Minuit Solstice - new spectral synth - free 30 day trial

[minuit-am]

I've been enjoying messing around with this. It's perfect for MPE. I'd love to be able to travel around the X and Y axis per note with pitch bend and slide. Are there any plans for deeper MPE implementation?

Yeah its ripe for MPE so absolutely up there on the feature list! Open to other suggestions too Thanks for using it and all the lovely feedback guys.

[v1md]

Yeah its ripe for MPE so absolutely up there on the feature list!

Thumbs up from me. Loving the plugin so far.

[krankyone]

Really like Solstice so far. Please add a setting for pitchbend. I like +-2 semitones instead of 12. Thanks

[Ah_Dziz]

You could fake some MPE pitch with a sub host and some midi trickery. In The mean time. I'd like to see a wee mod matrix and MPE mode myself. It's a very fun synth but without those additions it's not doing much I can't already do.

Edit: I'd also love to see mts esp support added. There's no good spectral synthesis that supports that out there yet.

[EvilDragon]

Really like Solstice so far. Please add a setting for pitchbend. I like +-2 semitones instead of 12. Thanks

Please add separate up and down bend ranges. I like +2/-12.

[minuit-am]

Really like Solstice so far. Please add a setting for pitchbend. I like +-2 semitones instead of 12. Thanks

Please add separate up and down bend ranges. I like +2/-12.

WIll take a look at pb ranges when we do MPE - seems fairly certain that's going in next.
Keep the feature requests coming everyone! We'll probably do a vote sometime.

The easiest thing for us in the next 6-8 months are features low in big UI changes or workarounds (entire new panels, relayouts etc) so do bear that in mind, but I'm open to hear anything.
(I have plenty of mostly-backend improvements I'm starting to dream up anyway through chatting to people, partial-tracking, sample windowing, concatenating multiple samples on import - just ideas!)

[tlvid]

This is so good - I didn't need to spend more money this month but it's got me.

I've emailed the devs about a few QOL things I consider important (window size saving, init preset) so hopefully those can be implemented quickly. Then any added features are a bonus that will just cement this thing's place in the must have section for ambient/experimental producers.

[kraster]

This is great.

Would I be right in saying that this uses some form of concatenation in the sense that it analyses a sound, decomposes it and groups them by similarity?

It reminds me a little of Red Timbre Audio's Graphiti but Graphiti is more about using particular (MIR) characteristics to group sounds than spectral decomposition. Solstice seems to also place more emphasis on spectral blending. Graphiti is also more about groups of samples than a single one.

Solstice plays exceptionally well with external modulators on the XY parameters in static mode. I'm using various modulators in Live with great results.

One thing I'd love to see is some different way of regrouping the graph to alternative layouts.

Great stuff.

[EvilDragon]

WIll take a look at pb ranges when we do MPE - seems fairly certain that's going in next.

Please do note a crucial detail: MPE pitch bend range should be separate from regular pitch bend range (which is still what would be applied on the MPE global channel, affecting all voices). And MPE bend range generally is the same for up/down, I don't recall of an MPE device which implements it separately for up/down.

[minuit-am]

All of you on mac - try out the new build 1.0.3! Download it off the website and turn your attack to 0 - there are some massive improvements to transients. Coming on windows later!

[Uncle E]

Am I correct that it doesn't respond to aftertouch or mod wheel? It would be great if these and other controls (including MPE) could be mapped to path position. Also, it would be great if we could add more path handles, if paths could skip frames, and if the filter could have its own envelope.

You might want to move the magnifier because it can interfere with the path handles.

[kraster]

Very cool.

Was it the case that the transients were separated before?

[Ah_Dziz]

Really like Solstice so far. Please add a setting for pitchbend. I like +-2 semitones instead of 12. Thanks

Please add separate up and down bend ranges. I like +2/-12.

WIll take a look at pb ranges when we do MPE - seems fairly certain that's going in next.
Keep the feature requests coming everyone! We'll probably do a vote sometime.

The easiest thing for us in the next 6-8 months are features low in big UI changes or workarounds (entire new panels, relayouts etc) so do bear that in mind, but I'm open to hear anything.
(I have plenty of mostly-backend improvements I'm starting to dream up anyway through chatting to people, partial-tracking, sample windowing, concatenating multiple samples on import - just ideas!)

I'd love to see some close control over windowing. Maybe drawable window function (probably too much gui). Some phase vocoder partial tracking and pitch flattening, expanding, manipulation,etc would be huge. There are few spectral sample playback engines that really focus on letting you screw with the analysis and playback in a fun way. It might not be something that many people want but I think it would be great.

[Uncle E]

Is it really spectral? When I load long vocal phrases, it seems to just be skipping around grains, with no change to the sound (not that it matters, it’s lovely as it is, I’m just wondering if I’m missing something).

[minuit-am]

Is it really spectral? When I load long vocal phrases, it seems to just be skipping around grains, with no change to the sound (not that it matters, it’s lovely as it is, I’m just wondering if I’m missing something).

We highlight the position in the waveform so maybe that's a bit confusing but yes it's fully synthesised through an FFT!
If you turn the spread to 1 in static mode, then hold it over a single frame, you can hear that there are no windowing artefacts introduced - if you were to do the same in a traditional granulator (with spray and density turned to low to make the sound as "static" as possible), you'd hear an extra periodic sound which is the window around the samples, depending on the size.

Even playing the waveform in our app is actually going through the same spectral engine, this is how you can click on the waveform and move the mouse and it also stays smooth even if you freeze.