Re-Compose Spexx (Now renamed Venom and owned by W.A. Production)

[Neon Breath]

@bliquid25: Just crurious, I know it just has been released but do you guys plan on implementing more effect modules in the future?

Love it so far, very powerful spectral manipulator already. Top quality full round sound.

[bliquid25]

Gah, still bummed out I missed on the pre-order price, seemed to completely miss for how long it ran This one looks very awesome, to be quite honest!

Well, Spexx being our first audio (effects) plug-in, it's kinda understandable that a few of you were holding back on that pre-order.

But either way, it's out now and there's a demo available. Go grab it and let us know what you think about it!

[bliquid25]

@bliquid25: Just crurious, I know it just has been released but do you guys plan on implementing more effect modules in the future?

Love it so far, very powerful spectral manipulator already. Top quality full round sound.

Nothing decided for Spexx so far, but curious to hear what people think about it and would like to see added or changed. Again, it being our first such product, it's important to establish a solid baseline to work from.

There is, however, an entire set of other effects in prototype stage, from simple effects to more complex ones. Those certainly we'd like to bring to market, but step by step - first we need to iron out any bugs, etc. there may be, and look into some other items (e.g. preset browser) that add even more value to Spexx.

Keep those ideas coming, we're more than happy to listen and chime in on those thoughts!

[Neon Breath]

@bliquid25: Just crurious, I know it just has been released but do you guys plan on implementing more effect modules in the future?

Love it so far, very powerful spectral manipulator already. Top quality full round sound.

Nothing decided for Spexx so far, but curious to hear what people think about it and would like to see added or changed. Again, it being our first such product, it's important to establish a solid baseline to work from.

There is, however, an entire set of other effects in prototype stage, from simple effects to more complex ones. Those certainly we'd like to bring to market, but step by step - first we need to iron out any bugs, etc. there may be, and look into some other items (e.g. preset browser) that add even more value to Spexx.

Keep those ideas coming, we're more than happy to listen and chime in on those thoughts!

Totally makes sense. Thanks for communication.

And congrats on the release!

[bliquid25]

Totally makes sense. Thanks for communication.

And congrats on the release!

Thanks a lot, really appreciated! And same to everyone who supported us in bringing Spexx to market from all of us.

#MerryXmas to y'all!

[Neon Breath]

Keep those ideas coming, we're more than happy to listen and chime in on those thoughts!

As a 'modular' style of workflow, I think Spexx would benefit greatly having a mix parameter for each effect modules, independently to the master mix. It's a bit crippling not being able to balance the amount of each effect. Often I would like to use just a little subtle amount of an effect, especially the Slope and Mirror effects, and I end up having the effects smearing & affecting the audio all the way in full swing. Individual mix is essential in my opinion, for a true control of the sound sculpting.

[sacer]

the gui on windows doesn't work for me, I use 110% Scale on Win10, and i have to click above the icons, to activate

[c_voltage]

That is, as the temporal granularity defines the "jumping distance" for the FFT algorithms, it is linked by a max. factor of 2x to the spectral resolution. Thus, as the default setting for said temporal granularity is "2", consequently you cannot turn down the spectral resolution at this setting. Thus, you first have to turn down the temporal granularity to a lower value ("1" or "512") in order to be able to switch the spectral resolution also to "2".

Oh, really can be drop to 2k, thank for explanation.
Well, why i wanted try even more lower sizes, just wanted to hear more audible difference in different FFT modes. So to speak, expand the range of sound transformation due to this (i.e. more near to sound degradation, and how freeze could looks in that state, would be interestingly )

[bliquid25]

As a 'modular' style of workflow, I think Spexx would benefit greatly having a mix parameter for each effect modules, independently to the master mix. It's a bit crippling not being able to balance the amount of each effect. Often I would like to use just a little subtle amount of an effect, especially the Slope and Mirror effects, and I end up having the effects smearing & affecting the audio all the way in full swing. Individual mix is essential in my opinion, for a true control of the sound sculpting.

I won't say yes or not to it at this stage, as we discussed it internally and there are different opinions on this subject. Without getting too far into the technical complexities, adding a mix parameter for each of the effects in the second stage (output) is not too big of a deal -- however, it looks different for the first stage (freeze): the effects in this chain work in unison with the continuous base effect ("spectral freeze") in Spexx. It gets tricky to make changes to each of them, as it has an impact on the others and can 'destroy' the signal or effect created entirely (in that it doesn't sound correct anymore because it's washed out, etc. etc. .. plenty of strange, unwanted effects possible in this area which can result in a lot of headaches for us to try to solve).

Some may see this as a feature, others stand on the original proposition of correct sound transformation. Whatever 'correct' means in this particular state is something we need to look into further. Also, it would help if you guys provide us with a better understanding if you are looking for individual mix parameters to all effects, single chains only or any other combination.

Sorry for being abstract in my wording, it's difficult to describe the above when not having a sound example to share with you. Point noted though, and we'll report back on it.

[Neon Breath]

As a 'modular' style of workflow, I think Spexx would benefit greatly having a mix parameter for each effect modules, independently to the master mix. It's a bit crippling not being able to balance the amount of each effect. Often I would like to use just a little subtle amount of an effect, especially the Slope and Mirror effects, and I end up having the effects smearing & affecting the audio all the way in full swing. Individual mix is essential in my opinion, for a true control of the sound sculpting.

I won't say yes or not to it at this stage, as we discussed it internally and there are different opinions on this subject. Without getting too far into the technical complexities, adding a mix parameter for each of the effects in the second stage (output) is not too big of a deal -- however, it looks different for the first stage (freeze): the effects in this chain work in unison with the continuous base effect ("spectral freeze") in Spexx. It gets tricky to make changes to each of them, as it has an impact on the others and can 'destroy' the signal or effect created entirely (in that it doesn't sound correct anymore because it's washed out, etc. etc. .. plenty of strange, unwanted effects possible in this area which can result in a lot of headaches for us to try to solve).

Some may see this as a feature, others stand on the original proposition of correct sound transformation. Whatever 'correct' means in this particular state is something we need to look into further. Also, it would help if you guys provide us with a better understanding if you are looking for individual mix parameters to all effects, single chains only or any other combination.

Sorry for being abstract in my wording, it's difficult to describe the above when not having a sound example to share with you. Point noted though, and we'll report back on it.

Thanks for taking the time to explain, and still consider

[bliquid25]

the gui on windows doesn't work for me, I use 110% Scale on Win10, and i have to click above the icons, to activate

Aha, interesting. We've tested with a fair bit of machines running different Windows versions during the beta test, but this issue had not been reported so far.

It would be great if you perhaps can take a screenshot or short video of it and send it over to us at support@re-compose.com. We have a number of Win 10 machines here, being able to see what's happening would be of big help in analyzing and reproducing the issue.

Btw, as we did see hosts behave differently, if you have another host installed on your machine, give it a shot there and let us know if that makes any difference.

[bliquid25]

That is, as the temporal granularity defines the "jumping distance" for the FFT algorithms, it is linked by a max. factor of 2x to the spectral resolution. Thus, as the default setting for said temporal granularity is "2", consequently you cannot turn down the spectral resolution at this setting. Thus, you first have to turn down the temporal granularity to a lower value ("1" or "512") in order to be able to switch the spectral resolution also to "2".

Oh, really can be drop to 2k, thank for explanation.
Well, why i wanted try even more lower sizes, just wanted to hear more audible difference in different FFT modes. So to speak, expand the range of sound transformation due to this (i.e. more near to sound degradation, and how freeze could looks in that state, would be interestingly )

Yeah, we get why users would want that. Technically speaking though, at lower resolution sizes there is a thin path to walk on for the signal to be detected with a sufficient level of accuracy. That is, there's a cliff to fall off from in that signal recognition as part of the FFT turns to poor quickly.
This naturally also depends on what input signal you feed into Spexx, but generally speaking the 2k limit set in the software as is today provides enough of a safe margin to correctly identify a particular input signal.

The key thing to understand here is again the particular characteristics of the spectral freeze: it works great within the boundaries set, but may deliver all sorts of strange phenomena when leaving those limits. So, you could equally see it as some sort of a protection to make sure it delivers on what we propose, as we have no control over what users feed into it.

And, to clarify on the latter: we're not aiming at taking control away from the user, but in today's world it's easy for people to spat negative feedback around quickly. And, that's the downside we need to protect against as a developer.

Either way, always happy to discuss and provide further input / explanations.

[bliquid25]

@All Welcome back from the winter break! We've got some news to share with you.

Our @MartinGasser has been hard at work over the past weeks to get even more performance out of Spexx. That has resulted in a number of version updates - as of today we're standing at v1.0.11, which has seen some black magic applied through the use of advanced mathematics. It results in a much lower CPU usage than was reported earlier, and delivers stable CPU loads across the different spectral resolution settings available for the user.

Not saying that the release version (v1.0.0) wasn't performing well, rather that it's now even better when it comes to performance and stability across a wide range of machines. And, that we're working on other items, too.

We've also created a number of videos showing what each of the effects does, see this playlist

(Click on the link to read the descriptions on YouTube, which contains more info on each of the effects and what is shown in those videos.)


Download the latest version of Spexx here.

Anyone fancy sharing their feedback on those performance improvements?

[c_voltage]

bliquid25 Hmm, tried just now - really cool, very low CPU, in any FFT stage (exactly with enabled "two arrows" icon - now they do work very noticeably).
Also, i tried to add second Spexx instance in chain - no any noticeable increase of cpu usage, good. And again - this is at my old quad core cpu.
As well, it seemed to me that now appeared even some more distinguishable behavior (freeze character) during different fft values.
Pretty successful build, thank you.

[bliquid25]

bliquid25 Hmm, tried just now - really cool, very low CPU, in any FFT stage (exactly with enabled "two arrows" icon - now they do work very noticeably).
Also, i tried to add second Spexx instance in chain - no any noticeable increase of cpu usage, good. And again - this is at my old quad core cpu.
As well, it seemed to me that now appeared even some more distinguishable behavior (freeze character) during different fft values.
Pretty successful build, thank you.

Ok, great. This works exactly as expected, and should deliver some great results.

The different behavior you noticed on the freeze character may only be related to some degree to the above. Unless you've fed the exact some input signal to it, it may just be that a different input signal shapes the output ever so differently.

Thanks for the feedback, and we'll be back soon. We'd really love to know / see what you guys work on with Spexx, and dig into what improvements we could potentially make to help your workflow.

Any suggestions are welcome, as always!