Thorn: Dmitry Sches' new synth!

[Sound Author]

Yeah, I get a few problems when trying some of the osc spectral functions (Smooth seems touchy!). Crashes Bitwig and have to reload all plugins.

I experienced a similar thing yesterday within FL Studio when fiddling with the "Smoothing" and "Sharpen" options within the Harmonic Editor, and shot off an email to Dmitry. It does indeed appear to be a bug, which he intends to squash ASAP. So, you're not alone

[Sound Author]

Yeah, I get a few problems when trying some of the osc spectral functions (Smooth seems touchy!). Crashes Bitwig and have to reload all plugins.

I experienced a similar thing yesterday within FL Studio when fiddling with the "Smoothing" and "Sharpen" options within the Harmonic Editor. Yup, crash and burn. I shot off an email to Dmitry, and it does indeed appear to be a bug, which he intends to squash ASAP. So, you're not alone

[.jon]

A pretty interesting synth, but since this is "inspired by" Spectral*, the comparisons are kinda unavoidable. I've spent the evening with my mind set to buy either one (or Razor, should they both fail) for a decidedly digital pad synth for ambient music.

- both have their strengths and weaknesses in signal path / workflow. I dislike any tabs in synths, but independent amp envelopes and filters really add a lot of depth (Spectral). The "wire style" modulation linking in Thorn is awesome, so are mute buttons in the mod matrix. Thorn is more streamlined, but at the expense of possibilities. This one is a tie.

- soundwise it's also almost a tie (with Thorn osc oversampling enabled, it aliases rather gladly without that), Spectral is more heavily antialiased which I personally prefer strictly for my use. Then again, Thorn has massively superior filters. Filters don't matter much for my intended application, but I have to say they are rather lovely.

- features is another tie, Thorn has noise but simple and fewer EGs, fewer editable harmonics but it has a noise osc, Thorn has better MIDI learn implementation but envelope values are in percentages instead time, etc etc.

So what decides in a situation like this? The GUI. And this is where Thorn fails for me. The lighting literally makes my eyes hurt, the warm light on the left side acts like a screen reflection, on top of looking terrible next to the cold light on the right side. Font aliasing is messed up (guess this comes with JUCE). The faux metal mesh elements serve no other purpose than create distractions, the grills are borderline marching ants restless. The carefully rendered knobs have jagged edges. The spectral editor pop-up windows can't be moved, they appear to be placed at a totally random position, and their zoom scale micro-popup is misplaced. And microscopic. Effect background patterns are too abstract to aid memorization, and they just add visual clutter instead of helpful separation.

Some of these issues are subjective and spill to UX territory, but I'd honestly recommend redoing the lighting, getting rid of the metal grills and checking if the fonts and knobs can be fixed. Not the ones in the bitmaps, but the adjustable ones.

* Spectral's original idea was great but Linplug retired from the biz, so launching clones is actually awesome, and even better when it comes with well-thought changes. No offense meant, but surely I'm not the only one who sees the "slight resemblance" here.

[egbert101]

<delete>

[aMUSEd]

So what decides in a situation like this? The GUI. And this is where Thorn fails for me. The lighting literally makes my eyes hurt, the warm light on the left side acts like a screen reflection, on top of looking terrible next to the cold light on the right side. Font aliasing is messed up (guess this comes with JUCE). The faux metal mesh elements serve no other purpose than create distractions, the grills are borderline marching ants restless. The carefully rendered knobs have jagged edges. The spectral editor pop-up windows can't be moved, they appear to be placed at a totally random position, and their zoom scale micro-popup is misplaced. And microscopic. Effect background patterns are too abstract to aid memorization, and they just add visual clutter instead of helpful separation.

Diversion has the same problem since the redesign ( if anything Thorn looks a little better actually to me), I still prefer the older more subtle interface to this Tone 2 school of overcooked gui design.

[Sampleconstruct]

Here is another video: OSC1 uses a wavetable derived from various imported wavs, OSC runs in FM mode morphing between two waveforms, OSC3 provides the FM modulation input. The hand-drawn harmonic filter creates shifting overtones. MW modulates OSC1 FX (Primes) and increases volume of FM OSC 2.

[aMUSEd]

That is so like Spectral

[Sampleconstruct]

That is so like Spectral

Of course it is

[sqigls]

I'm getting tiny clicks (ironically) from the Glitch Sequencer... little zero-crossing-like clicks, around 5k or so, but they don't seem to show up on my spectrum analyser. A high cut from a parametric EQ is a workaround for some patches, but it can't hold me for too long

There is a declick knob in the upper panel. Does it help?

HA! no, it actually makes it worse, believe it or not.

[Teksonik]

Getting clicks here as well. I'll see if I can post an example patch tomorrow.

[Sound Author]

It seems the Delay starts clipping when filter output exceeds 50%.

[deastman]

Okay, so I finally had some free time to check out Thorn. I haven't tried Spectral, so I can't speak to those comparisons (but I'll probably try it out as well). I found Thorn to be super fun and inspiring, and also fast and easy to work with and to get interesting results quickly. I like the ease of assigning modulation routing, although I would prefer being able to control the modulation amount directly on the knob being modulated (maybe this is there and I just haven't found the key combination yet). Also, like others have said, there really needs to be a GUI resolution between normal and large. Overall, I thought this was a no brainer at the introductory price.

[bite_me]

I would prefer being able to control the modulation amount directly on the knob being modulated

right click and drag

[cb8rwh]

You can use right-click & drag to control the modulation amount on controls.

[deastman]

Ah, excellent. Thanks for the tip!