One Synth Challenge #156: Synister by QUL at the University of Berlin / Open Source (Voting Started!)

[Taron]

Yes it is! Good on ya'! ...and with a bit of TLC in the mix and no hesitation to work with FX-Clip one may do some wild things with it. Just too bad it exhausts my miniPC too soon. I may have to stick with minimalism to pull something off. But why not!?

[SeBaer]

[...] a bit of TLC in the mix [...]

But isn't TLC supposed to separate mixtures? Or did you in fact not mean thin layer chromatography?

[] Peter:H []

Funny. It seems that the synth uses basically the Juce Synthesizer class from here: https://docs.juce.com/master/classSynthesiser.html

See https://github.com/the-synister/the-sou ... rocessor.h

Code: Select all

private:
    //==============================================================================
    class Synth : public Synthesiser {
    public:

And the Square Oscillator is very basic without ripples. "Without ripples" means full aliasing.
See https://github.com/the-synister/the-sou ... cillator.h

Code: Select all

static float square(float phs, float trngAmount, float width) {
        ignoreUnused(trngAmount, width);
        //square wave with duty cycle
        if (phs < 2.f * float_Pi * width) {
            return 1.f;
        }
        else {
            return -1.f;
        }
        //return std::copysign(1.f, float_Pi - phs);
    }

What is this ripples thing about? Check out the following article about how to programm an oscillator with a "less aliasing" approach: http://www.martin-finke.de/blog/article ... scillator/
When you keep in mind that the article about the ripples oscilltor is 8 years old and the synth only 6 years ... it's a bit disappointing that the synth author was not able to do copy/paste

But may be, the "imperfection" of Synister means "perfection" ... let's see.

[IV!]

At first, I wanted to give up this month right away, since eating glass shards is really not one of my favorite activities. But these active discussions, the all-conquering optimism of Taron and the compromising material from L-EctroBit, in which I am one of the proponents of this synthesizer, make me not give up trying to make a track this month in advance! OSC is sometimes paradoxical in that a lot of great tracks come out of "dark horses", and this is one of the most interesting things for me in this challenge - to observe how giant barriers of technical imperfection and design perversions are overcome and new sound worlds are born in the chaos of noise and aliasing!

For everyone else, it will be a great contrast shower after Any Synth, so that you remember how it happens and accept any next synthesizer with open arms!

P.S. Sorry for beginners... but not much. A great young OSCer course and a chance to prove yourself! In fact, there is no such thing here... just have fun! Um, I mean, try not to hurt yourself too much!

[doctorbob]

I'm with Mr T here. Let's give it a go ... here's a little bit of my WIP with "placeholders" for the percussion! Nothing on the master, 14 tracks (all basic stuff) apart from the soloing of course.

CPU is 2%-5% on my machine, no issues.

Will develop this further, a month to work on the percussion and refine the other sounds, as well as work out the last few minutes of where this track might go. Just a cool relaxing cool jazzy styled thing.

Hope it sounds ok so far. BTW, have been working on some arrangement before the synth was announced, to this is quite definitely NOT a 2 day wonder!

https://soundcloud.com/doctorbob/wip

[Taron]

Very sexy, Rob! ...what a cozy track this may become.
Yeah, my little machine here is amazing me left and right, having had no issue to run 10+ instances of FullBucket's FB-7999 with some extra effects and mastering (albeit minimal: OTT, LoudMax). But it never came close to exhausting my machine. Then again, Björn is a master with that stuff!

[L-EctroBit]

At first, I wanted to give up this month right away, since eating glass shards is really not one of my favorite activities. But these active discussions... make me not give up trying to make a track this month in advance!

Glad to hear that you will be participating this month. Now I see that revealing your name as one of the Synister proponents in 2020 has paid off.

But may be, the "imperfection" of Synister means "perfection" ... let's see.

That is something that many of us are about to discover.

Kidding aside, I've started making presets with Synister and have come up with some interesting sounds. So I encourage those who are in doubt about the possibilities of this synth to give it a try.

[Aro]

I think I'm up for the challenge. I, too, like Dr. Bob started a piece prior to this month. Just notes in a notation editor, but no desired sounds yet. I took a minute or two to put the notes to Synister and I'm liking what I hear so far. I'm not confident enough to share yet, but confident enough to think I might follow through with this months challenge!

[ontrackp]

After my first 1/2 hr with this synth I was ready to give up -- then suddenly it gelled.

Each synth has it's own personality, and my feeling is that personality should drive the direction of your composition. There are definitely some limitations to Synister, and the oscillators are not all that pretty, but with almost any synth (except WaveRazor) after playing around a while, and trying some things, suddenly it can start to come together. So now - I'm in.

I failed to complete my piece last month (first time in years) due to heavy work obligations, but I'm determined to do something worthy of Synister this month.

I encourage everyone to give it a chance -- it doesn't sound very good -- but it has it's own sound, and it's own kinda quirky feel, which means there is a flavor of creative that should work with it. The mystery, and the fun, is, what flavor is that?

[ontrackp]

OH - and question. As the "play" button on the step sequencer cannot be controlled by MIDI (as far as I can tell), is it legit to create a step sequence and record it as audio to use on a track? I think it should be -- the sequence and sound is all the synth. Thoughts???? This is less unwieldy than having instances of it just chugging away all the time and hope that you don't turn it off by accident with the space bar or return key, which seems to do that.

[ontrackp]

Hey BJ and Richard -- considering that the synth sounds so bad, how about allowing paid plugs again? We can polish the turd!?!?!

[ontrackp]

(sorry - don't know how to get rid of that attachments box)

[RichardSemper]

Sorry, you missed a gem last month with any synth and paid plugins. This month is usual rules.

Been playing around a bit with it. The Oscillators don't sound too good with the aliasing and paucity of waveforms, but you can get a (sort of) triangle, and modulations do quite a bit. Also the envelopes have interesting shaping possibilities.

I noticed that the tuning is reliant upon the soundcard samplerate. Seems at 44100 Hz samplerate the main freq must be set to 440Hz, while anyone using 48000 Hz samplerate needs to set main freq to 404.8556 Hz. Naturally this will affect patches created with it. hmmm

[ELEX]

OH - and question. As the "play" button on the step sequencer cannot be controlled by MIDI (as far as I can tell), is it legit to create a step sequence and record it as audio to use on a track? I think it should be -- the sequence and sound is all the synth. Thoughts???? This is less unwieldy than having instances of it just chugging away all the time and hope that you don't turn it off by accident with the space bar or return key, which seems to do that.

Thought:
The usual would apply, wouldn't it ? Recording is fine, looping any recordings is not. Esp. given the fact that this synth is big on inconsistencies. I don't see how anyone would be able to use this sequencer without recording, tbh. Start/stop behaviour is simply unworkable, as far as I can tell.

[Aro]

Okay, decided to share my work in progress.

https://soundcloud.com/lionsclub-1/alon ... al_sharing

I'm having fun with it. I'm no sound expert, but I likes what I likes.

** I just listened on headphones. It sounds way better on speakers, probably because my room has a natural low frequency bump. Something to work on and learn from. WIP right?