KVR Audio

bailees7irish · Post by **bailees7irish** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:18 pm

This synth doesn't get mentioned near enough here on KVR. I'm curious as to why that is. Do many people not get along with it for whatever reason or what? It's in my top 10 free synths.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:21 pm

its a piece of art.

stanlea · Post by **stanlea** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:24 pm

It will never be finished.

dune_rave · Post by **dune_rave** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:34 pm

It's great freeware!
I've made a demo video some time ago:

However, there are so much "supersynths" in the market
with realistic 3d gui, "analog modelling", etc (think about the Diva, Lush-101, Synthmaster 2.6, Monark, ....)
so freewares like xhip can be forgotten

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:36 pm

Maybe because it's still Beta?

It was really "hip" some years ago, mentioned everywhere as one of the best freeware synths. I guess the love has cooled down now as there are better free synths and it's still not finished...

robenestobenz · Post by **robenestobenz** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:39 pm

It's the dog's.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:52 pm

Tricky-Loops wrote:Maybe because it's still Beta?

Next year it will be 10 years old, hopefully version 1.0 will be out then

An interesting synth, also a plus that is recently went 64 bit

http://www.kvraudio.com/news/aciddose-u ... -bit-18636

Aloysius · Post by **Aloysius** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:57 pm

This domain may be for sale.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:00 pm

Tricky-Loops wrote:It was really "hip" some years ago

I missed out on that. Actually the amount it gets mentioned coincides directly with the number of times I mention it, so I'd really question whether it was ever hip

It isn't "in beta" in the sense you seem to be using it. It's more a perpetual beta with a long-term plan that gets modified as more things are finished. Usually I manage to add three for everything I get done, which explains how it will never be completed unless I exhaust all the interesting things I can do with it.

People have asked for built in effects, so it now has that. They wanted a mod matrix, it has that. Routing midi stuff in the matrix, has that. I'm working on adding a whole unison section and haven't really planned it out clearly but a lot of ideas exist, key splits, layering and so on. I've already experimented with layering, panning and that is actually working in the current WIP version too.

The current version can be considered 7.0 really. As far as I'm concerned, the one on the site, released to the public is complete right now. Nothing needs to happen to it, if it works, use it. If it doesn't, you're out of luck

The next version will be 8 and I'll be switching to a release system more like many software projects have done to end the confusion, and for exactly the same reason firefox adopted this strategy. Which version is new? What are the differences between 3.06 and 3.14? What about 3.14r159?

Obviously that is too confusing and misleads people, it makes them believe... well I'm not sure what they believe. In any case it is more accurate to say 7, 8, 9 and so on.

10 will be a major landmark for me where I think some of the features I just outlined will be expanded greatly as part of a commercial project. This will be developed until completion, no comments about it in public, no news about what is being worked on or what plans are. All private until I consider it done, then I'll toss it out into the world and you can bash it to pieces or fall in love, I won't much care since it'll be done. At which point I'll most likely have come up with other things to work on.

I'm a bit unsure about how I want to limit some of the features in the free version with respect to the detrimental effect giving them away will have from differentiation of the commercial product. What I have realized though is that the market is really populated by actual synthesizers now. I'm not really filling any sort of void any longer with Xhip in the same state it has existed for the past decade. Commercializing it requires a rethink.

Meanwhile I've also found more interesting avenues to apply the code I already have in other commercial products. People do buy them, just for reasons that are totally unrelated to why I develop Xhip. People say "oh the filter in Y is great!" or "I love the effects in Z!". Sometimes gives me a chuckle they don't realize that's all just the same stuff with a different label on it.

So it seems to me in fact that these two things are simply incompatible; Although not like I haven't already known that the whole time. Just had a brief period where I started to think maybe I should be changing the focus to make Xhip commercial... No, I don't think so. At least not in that way.

See also the forum http://forum.xhip.net/ for my rant on version numbers and why I don't have a thread about stuff I'm working on anymore.

Regarding the domain: You're looking at presetexchange.com, which sounds too much like pre-sex-change and is a super lame domain name I only kept while I tried to think a name. I think xhip.net is better, so the other got tossed in the garbage.

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:01 pm

Aloysius wrote:
This domain may be for sale.

Works fine:

http://xhip.net

Aloysius · Post by **Aloysius** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:03 pm

Tricky-Loops wrote:
Aloysius wrote:
This domain may be for sale.

Works fine:

http://xhip.net

Interesting. That works OK. However,

none of the links from kvr work for me:

http://www.kvraudio.com/news/aciddose-u ... -bit-18636

These are:

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/xhip/

Maybe people just assume it's a dead product when they click on these links.

srv-musikmaker · Post by **srv-musikmaker** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:12 pm

Good one if you wanna make techno I guess.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:17 pm

Aloysius wrote: Interesting. That works OK. However,

none of the links from kvr work for me:

http://www.kvraudio.com/news/aciddose-u ... -bit-18636

These are:

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/

http://xhip.presetexchange.com/xhip/

Maybe people just assume it's a dead product when they click on these links.

I can't control news once it was already posted to the front page. I only have control over the content on http://www.kvraudio.com/product/xhip-by-aciddose and the effects and other "product pages".

So since the old links were part of the news items I'd have to do something special to get them changed. I didn't think anyone would actually end up at the site via those articles. It was possible to use a redirect response for the old domain for a year during which all the search engines replaced presetexchange.com with xhip.net by the instruction in the redirect. Unfortunately I can't go through the whole web and correct all the broken links on old pages with screenshots of some version I released in 2005. If nobody wants to update those on their own, well..

edit: Actually turns out I can edit those URLs, either I didn't see it before, something has changed or I'm just blind

Mutant · Post by **Mutant** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:27 pm

A thread at KVR is the best publicity pump for a VST(I) plugin.
In my opinion the synth started to get forgotten by most kvrians just at the time when Aciddose abandoned that thread to make his own forum.

I love Xhip because it can do things most other free synths can't do - one small example is a delay on LFOs which makes it possible to create an automatic vibrato on sustained notes - sure some free synths (Charlatan, Tyrell) can do it too, but they miss some other nice and rare features Xhip has.

fluffy_little_something · Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:50 pm

Maybe some people just don't like that "work in progress" approach, they may want to get the impression they are using a final, mature plugin.

I envy developers their motivation these days, especially those who make free stuff.
I would only make something for free if it were really unique, but with synth plugins nothing is really unique anymore due to the incredible choice out there.

No love for Xhip