One Synth Challenge #119: Waverazor 2 by Tracktion (Jasinski Wins!)

[Auplant]

on the subjects of effects... I love the chorus, I would love a standalone chorus plugin like that which offers so much flexibility

So, you like that chorus? Have you managed to make it not crackle due to no interpolation within buffer rendering, when you use it as EFX?! Because, well, it's one of the many victims of this problem inside waverazor.

Try and change the chorus sweep type to "CENTER LO" and tweek the "Center Bias" knob with trial and error. I'm also using careful filtering and reverb on sounds so I don't notice any crackling

I'm using 3x over-sampling on the X pole sv filter - crank that up if you're using the 2 pole/X pole sv filter

[Taron]

Here's the comb based pluck sound...

...Ah, thanks, phace, didn't see your message before. Cool, but...yeah... well, I might play around with that, thanks a lot!

[Auplant]

@Taron Impressive acoustic qualities in this pluck sound, didn't know you could make such a thing with a comb filter

I'm making pretty cool grainy sounds, even though I'm doing an ambient track

my preset naming looks like this


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I decided to experiment with your preset Taron, made a (almost) realistic harp from it, and added a macro to control Velocity amount

Experimenting is fun...

[Taron]

Thanks, phace! Not sure what all has happened with your modification of my preset, but it somehow can cut off harshly with a DC click (not due to voice limits! Just two notes in even...), is enormously loud and I would always avoid hooking delays into a sound unless it really means something important to the sound itself, you know. Though, I wonder, if that's some other eerie kink as many template presets appear to have a delay...seems like it's unintentional?!

But, yeah, combs are beautiful and powerful, if they're well implemented and it's one of the things I don't mind about waverazor. The comb seems fine, but also shows the crude dial implementation... tough to adjust neatly, where it's really necessary. However, the "wirev" mode of comb helps to tune it at 100% feedback. That's cool.

More weird things: Now, I figured out that what the rest of the world knows as sustain time to a sustain level, waverazor has kind of in there as "sus decay" with a fixed target level of 0, while this whole thing shouldn't exist and instead the sustain and sustain level should do that trick. Those two are in the realm of uselss, as a sustain level of 0 will somehow bounce back up afterwards to supply the sus decay with some level to decay from, hahaha...which is...uhm... "what?". Also, ONLY the sus decay will act properly with the sustain pedal. If you had dared to touch the sustain parameter, your sustain pedal with simply hold the sound at the attack level...yes, it does. BUT there's more... IF you so choose to deal with it and put sustain to 0 and sustain level to 100% (sorry about the mixup earlier!), and work with sus decay instead, you get the right sort of envelope behavior IN PRINCIPLE, but you also get the bonus of a curious sound glitch that sustains with the sound, like pieces of the waveform being cut off or repeated from that moment on. As if somehow the duty cycle gets cut at the moment of sus decay kicking in and the next round of the cycle is a bit quieter and so on, but this cut off introduces a tiny kink in the waveform then, essentially breaking any hopes for clean quality in the sound rather than a digital hiss, if you know what I mean. I'm biting my tongue on where I'd expect to find such things among the great scene of generous vst creators, but instead I add that as a big plus to the daring of these cats.

[Auplant]

I should have deactivated the sustain pedal - lesson learned

Here are some not so easy to see things which I modded in the preset, if it's of interest

[Taron]

Yeah, that explains a lot. The comb filter change likely created the trouble, because all other modes behave very differently to feedback. I haven't even looked at the fx bank there, but the very idea of using even more effects in WR really scares me...
Anyway, cool, phace, it's great to keep exploring options, that's almost always a good idea!

...I've played around with more "physical modeling" things, using the combs. If you play your cards right, you can create flute and even bowed sounds, using different envelopes on the oscillators with different waveforms set and different tunings on them. It's a pretty vast spectrum, but all of it makes WR appear as a very different kind of synth. Probably not what one would expect, hehe.

[Auplant]

...I've played around with more "physical modeling" things, using the combs. If you play your cards right, you can create flute and even bowed sounds, using different envelopes on the oscillators with different waveforms set and different tunings on them. It's a pretty vast spectrum, but all of it makes WR appear as a very different kind of synth. Probably not what one would expect, hehe.

Would be great to prove to others that there's more to WR than what one would first assume. I saw ridiculous comments on youtube such as "this synth is unusable for music". What a load of crap!

[Taron]

...I swear, I wasn't one of them, but I believe it's just the frustration of the contrast between what it is like and what it takes to get this synth, carefully expressed.
Anything can be used to make music, but for many great and greater options with less or even no problems one needs only to hit "download". (I will stop beating the horse to death, though, with my less and less elegant hints!)
I think, where ever there is enthusiasm and willingness to create, I want to support it and salute it, too. WR has a curious approach, which still needs a great deal of attention to a bunch of layers of development. For me the #1 priority is that the sound comes out deliberate and clean without basic problems in form of aliasing and other interpolation issues. Endless options to modulate a sound come in vain, if they can't lead to a professional sound quality in a product that wishes to be professional (Sorry, poor horse!). So, yeah...some more tweaks, also regarding memory management (yet another layer begging for attention!), and then this could be a pretty cool instrument.

[Taron]

Here's another neat comb based toy. You can use the vectors 1 to dampen and detune the combs and there's Macro A as Attack Time for some more fun with it.
(Fixed Attachment!!!)

[Auplant]

Although I don't really need to do it, I'm just wondering if it's possible to sync two oscs together like in a ring mod fashion?

I know that there is some kind of a sync in the synth, from the manual:

wav# sync - Resets the wave in the segment to its starting phase when active.:

But I guess the osc does a kind of sync on itself with all the segments and clamps down the pitch?(synth pitch I mean, not midi pitch)

it's located there if anyone is wondering where it is:

[ontrackp]

Taron. I've been away from the studio so haven't had a chance to download your patches but am interested in what you're doing. Are you stacking the comb filters -- I've not had much success making useful sounds using just one. I also am getting a low freq artifact on some "pure" waves from init patch. I have not had the problem you do with patches not coming back when you re-open. Everything comes back perfectly for me (Mac OS).

[] Peter:H []

deleted

[Taron]

Taron. I've been away from the studio so haven't had a chance to download your patches but am interested in what you're doing. Are you stacking the comb filters -- I've not had much success making useful sounds using just one. I also am getting a low freq artifact on some "pure" waves from init patch. I have not had the problem you do with patches not coming back when you re-open. Everything comes back perfectly for me (Mac OS).

L O L, OMG, I was just going to make an example song for you, loading up my Comb_Toy01 and thought my ears are going to implode...da f..ck.... so, yeah, I am having the problem that sounds can come back VERY differently than what I had saved...
Well, I would apologize in advance for all those, who loaded up this patch and had a meltdown, but that's 100% what I was talking about and not my freaking fault!
Danged...anyway, I'll render an example for you. My other comb patches seem fine. You have to watch out with combs, because their unique power is in their feedback, which you should let run freely, only triggered by an impulse wave, rather than having a waveform constantly feeding into the comb. So...you tune it right, set the feedback high (even at 100%) and control the damping to your liking, especially in the first comb mode in WR. IF you keep feeding a wave into the comb, especially when its at the same tuning, it will resonate like crazy, of course, creating all sorts of havoc.
I will now have a look at what I need to do to fix the darn Comb_Toy patch...

OK, I have it fixed now, check the original post again:
viewtopic.php?p=7282522#p7282522

It was the compressor effect. When I applied it, it didn't seem to do much at all, so I tried some things with it and eventually just forgot about it. After loading the patch back up, the compressor went into FULL EFFECT, which was "no kidding" bombastic and gear-endangering, haha. So, yeah... things that don't seem to work right away MAY work later: Watch out!

[Auplant]

I finally got to the glitch area I was trying to get to, this synth has become addictive, it's definitely fun to work with

[Taron]

Here's a quick doodle as example for ONLY comb based sounds:
https://soundcloud.com/taronium/wrcombing/s-yDOwe

It's harmonically so simple, I felt like it should be a known tune of sorts, but I don't know... just felt like I might've stumbled upon some old song by accident. Anyway... that's just a side-note.