2 uses 4-17%

Since modwave will often be running 8 simultaneous effects, I'm not surprised that the CPU usage might be slightly higher.

Btw - Icarus is one of the very few wavetable synths (maybe the only other one?) that, along with modwave, allows phase-synchronous blending of two wavetables in realtime. On modwave, this is the "A/B Blend" control.

[aMUSEd]

Any reason why the XY position params can't be controlled? eg I can map them to knobs in Komplete Kontrol but when I turn a knob the XY doesn't move

[danatkorg]

Nice synth, I like the Korg sound (have all the other soft synths...) but it is not very stable on my Win10, Reaper 6.71 system with 8700K processor. The mod nobs crackle and clicking or just using the arrow keys on the program presets is enough to crash Reaper.

Edit: standalone is fine, no crackles and crashes

Interesting (but not in a good way). We test with Reaper on Windows. I'll send a DM, if it's OK, to get some more information about your system and setup, and we'll see if we can get to the bottom of that.

[emasters]

Any reason why the XY position params can't be controlled? eg I can map them to knobs in Komplete Kontrol but when I turn a knob the XY doesn't move

Not sure why - should be cc 18 & 19 by default. I did check the Modwave HW manual to see what the HW synth's midi implementation is. CC 18 & 19 do show that they are the X and Y parameters for the pad. However, the KAOSS Physics CC implementation (which is how the parameters are labeled in the soft-synth settings), are controlled via System Exclusive messages in the HW. Makes me wonder if the soft-synth pad implementation requires the HW System Exclusive message protocol, to work? Curious....

[danatkorg]

Any reason why the XY position params can't be controlled? eg I can map them to knobs in Komplete Kontrol but when I turn a knob the XY doesn't move

If Kaoss Physics is On, then the "Touched" CC needs to be On (CC20 by default, value 127) in order to control via CCs. This is necessary because Kaoss Physics is all about "throwing" the ball; you grab it, drag it, and then release. Similarly, if Kaoss Physics is Off, and Hold Position is On, then when the ball isn't "touched" it snaps back to the center.

That said, if Kaoss Physics is Off and Hold Position is also Off, it *seems* like we could ignore "touched" and always respond to the X/Y CCs. I'll look into it.

[danatkorg]

I did check the Modwave HW manual to see what the HW synth's midi implementation is. CC 18 & 19 do show that they are the X and Y parameters for the pad. However, the KAOSS Physics CC implementation (which is how the parameters are labeled in the soft-synth settings), are controlled via System Exclusive messages in the HW. Makes me wonder if the soft-synth pad implementation requires the HW System Exclusive message protocol, to work? Curious....

Unfortunately, plug-ins and SysEx don't generally get along; to get them to work, you end up having to do things like supporting MIDI interface ports directly from within the plug-in (which gets "pl-ugly"). Also, while almost all DAWs are happy to receive and record SysEx, Live does not (except for Max For Live patches). So, with the just-released modwave (hardware) version 1.1.3, we added a CC-only method for Kaoss Physics. This works for both the hardware and the software versions. The old SysEx method is still supported for the hardware, optionally, for compatibility with older sequence data if necessary.

[EvilDragon]

Dan, do you think it'd be valid to support 14-bit CC mode for greater resolution for the Kaoss Physics pad?

[Rod Staples]

Is anybody else getting CPU spikes and crackles when adjusting the knobs and controls?

[EnGee]

I have demoed it on both Windows and Mac. In Windows, horrible performance especially when changing presets! Ableton Live behaves strange! The CPU jumps to 4000+% then goes down gradually when changing presets!

OK, I see what this is now. You're looking at the "Current" CPU meter in Ableton Live. I see the same thing on the Mac. The "goes down gradually" is the result of the *meter* in Ableton; it has nothing to do with the actual CPU usage. (There's a lag filter on their meter, like ballistics in a VU meter.) If you look at an actual CPU meter, such as in Activity Monitor on the Mac, you'll see...nothing at all. There's a very brief burst of multi-threaded activity when the Performance is selected, in order to calculate the wavetables. In Digital Performer on the Mac, this doesn't show up on the meters at all.

If you note any actual problems that result from this, please let me know! For now, though, it looks like a quirk of Ableton's CPU metering.

Oh I see! When I changed the CPU indicator in Live to "Average", it just maxes the CPU when I change the presets but fall down immediately, similar to Cubase.
I have the buffer set at 128. I tried also Presonus iTwo audio interface, and it is almost the same results. Anyway, In Mac mini M1, it has a much better performance (Live).

By the way, I'm trying to find 'unison' but I might be dumb! I can't find it! Is it under another name? or it is not in the oscillator's page?

Edit: Oh I found it! It is in the ARP&Setup page. It is global unison? Oh no! It is per layer! Good I think I will purchase it as it is incredibly fun and flexible

[danatkorg]

Well, #&%@$^@.

So! Here's the scoop. We made a change in the VST3 parameter mechanism going from version 0.99 to 1.0, just a few days ago. We thought it was a benign change - but I just tested the VST3 in Ableton Live on macOS Monterey, and it has the crackling you're talking about. In contrast, the AU in Ableton Live works fine. And, the kicker: when I go back to 0.99, the VST3 works fine too. So, we just broke this. Look for an update very soon. Sorry for the hassle.