Charlatan³ Free VA synth updated to v3.3.2 (Win/Linux)

[Nug Wrangler]

New release 3.3.0 !

• Support sine-shaped segments in Osc waveform editor
• Reworked UI skin
• Delay FX: add dual modes
• Added optional sustain stage to MSEG
• Added Velocity Off mod source (Release Velocity)
• Made XLFO polyphonic
• Chorus: Revised 4-voice mode with Triangle LFO. Should in general sound lusher with less flanging and periodic beating
• Added 5 Osc waveform presets
• Linux: fix compatibility with glibc 2.41 (disable executable stack)
• Minor optimizations and fixes

Nice

[audiojunkie]

New release 3.3.0 !

• Support sine-shaped segments in Osc waveform editor
• Reworked UI skin
• Delay FX: add dual modes
• Added optional sustain stage to MSEG
• Added Velocity Off mod source (Release Velocity)
• Made XLFO polyphonic
• Chorus: Revised 4-voice mode with Triangle LFO. Should in general sound lusher with less flanging and periodic beating
• Added 5 Osc waveform presets
• Linux: fix compatibility with glibc 2.41 (disable executable stack)
• Minor optimizations and fixes

Thank you for this!! I have a question: With the Reqorked UI skin, does this synth now support HiDPI (Scaling for high resolution monitors) for Linux? Thank you again!

[digitalboytn]

Does the reworked skin give Charlie a few more voices of polyphony please ?

[Daru925]

The synth knobs behave weirdly Like filter knob doesnt move until i turn it almost full left or right and then jumps.

Windows 11 vst3 ableton live 12

Edit: oops i wasnt in max performance mode on my laptop. ignore.

[satYatunes]

^^^ I noticed this too but not the jump part. Too much mouse movement needed to move knobs even a little bit.
I will try again in some DAW and see if it's consistent behaviour.

Windows 10 VST3 SaviHost

[Nug Wrangler]

^^^ I noticed this too but not the jump part. Too much mouse movement needed to move knobs even a little bit.
I will try again in some DAW and see if it's consistent behaviour.

Windows 10 VST3 SaviHost

The synth knobs behave weirdly Like filter knob doesnt move until i turn it almost full left or right and then jumps.

Windows 11 vst3 ableton live 12

Edit: oops i wasnt in max performance mode on my laptop. ignore.

Not here. Windows 11, vst3, fl studio 24

[yzcoruhT]

This plugin is really, really good. I don't know how is it possible, that it sounds so good, has a lot of options and costs almost zero CPU. I did not read the whole thread, but I'm missing two things:
1 - resizable GUI (some labels are too small on my screen - not using a laptop btw.)
2 - looks incomplete (I mean - e.g. some knobs are sensitive to mousewheel, others not)

I know that it is under development, there are updates time to time... hope future updates will fix it, I will add it to my plugin arsenal and send some money... but now I can only recommend it to anyone who is looking for nice sounding and easy to learn plugin at no cost with CPU usage of Synth1.

Great plugin. Like it!

[mjolnir]

Version 3.3.0 seems to be working okay in Manjaro 25.02 XFCE Linux v6.14.6-1
Actually, I used Charlatan in some of my recent tunes, too.
Much thanks for high quality sounds.
Thanks for keeping this active and real.

[rafa1981]

(I mean - e.g. some knobs are sensitive to mousewheel, others not)

This was my opinion too. Lots of plugins, paid and free, don't get this right. E.g. Korg Collection, Valhalla, etc... don't. U-he does.

On dropdowns, e.g. reverb algorithms when testing sounds it's much nicer to scroll the mouse wheel (or click an arrow button) to change to the next algorithm than to do menu diving.

[Akanomad]

I really like the phaser effect on this plugin. It adds depth and a formant-like resonance that I enjoy using on arpeggios. With its low CPU usage and wide range of options, it's becoming one of my go-to recently. For a future update, I’d like to see a dynamic UI (like in Pigments, Vital, or Serum) to better visualize how the modulations are affecting the sound.

[MRT]

Very nice update, thanks.

[karrikuh]

Thank you for this update! Really cool stuff. I think a few more filter modes would be awesome but not necessary. I love the 3109 OTA filter in TAL J-8 and in my Xena. It is severely underemulated and underrepresented. A frequency shifter effect or filter would be cool too.

The way I see it, adding various filter flavors does not really match the synth's philosophy which is to keep things simple and not have the user get lost in choices that barely matter for the final musical outcome.

Frequency shifters seem interesting and worth exploring how it would fit into Charlatan. Thanks for the suggestion!

[karrikuh]

Is this skinnable?

No, not planned currently, sorry.
You can of course try to replace the embedded PNG resources using sth like Resource Hacker - as has been suggested - but you will be mostly on your own there. One hint I can give you: be careful that the images have the exact same pixel dimensions and color format (e.g. RGB vs Grayscale, with or without alpha channel) as the original which you want to replace.

[karrikuh]

Thanks so much Karrikuh - extremely useful additions to my absolute favorite free synth by far - and as a sounddesigner i am not easily wowed.
But pleeeease... Give it at least 12 voices, if you can. Charlatan can do absolutely gorgeous pads - for which one needs 12 voices (up to 6 for the chord itself, and 6 for at least one release overlap).
Do you think that's possible?

It's not hard technically, but I have personally never felt limited by the 8 voice limited (not encountered 6-note chords so far...). I will add it to the list of possible future enhancements.

[karrikuh]

Thank you for this!! I have a question: With the Reworked UI skin, does this synth now support HiDPI (Scaling for high resolution monitors) for Linux? Thank you again!

No, this was really just the graphics and color design work.

Supporting hi-res displays is still planned but requires a complete rework of the underlying UI rendering, including hardware acceleration, which is quite a big undertaking. The good news is that I did start some exploration in this direction throughout the past months and have settled on a rough concept.

The current plan is to introduce the feature in two steps:
1) Render the UI in standard resolution like before and upscale the result. The result will not necessarily be pretty but should at least make the plugin usable on UHD monitors. The upscaling will already make use of HW acceleration (i.e. Vulkan) and therefore serves as a compatiblity testbed wrt. the various end user systems.
2) Rework UI to properly render graphics at high resolutions. This is the bulk of work and I'm not sure if I manage to finish this until the end of the year.

Please understand that due to the overall amount of the effort involved, it is impossible to come up with a halfway reliable timeline at this point.