The Quilcom SECTION: An ensemble synth

[Spogg]

Today I’ve been experimenting with Phase Distortion, which is a whole fascinating area to check out. We shall see! If I decide to make a PD synth it will certainly have Martin’s Chorous in it.

Can't wait to hear the results! So far I could only find our very own BobF and one other plugin programmer doing a PD synth that explore the possibilities beyond Casio!

I’m still at the R&D stage (i.e. messing about) with PD and at this point I don’t know where it will go, but very early results seem at least “interesting”.

There is already a wonderful PD synth available for free, in case you weren’t aware (I think you may be referring to this). It’s called DIGITS:
http://www.extentofthejam.com/
This thing is a wonderful exercise in sound and UI design. There’s no manual or help file but I worked everything out just by exploration.
So I wouldn’t want to make the same thing, even if I could. What I hope for is that I can take a new approach and maybe get different results, but using the same principles.

When I started out I accidentally made a wave folding system and it was very simple. I wish that had happened way back when Kevin wanted one.

Cheers

Spogg

[kortezzzz]

Where did you get that from? It's nonsense. It uses a few MBs, just like any other plugin in my library.

You can see that in the recommended system requirements at their site (top right corner). Maybe not every single preset goes into 8gb ram usage usage, but the recommended settings most likely implies that some of the presets would need large amount ram. Now, considering the fact that it may pass 96 voices into 9 effects and 4 global effects does makes sense, but 8gb?... isn't it way too much for recommended settings?...

Other than that, only god know what is the "real world" performance gap between FS and and juce. Not only the macro differences, but also the micro ones, as I've stated about the voice management when playing chords. If spog reached to the top of FS's abilities with this synth, we may have a problem here, because new projects only push the recent limits toward for being able to compete with the behemoth firms in the market. I for instance work very hard to invent formats that would allow me to stay in the safe zone of the performance limits because some of projects already failed due to their size. So my conclusion is we have 2 paths to choose from; the first is being optimization masters with asm, ruby and dsp or be very selective with the projects we choose to develop by always considering the prices. Spog went here a little too far and you gave him one stringent comment. Then how would a client that payed money would react to such a situation?

[tulamide]

You can see that in the recommended system requirements at their site (top right corner).

That's obviously a mistake. Probably a leftover from a sample package. Why I am so sure? This is what the text says:

• 8 GB RAM or more is recommended. Plus at least 8 GB hard disk space for installation.

The installation uses approx 200 MB on the hard disk, and even the before metioned absolute maximum of what you can do with the synth never exceeds a few dozen MBs in RAM. I don't even have 8 GB RAM!
Trust me, neither does it need 8 GB RAM (or 4 GB), nor does it use 8 GB of hard disk space. Nor does it overload you CPU at any time. I used the same preset I mentioned before for the ultimate test. Everything to the max and then I played 32 notes simultanously (32 polyphony is the max). The CPU load raised to about 35% on my 3rd generation i5 with this totally unnatural crazyness (nobody would use a synth in that way). And I expected it, because it also says (and that's way more likely to be true):

• Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 or newer.

You see, it's much ado about nothing.

Other than that, only god know what is the "real world" performance gap between FS and and juce. Not only the macro differences, but also the micro ones, as I've stated about the voice management when playing chords. If spog reached to the top of FS's abilities with this synth, we may have a problem here, because new projects only push the recent limits toward for being able to compete with the behemoth firms in the market. I for instance work very hard to invent formats that would allow me to stay in the safe zone of the performance limits because some of projects already failed due to their size. So my conclusion is we have 2 paths to choose from; the first is being optimization masters with asm, ruby and dsp or be very selective with the projects we choose to develop by always considering the prices. Spog went here a little too far and you gave him one stringent comment. Then how would a client that payed money would react to such a situation?

I always give honest feedback, and Spogg knows me for that and likes it. Nobody's helped, if I'd hold back on what I witness, or just say "good job". Everybody here who creates a synth does a good job, so that goes without saying. And it'S the feedback that can help you improve your creations. Or you can choose to ignore the feedback.

About commercial plugins I can't say much, since I never sold any of my stuff. From Adam however I know that his customers are overwhelmingly positive, and rather ask for more features than complaining about the sound.

Flowstone will always be slower in processing than any C++ engine. That'S the price you pay for all the comfort, Flowstone offers in creating synths. No need to stare at rows of complicated code that will only work if you set up a programming file AND a header file, forcing you to switch back and forth between them when correcting stuff. You also get no visual feedback regarding your GUI. You have to build it, then compile your whole plugin, then load it in your DAW and finally you can test it. Compare that to the easeness of Flowstone's "views"!

To be honest, if you want to compete with the behemoths of the market, you have to use the same tools as they use. Which is C++ with a specialized library like JUCE or WDL-OL/iPlug.

That said, the 64 bit version of FS4 is far ahead of FS3, so there is yet another bit of headroom to explore, before it reaches its limits. At one point though, you have to switch to C++, if you're seriously considering to compete with Rob Papen, U-HE and the like.

[kortezzzz]

About the requirements, yes, you're probably right. It doesn't makes sense at all, but they should be warned about this statement since they may loose a lot of scared potential clients.

About competing, I know the limits. I also know the little nuances where FL fails to do much simpler tasks after rendering, in the DAW, so I just fit my chosen projects to those limitations from the first place. Adam's synth is not a good example for a typical FS synth by any mean. It's structures are optimized with asm re-wirten modules and they are advanced far beyond any synth that would be ever done by anyone else. I have no idea if Adam has built a voice management from scratch instead of using the standard primitives, but I surely know that the primitives have a problem with generating chords. So I'm just trying to make cleaver choices with "what should I develop?" and so far so good. No one complains about the sound. Just about the features and sometimes about noises and click on heavy preset changes. I love a honest feedbacks as well and I didn't complained about you honesty. I just took your comment as an example of what can happen in the "real world" when you try to push the limits beyond your platform's abilities. And I know for sure that some of us do try and get frustrated because in theory it looks achievable, but then you bump into the limits wall.

[Halon]

Awesome stuff Rex!

[Spogg]

Awesome stuff Rex!

Thank you sir!