Announcing Poly-Ana Beta 0.11 Special offer save $60

[hifiboom]

apart from the fact that this beta is buggy as hell,

THIS VST IS REALLY REALLY FU**ING GOOD SOUNDING!

Honestly, I think it is the best sounding VST, i've heard so far.

It heavenly eats CPU, but I don't care if the results are that convincing.

Move on fast and make it final....

For the price its a bargain.

And it has an analog sound that I will prefer to use over every other expensive so-called-VST-emulation.

[-momo-]

Really nice work, old buddy - I know how hard you've worked on this. Congratulations!

Even though it adds nothing to the sound, personally I think the keyboard is a work of art. Nice and shiny, full perspective with shadows that behave like they should. I haven't seen every vst keyboard out there, but Poly's is the nicest looking one I have seen.

Again - very nice work. Wishing you orders up the ying yang (mine on the way).

Cheers,

-mo

[bduffy]

I'm just glad there's no rush for the beta price offer; I just ran out of cash and my .ca domain expired today! Whoops.

[spritex]

Sounds great, much better than Zebra IMHO,

Quite different beasts, don't you think? Zebras soundscapes are beautiful, and I can't see how they could be done with this one.

What this does better, is the basic traditional analog style sound, especially at 8x. Really good.

But frankly, the GUI will put off many people. I have never understood why softsynths should have fancy 3D knobs in the first place, and this is one of the most blatant examples.

Also, I don't understand why there are big knobs for "source" selection. There could just as well be a neat little box telling the current source, and a list when you click it.

[Teksonik]

I'm away from my main computers now but if TOTC is getting that excited I don't even have to hear the demo. Sounds like a must buy.

[mistertoast]

Anyone coming up with interesting sounds yet?

[K-Slash]

Best sounding virtual analog synth ever, greetings...

[suthnear]

BR: I am also experiencing intermittent crashes in ext and sx3 - can't discern a pattern other than it tends to occur when opening the gui. It's a hard crash, too: it requires a restart of windows.

FR: Any plans to add a function to link the two filters (with cutoff 2 then being an offset)?
FR: midi learn - right-click, select midi learn from the pop-up, twiddle the knob on the controller, done
FR: when hovering over a knob, it would be cool if you could see it's current setting in the parameter window at the top of the screen or in a tool tip (alt, you could add it to the right-click pop-up menu, should you implement one).

I am definitely buying this: just too impressive to pass up.

[_starcraft_]

the gui is awful...don't even fit on my 1024-768 screen.
the cpu usage is insane....i can only use 1 instance.
but the sound is the real thing and the price is fair (if a better more minmal and functional GUi is provided).
this vsti is the answer to "why does bass suck in vstis"....well it doesnt anymore!
i allready used other synths at 96k and noticed the benfits of oversampling.(theres a reason why hardware VAs operate at 96k).
if cpu goes down 15% and an alternative gui is provided i'm interested.

[M'Snah]

I'll only buy it if it gets a dongle or at least Pace .

[Highvoltage]

But frankly, the GUI will put off many people. I have never understood why softsynths should have fancy 3D knobs in the first place, and this is one of the most blatant examples.

Also, I don't understand why there are big knobs for "source" selection. There could just as well be a neat little box telling the current source, and a list when you click it.

Totally man.

Those source selector big ugly knobs take up almost 40% of the screen. A little dropdown list would be so logical, i dont know how you came up with this idea...
please listen to the people when they tell you the gui isn't practical at all.

also, the highpass filter does not filter out the highest freqs, and generally it sounds horrible. why is that?

sorry if sounded harsh, other than these, i love the sound VERY MUCH. especially the audiorate filtermodulation.

[Unkie Al]

Ohh maaaannn - - - if this were an actual hardware synth, I'd be all over it like hot fudge. I'm one of those analog wackjobs from the modular '70s that love knobs and lots of them.

[AdmiralQuality]

BR: I am also experiencing intermittent crashes in ext and sx3 - can't discern a pattern other than it tends to occur when opening the gui. It's a hard crash, too: it requires a restart of windows.

Have a good idea already what this is, will hopefully get a fix out in not too many days.

FR: Any plans to add a function to link the two filters (with cutoff 2 then being an offset)?

Nope. Link them by programming them similarly. It's the fact that they're NOT linked that's exciting to me. Means you can make bandpasses that get wider and narrower, etc.

FR: midi learn - right-click, select midi learn from the pop-up, twiddle the knob on the controller, done

Midi-learn is possible, but with 185 knobs and 128 MIDI controller numbers... ug, it's just a lot of STATE to store and a messy many:less mapping. What's wrong with VST automation? Also note that you can route any MIDI CC you want to 3 of the modulator sources.

But yes, SOMETHING more will be done for MIDI mapping of controls. It's already in the Coming Soon list.

FR: when hovering over a knob, it would be cool if you could see it's current setting in the parameter window at the top of the screen or in a tool tip (alt, you could add it to the right-click pop-up menu, should you implement one).

Agree.


And Highvoltage, sorry, but other people seem to get it. (Like Unkie Al! Thanks!) It comes down to a matter of taste I think and this is simply the way I chose to go. My design philosophy was to not have anything hidden, requiring drill down, or more than a single click away. I wanted it to be an interface that could have existed in hardware in 1976. This way, you see all the options available to you (or at least get an impression of them, I don't expect anyone to read upside down ). Trying to take what was good and intuitive about reality and apply it to GUI design.

Still, I *might* at some later time add an option to replace the dials with dropdown lists for you. For me though that would totally spoil the paradigm and sense of immersion. But if it'll help sell a few more copies I'm sure at some point I'll be compelled...

To _starcraft_, sorry but 1024x768 is below spec (I guess I should add that to the system requirements). You probably wouldn't like some of the competition's products either (I'm not going to say what product I set out to "beat" with Poly-Ana, but suffuice to say its interface is MUCH bigger). There are many hosts that will let you access parameters without opening the plugin's GUI though... maybe you should try one of those.

Yes, the highpass filters don't close all the way. This was a fix to cure what, in SCAMP, people were calling "the bad sound". What it is, is with resonance on in any amount, the filter makes a sudden jump in volume at the upper 1% (or so) of the knob movement. So to prevent that in Poly, I just made it so the filters can only open to 99%. That's not a problem of restricting brightness as Poly-Ana is internally oversampling, so 99% is already FAR beyond the highest frequency your host can make anyway... so it sounds perfectly bright when used as a wide-open LPF. But in HPF a tiny bit of highs leak out due to this.

BTW, I have just today noticed the same "bad sound" in 12 dB/Oct mode that someone described above... (odd, I didn't notice it originally, maybe something changed near the end that re-introduced this). So I think I need to do some more tweaking of the resonance factor when in the 12 dB setting. (Resonance doesn't work very well in the 2 pole filter... it's tricky to get right.)

If the HPFs sound gritty, that's just because of the quality setting. Turn it up to 8X and it should get noticeably better. High pass tends to bring out the artifacts and aliasing. I'd usually recommend using a highpass in series with a lowpass (creating a bandpass) as very rarely does a raw oscillator through only a highpass sound good. Poly-Ana's voice design is a bit of a trade off... the reason you're all saying it sounds so authentic is because it IS authentic... it THINKS its a real synth. Rather than smooth things over with the same old common techniques, instead Poly-Ana just plain TRIES HARDER. But the downside of this is it's not perfect, and there definitely is noticeable aliasing, especially in very high pitched tones (but as an old piano tuner once told me, "Nobody plays up there anyway". )

Down where we usually DO play though, it works wonderfully. And really, most soft-synths sound too clean anyway so a bit of digital grunge sounds not so different from the analog grunge that we all miss so much. Don't you think?

Anyway, after some optimization I may just add that "same old technique" in and totally eliminate any aliasing. But for right now it would just increase CPU demand, and I think this girl is hungry enough already.

[_starcraft_]

Nope. Link them by programming them similarly. It's the fact that they're NOT linked that's exciting to me. Means you can make bandpasses that get wider and narrower, et

sorry but this is really stupid answer.
noone says to get rid of the non linked filters....but to give an option (one single button ) to have them linked.

[diverdee]

regarding midi learn - Ableton lives vst automation only covers the first 128 parameters & no more.
So essentially without a midi learn option users of Ableton Live would not be able to fully automate this vsti.
It's a shortcoming of Abletons to be sure - but that's ma shortcoming on a very poular host which could possibly aversely affect potential sales.
Just something to be aware of.