Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[Igro]

Surge's modulation is processed every 32 samples, so it is not really super conductive to audio rate modulation. Use other synths if this is what you need.

Just wanted to ask, what is the reason for not taking the Surge to another level with high-res modulation? In fact, that is probably the last thing in Surge that still missing.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Surge's modulation is processed every 32 samples, so it is not really super conductive to audio rate modulation. Use other synths if this is what you need.

Just wanted to ask, what is the reason for not taking the Surge to another level with high-res modulation? In fact, that is probably the last thing in Surge that still missing.

The internal block size is always a tradeoff between CPU use and quality. Smaller blocks reduces aliasing in modulation at the cost of more CPU use.

Computers have obviously gotten a lot faster since Surge was originally designed, so it is fair to say that the block size could be reduced a bit. That change has *many* edges though, and can easily break existing stuff. So we won't make this change in main until XT2, to be safe. Some of the internal refactoring in preparation for that change has already been made though, and if you're willing/able to compile Surge yourself you can try it at block size 16 or 8 already. This of course comes with the same caveat as our "nightly" builds: Beware that your Surge may be less stable if you do this.


And all that being said, even at block size 8, you're not gonna get perfectly clean filter FM across the whole range. Some of the patches I contributed to 1.3 (found under "A.Liv") use filter FM trickery, and they sounds pretty good even on block size 32! But those are all bass sounds intended to be played in a really narrow sub - bass range. For keys/leads/etc these techniques fall apart into an aliasy mess very quickly... And block size 8 only moves that problem up two octaves, it doesn't fix it. So as EvilDragon said, if alias-free filter FM and such is a priority, there are better options than Surge, and it'll probably stay that way even in XT2.

[EvilDragon]

Correct, because due to various reasons we cannot go below block size of 8 samples.

[baconpaul]

There’s two core reasons

1. The block operators assume the parameters are constant or linter/lag across the block. We could introduce a vector parameter and rewrite all that code and in many cases that could work (and this is how inter osc fm works roughly) but it would be changing every api and every dsp point. Not impossible but work.

2. But even once we had done that our filters make the assumption that setting cutoff and resonance is more expensive than evaluating a step (correctly) so have been built internally to have relatively expensive “set coefficients” which then begins a special lerp of the filter. Rewriting this would require revisiting the cpu characteristics of these coefficient makers which are both expensive and non parallelizable. Again, doable but a radical change in the performance profile

As Andreya said though, we went through the effort to make the entire synth block size independent (well more accurately “work with any power of 2 block size greater than or equal to 8”) and right now all of the rack modules run at block 8 and the reuse of the components in short circuit run at 16. And we have found all those bugs!

[Chris-S]

Wanna test Surge XT on my linux (Manjaro) laptop. Problem: Reaper7 is not finding the plugin.
Maybe the space character in the directory name is making problems?
The plugin is installed in "/usr/lib/vst3/Surge XT.vst3".
It's working in Ardour though.

[_al_]

Ok, so I've finally decided to use this synth in a project, and am noticing something which is slowing me down considerably.

I like to be able to quickly type in values for knobs and faders (for example, quickly setting a filter to 400hz), but it seems the only way to do this, is to right click a knob, and select "Edit Value" from the dropdown list?

In FL, this is extremely annoying, because "Edit Value" is often nowhere near the area that I right clicked, so I have to carefully move my mouse to the option, every time I want to change something accurately.

I'm not sure if it's my AHK script, or the synth, but I can find no quicker way to do this!
Usually, when synths allow numerical input, there is a shortcut, like Alt + click, or double clicking the numerical readout below the knob, but with Surge, to my surprise, there is no such shortcut!

Is this just my comp? Or is it really not there?
If not, may I please request that this be added at some point? Obviously Shift click is reserved for fine tuning, and double click resets to default, but Alt click seems to be free, and would actually be most intuitive for me, as my left thumb is always on the spacebar's edge, so I can press Alt without even looking.

Not just throwing this in for the fun of it... I really think this lack of a shortcut will be enough to stop me reaching for this synth, which would be a shame, because this really has turned into a supersynth, at an amazing rate.

[muki]

I like to be able to quickly type in values for knobs and faders

what seems to work on my mac, in logic under mojave in surgeXT seems to be:

(regular left-) click the knob once
hit enter (return seems to also work)

this opens the small entry-menu above the value
entter your numbers with the numerical keypad

hth

[_al_]

what seems to work on my mac, in logic under mojave in surgeXT seems to be:

(regular left-) click the knob once
hit enter (return seems to also work)

this opens the small entry-menu above the value
entter your numbers with the numerical keypad

hth

Oh wow. Lucky mac users.
Yeah... that ain't working for me. Not sure if it's a windows or FL problem, but I literally have to bring up the menu every time

Thanks for helping though

[mabian]

what seems to work on my mac, in logic under mojave in surgeXT seems to be:

(regular left-) click the knob once
hit enter (return seems to also work)

this opens the small entry-menu above the value
entter your numbers with the numerical keypad

hth

Oh wow. Lucky mac users.
Yeah... that ain't working for me. Not sure if it's a windows or FL problem, but I literally have to bring up the menu every time

Thanks for helping though

Just checked on Windows, it works - at least in REAPER.
You have to enable the "Use keyboard shortcuts" option in Surge main menu -> Workflow category.
Then, just click on a knob and press ENTER and the numeric entry textbox shows up

- Mario

[_al_]

Just checked on Windows, it works - at least in REAPER.
You have to enable the "Use keyboard shortcuts" option in Surge main menu -> Workflow category.
Then, just click on a knob and press ENTER and the numeric entry textbox shows up

- Mario

aaah.. Mario saves the day!

Thank you so much.
Yeah, enabling shortcuts worked. Not sure why it's off by default, but I'm happy it's fixed.
Thanks bro. This synth gonna be unstoppable now

Still a little fiddly, having to move my left hand over to enter, but I can live with that

[whassup]

Just checked on Windows, it works - at least in REAPER.
You have to enable the "Use keyboard shortcuts" option in Surge main menu -> Workflow category.
Then, just click on a knob and press ENTER and the numeric entry textbox shows up

- Mario

Thanx Mario, didn't know that.

[bulevardi]

Wanna test Surge XT on my linux (Manjaro) laptop. Problem: Reaper7 is not finding the plugin.
Maybe the space character in the directory name is making problems?
The plugin is installed in "/usr/lib/vst3/Surge XT.vst3".
It's working in Ardour though.

Right here it works out of the box, using Surge XT on Linux Mint, in Reaper.
It's on my other pc, I should check the paths to see which is the correct directory where I installed it.

The synth is a real beast, I'm not able to work properly with it yet, not that familiar with the whole routing and all the possibilities it has. I just installed it last month.
The only thing is missing is a 'simple' arpeggiator.
I think one should be able to do so via the step sequencer, but I haven't been able to create what I want.
U-HE hive is way easier to work with, but I want to switch to this heavy beast, which is free and more open source.

I need to find more tutorials for n00bs like me.

[Chris-S]

The only thing is missing is a 'simple' arpeggiator.

Not a big deal, because there are many external arpeggiators existing.

[EvilDragon]

We are happy to release Surge XT 1.3.1 today!

This release contains a variety of fixes versus 1.3.0 and we recommend all users upgrade.

1.3.1 especially contains features for OSC users, consumers of our Linux binary and users of our CLAP plugin. In OSC land, we extended our features such that the entire synth is remotely controllable, and also there is a free TouchOSC template available. For Linux, we changed our build pipelines to bring back binaries for older Linuxes, in doing so restored the LV2 binary and also added a regular OBS build for folks with different configurations. For CLAP, we upgraded to CLAP 1.2.0 and implemented full preset discovery support.

We hope you enjoy using Surge! As always, the changelog is available here, and we welcome any bug reports on our Discord or GitHub!

[audiojunkie]

Fantastic news!! Great job!! Thank you!!!