Uhbik 2.0 Public Beta Revision 18148 (yes, really)

[Stirner]

I honestly never paid much attention to Uhbik.
With the announcement of 2.0, I’m curious: how does it compare to something like MeldaProduction's MXXX? I already own MXXX, so I’m wondering if Uhbik brings anything unique to the table, or if it would mostly overlap with what I already have.
Are there features or character aspects in Uhbik that make it worth having in addition to MXXX, rather than redundant?
Would love to hear your thoughts, especially from those who’ve used both!

If this is too off-topic, I apologize.

I was too afraid to ask this but I have the same question. I don't have MXXX, but Arturia's FX bundle and Eventide H9 bundle and NI's FX with Guitar Rig and other stuff. Is Uhbik better or just different?

[MacGyver]

Dear Urs,

I understand your points and agree to most of those.

But... rant follows:

However, apparently some DAW manufacturers have spent absolutely no time on this.

Yet you can't expect the world to adapt to your expectations. There always will be DAWs not supporting VST2->VST3 migration, be it outdated DAWs, be it "lazy devs" DAWs.

We have done our part, as have certainly done many other plug-in and host developers. It's really weird and it makes me angry when some of the biggest players in the field can't be arsed.

I don't think that you have done here all you can. What is so difficult to rename the uhbik resource dir to "uhbik2" to prevent overwriting...? It could be that you have to adapt some lines in the installer script, copying over data first. That's it. Benefit would be working U-He products in all installation scenarios, no errors at all. Currently you are making manual preset conversion very hard. Not all DAWs even support a plain parameter view, so without a working v1 GUI, it will be impossible to manually read out the parameter values then.

People sometimes do not even use the latest version of a DAW, you know...

[Urs]

Dear Urs,

I understand your points and agree to most of those.

But... rant follows:

However, apparently some DAW manufacturers have spent absolutely no time on this.

Yet you can't expect the world to adapt to your expectations. There always will be DAWs not supporting VST2->VST3 migration, be it outdated DAWs, be it "lazy devs" DAWs.

It was not our decision to drop support for VST2.

We have done our part, as have certainly done many other plug-in and host developers. It's really weird and it makes me angry when some of the biggest players in the field can't be arsed.

I don't think that you have done here all you can. What is so difficult to rename the uhbik resource dir to "uhbik2" to prevent overwriting...? It could be that you have to adapt some lines in the installer script, copying over data first. That's it. Benefit would be working U-He products in all installation scenarios, no errors at all. Currently you are making manual preset conversion very hard. Not all DAWs even support a plain parameter view, so without a working v1 GUI, it will be impossible to manually read out the parameter values then.

People sometimes do not even use the latest version of a DAW, you know...

Please don't mis-contextualise my post. We have done our part in the transition from VST2 to VST3. Uhbik even more so than any of our other plug-ins because Uhbik supports yet another mechanism that VST3 has to replace a missing VST2. That's 3 mechanisms.

It is totally possible that a major DAW manufacturer can't ever be reasoned with. Particularly if they lack the resources to do so, due to whatever circumstances. We will try what we can to make this easy for our common users. Part of this beta phase is to figure out what that could be.

Luckily, because of the renaming, it would be easily possible to run the old Uhbiks with a skin for the time being. Until hopefully that DAW manufacturer figures out how to move forward maybe.

[MacGyver]

Luckily, because of the renaming, it would be easily possible to run the old Uhbiks with a skin for the time being. Until hopefully that DAW manufacturer figures out how to move forward maybe.

Is here a misunderstanding? What I was trying to report: After installation of this beta version the old v1 versions won't open the GUIs anymore, showing an error: "installation issue: can not find gui resources". So these old versions currently break because of this new installation.

[paramita123]

The addition of envelope followers and other smart modulation tools make me WISH for U-HE to think of guitar players...
I am quite bored with amp sims doing full skeuo with hundreds of hardware amps and am searching for a new guitar sound, that is alive, dancing, reactive, akin to some of the things we can do with synths.
So I'm going to install Uhbik 2 beta and see how that goes on guitars

[MrJubbly]

But... rant follows:

However, apparently some DAW manufacturers have spent absolutely no time on this.

Yet you can't expect the world to adapt to your expectations. There always will be DAWs not supporting VST2->VST3 migration, be it outdated DAWs, be it "lazy devs" DAWs.

And yet, one of those DAW developers in question, already just confirmed that they would start fully supporting the VST3 migration methods in their next update (FL Studio 25). And also confessed to having hitherto dragged their feet on the matter.

FL Studio 25 will have full support for these interfaces. Yes, we dragged our feet on this.

Which kinda confirms that Urs was indeed raising a valid point.

[Urs]

Luckily, because of the renaming, it would be easily possible to run the old Uhbiks with a skin for the time being. Until hopefully that DAW manufacturer figures out how to move forward maybe.

Is here a misunderstanding? What I was trying to report: After installation of this beta version the old v1 versions won't open the GUIs anymore, showing an error: "installation issue: can not find gui resources". So these old versions currently break because of this new installation.

That is why we do beta testing. To find issues like these.

There won't be much of a problem to get this running in the final version, e.g. to add a zip with files to run the old versions in parallel.

[Urs]

The addition of envelope followers and other smart modulation tools make me WISH for U-HE to think of guitar players...
I am quite bored with amp sims doing full skeuo with hundreds of hardware amps and am searching for a new guitar sound, that is alive, dancing, reactive, akin to some of the things we can do with synths.
So I'm going to install Uhbik 2 beta and see how that goes on guitars

There are not many presets for guitar yet, but I guess the envelope follower will allow for quite some interesting stuff, and if you manage to set up MIDI, you can probably get pedals in.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Feature request if I may: for Uhbik-Flanger, can you guys look to extend the Delay time range up to 30ms? Lot of chorusing effects can run into 15ms, and even longer for more extreme chorus/vibrato. Hoping that can be done in a way where existing presets can be mapped properly despite a larger range.

Or maybe explore a dedicated Uhbik-Chorus as suggested earlier, but to differentiate it from the Flanger and Delay, make it a three-voice chorus with per-voice phase and a wider range of delay times. That would allow Uhbik-Chorus (3-voice with phase) to kind of sit right in between Uhbik-Flange (1 voice) and Uhbik-Delay (4-voices but less suited for chorusing due to the control-set). You could have options to turn voices on/off in Uhbik-Chorus to go from 1, 2, or 3 voices (voices being delay lines of course).

[Urs]

We'll think about it...

The flanger is not filtered in any way, to get the best possible comb filtering effect. Chorus sounds best IMHO if there's quite a bit of filtering involved. Such that I don't see Uhbik-F as the ideal grounds for a Chorus. As long as it doesn't dig too deep into Colour Copy, I don't mind adding a dedicated Chorus to Uhbik.

Again, no promises, but we'll think about it. It came to mind before.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

As long as it doesn't dig too deep into Colour Copy, I don't mind adding a dedicated Chorus to Uhbik.

Yeah, ColourCopy and ValhallaDelay (in various BBD modes) are two of my favorite non-chorus, chorus plugins. Then Audiority for the dedicated CE-1/CE-2 emulation thing. But there's no rule that all chorus plugins need to be BBD-based either, which is where/how you could probably differentiate from CoCo (along with having 3 voices).

No worries on the no promises. Thanks for your consideration.

[paramita123]

This is crying for a master holder !
SImilar to Mixbox or even better StudioVerse with multiband and parallel.
After just 5 minutes playing with my guitar, a combination of 3rd party amp sim + the fascinating Runciter + the delay, I had some unique lead sounds..
Runciter is the most exciting after a quick go through it all, I was able to get cool lazer-like guitar sounds with the Contour on Transient, though it is hard to control the behaviour.
A master rack system would allow to share the env and LFO across multiple units and generate phenomenal super-patches

[Urs]

This is crying for a master holder !

We know... but this is where it's been absurdly tragic so far. We tried twice to finish a rack unit of Uhbiks, and each time it became too ambitious to do. And then we had to put the whole project back on hold, other projects became more finish-able, and then it took years to bring it back up.

So for now we concentrate on the single units.

I do hope that bringing this out, as it is, will put us in a different position for future work. But then, with Zebra 3 on the horizon, I can not dare any forecast let alone promise anything.

[paramita123]

Sure must be complex.
Well I can still load my favourite Uhbiks into Waves StudioVerse ... Giving them multiband and parallel power with macros too.
So not too bad
And yes it can be a really cool FX unit for guitar players, if others try it give me a shout tell me what units / settings I'm eager to try new guitar sounds !

[limitlesssss]

Or if you're using Bitwig Studio, you can use the Chain tool to put multiple Uhbik plug-ins in series, or the FX Layer tool to put multiple Uhbik plug-ins in parallel, or combine both, plus all the modulation you could ever dream of:







Screenshots courtesy of @ere2learn. Thank you @ere2learn.