Deimos - free synthesizer (Windows, MacOS, Linux)

[jsandas]

You're not the first to be confused a bit, I'm considering adding some help function or something inside the synth to help with this.

I forgot to mention what was going to be my main point: I would be satisfied with just a couple of screenshots with a little bit of text that explains how to turn on the various greyed-out features.

[Nug Wrangler]

A copy/paste function would be great

[Tom Trnk]

You're not the first to be confused a bit, I'm considering adding some help function or something inside the synth to help with this.

I forgot to mention what was going to be my main point: I would be satisfied with just a couple of screenshots with a little bit of text that explains how to turn on the various greyed-out features.

Yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking of, it shouldn't need much more than that. Sort of a mini-manual that could fit into the synth itself .. might be redundant though once I get a separate manual going .. we'll see.

A copy/paste function would be great

For individual oscillators/LFOs/envelopes etc I guess. Noted
The oscillators already have some copy/swap functionality when right-clicking their (1) and (2) headers, but a more traditional clipboard functionality that works for more elements can't hurt!

[Nug Wrangler]

A copy/paste function would be great

For individual oscillators/LFOs/envelopes etc I guess. Noted
The oscillators already have some copy/swap functionality when right-clicking their (1) and (2) headers, but a more traditional clipboard functionality that works for more elements can't hurt!
[/quote]

Ah nice didn't know that, thanks

[SeBaer]

Hi,
I have two issues with this synth. The first is my lack of understanding of how to save patches within the plugin. The preset functionality of Reaper works fine, but I can't figure out the native save function of the synth.
The second issue is maybe a bigger one. When using the Rough mode on the filter, at higher feedback values the pitch of the sound shifts or rather jumps. Also, when it's in a feedback region where the shift occured, changing the filter frequency causes shifts in pitch. Resonance also causes weird artefacts.
This is reproducible by starting from an INIT patch, selecting rough mode and turn up Feedback while holding a note. While turning it up all the ways, several jumps in pitch can be witnessed.
Is this the expected behaviour?

[Tom Trnk]

Hi,
I have two issues with this synth. The first is my lack of understanding of how to save patches within the plugin. The preset functionality of Reaper works fine, but I can't figure out the native save function of the synth.
The second issue is maybe a bigger one. When using the Rough mode on the filter, at higher feedback values the pitch of the sound shifts or rather jumps. Also, when it's in a feedback region where the shift occured, changing the filter frequency causes shifts in pitch. Resonance also causes weird artefacts.
This is reproducible by starting from an INIT patch, selecting rough mode and turn up Feedback while holding a note. While turning it up all the ways, several jumps in pitch can be witnessed.
Is this the expected behaviour?

To save patches, simply right-click the preset header and it will have a "Save as .." option in the context menu

The filter behavior you observe is indeed expected. Rough mode can get particularly nasty with the secondary feedback, so it goes all the way from emphasizing certain frequencies at lower values to really really messing with the signal at higher values.

Since it involves feedback it will of course interact with other variables, mostly oscillator volumes and filter frequency .. and therefore also the pitch of the notes you play. The jumps in pitch you get at the output are an expected artifact once the feedback goes a bit out of control and takes over.
If you're after getting more consistent sounds across the keyboard out of it, you could try raising filter pitch tracking, or assigning the track mod source to the feedback control.

[SeBaer]

To save patches, simply right-click the preset header and it will have a "Save as .." option in the context menu

Well, that's as far as I already got. Now I figured out, you have to fill all text boxes in order for the save button to do anything.

The filter behavior you observe is indeed expected. Rough mode can get particularly nasty with the secondary feedback, so it goes all the way from emphasizing certain frequencies at lower values to really really messing with the signal at higher values.

It certainly behaves quite unprecictable and also seems to have a hysteresis. If you lower the feedback value, pitch does not jump back at the same value it jumped at turning up, but a lower one.

Since it involves feedback it will of course interact with other variables, mostly oscillator volumes and filter frequency .. and therefore also the pitch of the notes you play. The jumps in pitch you get at the output are an expected artifact once the feedback goes a bit out of control and takes over.
If you're after getting more consistent sounds across the keyboard out of it, you could try raising filter pitch tracking, or assigning the track mod source to the feedback control.

I can't imagine imagine, why feedback in the filter section should affect the basic oscillator pitch. That's at least, what it seems like to me.
Unfortunately the pitch jump can also depend on the played note, and no amount of filter tracking can remedy that. So if you play a chromatic scale downwards, suddenly pitch jumps up at certain notes.
Basically you're stuck with feedback values below around 0.47, which is unfortunately not enough to get the sounds as dirty as I like (and according to OSC-rules external distortion is not allowed).

Edit:
Question: if I mistagged a saved sound, is there a way to edit tags after the fact?

[Tom Trnk]

Question: if I mistagged a saved sound, is there a way to edit tags after the fact?

Yep, load the preset and then switch to the save dialog again. It will show the tags currently used by that preset, you can adjust them there and hit save to overwrite.


The filter feedback changing the apparent final pitch is a result of what happens when the feedback signal becomes so strong that it dominates the input signal ... so if you're after more stable distortion from the filter, try raising oscillator volume to max.

A sine wave at max volume, filter frequency max and feedback at max gives me a very square-like tone across most of the keyboard. It's the higher oscillator volume that adds to the stability.
You could even modulate the oscillator volume beyond its normal maximum (assign a const source for example), the rough filter will then start to distort a little bit even without feedback.

The distortion using filter feedback is for sure not the easiest to handle, but with a few tricks there's some neat results to be found.
The pitch-changing instability is btw something that a few other synths also have .. but it depends a lot on used filter types and the range of feedback amount they allow.

[NWSM]

0.11.0 - CLAP on Linux

Saving Presets Issues:

- click on field Name or ADD Tags makes it a white field, can not type into it
- i can paste text from clipboard and save then but can not edit then

Edit: Crash when overwrite another Preset, with copy paste text into the Name Field

Deimos Stream - enjoy
https://www.twitch.tv/gondreamer

[nomati]

I posted about this bug as a comment on the 0.11.0 build itch.io page a week ago, but a comment has never appeared as moderated / approved, so just wanted to put it in here in case you didn't see it. Using this as a VST3 within Ardour on Linux, it mostly works, but the VST window will occasionally lock up the UI thread on the main Ardour GUI thread, such that I cannot even click the x window in order to exit the deimos plugin (although the deimos part of the window continues to respond). I just have to kill / restart the entire daw when this happens. It's only about like one time out of four when I'm trying to close the plugin, but that still makes it quite difficult to use. Have a gdb debug trace and happy to send more information; I don't know what the best place to submit bug reports is.

[Tom Trnk]

I posted about this bug as a comment on the 0.11.0 build itch.io page a week ago, but a comment has never appeared as moderated / approved, so just wanted to put it in here in case you didn't see it. Using this as a VST3 within Ardour on Linux, it mostly works, but the VST window will occasionally lock up the UI thread on the main Ardour GUI thread, such that I cannot even click the x window in order to exit the deimos plugin (although the deimos part of the window continues to respond). I just have to kill / restart the entire daw when this happens. It's only about like one time out of four when I'm trying to close the plugin, but that still makes it quite difficult to use. Have a gdb debug trace and happy to send more information; I don't know what the best place to submit bug reports is.

Thanks! Just double-checked on itch and can't find your comment there, weird.
Anyway, I think I've seen this problem before, but so far only with the UIs of several instances open at once. I have a fix for that on my machine and will try to get a new update ready still this week
Let's see if that makes it work well on your end too.

0.11.0 - CLAP on Linux

Saving Presets Issues:

- click on field Name or ADD Tags makes it a white field, can not type into it
- i can paste text from clipboard and save then but can not edit then

Edit: Crash when overwrite another Preset, with copy paste text into the Name Field

The text entry fields are a bit annoying, they have some issues on Linux still and I think it's affected by the DAW hijacking some keys. I had this happen in Bitwig only once though, randomly, and a lot of alt+tab and escape and other random keyboard action fixed it for me.
I noticed similar key hijacking issues with recent Bitwig versions on Windows too, also solved by alt+tab etc, but the text entry there works differently so it's not affected.
On Reaper+Linux I get the text entry issues more consistently, maybe I'll be able to find out something ..

It's currently preventing people from saving presets so I'll do some more digging to find a proper fix

[Tom Trnk]

New version is up!
Deimos 0.12.0

Besides several fixes listed below, this update also introduces a few changes.
Again, this update unfortunately might change automation IDs, sorry about that!


The internal sample rate was increased for slightly better overall sound behavior, and along with it I reviewed oscillator modulation (FM/PM/SM) behavior. This results in fewer undesired audio artifacts, but may cause differences to how certain presets sound. This was unavoidable.

Due to some changes/tweaks, the synth now temporarily runs with 2 revision options, visible using right-click on the "Voices / Aux" header.
This is a temporary solution while the KVR OSC is still in progress, to minimize disruptions when upgrading.
In a later update, all sounds will be automatically upgraded to the new revision using a best-effort solution.

- Envelope timings: slightly changed scaling of attack/decay/release knob values to give a better distribution of precision.
- Noise: Slightly raised volume, and made the HP/LP controls also apply some gain compensation. This should make noise more easily usable across a wider range of colors.
- Classic wave tone control: Slightly more impact on triangle in the positive half.

Other changes:

- Exposed "Tune Slop" control in the voices section. This controls voice tuning variation (not the same as oscillator tuning variation!), and if this and the oscillator slop control are both at zero, oscillators for fresh voices will trigger with consistent initial phase.
- Exposed "Env Slop" control in the voices section. This controls the amount of per-voice differences in envelope levels and timings.
- Moved the oscillator phase control into the wave generation dialog, to remove some confusion about its relevance: For most settings the oscillators are free-running, so it often does not directly affect the sound. The phase animation control that's available for some oscillator shape modifiers is still on the main panel. Oscillator phase can be modulated by right-clicking the wave display.
- The AUX LFO can now also have a phase offset.

Fixes:
- Fixed voice stealing of held notes sometimes being misinterpreted as legato playing depending on settings, causing notes to not trigger properly.
- Fixed a bug where some host-dependent behavior caused presets to accumulate duplicates of their tag list, causing excessive file sizes and load times. Loading and resaving an affected preset will clean it up.
- Fixed how some actions (adding modulation, swapping oscillators, ...) reported parameter changes to the host. Some unrelated parameters could get messed up during the process, for example when they were modulated using Bitwig modulators. This should no longer happen.
- Fixed some UI performance issues
- Linux: Fixed plugin windows sometimes not opening/closing properly, appearing as unresponsive instead.
- Linux: Fixed clipboard implementation (should now work except for certain edge cases when copy-pasting between plugin instances)
- Linux: Disabled the VST3 "Host ..." functionality on parameters for now as it was sometimes not behaving and could cause crashes.

Known issue on Linux:
Text entry fields (when saving a preset) are still suffering from host-dependent behavior that hijacks keystrokes.

Until this is fixed, clipboard functionality accessible using right-click should now work well enough to work around this limitation.



Enjoy!

[Nug Wrangler]