Deimos - free synthesizer (Windows, MacOS, Linux)

[Tom Trnk]

VST and CLAP don'tvalidate in Bitwig 6.0.2:

Big oof. It's working fine on Bitwig 5.3 (my main DAW) across all my machines .. so perhaps something changed with Bitwig 6. Thanks for bringing it up!
Time for me to update and diagnose what's going on.

Oh and I see Bitwig finally comes with some features I've been missing for years .. neat

[Tj Shredder]

Actually I had some weirdnes with the Mac audio system, it is a crashfest sometimes. A restart did solve the scanning of the VST3, but the CLAP didn't want to get through... I am not at home, so when I am back, I'll try with 6.0.4 and see if that changes anything...

[Tom Trnk]

Glad the VST3 works! I updated to Bitwig 6.0 on both my macs (an ARM and older Intel) and both load the VST3 and CLAP plugins without problems.
If the CLAP issue persists and you don't think it's a local setup problem, feel free to DM me and we can check log files.

Heads up: CLAP currently doesn't support per-voice modulation from Bitwig, if that's what you're hoping to get.

[whassup]

Deimos sounds good!
Do you have an official ETA for your big version?

[Tom Trnk]

Deimos sounds good!
Do you have an official ETA for your big version?

Thanks!
The big version is coming along well and I enjoy using it, but it still needs a little polishing, more presets, and some backend work that is difficult to estimate. While I don't want to promise a date, I can say that the optimist in me is currently hoping for around August.

[whassup]

Cool Tom.
Looking forward to that.

[4_the masses]

Decent freebie, good sounds. Thanks for the share

[NWSM]

Happy to announce I finally got around to implementing support for polyphonic expression

New update available here: Deimos 0.9.0
Details in the devlog

Enjoy!

VST and CLAP don'tvalidate in Bitwig 6.0.2:
com.bitwig.flt.library.metadata.reader.exception.CouldNotReadMetadataException: could not read metadata: Plugin host did not respond for 20.0 seconds
I just see there is a newer Bitwig version, will try later if that solves the problem...

Dont install flatpak bitwig....if so use the DEB to install then it should work - if you have debian based distro*

[Nug Wrangler]

Very nice synth Tom! Will be using this a lot

[Chris-S]

OSC 05 / 2026.

[mutagen]

CLAP version seems to trigger on both MIDI note on and note off. Most apparent on the 'Filter Kick' preset but seems to crop up elsewhere. Reaper 7.71 Windows 11 Deimos 0.9.0. Could not reproduce in Bitwig 6.0.2 so maybe I should dig into what Reaper is sending or see if other CLAP plugins are doing anything like this.

I spent a long time trying to understand the double trigger and started to appreciate the way modulations are done but couldn't understand where the extra trigger on note release was coming from. Then I finally tried the VST3 and didn't feel quite so dumb.

Looking forward to learning this better and also looking forward to the big version.

[nomati]

Linux / Ardour user reporting here: Ardour does not support CLAP at this time, and that's your only packaging for Linux. I'm sure there are many priorities, but consider adding building VST3 or LV2 for Linux to the list. Thanks.

[Tom Trnk]

CLAP version seems to trigger on both MIDI note on and note off. .... Reaper 7.71 ..

Turns out I missed a part of the MIDI spec that requires treating note-on with 0 velocity as note-off.
Some MIDI controllers might do this and I guess Reaper doesn't preprocess MIDI for CLAP plugins already on the DAW side ... consider it fixed with the next update!

Linux / Ardour user reporting here: Ardour does not support CLAP at this time, and that's your only packaging for Linux. I'm sure there are many priorities, but consider adding building VST3 or LV2 for Linux to the list. Thanks.

Good point! I actually have a working VST3 build now on my linux machine since a few days, exactly because CLAP support isn't that widespread yet. Still testing, but it will very likely land in the next update as well

Deimos has been chosen for the current OSC round so I'll try to get the next update out asap!

[mutagen]

CLAP version seems to trigger on both MIDI note on and note off. .... Reaper 7.71 ..

Turns out I missed a part of the MIDI spec that requires treating note-on with 0 velocity as note-off.
Some MIDI controllers might do this and I guess Reaper doesn't preprocess MIDI for CLAP plugins already on the DAW side ... consider it fixed with the next update!

Oh that's interesting, Reaper's MIDI log plugin shows the notes as MIDI off as far as I can tell. I do have an ancient budget M-Audio controller so I'm not surprised it might be sending weird stuff.

I'm having fun exploring the oscillator modes in Deimos, there's some great stuff lurking under the surface.

[Tom Trnk]

New version is up: Deimos 0.10.0

Lots of fixes this time, and Linux now gets a VST3 version as well for more support across different DAWs

Fixes:
- Synth voices no longer output a small amount of DC after their amp envelope ended
- Fixed note-off handling in case of multiple notes of the same pitch being played, such as is possible on a LinnStrument for example
- Fixed poly realloc mode so it no longer steals voices that are still held
- Fixed bug where note-on events with 0 velocity were not properly interpreted as note-off (as intended by the MIDI spec), resulting in new notes being triggered when releasing a key (observed in certain combinations of controller + DAW + CLAP format)
- Added limits to the "Track" modulation source to contain feedback loops if it is assigned to voice tuning
- Fixed handling of file path encodings on Windows, so that presets and configuration can also be saved/loaded properly with Unicode characters in their path
- Added filtering of very short bursts of note on/off messages to help against anomalous/jittery controller output

Improvements/Changes:
- The oscillator shape modifier UI was updated slightly, and some modifiers modes were combined (an extra toggle gives access to the same functionality as before)
- The ratio for modes that support it can now go up to 32
- The "Mix" mode now also has a ratio selector and invert option
- Better visualization of velocity and pressure curves in the settings
- Increased UI contrast for modules that are currently not in use
- Added a modulation wheel control in the expression section, which is saved in the DAW project and presets
- Right clicking the synth background gives faster access to screen size selection and settings
- Factory presets: updated some to make better use of the expression controls, as well as setting a more useful modulation wheel default. Added 4 new ones.
- The windows download has been split into a normal and a "cpucompat" version to avoid confusion which plugin files to install: use the normal one unless you experience rendering issues (usually happens only on older systems)