Saturn - A 6 voice Polysynth (updated)

[Spogg]

Yes the dark background with the Black knobs are indeed a little eye tiring. I could always add an option to change the color

If you intend to change it I’ll wait until you have! Personally I liked the look I must say.

I also note you mentioned something about MIDI input channels but I didn’t actually understand, sorry.

Cheers

Spogg

[wlangfor@uoguelph.ca]

Cool. Thanks for checking in Robert.

Wouldn't miss it. I'll make a techno track maybe. Was working on a fork of freq. Also, updating an old bronislav and then getting back the mverb gui. So, track tonight - tomorrow?

[trogluddite]

I've enjoyed having a play with that. Touches like the separate pitch/pwm envelope and LFO fade add a lot of versatility without adding too many extra controls; it's a good balance between features and complexity overall, I thought. I've only fiddled a little bit with the presets so far, which show the features off nicely; but it seems like a synth I could MIDI up and enjoy making patches on.

Like kortezzzz, I think the GUI maybe needs a bit more clarity - not so much the colours for me, but I found the repeated pattern of the rings of numbers a bit distracting (it's the kind of thing that sets off my synaesthesia, though, so I may not be the best judge!)

[tulamide]

I wanted to chime in as well. But I'm on my gaming pc, where I only have FS 4, no midi controller (just the pc keyboard), and no ASIO (just Direct Sound).

Unfortunately, under these circumstances, the synth does nothing. It doesn't recognize midi input, no sound is generated and the synth produces over 230 triggers per second while doing nothing. It's too late tonight to really do a bug tracking, but maybe others can have a look at the synth under FS 4 and in various environments?

(for example Exo's saturation is in asm, so maybe broken under FS 4?)

[Spogg]

I’ve spent a bit more time looking inside etc. and I offer a few comments which I hope will help…

The modwheel can generate a huge amount of triggers. I’ve attached a modwheel source that limits the triggering, yet still allows smooth operation.

There are 2 identical preset parameters; “Filter Float”. They all need to be unique, as I’m sure you already know. When you change this, you may need to re-do some or all of the presets.

I don’t see the option to Save and Load ALL programs on the front panel; just individual presets. This means that users won’t be able to switch whole “banks”.

The Bend range knob has a scale from 0-10, but the actual range is 0-12 and goes up in 5 steps.

I set 32 voices and found that, when playing, the CPU was still ok (on my core i7 PC at least). All 32 channels showed at 15% in FS but this would almost never happen in practice. I think most users will get that huge sustained chords and/or long release times will use more CPU. I didn’t see any opportunities for optimisation.

Cheers

Spogg

[Halon]

I've enjoyed having a play with that. Touches like the separate pitch/pwm envelope and LFO fade add a lot of versatility without adding too many extra controls; it's a good balance between features and complexity overall, I thought. I've only fiddled a little bit with the presets so far, which show the features off nicely; but it seems like a synth I could MIDI up and enjoy making patches on.

Like kortezzzz, I think the GUI maybe needs a bit more clarity - not so much the colours for me, but I found the repeated pattern of the rings of numbers a bit distracting (it's the kind of thing that sets off my synaesthesia, though, so I may not be the best judge!)

Thanks trogluddite i should make an option to change the colors or atleast make it a bit clearer.

I wanted to chime in as well. But I'm on my gaming pc, where I only have FS 4, no midi controller (just the pc keyboard), and no ASIO (just Direct Sound).

Unfortunately, under these circumstances, the synth does nothing. It doesn't recognize midi input, no sound is generated and the synth produces over 230 triggers per second while doing nothing. It's too late tonight to really do a bug tracking, but maybe others can have a look at the synth under FS 4 and in various environments?

(for example Exo's saturation is in asm, so maybe broken under FS 4?)

Thanks for chiming in tulamide. Does that mean that i should add a direct sound out aswell as asio out?

I’ve spent a bit more time looking inside etc. and I offer a few comments which I hope will help…

The modwheel can generate a huge amount of triggers. I’ve attached a modwheel source that limits the triggering, yet still allows smooth operation.

There are 2 identical preset parameters; “Filter Float”. They all need to be unique, as I’m sure you already know. When you change this, you may need to re-do some or all of the presets.

I don’t see the option to Save and Load ALL programs on the front panel; just individual presets. This means that users won’t be able to switch whole “banks”.

The Bend range knob has a scale from 0-10, but the actual range is 0-12 and goes up in 5 steps.

I set 32 voices and found that, when playing, the CPU was still ok (on my core i7 PC at least). All 32 channels showed at 15% in FS but this would almost never happen in practice. I think most users will get that huge sustained chords and/or long release times will use more CPU. I didn’t see any opportunities for optimisation.

Cheers

Spogg

Thank you Rex. I will revisit the schematic then. About not being able to load banks, i guess the culprit could be because there is a button instead of the regular save/load module perhaps? And i did test the pitchbend/bend range in vsthost and it seemed to work well. Should i have 12 steps instead of 5? Also About the midi channel i mentioned earlier, most virtual synthesizers have the ability to change the channel number from 1 to 16. I guess its not needed.

[Spogg]

About not being able to load banks, i guess the culprit could be because there is a button instead of the regular save/load module perhaps? And i did test the pitchbend/bend range in vsthost and it seemed to work well. Should i have 12 steps instead of 5? Also About the midi channel i mentioned earlier, most virtual synthesizers have the ability to change the channel number from 1 to 16. I guess its not needed.

Banks (“All programs”): You could use buttons to adapt to the Load/Save module’s functions, or just bring out the Menu selector in a style to suit the GUI.

Pitchbend: The pitchbend works perfectly! My point was that the readout doesn’t tally with the knob’s scale, which I felt gave a certain dissonance. I do think that 12 semitone steps are better, that’s just a personal opinion, but in my view the knob’s scale should match the set value. Alternatively you could just have 10 steps, but I personally like to be able to bend a whole octave. Maybe the best way forward is just to remove the scale from that knob, or make a new one that tallies with 12 steps.

MIDI channel number: Others may take a different view, but I would leave MIDI routing to the DAW since you already have it (in Reaper anyway). I see no need to have another control that’s not strictly necessary.

Cheers

Spogg

[Halon]

How would i go about to adapt the button to the load/save button so it would be possible to save whole banks? This is one of the things that makes me scratch my head. I'll see if im able to figure it out. I do like those buttons but i could always just use the standard preset manager. Also the pitch bend readout was wrong indeed. And I guess the standard is 1 - 12 semitones instead of 3-5-7-12 semitones.

[Halon]

I managed to work it out but the button is does not 'de-press'
after pressing it. I attached a schematic.

[kortezzzz]

@tulamide,

Strange thing when using this synth under FS4 alfa: I've cleared up all the dsp modules that added up with asm's in the same containers and got sound out of it. But the 12db filter causes audio shutdowns here. When dived in, found out that the asm module doesn't likes any additional comments in it (those who tagged under the "\" symbol) and reports them as an error. After deleting them, the typical error message disappears, but the audio shutdowns remain. Exo's modules don't cause any errors. its the asm filter. Any thoughts?