U-he ACE!

[Download SOphist]

sorry if i haven'r gone through the whole thread, but can anyone help me with the CPU taxation on this thing (i've just downloaded the demo). One note of the init patch (saw wave) gives me a CPU hit bouncing between 11% and 15% (ableton Live 8's CPU meter), leaving the good'old triad at a somewhat hefty 25-30%. Some random patches hit easily 25% with just one note. Running Live 8.0.9 on windows vista home premium, core2duo p8600, 2,4 GHZ laptop. is this the general CPU hit, or is there something wrong with my system?

everything else seems awesome! this thing begs to be abused. congrats Urs! (and thanks for the spaghetti incident).

Cheers,
Miguel.

[Urs]

http://www.acesynth.com/index.php?item=downloads

The Windows installer takes me to:
http://www.acesynth.com/download/UhbikWinstaller.zip

Which is a 404.

- edit ---
Ohh, I see. You have a typo in your "registration codes" email that adds an "s" to "download", which takes you to a broken page. Might want to fix that

OOPSIE... fixed

[rob_lee]

just a note..

some of the presets you guys have will be omitted from the final bank (official release) as some are not complete (not many) im working on more basses/leads etc for the final release so back up the ones you have now as they're likely to change come next week.

@Urs

man i hate typing i can't effing spell to save my life trying to describe sounds lol

Rob

[xybre]

It comes in the night for your processor..
Its a CPU assassin

I do hope Urs can make Ace more CPU efficient, especially if he hopes to sell the Berlin Modular with much more intense requirements.

For now I'm just enjoying how great it sounds

[arp_laszlo]

two comments after cycling through some presets:

1) holy crap do some of the patches kill the cpu
2) omg does it sound good! Some synths make you sit up and take notice - this is one of them. Too bad this wasn't around years ago when KVR was rife with 'but does it sound like a Virus' comments

[zvenx]

we didnt' have the cpu to power it then
but yeah we do need a ace vs. virus thread.
rsp

[xybre]

Ace still doesn't sound like a virus, it is very different, better for some things.

You can totally make a hypersaw with stacked and detuned voices, no matter what Urs wants you to believe. :p It will set your CPU on fire to do so though.

[Urs]

when i change from accurate or standard to draft, the sound changes significantly to a very unpleasant high hissie missie.

It really depends. The more feedback (resonance...) and the more hgh frequent modulation, the worse.

I think that accurate is the ideal compromise between sound quality and flexibilty. Any "more accurate" would smoke your cpu with only little audible benefit. In contrast, "standard" is what you have with your average digital hardware synth (control rate at 4-16 samples with 96kHz sample rate) while draft is, hmm, typical digital synth. Good is good (but unfortunately not that easier on cpu than acccurate)

It doesn't come across easy for me, but one really has to compare ACE to an analogue modular or semi-modular. Anything in the same arena (if it ain't a sacrilege to mention the Cwejman SE-1 MkII here) is *monophonic* by principle (patch cords...) and costs twice the price of a new computer. In a way I think, if you can get 1 voice of ACE out of your computer: "Mission accomplished!" - It's all about modular synthesis. In modular synthesis, a single voice is usually enough. They don't have more. But it' soooo rewarding, and nowadays we havn't got expensive tape, have freeze!

Urs

[lagavulin16]

Ouch, missed the "spaghetti" promo code.

Still happy to have another great synth from Urs though.

[Urs]

Ace still doesn't sound like a virus

Put ACE on "standard" quality setting :-p

On a serious note, crank Sync fully up and check out Crossmodulation. This is IMHO where the Virus gets its nastiness from. And that's also where ACE excells.

I havn't spoken to Christoph in a while but I think that ACE draws a lot of inspiration from the same things that inspired the Virus. Which occurred to me after I finished the gui layout. I thought "this looks an aweful damn like a Virus". Then Howie called me and said the same. There are simple details that kind of strike one. But then of course, the Virus doesn't have cables and audio rate modulation and ACE doesn't have variable filter saturation. They're totally different. Thank goodness!

Urs

[funkychickendance]

Ouch, missed the "spaghetti" promo code.

Still happy to have another great synth from Urs though.

Me, too. What's $10 (or whatever it was) between friends?

Now, I'm running ACE on a pretty tired old rig, a single core 3.5MHz with 3GB of RAM. And yeah, you can produce some 99% CPU hits, some graunching noises, cracklefests, all kinds of instability. But usually it's only when i'm trying to produce polyphony, arpeggiating like a nutcase, or i'm overdoing the attack.

I'm pretty confident this synth will be pussycat controllable on my next rig, which'll play catch up for the past five years of ho-hum performance. And besides, we're on v0.9 here, a paid-for beta in many ways. For perfection, I guess ya gotta wait.

=fn<x>

[Echoes in the Attic]

Holy mother of god, this thing sounds fantastic! Even the draft mode sounds great. It's only noticibly bad when (like Urs said) the resonance is right up near full. Even then standard is quite ok.

CPU usage is not as bad as I was expecting (except when on "accurate"). I'll be buying this in moments.

[xybre]

Ace still doesn't sound like a virus

Put ACE on "standard" quality setting :-p

I was actually thinking that the Virus has its own more digital sound (Which I still know and love.. and its so easy to program! its a shame more people don't make their own patches for it)

On a serious note, crank Sync fully up and check out Crossmodulation. This is IMHO where the Virus gets its nastiness from. And that's also where ACE excells.

Hrm, I'll have to try that.

[zvenx]

for the record *I* was joking about the ace vs. virus comparison
rsp

[Download SOphist]

ok, really a cpu eater. not that i should complain, freeze is there for some reason.