Ultra Audio - Ultra (A fancy Vital-style synth that popped up out of nowhere)

[ffx]

Post filter you can add tube saturation to the fx bus.
Pre filter (or during filter really) you have drive on 2 of the filter models.
Analog osc has a drive in the bottom right.

That sounds quite nice.

Is there cross-osc ringmod and fm?

Very nice that the OSC fxs have mix amount always, makes it possible to add more sublte harmonics.

[Sound Author]

I discovered Ultra about a week ago, and I thought it was a beautiful looking synth, but I didn't fully appreciate the Ultrawave engine's capabilities until I saw the wavetable design workflow demonstrated in UltraAudio's most recent YouTube video.

Guys, give this developer a chance. I think this is a very cool approach to wavetable synthesis. Sure, we could compare it to other synths and find something to complain about here and there in terms of flexibility, but I've never seen a wavetable engine like this before, and I think it's something really unique.

[Velden]

One of my first Ultra patches, a wavetable cello detached layered with a super saw oscillator.

Nice work.

This synth can be taken places...

[Benedict]

That cello patch above is rather impressive.
- - -

I tried it for a bit and there are some things that are good. From what I saw, the tech really isn't as new as indicated. What is different is how it is implemented, which does: a) make wavetable building from samples easier, and b) smooth the sample transition issue.

Decent architecture. Rather Vital adjacent (a bit easier). All those tabs and pop-up windows that cascade and tumble over each other. It seems that you may only have one Ultrawave running at any time?? Sample OSC was simple but nice, Analog felt formulaic and I somewhat wonder why it might be there as surely the wav thing is more betterful overall (maybe not enough time here).

Price: I guess this depends on where you are with other synths and abilities etc. I immediately compare to what I can do in Europa. Is the new toy taking me somewhere I cannot go? While some hateful hirsute harry shouted at me that they are completely different, the results are what matter to me esp when people aren't going to notice, let alone care, if I use Serum, Europa or a wet toilet paper kazoo. For the sense of fiddle endemic in most VST that really puts me off using them that is a problem for me. As is the (apparent) singular Ultrawave when most things allow 2-4 Wavetables at once.

Seeing I don't use samples like many do the intersample thing is not a strong issue. That said I would use it from time to time where I like the idea of a sample, but too much aretefacting takes the edge off for me. As for making sample-derived Wavetables, I can do that simply in Europa already so long as I can see the waveform of say that Bass from the vid. I did exactly that with two of the cycles on his YT vid by eye-hand with an MSEG and it sounded cool.

I did not note a similar MSEG or other Wav-creation method which I think is a shame here. While Zebra, Predator have them, they are a PITA so nope on that for fun.

But back to price for me at $299 it is nowhere seeing it is not the revelation of a Synclavier/Fairlight dropped in the midst of P5s & J8s. $149 is still steep for what is a better-than-most workflow but ultimately feels (as I am glad the OP said here) a bit derivative and hoping we don't notice. At $69 I might think it fair for the U-Wav thing. At $39 I might jump in, es if it had a really usable wav-creation system not just the sample collation thing.



Note these are my IMOs, my opinions based on my life, so personal attacks will not look good on you when you try to claim your opinion has more rights than mine (nazism rarely looks good on one).

[Velden]

The Trial mode gives you 100 free credits, which you can use in the store.

If you end up buying Ultra, you get another 100 credits.

Please consider getting direct buyers 200 credits. Guess how it feels...

Apart from that, a few finishing touches still needed, a price probably too high and a little too much push on the embedded preset shop, this synth is unexpectedly really worth trying.

Guess there was still things to do with wavetables, or beyond them.

[kraster]

The real standout feature for me is still the fact that you can get a sample and kind of imprint that in various ways on the other engines.

Like using the pitch envelope from a sample to modulate the fine pitch of the analog oscillators or use the amplitude envelope to modulate other engine's ampitude or fiter cutoff. These things remain in lockstep with the resynthesised ultrawave so you get a kind of reinforced sample hybrid.

It's very very cool.

[Benedict]

That could be a bit interesting. That said, when i want that sort of thing, I do it and scraping it off other people's woek, not really my cup of meat.

[ultra_audio]

The Trial mode gives you 100 free credits, which you can use in the store.

If you end up buying Ultra, you get another 100 credits.

Please consider getting direct buyers 200 credits. Guess how it feels...

Apart from that, a few finishing touches still needed, a price probably too high and a little too much push on the embedded preset shop, this synth is unexpectedly really worth trying.

Guess there was still things to do with wavetables, or beyond them.

That's totally a bug, you will get another 100 credits, please bear with us while we get this sorted

[PieBerger]

When in the WT editor page interacting with the UI is incredibly laggy, to the extent that it's unusable sadly, is this a known issue? VST3 in Bitwig 6 beta on MacOS Sequoia. It could be related to the Bitwig beta so I'll try it out in 5.3.13 too and report back ASAP.

On a more a positive note, there is a lot of joy to be had playing with basic waveforms and the warp modes and the overall sound of the synth is fantastic, great job

[ultra_audio]

When in the WT editor page interacting with the UI is incredibly laggy, to the extent that it's unusable sadly, is this a known issue? VST3 in Bitwig 6 beta on MacOS Sequoia. It could be related to the Bitwig beta so I'll try it out in 5.3.13 too and report back ASAP.

On a more a positive note, there is a lot of joy to be had playing with basic waveforms and the warp modes and the overall sound of the synth is fantastic, great job

depends what you're doing - what actions are lagging for you?

[chaocrator]

+1 for Linux version.
we need some decent commercial synth comparable to Serum (since Vital is rather dated and not actively developed)

[PieBerger]

When in the WT editor page interacting with the UI is incredibly laggy, to the extent that it's unusable sadly, is this a known issue? VST3 in Bitwig 6 beta on MacOS Sequoia. It could be related to the Bitwig beta so I'll try it out in 5.3.13 too and report back ASAP.

On a more a positive note, there is a lot of joy to be had playing with basic waveforms and the warp modes and the overall sound of the synth is fantastic, great job

depends what you're doing - what actions are lagging for you?

Thanks for the quick reply. I was importing audio to convert to an Ultrawave, using the automated process option and I could see the frames in the editor and hear the result, apply warp etc. so no audio lag, but trying to select one or more frames to move around on the timeline or to select and action for processing, was basically impossible. The cursor would lag behind and become invisible (IIRC) and I would have to mouse outside of the entire synth UI and then come back into focus again to close the editor and return to the main synth page.

I'll repeat the steps when I'm back at my studio computer later today and report back. I think I'm still on v1.0.5 so after trying the above I'll update to v1.0.6 and see if that fixes things.

[osiris]

Could you put a vid on YT with a walkthrough of presets? (Are there presets?) I found only one explaining the new WT principle and the sounds were quite good.

[Gamma-UT]

Could you put a vid on YT with a walkthrough of presets? (Are there presets?) I found only one explaining the new WT principle and the sounds were quite good.

You might as well download the demo. The preset window plays preview snippets of each patch. You can scroll through those to your heart's content...well 20 minutes at a time.

[PieBerger]

Could you put a vid on YT with a walkthrough of presets? (Are there presets?) I found only one explaining the new WT principle and the sounds were quite good.

You might as well download the demo. The preset window plays preview snippets of each patch. You can scroll through those to your heart's content...well 20 minutes at a time.

30 mins as of 1st Jan with v1.0.6