One Synth Challenge #132: ToneZ by t0nit0rmx (MrKarollus Wins!)

[T0NIT0RMX]

Hi there ! I'm really amazed to discover ToneZ was chosen for the OSC of this month

ToneZ hit 10,000 download last week, but I haven't had that much feedback to fix bug / improve, I'll take the opportunity to note everything you guys report about the synth in order to improve !

Please note it's made with Cabbage & Csound so it may have some problems with compatibility in some DAW, especially Ableton.
I'm in touch with Cabbage's Dev to fix this kind of issues (we still can't figure the issues in Ableton tho)

Also, Csound engine is really CPU heavy so you may face high CPU usage with ToneZ especially if you load lots of voices and layers lots of ToneZ.

Finally, at first I'm a DJ/Producer (EDM, Bigroom)(I produce in LMMS), I made ToneZ to fulfill my needs of a subtractive synth with the options I needed, in my 3 latest track all the synth are from ToneZ !
After talking about it with some people, I decided to release it publicly, for free !

Hope you guys will enjoy ToneZ, I wish you a good luck for this OSC !
Feel free to let me know any issue you face, and also feel free to send me preset pack if you made some, I feature the best of them on ToneZ webpage !

[Taron]

Thanks, Tonito! It's great that you share your exploration/creation! Please, forgive us, if we're a bit harsh here and there. Everyone here loves to jump on a "new" synth every month and usually is very eager to produce a track. That's why it quite often gets a bit frustrating, when a synth acts up in one way or another. Key to this challenge is often the use of great many instances, as all sounds have to come from the chosen synth. While I mostly use single instances for sounds, I usually have around 20 instances tops. But many do layer them, ending up with 60+ instances in some cases ("oh, the humanity"). Thus, it will get rough with ToneZ.
I said it earlier already that I might give it a shot, despite my first impression that it seems rather impossible. Maybe I'll try a really minimalistic track...
Anyway, kudos on taking the plunge to make a synth in the first place. I've made one a while back, using just the vstsdk and vstgui in c++. It's most certainly more complicated, but one isn't at the mercy of a bloated API with little control over the given routines. I could never get myself to work with something like Cabbage or even SynthEdit. BUT it's still cool and we get to play with a little piece of your creative mind, which is always exciting!
Again, thanks and stay strong!

[] Peter:H []

@TonitoRMX - wellcome to OSC.
I was flashed by your little plug-in. Is this track all sounds from ToneZ?
Just wondering how you did the Bdr and Snare with ToneZ... above admiring the overall quality of this banger!

[functionform]

Hm, I hadn't noticed the CPU thing immediately, but I did notice that after I change a setting it seems to pause my daw for a second or so. I assumed it was rebuilding some internal wavetable or something silly like that.

[functionform]

LMMS! Shoestring budget. 60 USD for a Reaper license goes a very long way my friend. Cheers and hope you enjoy the entries!

[L-EctroBit]

Hope you guys will enjoy ToneZ, I wish you a good luck for this OSC !

Thanks T0NIT0RMX for your kind words and support here in One Synth Challenge.

LMMS! Shoestring budget. 60 USD for a Reaper license goes a very long way my friend. Cheers and hope you enjoy the entries!

LMMS is not so similar to Reaper, but rather to FL Studio, I think.
But let me tell you, today it is not necessary to spend money to work on a excellent DAW. For example, I already have time making my music on a free DAW, Cakewalk by BandLab, and since the first time I tried it I felt at home (I used Logic Pro 8 for a long time).
By the way, as a T0NIT0RMX pointed out before, that Ableton users may have problems with ToneZ, it works well in Cakewalk, at least in what I have tried, and as I said before it is a free DAW that is still in development, with constant updates . It is never a bad idea to have a second DAW at hand to help us in any contingency.

[T0NIT0RMX]

Please, forgive us, if we're a bit harsh here and there.

No problem haha Hopefully it will raise some points that can be improved !

@TonitoRMX - wellcome to OSC.
I was flashed by your little plug-in. Is this track all sounds from ToneZ?
Just wondering how you did the Bdr and Snare with ToneZ... above admiring the overall quality of this banger!

Thanks Peter for your kind words on Genesis Empire ! All the synth are from ToneZ, so the punch of the kick, the percs (snares, claps etc..), some effects like sweeps are samples. But the Leads, Chords, Plucks, Basses, are from ToneZ

[dakkra]

Alright I've got some simple patches going. Making the kick was a head ache and it's still not quite where I want it to be. I've not found a way to get the voice controls to end the kick on a zero-crossing/release to zero and thus there's quite a bit of clicking

Otherwise I'm slowly getting the hang of making it work for me:

[Tj Shredder]

Big plus: it seems to do voice per channel, I get polyphonic pitch bends with my LinnStrument!
But I could not find out how to assign cc74 or aftertouch to a parameter... A basic mod matrix seems missing.
I looked at the csound code, but I know why I turned away from lines of code programming to Max a long time ago...

[Medniex]

Thank you z.prime for pointing the way how to solve Ableton issue. Got mine working!

[functionform]

Is it me or is the amplitude env clicky? Also I don't see a way to alter the vel->vol mapping.

edit: my adsr amp was clicky because my Amt wasn't 100% turned up. Interesting. Any ideas on #2? I could use a velocity compressor, but slightly annoying.

[Taron]

I had a different problem, now that you mention the envelopes. I never got sustain on the first env to go all the way to 0.0, making it impossible to let a sustained note ramp all the way down to vanish. Makes it a bit awkward to do percussion. But since a simple kick, snare, high hat brought my computer to start stuttering I almost forgot mentioning the above issue, hehehe... doh!

[dakkra]

It's being discussed on the plugin discord. It seems like a limitation with the framework (CSound via Cabbage) which doesn't allow the sustain to be set to 0. Thus there's a snap/click to 0 at the end of the envelope stage.

[Taron]

That I don't understand... "snap/click to 0 at the end of the envelope stage"? ...weird.
I'll say thanks in advance already. Sounds interesting.

[HiEnergy]

I've checked the waveforms and oscillator output in ToneZ using Smexoscope and it seems there's some DC offset happening.
Although it's minimal, this is going to add up when stacking ToneZ instances.
I'll have to neutralize the offsets using a highpass filter or Live's saturator effect which has a DC offset remover built in.
Did anyone else notice DC offset in ToneZ?