DMS-Ascension

[Atlatnesiti]

Anyone here has a problem with stand alone version crashing on patch change under Mac OS Mojave?
Any help appreciated

[MuzikFreq]

I bought this synth/Rompler from PluginBoutique. It's REALLY good at some things and pure trash at others.

Pros: Quick to make a rich sound without all the fiddling around for even a simple trance pluck or pad.
Sequencer is pure awesome
Effects are pretty good for a cheap plugin
Easier than some synths to program

Cons:
CPU HOG! once you set the polyphony more than 4 the cpu on some patches takes a dump from 10-15% to 20-45% usage
Wish the midi sequencer transposed via note press.
Page flipping is kinda irritating.

Semi-cons:
Quality..... I dunno, I hear no difference and saw no difference with cpu usage.
Filter is not a standard filter, it has some odd color to it where it makes it sound brighter when opened but it has an amazing envelope for making plucks to pads... sooo kinda a toss up and will just call it as part of the unique sound this synth has.


I have Ana2, Sylenth, Massive, Serum, Hybrid, FM8, Synth1, Helm, and VacuumPro and this one now. I use each for different things and this one might just be something I'll use for various things but with current cpu usage I'll probably only use this as something to make a sound and freeze it.

[tonedef71]

Cons:
CPU HOG! once you set the polyphony more than 4 the cpu on some patches takes a dump from 10-15% to 20-45% usage
Wish the midi sequencer transposed via note press.
Page flipping is kinda irritating.

Thanks for sharing. I definitely agree with your last two negatives.

With respect to the CPU hogging, I would like to see how the performance on my PC compares with your experience. I had not really noticed the CPU burden because I was already lowering the polyphony down to what a particular MIDI channel actually needed (this is often a good practice to follow with any virtual synth patch which makes use of a synths's voice unison capability).

Which Ascension preset patches did you notice had the most egregious CPU usage?

What are the system specs of the machine you are running Ascension on?

Is the CPU burden also quite noticeable when running in standalone mode?

[Atlatnesiti]

Is the CPU burden also quite noticeable when running in standalone mode?

Can't answer that question since my standalone version is crashing on program change and nobody bothered to respond to my initial enquiry - 2 posts above
BTW; AU and VST is working fine here, and since I'm on iMac Pro with the highest CPU available, I don't really notice any CPU burdens

[tonedef71]

Is the CPU burden also quite noticeable when running in standalone mode?

Can't answer that question since my standalone version is crashing on program change and nobody bothered to respond to my initial enquiry - 2 posts above
BTW; AU and VST is working fine here, and since I'm on iMac Pro with the highest CPU available, I don't really notice any CPU burdens

Ugh. That sounds like a major buzzkill for Mac OS X Mojave users.

On my Windows 10 PC I can confirm that no crashing occurs in standalone Ascension when I cycle through presets.

[ztrauq]

Is the CPU burden also quite noticeable when running in standalone mode?

Can't answer that question since my standalone version is crashing on program change and nobody bothered to respond to my initial enquiry - 2 posts above
BTW; AU and VST is working fine here, and since I'm on iMac Pro with the highest CPU available, I don't really notice any CPU burdens

I'm still stuck on getting the plugin to load up the preset library itself in Mojave - navigate to it, open it, plugin does the "loading" animation for a second and then the DAW crashes... can't even get it to open the keyfile. Different DAWs, checked permissions, changed directories, tried everything I can think of, nothing. I don't normally resort to this, but I'll try contacting support, and maybe wait for a point release where they fix what's going on with the OSX version...

[tonedef71]

Creating custom sample ROMs for Ascension is a nifty way to increase the already impressive sample ROM library.

To get started, create a SF2 from some samples and create a single preset using a tool like the Polyphone Soundfont Editor. Alternatively, download a SF2 instrument from the interwebs and tweak it with a soundfont editor. I have attached a ZIP of some SF2 samples to play around with.

Next, prepend the characters "DI2-" to the beginning of the SF2 file and rename the extension from SF2 to DI2. Window users can run my attached BAT script to automate the process. Finally, copy the DI2 file to a subfolder beneath Ascension's data/samples folder (e.g. data/samples/user).

The next time you fire up Ascension, the new samples should be available in the browser.

For kicks, I imported all of the SFZ instruments and drum kits from Mixed-In-Key Odesi into Ascension. I had to first convert each of them from SFZ to SF2. Those Odesi instruments have that vintage lo-fi gritty sound, as if taken from a 12-bit recording.

[Musical Gym]

thanks!

[MuzikFreq]

Cons:
CPU HOG! once you set the polyphony more than 4 the cpu on some patches takes a dump from 10-15% to 20-45% usage
Wish the midi sequencer transposed via note press.
Page flipping is kinda irritating.

Thanks for sharing. I definitely agree with your last two negatives.

With respect to the CPU hogging, I would like to see how the performance on my PC compares with your experience. I had not really noticed the CPU burden because I was already lowering the polyphony down to what a particular MIDI channel actually needed (this is often a good practice to follow with any virtual synth patch which makes use of a synths's voice unison capability).

Which Ascension preset patches did you notice had the most egregious CPU usage?

What are the system specs of the machine you are running Ascension on?

Is the CPU burden also quite noticeable when running in standalone mode?

Actually I did some testing. Polyphony and Release times affect the cpu usage a ton.
Put release to semi lengthy and boom it shoots up playing a 5 note chord, put it to 0 and then it jumps from 10%-25% usage.
Polyphony of I think 16 then to 8 drops the cpu usage as well.
I have a feeling that the polyphony cpu usage is a kind of buffer as well but kinda makes no sense.
release on the amp env though is still crazy to me.

Same settings on Serum wasn't as straight forward but sounded cleaner and used around the same cpu usage.

Sound quality on Ascension is dubious though. I get clicks with the release time lowered on the amp envelope.
Kinda wondering if this is why I seen more rom presets than synth presets.

[tonedef71]

Actually I did some testing. Polyphony and Release times affect the cpu usage a ton.
Put release to semi lengthy and boom it shoots up playing a 5 note chord, put it to 0 and then it jumps from 10%-25% usage.
Polyphony of I think 16 then to 8 drops the cpu usage as well.
I have a feeling that the polyphony cpu usage is a kind of buffer as well but kinda makes no sense.
release on the amp env though is still crazy to me.

Hmm... does the attached preset spike the CPU usage on your PC?

[MuzikFreq]

Actually I did some testing. Polyphony and Release times affect the cpu usage a ton.
Put release to semi lengthy and boom it shoots up playing a 5 note chord, put it to 0 and then it jumps from 10%-25% usage.
Polyphony of I think 16 then to 8 drops the cpu usage as well.
I have a feeling that the polyphony cpu usage is a kind of buffer as well but kinda makes no sense.
release on the amp env though is still crazy to me.

Hmm... does the attached preset spike the CPU usage on your PC?

Not really. which is odd. took laying my arm on my keyboard to see it go up to 44-50%
Tapping on a chord rapidly will also spike it to 60% faster.

I'm also curious as to what DAW people who arent having any issues with this are using.
I use Live 10 which seems to handle Sylenth, Massive, ANA2 like a champ while Serum and a few others either eat the CPU or just out right crash Live. (Absynth actually crashed live somehow)

Now here's the odd thing is that I loaded up a project into FL Studio 20 that Ableton handled flawlessly with hardly any cpu usage but then saw 20-30% in FLStudio,
So this makes me wonder if some synths are optimized more for certain DAWs and their sound engines.

Reaper... is just an anomaly that can take just about anything.

[tonedef71]

Is there a way to convert the Ascension rompler files the other way around since the engine is kind of limited and a CPU HOG at the same time, something like a *.di2 to *.SF2 converter?

Attached is a ZIP containing a Windows batch file that will convert *.DI2 to *.SF2 (it also contains an analogous batch file that converts *.SF2 to *.DI2).

Just unzip the contents of the thread to a temporary folder. Copy the "bbe.exe" and "all_di2_to_sf2.bat" files to the folder with the DI2 files you wish to convert, and run the "all_di2_to_sf2.bat" to convert all the DI2 files in that folder to SF2 files.

The analogous "all_sf2_to_di2.bat" batch file can be used to convert all SF2 files to DI2 files. It does the same thing as the batch file I uploaded in a previous post in this thread.

Included in the ZIP file are a few custom DI2 files which you can use to test out the converter batch file before using it to convert the DI2 files that ship with DMS Ascension.

[tonedef71]

I'm also curious as to what DAW people who arent having any issues with this are using.

I primarily use Studio One 4 as my DAW of choice.

[Buckster]

Anyone else get an email from Plugin boutique yesterday with DMS offered for £8.95/$11 ? I did but price doesn't seem to work ?

[Stefken]

They sent a correction email. It's 19 euro now.