OB-Xf by Surge Synth Team

[digitalboytn]

And I agree an OB was probably never used bone dry in a track when it was out there. I'm sure lots of effects were added. Outboard.

Well... back in the day when we were using the "real" OB's,even the best studios had a limited number of outboard effects...

You have to remember that apart from the EQ, EVERYTHING was outside of the desk...

The compressors,gates,delays and reverbs all had to be patched into the console....

If you listen to some of those hits that were made with the OB's,a lot of the time the synths were dry...

Think Pointer Sisters...

The vocals were normally first in line for the effects...

A lot of the time when there were effects on the guitars and the synths,they were patched in on the auxiliary sends,so they shared the same outboard units...

Ahhh....the good old days...

Thank God for software...I love the digital domain

But anyway...back on topic...

If there were going to be some basic effects added to OB-Xf,maybe they could be handled a bit like Charlatan 3 ?

Push a button,get to the FX sub page,dial up some fruit and then get on with the main course

[whassup]

Thank God for software...I love the digital domain

That pretty much sums it up for me.

For all hyper preset needs (synths plus fx in one preset) I am getting more and more used to PatchWork.
Really stable these days and does so much of what I want.
Oversampling per plugin, Macro knobs, etc.
And it is just because no synth has Infiltrator built in...

[Nug Wrangler]

I honestly would prefer if OB-Xf didn't have any fx. I use my favourite plugins for that anyway, but that is just me

[bk]

No problem here with a dry synth. I've got tons of FX, most probably better than any that would be added. Keep it lean!

[Nug Wrangler]

Agreed!

[EvilDragon]

I think we can put that topic to rest now, yes

[Nug Wrangler]

Yes, sorry

[D-Fusion]

This plugin sounds great.
There is one issue i have with it in Bitwig 6 on linux and that is the patch browser.
I can select presets with the prev and next button but clicking on the browser number and selecting a preset from there does nothing in the latest version.

Just noticed that anything in the menu does not change either when selected.

Everything works fine without any problems when i go back to V0.9.48.

[EvilDragon]

We are happy to announce that we’ve released OB-Xf version 1.0, our first stable release. You can download the release here and read the manual here.

OB-Xf is and will continue to be free and open source software which you can use in your music however you want!

OB-Xf is a continuation and expansion of the last open source release of OB-Xd, the venerable Oberheim-inspired plugin originally written by 2DaT and later expanded by discoDSP, who sell an expanded closed source version of the synth today.

Our work with OB-Xf in the Surge Synth Team revolved around a few key efforts

1. Bring the synth into a clear buildable state with binary installers, a collection of memory and architecture fixes, and a repository which reliably builds and runs on all platforms, using the same infrastructure we use for Surge, Shortcircuit, and others.
2. Add several new features to the synth - including polyphonic unison, a second LFO, accessibility support, typing in parameter values.
3. Add a new high quality skin which is available easily in the repository and installer in both bitmap and vector form.
4. With the community, collect and curate a new set of presets.

That work led to the OB-Xf 1.0 release we had today.

We’re sure it’s not perfect though. We bet post-1.0 we will find some (hopefully small) bugs we missed in the beta period which will mean we will have a 1.0.1 and so forth, but we also have plans for some larger improvements. We already have an initial cut at MPE support running on a branch, for instance. More to come in 2026!

Finally we hope you enjoy using the synth. 2DaT and discoDSP gave us a great starting point which sounded good and ran well. We’re glad to have refurbished this wonderful plugin, and look forward to your feedback in our Discord, on our GitHub, or in the various forums where you can find us.

[Vortifex]

Grats on the release, and thanks for all the work you guys have done

For any FL Studio users updating, the VST3 version wouldn't load for me until I deleted the .fst file and rescanned.

[Kees49]

This synth sounds gorgeous!

[EvilDragon]

For any FL Studio users updating, the VST3 version wouldn't load for me until I deleted the .fst file and rescanned.

That would only be needed if you had an older pre-beta which had bank-based preset browsing. A fresh install should work right out of the box.

[EvilDragon]

This plugin sounds great.
There is one issue i have with it in Bitwig 6 on linux and that is the patch browser.
I can select presets with the prev and next button but clicking on the browser number and selecting a preset from there does nothing in the latest version.

Just noticed that anything in the menu does not change either when selected.

Everything works fine without any problems when i go back to V0.9.48.

"Linux" is an extremely wide term, so more details there would be needed (which distro, which WM, is it in CLAP, VST3, standalone or all of them, etc.).

Works fine here on Windows in BWS 6.

[Seafire Mk2]

For any FL Studio users updating, the VST3 version wouldn't load for me until I deleted the .fst file and rescanned.

That would only be needed if you had an older pre-beta which had bank-based preset browsing. A fresh install should work right out of the box.

Hence the word 'updating'

[EvilDragon]

I missed that word by accident!