Fathom Synth Development Thread

[RPH]

Yeah, that's what we should be talking about (mostly).
Do you mean the metamorphic oscillator, if I'm correct there isn't even a YouTube video showcasing that beast (hint).
The best part of it whatever you do in it, if I'm correct, it never aliases. So projects can remain at 44.1 or 48KHz to save CPU cycles. Sound wise it goes much further than e.g. Vital.

[WasteLand]

Yeah, that's what we should be talking about (mostly).
Do you mean the metamorphic oscillator, if I'm correct there isn't even a YouTube video showcasing that beast (hint).
The best part of it whatever you do in it, if I'm correct, it never aliases. So projects can remain at 44.1 or 48KHz to save CPU cycles. Sound wise it goes much further than e.g. Vital.

i don't mean the metamporphic oscillator, although it can already do a lot, yes i have Fathom Vector..

it was announced that 3.7 would have 'spectral morphing', what that means can be quite different (sometimes), it was a sentence. and in another post from FathomSynth it was called, or explained differently. KVR has changed, i can't go through the old posts, while writing this, but it is there in the last pages, from 1 and 2 months ago??

it never aliases indeed, well it is bandlimited by definition, although with FM i am not sure if it does alias, i made a patch with to Metamorphic Oscillators, one FM's the other, or did i chose in the end for AM, or did i, as always, make a lot of variant patches... one with FM and the other with AM? and other routings? well i made variant patches, with custom waves...

there aren't any showcasings indeed.

although quite versed in all the specific, specific for Fathom Vector i have still much to learn or to explore.

but programming it is easier than i thought, but good programming is never easy...

Fathom does some things for anti-aliasing, or better DSP calculations that you can change, in preferences.

never i good idea, in my humble my opinion, to set a complete project to 96Khz for instance, if oversampling is an option (and the best option is 2 settings; 1 for real-time, 1 for offline/rendering).

it offfers quite a potential of sounds, can it be compared to Vital, yes maybe, i personally wouldn't do it, i use both for different results..
but Vital hasn't a modular routing, for effects, for instance.

let's say Fathom Vector is one of the unique synths on the market, not all unique/niche synths, or by definition from small developers or not that known; like Vital (that isn't Serum!! Vital is designed for, well the filters are fine tuned for spectral..... the own character of it, but i am alone in the desert...), LION, Pigments 3.5.

Fathom Vector next to MSoundFactory, Music Developments Syne, Plasmonic, Generate, Abyss, Biotek 2, Kaivo, Aalto, etc. etc. well....

Fathom Vector goes quite deep, so perhaps you are right, i like that, the amount of control..
and (semi-)modular... (and me like soft modulars....).

it is an unique synth, with so much potential, and the sound!

[mcbpete]

Hopefully these suggestions won't invoke more wrath but wondering if a few [hopefully simple to implement] changes will aid both new and long term Fathom users:

Tool tips (available to switch on and off via Settings maybe?) - I have quite large gaps between trying Fathom (have the Vector version) and I forget for example 'the down arrow' for load and 'up arrow for save', the two identical looking circle icons 'Loading Primary Color Theme' and 'Loading Auxiliary Color Theme'. I click on the just to see what they do but having tool tip hover functionality would be great

On the bar at the top there's two 'settings' buttons which appear to do exactly the same thing, if you lost one of them and moved the two Theme related buttons (those circles) into the settings->Graphics menu you would have space to move the 'Browser' button up to where the other preset related buttons are in the top menu bar

The browser UI behaviour is a little quirky too: If you click a value in the 'Folder' and 'Type' column it selects that item, but if you click on the value in 'Category' 'Name' 'Author' 'Comments' column then gives you the option to rename the value of that item. Maybe a right click and/or long mouse press for renaming and a quick left click for selecting and/or loading?

Couple of tinier UI things:

The lower central middle bar showing 'Signal Flow View' when you're in the that view, which then becomes an editable text box in browser view (though not sure what that does as it doesn't seem to name the preset what you've entered in that box!) could maybe be themed not to look like a button and just be a flat title box changing between 'Signal Flow View' and 'Browser View' depending in what mode you're in.

The lower right 'Close' button (and other buttons when not applicable - eg. the Signal Flow button once in Signal Flow mode) could maybe be grayed out when they don't do anything

[zzz00m]

^^^ This.

Some UI workflow enhancements would be appreciated!

I have been a Fathom Pro user since the beginning, and I have most of the preset banks. This is one of the best sounding synths in my collection, and I really want it to be a success!

But I do find that if I am away from the synth for any length of time, it is difficult for me to resume the sound design workflow as I am hunting for the details. Perhaps relocating some elements might be a good start. But it might just be me...

[WasteLand]

^^^^ @mcbpeter; plus one, indeed sometimes, the UI can be 'against you', while i can still work in it quite fast, but a mistake is easy to make. tooltips indeed.

i think the logic of the elements is good, but sometimes, navigating, i am used to it now, but as i said, still make sometimes mistakes.

so overall, the logic is good, that can on simple points be better, improves the workflow. small adjustments.

especially, i work in periods/phases (...) with my soft-synths, mainly making presets, so going back, although i learn from all to work better in all..., after some period.

the UI is pretty good, in my opinion, i repeat, but at some small points a better, or more logical approach would be better.

i make always a mess with preset management, so i have learned to learn the preset management, almost at the beginning. didn't encounter things i didn't like. but don't do tags.. i use only my own presets, and they are easy located, although the naming scheme is always 'mood', so, after a year, it is a surprise, not always, i can remember a lot of them...

[Biscotto]

One of the reason I stopped using it, was the fact that when producing on a platform and then moving the project on the other (Pc <> Mac), Fathom would not work because it would think and declare that the version used in the project (coming from a different platform) was a different version (which was not obviously).

The developer said it was a matter of ID between the PC and MAC version and that eventually it was going to be fixed.

Has anyone noticed if this has indeed being fixed?

Thanks.

[] Peter:H []

Yeah, that's what we should be talking about (mostly).
Do you mean the metamorphic oscillator, if I'm correct there isn't even a YouTube video showcasing that beast (hint).

And a single video wouldn't be sufficient at all. I think one can spend one video for each of the "tabs" like the detune tab. The amount of control you can get over a feature others simply call "unisono" is hilarious. Don't know any other synth that has that amount of control over "unisono".
A minute ago I started Fathom dragged in Meta, dialed in 8 voices, pressed a chord and I was baffled...

Same with the "skip cycle" feature. I don't know any other synth that has this feature on board. I have tried to emulate it with Vital, but that is only possible because Vital has LFOs which can follow note frequency... kind of a hack.

The best part of it whatever you do in it, if I'm correct, it never aliases. So projects can remain at 44.1 or 48KHz to save CPU cycles. Sound wise it goes much further than e.g. Vital.

Yes, soundwise Fathom is top notch. No doubt about it.

[RPH]

The developer said it was a matter of ID between the PC and MAC version and that eventually it was going to be fixed.

I mailed this to Everett, can't answer this myself as I don't have a Mac computer.

[RPH]

Guys,

I have been in contact with Everett and he decided to keep away from KVR, due to what happened.
To keep this thread alive and relevant, post updates etc, he would like to have someone do the communication between this thread and him through mail about once a month or so. If there are user questions, feature requests, bug reports (or Fathom updates to post) be the one to deal with that. A liaison representative.

His words: Currently it would not be a paid position but it would include all Fathom versions and banks for free.

[BenfordLaw]

"due to what happened". What happened? This is a 353 page thread and I don't want to spend ages going through god knows how many previous pages to find out 'what happened'.

[BenfordLaw]

Ah, now I see (kind of) "what happened". Everett deleted loads of what he had written in reply to what seemed like perfectly reasonable posts (unless I've missed some of them). As he's deleted what he wrote, I have no idea what on earth went on.

All I can say is - I was a very early adopter of Fathom, because it was really affordably priced and looked good, but I had problems finding the latest versions and had to contact Everett by email to ask how to download the latest version (this was back at the beginning, I think), and then I kind of lost interest in Fathom, because I didn't like most of the presets (I only use presets, a crime I know.)
Re the website- it has so many things wrong with it which desperately need to be fixed. The home page just has two buttons, 'Fathom' and 'Fathom Vector'. Why waste your landing page by having just three words on it? Why waste visitors' time by forcing them to click a button just to view more information, when the entire rest of the page is blank? (At least as far as information goes.)
Then you get to the next page and you have nine images which you have to mouseover in order to find out what the hell they are. Then you have to memorise, presumably, what each image links to, or mouseover all of them again, until you find what you are looking for. Just incredibly pointless and wastes people's time. Why not just put the title of the link ABOVE each picture of Fathom and space them out a bit?
If you click on the top left picture, 'Introducing Fathom', you are taken to a VERY brief page with sound examples, and now the menu (the huge, useless and unintuitive menu) is now at the bottom of the screen!

If you click on the link 'What is a synthesizer?', you are taken to yet another very brief page with a small amount of information. ALL of this should be on the home page. There should be information about both Fathom and Fathom Pro, one on each side of the page, at the top have a few images of each synth, the price should be clearly displayed, as should a 'Buy Now' and a 'Download trial version' button, then bullet points of what each synth does, its synthesis methods, etc. and continue down the page with all the rest of the information that is hidden away on the other pages unnecessarily.

The 'Features Deep Dive' page is another example of making the visitor click on links to view small amounts of information, when ALL of that information should be on one page.
https://www.fathomsynth.com/featureshome

Everett should use anchors so that he can still have his links at the top of the page, but users could just scroll down if they wanted to read from the top to the bottom, or click on a link which links to an ANCHOR further down the page, saving all this clicking to go to and back from pages which contain a tenth of the entire information.

I have to say that the website always put me off, right from the very beginning. I'm sure I'm not alone. I wanted Fathom to succeed because it was so reasonably priced, I hope it does.

[Biscotto]

The developer said it was a matter of ID between the PC and MAC version and that eventually it was going to be fixed.

I mailed this to Everett, can't answer this myself as I don't have a Mac computer.

Thank you

I was ready to get the Vector but IIRC I asked if the issue was fixed and there was no reply.

I work PC on the road and on iMac in the studio. The PC is unavoidable.

[Tj Shredder]

Is vector adapted to the mac at all? It seems not:
https://www.fathomsynth.com/products/fathom-vector

Intel AVX and Fathom FX is Windows only.

[RPH]

Is vector adapted to the mac at all?

I read something else, when including the previous line:

Includes Fathom Pro Windows and Mac. Intel AVX and Fathom FX is Windows only.

So Intel AVX instructions and the FX version is Windows only.
Which is related to optimization.

[Tj Shredder]

On my 10-core Mac Pro Fathom brings it to its knees. Without optimization its useless. As far as I understood those optimizations are required for vector…