Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[baconpaul]

Hey Folks.

We have been fixing things and adding features over the summer and are planning a 1.6.2 release in the fall. Probably end of September or so, maybe a bit before or after. Some of the features we've added (which are all in the https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/changelog/ changelog) include

* read larger wavetables (up to 4096 samples) and directly support .wav file wavetables from a variety of popular formats
* support for alternate tuning in .scl files
* new features in the sin oscillator; in the vocoder
* Fully vectorize the UI wave displays
* Ship a VST3 for linux
* and a lot more. The changelog is up to date
* We have not yet updated the manual so the manual still reflects 1.6.1.1 features.

Anyway as we approach 1.6.2 I wanted to drop a note here asking if folks wanted to do a test of our nightly. Good bug reports make good software so if you use surge and don't mind testing our preview, please hop over to surge-synthesizer.github.io and download the current nightly. The best way to report bugs is to open a GitHub issue but I'll definitely read this board every now and then too if you don't have GitHub. Please remember good bug reports include your OS, your host, your surge flavor (VST2 or 3 or AU) and a rough idea of what you did. If you get a crash, a stack trace is almost always useful too, but we haven't seen crashes in a while - the nightly is pretty stable.

Finally many of you reported zoom problems and we looked into them. With 1.6.2 quite a few are resolved but traction and cakewalk still have resize problems. I can't quite crack them, frustratingly. But as you pointed out if you set a default zoom > 100% then in a fresh session (and all subsequent fresh sessions) the zoom works in cakewalk and (we think) traction. So to make this easier for you and not require two hosts, I added a menu item "zoom/set default zoom to...". This means you can start surge, choose that menu item, delete that track, and add a new surge track to get the larger surge from thereon out.

Thanks

[Halonmusic]

Cool stuff. Whats the difference between the original version and the nightly version?

[Tj Shredder]

Cool stuff. Whats the difference between the original version and the nightly version?

Bug fixes and new bugs... If the fixed bugs exceed the new ones a new release is on the horizon...

[baconpaul]

Cool stuff. Whats the difference between the original version and the nightly version?

The changelog has the differences between the last release (1.6.1.1) and the current nightly at the top. Basically the nightly is automatically built each time we do a push to master and includes all the latest features we intend to release. None of the features I mentioned above are in any of the numbered versions though.

The changelog also has all the changes we’ve made since it was open sourced with the version numbers.

But we don’t have a good list of what’s changed since the last commercial version (1.5.x) since we don’t have that synth or that source!

Hope that helps

[baconpaul]

Cool stuff. Whats the difference between the original version and the nightly version?

Bug fixes and new bugs... If the fixed bugs exceed the new ones a new release is on the horizon...

LOL. It’s like you were watching the changelog in July

I put out the call to test because we think we are well past the tipping point of fixes and features >> new bugs. But the reason we want people playing with it is because those bug reports are how we find and fix things.

[Halonmusic]

Cool stuff. Whats the difference between the original version and the nightly version?

Bug fixes and new bugs... If the fixed bugs exceed the new ones a new release is on the horizon...

Cool stuff. Whats the difference between the original version and the nightly version?

The changelog has the differences between the last release (1.6.1.1) and the current nightly at the top. Basically the nightly is automatically built each time we do a push to master and includes all the latest features we intend to release. None of the features I mentioned above are in any of the numbered versions though.

The changelog also has all the changes we’ve made since it was open sourced with the version numbers.

But we don’t have a good list of what’s changed since the last commercial version (1.5.x) since we don’t have that synth or that source!

Hope that helps

Thanks guys

[pc999]

Thanks, you have been doing cool stuff

[EnGee]

Wow! This is a powerful synth! Thanks for the developer for making it open source and many thanks to the current developers who are developing it further

I tried Surge maybe 10 years ago or more and I couldn't understand it at that time! But today I was reading about Bitwig development and step by step it led me to Surge. I'm playing with it in Bitwig (Linux) and the FM makes it a monster synth! It is stable if I don't change the zoom but I'll try the nighty build and see if there is any difference (is it ok to just install the newer one while the stable one already installed?)

[maxym.srpl]

Sorry for maybe lame question. I'm pretty new to synthesis.
I found, that Surge can generate some ringing noise on top of expected one. I narrowed it to wavetable usage.
While init Sine preset doesn't do that, it's enough to switch an oscilator to w-table sine or sine-octave to see the effect.
Image below shows the unwanted high-frequency when playing C3 note. Is it expected behaviour? It's a result of aliasing? The project I did screenshot from is set to 48kHz.

[baconpaul]

Hi all

@EnGee the nightly will install over the original but you can install the original back

@maxym.sprl so here’s what’s happening. Surge is emulating the original DAC circuitry from wavetable synths which basically kept (mostly) constant output. That means wavetables with small sample count at low frequencies add a de facto high frequency square wave overlay. You can filter this out with an LPF pretty easily but the aliasing is “on purpose”. Details are here: https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/830

[baconpaul]

Oh also @engee - what happens if you change the zoom on bitwig linux? I thought that worked fine when I tested!

[EnGee]

Oh also @engee - what happens if you change the zoom on bitwig linux? I thought that worked fine when I tested!

Well, when I try to zoom to more than 100% I get some problems (not major). I will explain below besides the blank screen I get in VST3 version (yesterday nightly built):

1. I get blank screen when I insert VST 3 version (as below):

Surge VST3 in Bitwig-Ubuntu.png

2. I get this error message when zooming to 200% in the VST 2 version but the synth works:

Surge 200% zoom.png

Now, there are two minor things about the zooming (in the VST 2 version):
1. Some graphics like the FM and Filter section (above) seems blurry when zooming to 125% or 150%. They are OK though when zooming to 200%.
2. The mouse click and drag is not smooth when zooming more than 100%. The scroll of the middle button is fine but changing the values with the mouse pointer is sluggish and jumpy.

Cheers

[baconpaul]

Oh thanks. Yeah we know the VST3 only works in reaper right now. Trying to figure that out but I think it won’t get figured out for 1.6.2. VST3 on linux is “not easy” it turns out!

Will take a peek at that mouse-speed-under-zoom thing. Linux may be misapplying the transforms. (We had to patch vstgui a few times to get zoom working at all).

Curious if you have a high dpi display or a regular dpi display? On Linux we don’t support variable DPI backing store so if you have high DPI you may not get the full interpolation.

Thanks!

[EnGee]

I have a normal dpi display I think! I mean i think it is 96 in Ubuntu gnome? I'm not sure. Anyway, I have a normal setup of 32" monitor with 1080p resolution. But, I will try in Reaper and see.

[maxym.srpl]

@maxym.sprl so here’s what’s happening. Surge is emulating the original DAC circuitry from wavetable synths which basically kept (mostly) constant output. That means wavetables with small sample count at low frequencies add a de facto high frequency square wave overlay. You can filter this out with an LPF pretty easily but the aliasing is “on purpose”. Details are here: https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/830

Quite a pity tbh. It's very audible. Filtering is not always the case, especially if you are using 2 generators and don't want to affect the second one. Also, I saw suggestions to replace default WTs with more quality (longer) versions. But seems it's not a considered way, probably for backward compatibility (?)
Anyway thank you for confirming.

Now about scaling. Please note, I have 4K monitor, with scaling in Windows set to 175%. Reaper runs in HiDPI aware mode.
I've tested 1.6.2 version, but after finding an issue I checked it with v1.6.1.1 confirming both exposes the same behaviour.

1. Reaper occasional displays VST container window scrollbars, probably considering VSTi doesn't fit a container.
2. It doesn't matter the vsti container mode: floating or plugin-chain window.
3. The issue shows up ONLY when changing scale to lower than default one. Example: if default scale is set to 150%, and you switch to 200% or 300% - everything is fine. If you switch from 300 to 200% or 150% it's still OK. But if you go for 125% (lower than default 150%), scrollbars appear.
So the workaround is, to setup desired scale, set it too default and restart Reaper.

Here is example view: