comments on Hybrid 3

[Sawtooth Fairy]

I have been exploring Hybrid 3 for a couple of days now. It sounds pretty good, actually, especially for the price and age. It is a musical synth, with useful effects and features.

That is why I am a bit disappointed by bugs and imperfections that one might not expect from such a mature plugin and which kind of undermine my trust in that product and company. Just a few I have already come across, I assume there are more...

- on osc 1 and 2 of layer B, the waveform displays don't change when switching to multi-wave square

- on osc 2 of layer A, the wavetable does not change, the sound is always that of wavetable 3 no matter which one is selected

- when selecting Restart as the envelope trigger mode on the Common site, there is an ugly bump noise with longer release times. the sound simply gets hacked off, instead of shortly faded out. on Tal's Mod it sounds really good and fluid without any such bump

- with certain modulations I get the impression that there is no oversampling, there is zipper noise, aliasing and what not; since the synth hardly uses any CPU, it might make sense to oversample it a bit, maybe that helps

[h66]

Hybrid 3 is one of the best, best Synths! H3 reacts in many ways like an real "analog" Synth (uncontrolled OSCs). Thats why H3 create great, great sounds. And thats why there are a few "glitches" in sound programming. BUT all "glitches" can be fixed by knobs and envelops.
Sadly there are no update (like free VSTs, for instance Valhalla), so you have to dig in the "layer" of all OSC and Envelops and Mods and LFOs and so on.

[Sawtooth Fairy]

Hybrid 3 is one of the best, best Synths! H3 reacts in many ways like an real "analog" Synth (uncontrolled OSCs). Thats why H3 create great, great sounds. And thats why there are a few "glitches" in sound programming. BUT all "glitches" can be fixed by knobs and envelops.
Sadly there are no update (like free VSTs, for instance Valhalla), so you have to dig in the "layer" of all OSC and Envelops and Mods and LFOs and so on.

What glitches?! No, the bugs I mentioned can not be fixed by the user.
Air should fix the bugs and release an update.
And I don't think Valhalla VSTi's are free.

[Sawtooth Fairy]

- on osc 2 of layer A, the wavetable does not change, the sound is always that of wavetable 3 no matter which one is selected

I have to correct myself, it does change, but with a long delay, unlike with the other three oscillators, where the wavetables load instantly when selecting them with the scrollwheel. Seems that there is some issue with loading the wavetables...

[planetearth]

Hybrid 3 is one of the best, best Synths! H3 reacts in many ways like an real "analog" Synth (uncontrolled OSCs). Thats why H3 create great, great sounds. And thats why there are a few "glitches" in sound programming. BUT all "glitches" can be fixed by knobs and envelops.
Sadly there are no update (like free VSTs, for instance Valhalla), so you have to dig in the "layer" of all OSC and Envelops and Mods and LFOs and so on.

What glitches?! No, the bugs I mentioned can not be fixed by the user.
Air should fix the bugs and release an update.
And I don't think Valhalla VSTi's are free.

I like Hybrid 3 too, and while I haven't come across the issues you've mentioned, I know it could benefit from some fixes. That said, if you're on Windows 10, be thankful it even installs. AIR Music has had a lot of problems with their plug-ins not installing or not working properly in Windows 10. It took a few months for them to fix that, and it appears that's all they worked on. It also appears they've moved on to other synths, even though they already had some great ones that could benefit from bug fixes and a bigger GUI.

And no, most of Valhalla's plug-ins aren't free. Supermassive is though, and it's really nice.

Steve

[mabian]

And no, most of Valhalla's plug-ins aren't free. Supermassive is though, and it's really nice.

Also Space Modulator and FreqEcho are, just for the record. And they're pretty cool too...

- Mario

[planetearth]

And no, most of Valhalla's plug-ins aren't free. Supermassive is though, and it's really nice.

Also Space Modulator and FreqEcho are, just for the record. And they're pretty cool too...

- Mario

Good to know, thanks!

Steve

[Sawtooth Fairy]

Hybrid 3 is one of the best, best Synths! H3 reacts in many ways like an real "analog" Synth (uncontrolled OSCs). Thats why H3 create great, great sounds. And thats why there are a few "glitches" in sound programming. BUT all "glitches" can be fixed by knobs and envelops.
Sadly there are no update (like free VSTs, for instance Valhalla), so you have to dig in the "layer" of all OSC and Envelops and Mods and LFOs and so on.

What glitches?! No, the bugs I mentioned can not be fixed by the user.
Air should fix the bugs and release an update.
And I don't think Valhalla VSTi's are free.

I like Hybrid 3 too, and while I haven't come across the issues you've mentioned, I know it could benefit from some fixes. That said, if you're on Windows 10, be thankful it even installs. AIR Music has had a lot of problems with their plug-ins not installing or not working properly in Windows 10. It took a few months for them to fix that, and it appears that's all they worked on. It also appears they've moved on to other synths, even though they already had some great ones that could benefit from bug fixes and a bigger GUI.

And no, most of Valhalla's plug-ins aren't free. Supermassive is though, and it's really nice.

Steve

Someone from Air support actually replied. They will look into the issues...

Yes, they have lots of synths now on their site, but no general-purpose subtractive one like Hybrid 3 it seems. A couple of emulations...

If they fixed the issues, I would be happy because the synth has the perfect feature set and sounds very 80ish

[machinesworking]

I would not count on Hybrid getting anything like decent updates. IMO all Air instruments in the collection they sell were likely coded by people who no longer work at Air. This is the sad truth of plug ins VS hardware, they get massive amounts of updates over the years, until one day they don't then stop working under Mac OS, then eventually under Windows.

Air have been talking for probably 7 years about upgrading these instruments, and have done nothing. The only thing that's happened is the sister In Music owned company Akai has had Air instruments included in the MPC line up. I would not expect anything to be done VST3, Apple Silicon, or resizable GUI wise, with any of the original line up of Hybrid 3, Loom 2, Vacuum, Tranfuser, etc. etc.

[Sawtooth Fairy]

I would not count on Hybrid getting anything like decent updates. IMO all Air instruments in the collection they sell were likely coded by people who no longer work at Air. This is the sad truth of plug ins VS hardware, they get massive amounts of updates over the years, until one day they don't then stop working under Mac OS, then eventually under Windows.

Air have been talking for probably 7 years about upgrading these instruments, and have done nothing. The only thing that's happened is the sister In Music owned company Akai has had Air instruments included in the MPC line up. I would not expect anything to be done VST3, Apple Silicon, or resizable GUI wise, with any of the original line up of Hybrid 3, Loom 2, Vacuum, Tranfuser, etc. etc.

Still, can't another programmer fix such bugs or is the code such a mess? Good code is written in a way that allows others to understand it.

And what other synth comes close in terms of sound, CPU efficiency and features (lots of envelopes etc.)?

[h66]

...
- on osc 1 and 2 of layer B, the waveform displays don't change when switching to multi-wave square

"switching to multi-wave square" - what? to multiwave or to square? there is no "multi-wave square"

...
- on osc 2 of layer A, the wavetable does not change, the sound is always that of wavetable 3 no matter which one is selected

No, not here, wavetable is changing, at default preset - Again, do you use a preset (with "background modulations")?

...
- when selecting Restart as the envelope trigger mode on the Common site, there is an ugly bump noise with longer release times. the sound simply gets hacked off, instead of shortly faded out. on Tal's Mod it sounds really good and fluid without any such bump

No, not here, no "ugly bump noise", at default preset - Again, do you use a preset (with "background modulations")?

...
- with certain modulations I get the impression that there is no oversampling, there is zipper noise, aliasing and what not; since the synth hardly uses any CPU, it might make sense to oversample it a bit, maybe that helps

Again, there are many things in the "mod matrix" by using presets.

That's why I asked for hybrid 4 - viewtopic.php?t=574650 - "only" a better GUI

btw.
played around again. 1. (the morphable) wavetable have no effect on the CPU of the preset (as with all modern wavetable synths) 2. insert effects such as unison have no effect on the CPU of the preset 3. OSC 2 and 3 as well as Filter, Seq Added phrase and envelope, have no effect on the CPU 4. Copy part A to part B (and pan each outside) has almost no effect on the CPU
But from 1st to 4th the sound has changed massively

[Sawtooth Fairy]

Of course there is multi-wave square You can change it from the default saw to square by clicking underneath the small waveform display.


As I said, I already corrected my statement that wavetables do not load. They simply load much slower on osc 2 of layer A when scrolling through them with the mouse wheel. So when I select a new one and keep hitting a key on my keyboard, the previous wavetable keeps sounding for quite a while.


As for the retrigger bump, compare the audio of Hybrid 3 vs Retrologue 2.

I used a primitive saw init patch, so no modulation or anything...

https://app.box.com/s/ytith4einxvxjgsqwx9g2rdqn821cq2z

[h66]

Of course there is multi-wave square You can change it from the default saw to square by clicking underneath the small waveform display.

My favorite synth, and i never seen this before Thanks

[Boy Wonder]

Of course there is multi-wave square You can change it from the default saw to square by clicking underneath the small waveform display.

My favorite synth, and I never seen this before Thanks

Yep. Can you imagine how powerful Hybrid 4 would be if they allowed morphing between saw and square in Multi-Wave? And preferably with visual representation? As full-featured as Hybrid3 is, it'd be amazing if they added sample-import and granular to the oscillators, as well as visual representation of the wavetables. Then again, that'll prolly make it too similar to other synths out there.