Acustica ALICE-9 synth

[Echoes in the Attic]

As far as I recall, Thing preset change spikes were fixed before the price went up...otherwise I wouldn't have purchased it (for M1 Max). It's currently available with 44% off with THSPECIAL before March 31st (still not cheap though).

What I do find annoying is they said they would improve Thing's preset browser including centralising preset management across plugin versions. They've gone quiet on that other than state they need to address preset management during the livestream.

I continued to test preset changes and spikes did not change when the price went up.

[JoeCat]

We all have our own tastes, but this UI makes me feel like I'd be purchasing some piece of hardware I can't afford. Even if it doesn't bring much new to the table, if it sounds decent, I'm buying. I spent $45 buying my mom some Claritin today; VST prices are about in line with a few trips to Chipotle now, especially intro/sale prices

[Frankie.T]

Apart from personal preferences, this UI for that kind of products is 100% fine, it doesn't overcomplicate anything, and you would have the same workflow with a Serum-like UI, cause here everything is pretty simple even if effective.

[hurricaneaudiolab]

I also thought "Lush" when I first saw Alice. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

[henrixon]

I live on number 9, next door to Alice...

[Nug Wrangler]

alice alice who the f is alice

[Cuauhtli]

[wintoid]

alice alice who the f is alice

10 points!

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

They didn't even add proper parameter ranges to the Thing AU (only the VST3) and they've been working on a whole other synth? Sorry but putting off such an easy but important fix, why? They fixed the VST3 parameter ranges in a few days after feedback. Shows poor attention to detail and moving on before finishing something.

There have already been a lot of improvements made to parameter ranges, and updates were released quite a while ago. On GS, the users who initially made those requests have since said they were satisfied. So which parameter ranges are you referring to specifically? Just trying to understand better.

For example, here are a few things that were done: parameters now include decimals where requested. Some parameters, like oscillator types, now display readable names (e.g., sine, square…).

Also worth mentioning—we’ve fully exposed MIDI functionality. It’s now possible to assign controls that weren’t assignable in the very first release, such as buttons.

To my knowledge there is no any difference between AU and VST3, they share the same code, and the same parametrization

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Thing is one of my favorite sounding synths. It had a bit of growing pains in the beginning, but now has become my go to for Jupiter 8 sounds.
This one looks great, I have no doubt it’ll sound incredible. Still curious to know what synth it’s inspired by, anyone in the know ?

thank you!

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

alice alice who the f is alice

from “alice in borderland”, a tv show. Thing8 was from “stranger things”, an other one

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

I just went and looked at "Thing", because everyone was talking about it. I can't fault the sound. It sounds good. But the interface! It's horrible! This Alice synth's interface is a vast improvement! I hope those who own Thing get an update some day that looks better. I would get a headache if I had to look at Thing all day.

We’ll definitely explore flat-style GUIs as well for certain synthesizer families. For TH8, we opted for a photorealistic GUI that aligns with what most developers in that synth category are doing—for example, Arturia.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

As far as I recall, Thing preset change spikes were fixed before the price went up...otherwise I wouldn't have purchased it (for M1 Max). It's currently available with 44% off with THSPECIAL before March 31st (still not cheap though).

What I do find annoying is they said they would improve Thing's preset browser including centralising preset management across plugin versions. They've gone quiet on that other than state they need to address preset management during the livestream.

Yes, exactly. Regarding the preset browser, we’ve made a lot of improvements for the release of Alice. If everything checks out, we’ll also update Thing. It’s something we often do: when a new product brings enhancements, we roll those improvements back to previous products that share the same components. There’s about a one-month window after a product launch where we try to address quick requests. I find the new browser much smoother—we’ve added a lot of features like program change support, and it behaves more reliably. Honestly, we had very few issues while creating hundreds of presets for Alice9.

Among other things, we’re releasing an early-stage MPE support in Alice, and it might also be made available for Thing in the future.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Watched the vid and it does sound nice though. Seems to have all of what made thing-8 sounds good but with more flexibility of additional oscillator types. I wonder what else is special about the OSC other than just being multi samples with variation in the start time?

At first glance, the two products may look like they share the same graphical structure, but under the hood, there are many differences. The most important one is the engine behind the oscillator—it’s neither a wavetable nor a traditional sample-based oscillator. It’s something in between, and it’s quite a new concept. This development kept us busy for about a year and ran in parallel with the creation of TH8, which is based on a more traditional DCO.

Thanks to this innovation, we’re now able to sample the oscillators of other synthesizers—even when they have a long temporal evolution. This allows us to do things that TH8 simply cannot.

[audiojunkie]

I just went and looked at "Thing", because everyone was talking about it. I can't fault the sound. It sounds good. But the interface! It's horrible! This Alice synth's interface is a vast improvement! I hope those who own Thing get an update some day that looks better. I would get a headache if I had to look at Thing all day.

We’ll definitely explore flat-style GUIs as well for certain synthesizer families. For TH8, we opted for a photorealistic GUI that aligns with what most developers in that synth category are doing—for example, Arturia.

It doesn’t need to be flat style. Skeuomorphic is fine. But there are parts to the GUI where the background and the font is the same color (or nearly so). Alice doesn’t have this problem. But when the writing can’t be read, something needs to be adjusted. Saying it was horrible is probably too strong of a word. It would probably be better to say that I didn’t care for it, and that there is room for improvement. Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.