What's up at Plogue?

[Niowiad]

Thanks for the feedback. The knob question is new I think. No one has expressed concerns over the up/down + left/right so far. I only use up/down myself and not distracted by left/right also being present. I also often just type the value I need or (depending on the control), just use the keyboard up/down arrows or even mouse wheel. You can also use modifiers in various ways including getting smaller increments and getting the default values fast.

Hi David.

I'm not sure if it's a Windows-only issue but chipsynthMD (which is the one the previous user was referring to) definitely has something different going on with the knobs found in the operator panels. They have some serious "slippery" feel. They tend to jump from one extreme to the other of the total range when some left/right movement is involved.
Very hard to use with the click&drag, so I've mainly had to use the mouse-wheel so far.

This does NOT happen on any other plugin in the chypsynth line, and as a matter of fact it does not happen on most other knobs in the very chipsynthMD, like the ones found in the EFFECTS or the STACK tab. It's mainly (or strictly) an issue on the MD operator panels.

At first I thought it was a matter of some knobs in the MD operators having few "points" rather than a "100 points resolution range", but then noticed knobs in SFC still feeling smooth although they had even fewer stepped points in the total range. So that's likely not the issue.
It feels related to the horizontal component in the overall traced path, maybe combined with the mouse cursor acceleration thing.
I don't really know what's going on, but there's definitely something.

Here's a quick (unlisted) video, I think it should get the point across even just by looking, although being able to feel it with the mouse makes it even more apparent.

[davidv@plogue]

David, any chance of adding higher quality interpolation and oversampling to Sforzando, similar to what Sfizz has?

We don't get that request often. You can use oversampling internally but you need to modify each sfz file and add a special opcode. There are long terms plans for a better sampler UI but not anytime soon.

[perpetual3]

That’s fantastic. I have years of music made with PortaFM and OPS7 in Bitwig that I would love to revisit and reshape with CLAP polyphonic modulation.

Can’t wait for the CLAP plugins.

Yeah they will be included in the next bunch of updates. We have preliminary support for CLAP hosting in Bidule too (in latest betas). So we are fully commited.
Cheers

[Nokenoku]

Hi David
Thanks a lot for your answer!

The knob question is new I think. No one has expressed concerns over the up/down + left/right so far. I only use up/down myself and not distracted by left/right also being present.

For me it's getting hard when doing small up-down-movements to finetune a parameter. Then the left-right often interferes, because I apperently am not able to go straight up or down with the mouse.

You can also use modifiers in various ways including getting smaller increments and getting the default values fast.

That's usually "Shift", but not here. I also tried "Alt" and "Ctrl".
What's the right key to do fine increments?

This allows the VST/AU/AAX and soon CLAP folders to only contain a lightweight binary that only contains the plugin-api specifics and not a duplicate of all the assets, UI file, presets etc, as a Host developer as well, we do not want to sgrind a VST folder that contains anything else than dlls.

That makes sense.
However I don't see any benefit in having shared ressources, when there are only a few MB to be saved. In that case I'd prefer redundancy to keep things simple, so every plugin would be complete on its own without the need for extra dependencies.

[Nokenoku]

I'm not sure if it's a Windows-only issue but chipsynthMD (which is the one the previous user was referring to) definitely has something different going on with the knobs found in the operator panels. They have some serious "slippery" feel. They tend to jump from one extreme to the other of the total range when some left/right movement is involved.

You are right.
It's only on those knobs! But it's even with up-down movement.

Also I just checked:
"Shift" is actually the right button for fine increments on other knobs.
But on the operator knobs it's bugged and will lead to jumping parameters, when you press it after you already moved the knob.
(And it will not slow down knob movement at all.)

I am glad to see, that this is just a bug.
Control is fine on other knobs (even though I'd still prefer to be able to disable left-right-influence completely).


Another thing I noticed:
The GUI of Chipsynth MD loads very slowly.
(Only "Vital" is even slower of the plugins I have.)


Hope, I don't sound too negative about the plugin.
Function- and GUI-wise it's definetly the best YM2612 plugin available, and I'd love to love it.

[Niowiad]

I'm not sure if it's a Windows-only issue but chipsynthMD (which is the one the previous user was referring to) definitely has something different going on with the knobs found in the operator panels. They have some serious "slippery" feel. They tend to jump from one extreme to the other of the total range when some left/right movement is involved.

You are right.
It's only on those knobs! But it's even with up-down movement.

Yes. What I meant was... a minimal horizontal component on a predominantly vertical motion seems to act as a weird multiplier.
At least that's the impression I got. It might well be incorrect and related to a completely different issue rather than the horizontal component in the motion.

The only thing I know is, those knobs sure behave in a completely different way from others found in Plogue plugins.

It always felt like a bug to me and I've actually been meaning to contact support in a while but always postponed. Seeing your post was the final push to write something a make a video

[davidv@plogue]

The MD Operator ADSR knobs are really a pain because the 32 values that the actual chip offers of - say the Attack - are not linear, so we had to fake linearity of mouse movement with regards to the actual effect on screen and in audio.
(believe me it was much worse before). Sadly its never going to feel as natural as other plugin's ADSRs which have an unlimited amount of steps.

The best is really to use the mouse scroll wheel on those and get discreet increments. This should be an eye opener of the limitations of the hardware.

EDIT: We just looked over this and maybe found a way to make it a bit smoother in a future update

[aMUSEd]

Does Bidule support MPE?

[davidv@plogue]

Does Bidule support MPE?

Define "support" I guess. MPE is sent through normal MIDI so if you take a MIDI Input, and connect it to a plugin supporting MPE, then its between those two things, Bidule won't interfere in any way.

If you mean the internal oscillator/synth building blocks, then no we would need to make a special version of the "Polyphonic adapter"

[aMUSEd]

Does Bidule support MPE?

Define "support" I guess. MPE is sent through normal MIDI so if you take a MIDI Input, and connect it to a plugin supporting MPE, then its between those two things, Bidule won't interfere in any way.

If you mean the internal oscillator/synth building blocks, then no we would need to make a special version of the "Polyphonic adapter"

Both, thanks

So if I insert the 'MIDI tape recorder' plugin (https://www.synthanatomy.com/2021/12/uw ... d-ios.html) and a MPE capable plugin like Equator 2, Bidule would let me record the MPE from this?

[davidv@plogue]

So if I insert the 'MIDI tape recorder' plugin (https://www.synthanatomy.com/2021/12/uw ... d-ios.html) and a MPE capable plugin like Equator 2, Bidule would let me record the MPE from this?

Again, we do not filter MIDI in any way by default. So it should record everything, unless "tape recorder" filters. No way to know. Surely our MIDI recorders dont.

[aMUSEd]

Great I'll try it - it's auv3 but I see Bidule now supports that (although my 2 auv3 Moog synths - Animoog Z and Model 15 - don't seem to show except the wrapped VST3 versions)

[perpetual3]

Great I'll try it - it's auv3 but I see Bidule now supports that (although my 2 auv3 Moog synths - Animoog Z and Model 15 - don't seem to show except the wrapped VST3 versions)

Model 15 is vst3?

[Niowiad]

The MD Operator ADSR knobs are really a pain because the 32 values that the actual chip offers of - say the Attack - are not linear, so we had to fake linearity of mouse movement with regards to the actual effect on screen and in audio.
(believe me it was much worse before). Sadly its never going to feel as natural as other plugin's ADSRs which have an unlimited amount of steps.

The best is really to use the mouse scroll wheel on those and get discreet increments. This should be an eye opener of the limitations of the hardware.

EDIT: We just looked over this and maybe found a way to make it a bit smoother in a future update

Thanks for your insight and for further looking into it

[Nokenoku]

The MD Operator ADSR knobs are really a pain because the 32 values that the actual chip offers of - say the Attack - are not linear, so we had to fake linearity of mouse movement with regards to the actual effect on screen and in audio.

But it's not linear.
And it's constantly changing its behaviour.

This really can't be right:


(This is in FLStudio.)