OB-Xf by Surge Synth Team

[EvilDragon]

I'm not sure what Easter egg is this? OB-Xd could load banks in quite some time, and OB-Xf will continue to do so.

However do be aware that the file format will change, for a number of reasons. So existing patches and banks won't be compatible at the outset (this is mainly because we are fixing certain inconsistencies in parameter ranges or scalings, extending the range of XMod by a factor of 2, and so on).

[ZonderP]

I'm not sure what Easter egg is this? OB-Xd could load banks in quite some time, and OB-Xf will continue to do so.

Probably OB-Xd could load banks from the beginning, but in March 2014 a new DAW called Bitwig Studio was released for the first time. Back then they were promising real-time collaboration over the internet (or something along those lines), but did not support something basic as providing support for loading and saving VST FXB banks in their first releases.
Thus at that time all VSTs without built-in preset/bank management had some hard times in this regards if one wanted to use them from within Bitwig Studio.
Since OB-Xd was/is open source, I just implemented support for bank load from with OB-Xd itself, if one clicked on a certain area of the OB-Xd GUI.
This is the related - short - topic:
viewtopic.php?p=5727994

However do be aware that the file format will change, for a number of reasons. So existing patches and banks won't be compatible at the outset (this is mainly because we are fixing certain inconsistencies in parameter ranges or scalings, extending the range of XMod by a factor of 2, and so on).

That's a pity!
No way to provide those fixes in a compatible manner?

[EvilDragon]

No (or at least not very easily, and we have other priorities - but pull requests are welcome!), especially since some parameters have non-linear scalings, like noise volume in the mixer shockingly has a different logarithmic scaling than osc volumes!

But I'm not really worried. It's not a super complex synth so making patches is easy. Also it's a completely new plugin ID so it's not going to replace OB-Xd instances in DAW projects.

Also, some features we're adding are gonna be very enticing, I believe. Let the better fork win

[ZonderP]

Fair enough.
You're right, OB-Xd/f is not super complex.
Compatibility would have been nice, but really nothing to worry about.

[MorpherX]

I'm not sure what Easter egg is this? OB-Xd could load banks in quite some time, and OB-Xf will continue to do so.

Probably OB-Xd could load banks from the beginning, but in March 2014 a new DAW called Bitwig Studio was released for the first time. Back then they were promising real-time collaboration over the internet (or something along those lines), but did not support something basic as providing support for loading and saving VST FXB banks in their first releases.
Thus at that time all VSTs without built-in preset/bank management had some hard times in this regards if one wanted to use them from within Bitwig Studio.
Since OB-Xd was/is open source, I just implemented support for bank load from with OB-Xd itself, if one clicked on a certain area of the OB-Xd GUI.
This is the related - short - topic:
viewtopic.php?p=5727994

However do be aware that the file format will change, for a number of reasons. So existing patches and banks won't be compatible at the outset (this is mainly because we are fixing certain inconsistencies in parameter ranges or scalings, extending the range of XMod by a factor of 2, and so on).

That's a pity!
No way to provide those fixes in a compatible manner?

In the upper left space of the OB-xd 2014 Gui there is a little screw. If you click on this screw you can load fxb presets, thats the easter egg (funny idea).
I am sometimes still using this OB-xd for some Brass ans Strings sounds, because it has an unique character ( you only have to add some Fx after the output).
Fotunately I don't need anything from this Surge Synth Team with their incompatible Juce-8 software.

[EvilDragon]

Time marches on, old operating systems become unsupported (for good reasons too), and considering this is all going to be offered for free and fully open, some concessions have to be made.

Even so, anyone willing can build it from source code with JUCE 7 and it will work on W7. We just won't be doing that officially.

[EvilDragon]

Situation report!

We've been working on a completely new UI for OB-Xf (by @satYatunes and @arturrembe), adding some new features along the way. A few of those features are not implemented yet, but will absolutely be there for v1.0 release. Here's the low-down (sorry for non-HiDPI image, I'm still at dual 1920x1200 as this works best for me!):

- Practically all hidden parameters that are useful are exposed to the front
- Ring modulator added in the Mixer
- Noise Color (white/pink/red) added in the Mixer (red noise not implemented yet)
- Separate pitch bend ranges in Control section
- Unison Voices parameter specifies how many voices from the total polyphony (set by Poly parameter) will be used when Unison is enabled (going to be implemented soon)
- The utterly opaquely named VAM parameter is renamed to Note Prio(rity) (it basically changes from low note priority to last note priority, and also adds high note priority)
- Filter Envelope can now be separately inverted at secondary targets (Env To Pitch and Env To PW)
- Second LFO (identical to LFO1, but per voice instead of global)!
- Added Volume as modulation target to the LFO
- LFO Waveform buttons became knobs, which act as a panner between sine/triangle, pulse/saw and S&H/S&G. At noon nothing is being put out by that particular waveform generator
- LFO Pulse and Sawtooth waveforms now have a Pulsewidth parameter (for Sawtooth it makes the ramp more concave/plucky)
- Voice Variation section got the Levels parameter, which mildly adjusts the output volumes of the 8 voices
- Programmer section at the bottom, with:
* patch number (click to open the context menu with the list of patches)
* patch name (click to rename)
* previous/next/initialize/randomize patch
* direct access buttons that allow you to select between 16 patches sorted across 16 groups (this required doubling of the maximum program count stored in FXB, from 128 to 256)
* direct access buttons have two LEDs, yellow shows which group is selected, red shows which patch is selected

Some other improvements you cannot see on the screenshot (some of them are still WIP):

- The synth now correctly produces 440 Hz when playing middle octave A key, previously it was one octave higher
- Increased maximum polyphony to 32 voices
- Finetune key modifier has been moved from Ctrl/Cmd to Shift
- For Osc tuning and Transpose parameters, Ctrl/Cmd snaps to semitones, Alt/Opt snaps to octaves
- Right-clicking the knobs shows a context menu with a value edit field to type the value in directly
- The arc around Filter Mode knob dynamically changes to show LP-N-HP or LP-BP-HP or 4P-3P-2P-1P depending on state of BP and 4-Pole buttons
- 4-pole filter mode now has an additional Xpander mode with 15 filter types
- The range of Crossmod parameter has been doubled
- The range of Env To Pitch parameter has been slightly increased to properly allow a full 3-octave modulation range
- The scaling of Noise Volume parameter in Mixer has been changed to match the scaling of Osc 1/2 Volume parameters
- The range of LFO Rate parameter has been increased to 250 Hz
- The range of Vibrato Rate parameter has also been changed to 2-12 Hz
- Tooltips are now always enabled

[bibz1st]

Is the synth close enough to the real thing to warrant updating, esp as Surge is all singing/ dancing. Dont get me wrong I think its good that your doing it and I'll grab it when available but was just wondering if it is worth the time and effort. Do you have your eye on any other ageing synths.

[EvilDragon]

It is an inspired by, it is not a super close emulation. But you can absolutely make a ton of classic sounds with it. It is easier to get around than Surge and more limited in breadth of available sounds obviously, that's always the tradeoff.

We are not really eyeing other aging synths, this was a pretty unique situation where an external developer came to us and then things kind of snowballed from there. So this is not really about "warranting to be updated", but more a "continue/fork where things were left off when discoDSP closed the source and went commercial".

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

One small GUI nitpick (I know it's nowhere near done - but early feedback is better right?): the "Poly" LED is right-justified, the Voices are centered, and pitchbend up/down are right-justified. Easy fix I'm sure. But just in case that slipped through without anyone noticing, which is easy when you're focusing on other things.

[EvilDragon]

That is intentional, because Voices is single digit (1-8) and the others are two digits (1-64 for poly and 0-48 for pitch bends). We opted for fixed LCD 14-segment positions, for that classic look.

And actually, we consider this GUI at least 90-95% complete, hehe! Just some features left to be implemented in code...

[bibz1st]

I see, Surge is still ongoing though ?

[EvilDragon]

Of course, a bit slower, since the focus is more on Shortcircuit. But it's summer, vacations, you know how it goes.

[satYatunes]

One small GUI nitpick (I know it's nowhere near done - but early feedback is better right?): the "Poly" LED is right-justified, the Voices are centered, and pitchbend up/down are right-justified. Easy fix I'm sure. But just in case that slipped through without anyone noticing, which is easy when you're focusing on other things.

Voices is single digit. Max = 8 hence center aligned in the LCD.

Oops! ED beats me to it

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Makes sense. Just looked a little funny in that screen print. Here's a whacky idea: it might look less weird (or not) if you could just make out little "off LED segments" in the right justified fields to fill in the space and make clear these are two-character 7-segment LED's.

That could also be an incredibly dumb idea. Or just always center and stop pretending there's an LED there entirely to make it look more balanced regardless of the setting.

Not a big deal. I understand the rationale now. Thanks!