KVR Audio

Jazz Franco · Post by **Jazz Franco** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 5:23 pm

thecontrolcentre wrote:If I close the DOS(?) window Blok opens when I load the vst, after removing the plugin, it crashes Live 8.

Crashes EXT1.4 (test host) and blows away ASIO drivers (M-Audio FastTrack) -- only got the audio back after uninstall of Block and a couple of reboots. Zephod has made some great plug-ins for Psycle and (afaik) Buzz, but this one stay a no-no for me. At least, until I know that it's more stable/safe.

Limeflavour · Post by **Limeflavour** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 5:58 pm

The Buzz version of Blok works fine for me, haven't tried the Vst version though but at the download site it says that Standalone and Vst versions are under heavy construction and must be used at "own risk".

GeorgeZ · Post by **GeorgeZ** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 7:36 pm

.... and should get new skins

emef · Post by **emef** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:29 pm

works fine in ableton live 8.08
quality bit of software, enjoying this simplified way of putting together a synth

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:07 pm

emef wrote:works fine in ableton live 8.08

Not here in 8.09 ... it crashes Live if you remove it from a track and close the DOS window.

t3toooo · Post by **t3toooo** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 5:34 pm

i bump it up,
i bought it for the "early bird discount" it's running stabile and it's a great piece of software.
it's modular you can build your own patches and it is easy to handle.
zephod really know what he do but of course he also need a bug report if something went wrong.
btw: he fixed the mentioned problems with some hosts.

edit:
the link from the first page doesn't work anymore...
but this one. http://www.blokmodular.com/

that's it!

Zephod · Post by **Zephod** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 6:02 pm

Sorry for the crashes earlier on.. All versions before SVN274 were considered "unstable" and "unreleased" and "beta" but the word spread a bit too fast about the plugin... The "dos box" (debug console... nothing to do with DOS) was my debug output to get information on the various VST hosts. The official version doesnt have it ofcourse. Closing it hard-unloaded the plugin so yes ofcourse it crashes.

SVN274 fixes most (all? never sure) of the stability issues for VST hosts + incompatability with some versions of windows.

Please give the latest demo a shot and have fun!

Greetings,

Stijn Kuipers / Zephod

Jazz Franco · Post by **Jazz Franco** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 9:06 pm

@Zephod
Quite strange -- can't enter site (Chrome running on W7)

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 10:58 pm

me neither, ff3 here ...

Zephod · Post by **Zephod** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:13 pm

Still trouble?

http://www.blokmodular.com was down last night... seems to be running fine now?

Jazz Franco · Post by **Jazz Franco** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:48 pm

Zephod wrote:Still trouble?

http://www.blokmodular.com was down last night... seems to be running fine now?

Now fine, but only using this link above (not the one on the 1st page of this thread)

Zephod · Post by **Zephod** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:51 pm

aaah ok

yeah... that links to the old site... Ive added a redirect to make that link work again as well.

thanks for the help!

Stijn Kuipers / Zephod

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 7:29 am

Here is a reply from another thread. I thought it would better fit here:

"

woolyloach wrote:
Ingonator wrote:
woolyloach wrote:
KungKrille wrote:Maybe give BLOK modular a try?
http://www.blokmodular.com/

There's a pretty nice ambient song made with BLOK here

Interesting.. can't beat the price, and it was originally made for teaching.. hmm.. next Friday is Payday..
I just got it around a hour ago. Really fun to play with it.
After i just built my first patch i found it sounds even better than i thought after trying the demo.
I'm super-tempted to give up some party money and buy the darn thing! I could work with it over the weekend.. hmm... argh!

MUST.. NOT.. SUCCUMB.. TO.. GEAR.. LUST.. AAIIIEEEEEE!!!

Screw it, I'll download the demo tonight and fiddle with it!

Here is a picture of my first patch (Updated):
http://rapidshare.com/files/419737122/3 ... W.jpg.html

It's more like a template so not all modules (e.g. Arp) are used in this patch.

There are separate OSC modules for SubOSC (like the standard OSC, but 1 octave lower), OSC Sync, PWM and HyperOSC (=Hypersaw but for all waveforms).
What i am currently missing is a module for different key modes like e.g. mono, poly or legato. At the moment it's always polyphonic.

UPDATE:
A drawback of BLOCK is that a single patch is only 4 voices polyphonic which will be maybe solved with future updates.
The low CPU usage of BLOK is correct. Even if i play a pad with hypersaw and a lead sound (4 voices together) the CPU meter is almost not moving, it's around 2% on my Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU.

Here are two threada about BLOK:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=269188
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... light=blok

------------------------------------------------------------
The "Buzz" version of BLOK is free. You could get Buzz here:
http://www.jeskola.net/buzz/

The Buzz dll from the BLOK website has to be copied into the "generators" folder of Buzz.

Here is my second patch, loaded with Buzz:
http://rapidshare.com/files/419659658/H ... W.jpg.html

I have also updated the first patch, so the picture of that is new.

I have tried to do such a hypersaw patch with AAS Tassman 4 almost 3 years ago with a synth called "HyperOSC":

http://community.applied-acoustics.com/ ... h_list.php

Since Tassman had no HyperOSC and multimode filter modules this took a big amount of modules and the CPU use was really big. I made my own HyperOSC module from a bunch of oscillators and a "Spread" fader which was able to detune all OSCs at once in a certain amount. Took a lot of work to set all the wires and modules for that HyperOSC to work like it should. In fact i had to program an offset for all OSCs to get the OSC spread/detune right.

With BLOK and it's HyperOSC module this is much easier and also more logical. I know that VAZ Modular 3 has this too but i would say that VAZ Modular is the "reference" for modular software synths and is much more expensive.
Since VAZ Modular uses no "cables" to connect the modules it's not as logical as BLOK is. Same about Tassman where the wires/cables are set in the "background".

KungKrille · Post by **KungKrille** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 9:41 am

When I said give BLOK a try I hadn't really done that myself. I remember I installed it long ago but I didn't have the time to work with it and then I forgot about it.

I own Tassman and it's sound quality is fantastic. Though it's a bit fiddly to create new synths with it fills my modular synth needs. I have enough vst's but BLOK looks really nice and at that price it's hard to resist. I think I will download the demo again

Zephod · Post by **Zephod** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:41 am

as to the limited polyphony - I am working on a version that has variable polyphony up to 16. The old educational version was limited to 4 voices to ensure proper behaviour on a 486/pentium 1 class machine for any patches the students came up with. For these days that limitation is a bit weird.

Glad you like it though