Ohm Force’s Ohmicide[S] has been released! 😍

[Red_Force]

For my purposes, morphing would be ideal but not required. I can achieve what I want through other means but I had developed a muscle memory with Ohmicide. I did sometimes use the Morph Seq mode as like a complex, key triggered MSEG but since I couldn't control the Morph speed with MIDI or automation, I typically left it at zero and used the normal Morphing or Morphing Trig modes for fast switching.

Tonight I went back to an old project in which I was driving Ohmicide with my Octatrack. The OT generates the sound processed by Ohmicide, and transmits MIDI that controls it. A heck of a lot of fun. It still works for me in Bitwig but it gets a little crashy occasionally.

Thx. Definitely on the FR list

@red_force Does this use the same algorithms that were in the original? From the demo video above it sounds quite a bit like it (wild and crazy). Does it also have the same sort of feedback options (I don't see them in the video).

When we did the Euro Rack we made a few minor edits (fixes, really) and this is what you get in ohmicide|s|

In my head, they were lost in a French opium den doing sketches of cats in space.

From the get go our project was Ohmstudio. We made the plugins as a way to improve our skills before taking the dive on the first online collaborative DAW (and arguably, the only one to this day). Making Ohmstudio was incredibly hard. We did it but when it tanked commercially it was very painful (and I'd say the mental part was worse than the money part). We were not in any state to do plugins afterwards. A collective burnout. Fortunately new ohm men joined us and when we weren't doing B2B stuff (including tech that is now in Ableton Live) we started to go back to plugins. We made a few mistakes down the line and it took way longer than planned to have the tech stack we needed. We had fallen from the horse and just climbing back on it to catch up with the race was an adventure. This release feels really special to us tbh, like at 10 years arc's conclusion.

But I would remind you all that this “Ohmforce” is not at all the original Ohmforce. [...] It’s a new product from a new company that has had a considerable start-up cost to get here, and is only tangentially connected to the overrated nostalgia product it is marketed as.

Eh. It's 50% of the same people. There was no buyout (we declined two offers in our history).
What is true is that the whole thing was a heavy investment, in money, time and... skill, somehow. We had this whole tech stacks which still has some cool stuff (it's own graphic libraries for one thing, doing fancy stuff like motion blur on knobs etc.) but that was ultimately too costly to maintain because each time there's a standard update (generally by Apple) we we're in 6 months/man simply for things to continue working. So we moved to JUCE which I think was the right move but came up with a whole new set of challenges and in general a fair amount of technical debt that started to really show in the Catalina era. There's also the fact that Plum Force (Laurent de Soras) had left us (for a life in the country side, the chicken in the ohmboyz∞ EA video are from his farm) and a new Green Force (Simon Ardon) had replaced him and this also came with a set of new challenges.
So new architecture, and a complete rethinking of the features, UX etc. It's easy to see that there is more differences between the old and the new than say 4 generation of guitar rigs in terms of what the plugin actually does. Save for the bands DSP everything else is new.
(Red is still the same old me, First Green was Cid Andrade who did communication and left in 2010 I think? New Green is Simon Ardon, worked on all the new plugins. Ivory Force/Jérome Noel had also left the company circa 2010, he was behind a lot of the distortion algorithms and presets).

First third-party plugin I ever bought. Sale-at-a-loss by Musician's Friend perhaps? And yes, I'm already subscribed so I don't miss the inevitable sale

Nearly certainly not with our permission. That's the issue with distributing keys to 3rd party, shady business ensue. That being said like steam keys I am sure those were valid too.

This does not seem in any way the same company I bought so many things from over 10 years ago.

We did get older, got kids, some people parted ways but... you know what, every company has changed and so did you. In the 00s we were the cool kids side to side with FXpansion, Camelphat, PSP. Native Instruments yearly big news was them releasing plugins. Well, we're not cool kids anymore and most of the people from back then have moved way more than we did (which I am not sure is something to brag about anyway). Sure, U-He (and GForce afaict!) are still rocks. But if you judge every player by this standard, no one stands a chance

is there any sort of oversampling option / preferences ??

Yup. Just look right of the logo in the top of the central bands display. We moved it from pref to DSP because at that point we feel like it's more a preset design choice than a "sound quality vs CPU" trade.

The reasonableness of the pricing depends heavily on whether you consider this an entirely new plugin or a continuation of the existing plugin. 20% loyalty offer on a new plugin is perfectly fine, but if you consider it be equivalent to going from v2 to v3 of a fabfilter plugin or Serum 1 to 2 or whatever it’s the worst pricing for a single plugin upgrade I can think of.

This is exactly our... well not just reasoning but situation. The budget on ohmicide|s| is probably equal or higher than the one on ohmicide, which was probably one of the most expensive FX plugin to develop (3 years of development). When you see upgrade from v1 to v2 this isn't that, and btw we may try those and if so you'll see a very different pricing.

The knob thing is a legit complaint imo...

Next update, maybe this week.

I notice it a lot on the bypass mute and solo buttons on the bands.

That too. Also, rescaling turned out to be much easier than we anticipating, thx JUCE!

Hmmm. Curious... IIRC, 'they' were amongst the first, if not the first to have a means (right-click, or a key-press) to allow you to "fine-tune" a knob/slider. I think they may have even licensed it to other devs. Could be wrong, but theirs were definitely the first plug-ins that I noticed this ability, way way way back.

Was the left move vs top move. Debatable how good for automation. Now we have ctrl click like many others.
But jumpy is a different issues. There has been some challenges doing the central bands display and we're still fine tuning it - not every issue pops up in beta.

based on earlier post by redforce it sounds like they're tweaking it.. would be cool if there was a 'knob physics' preference somewhere for a different option.

So right no there is no knob physics. Bases on you DAW (Live 12 especially) and/or system there are some jumpyness though. We're working on them.
There was knob physic in the old plugins. We could have implemented them back in the new one but considering that nearly no one went there after us we thought maybe this wasn't good. It felt nice demoing it but arguably, not as responsive for automation.
There never was physic on midi cc, considering your cc knobs are... well, already physical? Or did I misunderstood?

I'm not a huge fan of using external modulators for things.

Modulators in DAW are very nice but there are key things they don't do for you.
1) they don't go with presets. Ohmicide|s| is a good illustration of what it costs. Look at the guitar presets, most of those use some enveloppe follower on gain not as an noticeable FX but as a way to distribute the distortion impact a bit more after the attack - just better sounding distortion really. You completely lose that if you don't have embedded modulation. We value presets a lot.
2) "happy accident machines". There is no question that a full modular system where you create a modulator when you want one, add it and end up with a patch that only has what you wanted in it is elegant UX design. But what you lose there is the temptation of just hitting that knob that is right here and see what it does. We think there is value in both approaches (in fact, we think some users will always be very partial to one vs the other) and we picked the later which is... well more our turf. So as little friction as possible to add a filter in your band, add a new modulation etc.
3) It's always a bit better to have your own modulation and test them in your DSP so that you can spot weird issues and be sure you pick how you want the result to be. It's not in your hands if you let that to the DAW. In general having our modulation makes us test way more... well behavior of DSP under modulation/automation
4) only a fractions of DAWs offer modulation, especially real time.

I would love to see a sidechain and midi note control for the envelopes though.

Definitely on the FR list.

Guys, have anyone tried this plugin in Ableton 12 on Windows 11?

So yes, we do know that there are issues with performances on Live 12 specifically. We're working on it.
That being said what we had so far was not as extreme as what you have here. JUCE isn't great on perf when you have several JUCE UI opened at the same time so if Sylenth1 is a JUCE plugin that certainly adds insult to injury. That being said I can usually work with 3 of our UIs open simultaneously without thinking about it - not silky smooth framerate but good enough. Anyway, this maybe a matter for either next patch or the one after.

I did. They were reactive for a mail or two, but then I guess got flooded with support requests.

Ah! So that's you ^^.
Well it's more than we're working on it and there's no point to babble until we have things to send to you ^^

[zerocrossing]

Ohmicide has always been on the extreme end of distortion. More about making a sound almost unrecognisable and the new version continues in that vein.

Yeah, that's why I bought Ohmicide all those years ago and still use it. What I'm saying isn't that Ohmicide isn't good, I'm saying that Ohmicide S doesn't seem like a $60 upgrade, YMMV. I don't think the UI is an upgrade. I can't tell if it has new algorithms, or it's the old ones with new names. It's the same number of algorithms, that I can tell. One that has the same name seems to sound very similar, if not slightly tamer. Maybe a higher oversampling rate? The modulation I already have. It's somewhat cool to have the modulation saved with the plugin's preset, but I can save it as a Bitwig preset.

That's fair. Only you can decide what something is worth to you.

The UI has issues with being a bit jumpy but overall I much prefer the layout of the new one to the old one. I always found the original Ohmicide UI to be too abstract and cramped with a lot of fiddly small knobs.

OhmicideS is a bit more conventional but better for it, imho.

I'm not a huge fan of using external modulators for things. I have both Ableton and Bitwig which are both very capable of that kind of thing but there's something about using external modulators that breaks the workflow for me.

I'm also a big fan of the "last touched parameter" modulation system that's in OhmicideS. The cross modulation options are also very cool. I would love to see a sidechain and midi note control for the envelopes though.

Yeah, having the modulation inside the plugin isn't nothing, but I sort of see this as a "cardamom" plugin. A spice you go out and get for a specific recipe, but don't necessarily keep in your spice rack with your peppercorns. If I was using Ohmicide all the time, I'd probably do the upgrade.

[zerocrossing]

In my head, they were lost in a French opium den doing sketches of cats in space.

From the get go our project was Ohmstudio. We made the plugin as a way to improve our skills before taking the dive on the first online collaborative DAW (and arguably, the only one to this day). Making Ohmstudio was incredibly hard. We did it but when it tanked commercially it was very painful (and I'd say the mental part was worse than the money part). We were not in any state to do plugins afterwards. A collective burnout. Fortunately new ohm men joined us and when we weren't doing B2B stuff (including tech that is now in Ableton Live) we started to go back to plugins. We made a few mistakes down the line and it took way longer than planned to have the tech stack we needed. We had fallen from the horse and just climbing back on it to catch up with the race was an adventure. This release feels really special to us tbh, like at 10 years arc's conclusion.

Sorry, the studio said the DAW story didn't resonate with the focus groups, so they're going with the cat in space story for the movie.

[Greenstorm33]

The reasonableness of the pricing depends heavily on whether you consider this an entirely new plugin or a continuation of the existing plugin. 20% loyalty offer on a new plugin is perfectly fine, but if you consider it be equivalent to going from v2 to v3 of a fabfilter plugin or Serum 1 to 2 or whatever it’s the worst pricing for a single plugin upgrade I can think of.

This is exactly our... well not just reasoning but situation. The budget on ohmicide|s| is probably equal or higher than the one on ohmicide, which was probably one of the most expensive FX plugin to develop (3 years of development). When you see upgrade from v1 to v2 this isn't that, and btw we may try those and if so you'll see a very different pricing.

Yeah, that's fair. I can see a lot of work has gone into it, and I'm sure the price reflects the reality of what it took to get the thing running on a modern tech stack. You can get much cheaper distortion plugins that are also very good, but there was no way to have a cheaper modernized Ohmicide. I went ahead and bought it. Consider it an apology for contributing to the complaining about the price. So much for spending less on plugins

[Red_Force]

Sorry, the studio said the DAW story didn't resonate with the focus groups, so they're going with the cat in space story for the movie.

Fair

Consider it an apology for contributing to the complaining about the price. So much for spending less on plugins

Look I realize this might look for pandering at this point but wishing for a cheaper price is in my personal opinion an absolutely reasonable drive from a customer standpoint (and also we only ask those for things we care about, so I don't read those rants as entirely negative).

Music app prices are hard. I can buy procreate dreams, a massive budget app (at least in comparison to any plugin) for a third of the price of ohmicide-s. The situations as I understand it is that music is already nerdy in nature, DAWs are complicated and that alone restrict the people who can get value out of all the DAW app. Which in turn means they have to pay more per app bc the load of financing the whole research and dev isn't spread amongst a very large group.

A common dream in this industry has been to bring things to the masses at a cheaper price (NI initial business plan) and ... plugins did that to a point but not to a "kids buy plugins" point. So right now it's that weird state with high entry prices, wild occasional discounts. Can't say that I love it but I took my best shot at moving that needle in the ohmstudio days (and way before that - who remembers that initially we had a 10€ version of ohmboyz in 2000?), failed. If there another shot to be taken, sure, but I feel like ohmforce rn isn't in a situation to make a difference as it is.

[pekbro]

I always enjoyed the chicken videos.

[Red_Force]

I always enjoyed the chicken videos.

My favorite part is the reverse chicken.

[FarleyCZ]

I did. They were reactive for a mail or two, but then I guess got flooded with support requests.

Ah! So that's you ^^.
Well it's more than we're working on it and there's no point to babble until we have things to send to you ^^

Awesome! Thx! Totally agree. Yet with glitches like this there's alway a good chance it's just on my particular machine/system/installation. So I figured I'll ask around in the meantime. Sorry If that came across as too impatient.

Guys, have anyone tried this plugin in Ableton 12 on Windows 11?

So yes, we do know that there are issues with performances on Live 12 specifically. We're working on it.
That being said what we had so far was not as extreme as what you have here. JUCE isn't great on perf when you have several JUCE UI opened at the same time so if Sylenth1 is a JUCE plugin that certainly adds insult to injury. That being said I can usually work with 3 of our UIs open simultaneously without thinking about it - not silky smooth framerate but good enough. Anyway, this maybe a matter for either next patch or the one after.

It varies in my case. Upon further testing I encountered occasions where it was pretty usable. But it gets into the state from the video without warning. I never had problems like this with any other plugin. And some of them (like for example Lunacy Audio's ones) are quite heavy on GPU.

Btw if this is a JUCE plugin, are you guys using threadpools for the GUI part? If not, I would maybe recomend investigating that, as this would offload whatever is the GUI part doing onto a separate threads. This whole thing feels to me like other hosts are running plugin GUI methods in separate threads for safety and Ableton isn't. They probably just call the methods directly and the whole GUI part runs on the same thread. So whatever glitch/hangup happens in your GUI, hangs the Ableton's as well. ...just a wild guess, but trying to be helpful.

[dayjob]

thanks @Red_Force for chiming in. interesting to hear some details on ohmforce and plans for ohmicide(s).

no buyer's remorse here. stoked to have it.

[hey212]

So right no there is no knob physics. Bases on you DAW (Live 12 especially) and/or system there are some jumpyness though. We're working on them.

That's not true, I've emailed with Green Force and he confirmed that the knobs have "velocity" that he is "tuning". It's not some mysterious bug in the DAWs, it's something you added.

Also, how could it be a bug in the DAWs when your other recent release, Ohmboyz Infinity, has perfectly normal knobs without any physics, velocity, whatever you want to call it. Just make the knobs in Ohmicide work the exact same way the knobs in Infinity do and the problem will be solved.

[Red_Force]

So right no there is no knob physics. Bases on you DAW (Live 12 especially) and/or system there are some jumpyness though. We're working on them.

That's not true, I've emailed with Green Force and he confirmed that the knobs have "velocity" that he is "tuning". It's not some mysterious bug in the DAWs, it's something you added.

Also, how could it be a bug in the DAWs when your other recent release, Ohmboyz Infinity, has perfectly normal knobs without any physics, velocity, whatever you want to call it. Just make the knobs in Ohmicide work the exact same way the knobs in Infinity do and the problem will be solved.

Hmm. This isn't what I've said, no.

What I've actually said is that the plugin is choppier in Ableton Live 12, which can easily be checked. I am not 100% this is on all builds bc I am always on the latest beta one, but I am pretty confident it is already in the current public one. I didn't say it was a bug of Live 12. I didn't infer it either, in fact I never thought it was. But yes, right now we have a specific issue between our UI and this specific DAW. And BTW I say Live 12 because this issue isn't on Live 10, from what Green Force said to me.

Anyway, I am sure you can agree I need to be able to convey that information without being accused of inferring something else

The velocity things isn't "physics". It's a method based on moving knob using the velocity of your mouse as provided by your OS to the plugin as opposed to the position. The velocity method was a method developed for a specific issue in Logic where the cursor would randomly end up top left of the screen once every hour AFAICR. Right now we're considering dropping it for the next patch as it's bad on some system and we've improved the other one. Still a WIP thing though.

If you want to see what we call knob physics here, look at old ohmforce plugins and observe the inertia when you move them. That's physic modelling, implying the knob has a weight, a friction etc.

As for ohmboyz∞ (or frohmager), they use a different method for knobs atm. Ohmicide|S| uses a few more openGL knobs if you want to know (because in theory at least they should be smoother that way). Ultimately we'll unify the method used but as discussed, there are still issues to be sorted first.

[hey212]

The velocity things isn't "physics". It's a method based on moving knob using the velocity of your mouse as provided by your OS to the plugin as opposed to the position.
...
As for ohmboyz∞ (or frohmager), they use a different method for knobs atm. Ohmicide|S| uses a few more openGL knobs if you want to know. Ultimately we'll unify the method used but as discussed, there are still issues to be sorted first.

Note the top of the page where it says, "This article is about velocity in physics".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity
So when you are talking about velocity, by definition, you are talking about physics.

Anyway, the semantics are not really the point. The point is that the knob behavior in Ohmicide is a function of intentional code, and you've already released a different plugin that got zero complaints about knob behavior, so the solution is already known.

[Harry_HH]

Why all the demos have drums as the signal - is the Ohmicide only a drum fx?

Or are the person putting demos just lazy?

If they really wanted to demonstrate the product, they would use signal of different tonal characters.

[machinesworking]

The reasonableness of the pricing depends heavily on whether you consider this an entirely new plugin or a continuation of the existing plugin. 20% loyalty offer on a new plugin is perfectly fine, but if you consider it be equivalent to going from v2 to v3 of a fabfilter plugin or Serum 1 to 2 or whatever it’s the worst pricing for a single plugin upgrade I can think of.

This is exactly our... well not just reasoning but situation. The budget on ohmicide|s| is probably equal or higher than the one on ohmicide, which was probably one of the most expensive FX plugin to develop (3 years of development). When you see upgrade from v1 to v2 this isn't that, and btw we may try those and if so you'll see a very different pricing.

A good rule of thumb IMO would have been transparency up front. Let people know that the development to get a similar plugin going with the new version was far more than an upgrade. It's also good to know that in the future if Ohmicide[ S ] ( why the [ S ]? for Sequel? ) gets an upgrade it will be a better upgrade price.

[dhruan]

Has anyone else encountered issues with saving patches? It doesn't seem to allow me to create a new folder/bank to save the patch into, and as a result, the patch can not be saved. MacOS 15.5, Reason 13.