KVR Audio

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 1:45 am

I had thought I'd be ready to post the RC for version 8 by May this year... Obviously I haven't invested as much effort as I'd planned.

See the news and download the alpha here.

I've fixed a few things.

I'll try to make a list of big features:

GUI can be scaled by right-click on the Xhip logo, depends upon host support for sizing. (120%, 150%, 200%). It resizes the background bitmap which doesn't look great, but is fine as a temporary solution.
Presets and banks now come with bank name and preset categories. This allows the menu to be much more accessible/readable.
More LEDs, everyone loves LEDs right? The voice activity LEDs now change color to match the envelope stage for the voice they represent.
Text edit for the names. Right click to edit, middle click for an extra menu (if there is one.)
Some extra menus on some buttons too, right click for those.
The oscillators have been improved a bit, they have had support for thru-zero xmod for a long time. That isn't 100% finished (needs a few more tweaks).
A lot of menus have been cleaned up. For example see the filter modes or voices, routing, ...
The synth is overall quite a bit faster although on modern hardware like you care about that.
The default skin is embedded in the plugin. No longer needs an installer.
The mixer now has a ringmod level rather than switch, the switch was a dumb work-around and the level works fine.
The mixer levels now have a bigger (-90db) range, most often useless but sometimes required. This uses multiple step sizes and going from -40 to -90 takes up only the very last tick of the dial. Hold shift and mouse/wheel or right-click and drag to fine-tune that.
There is a unison "stereo" switch.
Also a switch for voice recycling.

Some notes:

Don't worry about the unison or effects page, the control pages will be adjusted before the RC and effects will likely be removed.
Old presets likely remain incompatible at this point. That will also be fixed for the RC.
The "random" button is garbage, don't say I didn't warn you! Hissss!
I haven't figured out exactly how I want to eliminate the buttons yet.

I'm just posting a thread here because I'm interested in whether there are any serious bugs remaining.

Most of all, I'm interested in any small, simple changes that might be put on the list to be added before the next release. For example the unison "stereo" switch should be a "width" knob. Stuff like that requires minimal effort but makes the whole synthesizer far more useful.

Longer term considerations:

I've considered dropping MIDI/VST-style preset management and having the plugin work more like an AU. The current preset would be temporary/edit and other presets (more than 128) could be loaded from an unlimited number of banks. This will still be compatible with multitimbral functions ("drum mode") but not with MIDI program changes. One solution might be to have a "MIDI program map" where you can select presets to load triggered by MIDI program changes.

D N A · Post by **D N A** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 6:51 am

nice!

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:21 am

aciddose wrote:I'm just posting a thread here because I'm interested in whether there are any serious bugs remaining.

Most of all, I'm interested in any small, simple changes that might be put on the list to be added before the next release. For example the unison "stereo" switch should be a "width" knob. Stuff like that requires minimal effort but makes the whole synthesizer far more useful.

Thanks for the update

I will be firing this up in FL Studio later today, will let you know if I get any problems with it.

Mutant · Post by **Mutant** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 1:50 pm

Thanks for the new version.

No 1.02 asymptote though... ill stick with the old one for now then, i just love these smooth high resonance sweeps too much haha.
Also im waiting for the "route" section to be saved with presets, it is VERY useful for making sounds where many parameters are controlled with 1 knob.

donquixote · Post by **donquixote** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 2:31 pm

thanks a lot!

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 2:43 pm

I'm just working on the xmod stuff ATM.

I got the preset categories to show numerical splits when there are more than 16.

So for example say you have 36 "bass" presets, it will split those into bass 1, bass 2, bass 3 with the first 16, 16, 4.

Thing I was messing about with for hours is when a preset doesn't have a category (the "null" case) when it has less than 16 I just show them directly in the main menu. If more than 16, they get split into a forced category named "No category".

http://xhip.net/temp/Spank_with_broom.adxi

I should really aim to get the route stuff into state/preset asap. I suppose I need to add another sub-page that says "global/preset" and override switch... ugh. I'll figure it out I guess.

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/all-over

Based upon my test it appears to make this sound like "wheeeeeaaa" when you press the random button. Be careful or you might end up with something even worse than this.

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/glitchy
(I really like the race-car (0:59) followed by horrible miniature robot scream (1:01). Also the digital ghost sound (1:19) rules. To reproduce this play some sequence where you always have lots of voices active. Keep hitting the randomize button. In the future I should add weird stuff like randomize to the route page, so pressing sustain = randomize for example.)

I'll try to get the next alpha up soon with the category and xmod fixes in.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 3:27 pm

Works pretty well for me, but GUI is too small for my liking, got problem reading some of the controls, would be great if size could be increased 30% or so.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 3:31 pm

It can be, it just isn't finished yet.

Almost fully resizable "skin". (Click for full res.)

There are a few bugs and issues remaining. This is actually quite a complex issue so I'm going to work on this a bit later and focus on just getting the next version out.

I will post a new alpha at some point with the zoomed GUI available but more work needs to go into the skinning features to make it work well. I can post an enlarged GUI by replacing the bitmaps manually, although just zooming them looks a bit crap.

(The fonts need to be replaced, all the menus need to size correctly and so on. It works already but there are some remaining issues.)

Mutant · Post by **Mutant** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 3:45 pm

Also i like switching presets by MIDI program change message, would be sad if that functionality wasn't there anymore.

AutoMotto · Post by **AutoMotto** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 5:50 pm

No longer the option to use wav files ? That will be missed

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:25 pm

Nothing has been changed regarding PCM.

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/bad-loop-points
https://soundcloud.com/xhip/bad-organ

See this thread: (xhip forum) http://forum.xhip.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8

All you need to do is hit the "pcm" button to load a .wav file. It supports 8 and 16 bit, any number of channels (uses the first only). It will appear in the waveforms list under "pcm".

Pyrotek45 · Post by **Pyrotek45** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:49 pm

width knob would be much better than a switch as it offers more control.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:08 am

New alpha on the page has fixed xmod and categories are working fully.

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/xmod
Bellybutton lintbass.adxi

The xmod still needs a few more tweaks. The depth is too high for feedback modes (A! -> B, means A feedback output to carrier B.)

The whole thing sort of sucks (xmod I mean) as it isn't really possible to get it "perfect", but still it's a really cool option to have in addition to the plain old exponential xmod. Anyway it's an effect to be used sparingly, not the main focus of the synthesizer. If I wanted to do that I'd probably need to do a "FM" synth specifically.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:11 am

Numanoid wrote:Works pretty well for me, but GUI is too small for my liking, got problem reading some of the controls, would be great if size could be increased 30% or so.

I've got this working roughly now. I implemented a nearest and linear rescaler directly into the GUI lib Xhip uses, so it should be able to rescale any bitmaps automatically now.

There is a remaining issue with X/Y ratios... basically if the bitmap isn't a perfect square ratio it will resize one dimension incorrectly, leaving color stripes along the edges.

In any case it works okay for now, this is just a proof of concept. It will be much more useful when you can actually type in the number to scale to.

Currently it is fixed at 150%, or 50% larger.

edit: Just get the latest from the alpha page.

And of course another random clip that I generate while testing.
https://soundcloud.com/xhip/broken-ears
http://xhip.net/alpha/releases/presets/ ... edoil.adxi

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/chilly-earmuffs

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:42 pm

yeah really interesting sound - just checking demos, waiting a bit,
in case you give use loads of versions to dl

it kinda reminds me of some of the things you can do with a
...!mini kaossilator!(eek...but it's a good thing, some of those
xmod etc sounds are really cool) - it's got good 'space'
(maybe i suggest a single zip download with fxb/p's included?)

New Xhip alpha