Projects using Martin's new Sync Osc

[k brown]

Thanks B -
I figured someone would comment in this. I should have included a warning in the OP. This is based on a very old SM build; the bad old spaghetti days and I just was too lazy to tidy it up -put all my time into upgrading and fleshing out the functions, and improving the GUI. I should at least give the connections neater paths.

[k brown]

Updated schem for one that's a 'neater mess'?

The reason I didn't update this with mostly wireless, isn't just laziness; it's been my experience that when opening an old SM project in FS, the whole wireless thing is very buggy - it's a real bitch to keep them all 'active'; change any connection to one and it goes dead and has to be 're-activated', usually over and over again. This almost never happens with a project begun in FS. So when updating these old SM builds, I usually leave well enough alone.

No too interested in the Micro Korg (I've looked at it before) - the whole vocoder thing's never appealed to me at all, and w/o that, the MK isn't terribly interesting.

NOTE: To those who downloaded IMIJ from the first page, get it again; one of the osc's sync was left disconnected!

[trogluddite]

Oh yes, flexPatch is my favourite of the collection yet! Using a few patch cables and the LFO patterns, I was soon making some very odd "broken-robots playing horror-movie music" type patches (this is a good thing, IMHO! )

I had a couple of little glitches at startup (some Ruby inputs apparently without values), but switching presets seemed to sort them out. It's a bit late to be looking into that right now, but I'll dig a little deeper tomorrow unless it's something you fix in the mean-time.

A very interesting synth all the same; it totally lives up to its "flex" name!

[k brown]

Hmm - couldn't be Ruby, this doesn't have any. Maybe too many code-based VCAs (I've been scolded about those before ). I did find a few of those that weren't connected to anything, could that cause a problem?

Replaced schem.

Changed the name; UVI has a sample-based Chroma plugin they're calling Kroma. Mine's now Croma flexPatch - spelled that way is really a word, it's chroma in Potugese. The word chroma in most languages is, well chroma.

It's sort of unbelievable that there's no other actual soft synth based on this - I would have thought it an obvious choice for the likes Arturia, or even u-he. It's a much more interesting instrument than the Prophet 5 or Pro-One, and those actual instruments weren't a bitch to program, like the Chroma, or anywhere near as rare. I guess they base their choices more on the popularity of certain vintage synths.

[trogluddite]

Hmm - couldn't be Ruby, this doesn't have any.

KROMA flexPatch -> Shelf Filt_mv -> Matched 1Pole Low Shelf -> HS Coeffs. I don't think the Ruby itself is a problem, it's only a bit of maths.

Seems to be OK, though, when I reload the version that I loaded and re-saved (just to change to ASIO instead of DS). Maybe just one of those intermittent FS-version things that sorts itself out once it gets a kick from a trigger?

[k brown]

Ah ha, I just didn't dig deep enough; Martin doesn't seem to use Ruby that much.

[trogluddite]

I guess they base their choices more on the popularity of certain vintage synths.

Yes, sadly that seems to be the way - as with so many things these days, brand recognition takes precedence. Part of what makes your synths interesting to me is discovering some of these lost vintage models for the first time and getting to play with updated versions of some of their innovations that seem to have been lost in the rush to perfect virtual-MiniMoog/TB303 version umpteen.

[k brown]

Umpteen and a half.

I must admit, the first thing I did when I realized 104 years ago what SM could do, was a minimoog. Then I woke up and realized that what was most remarkable and memorable; why it's had such legs, is it's unique sound, not that it was so interesting as a synth - very limited. Especially way back then I hadn't a prayer of producing that in SM. Spogg probably comes pretty close with his A.S.S. (no jokes - I hope we're done with those!

By the way, you got me thinking about a synth all in mono/blue, and the things that are uniquely possible therein, I think I may try it with my mashup of the Roland SH-5 and SH-7; I think they were two of the most interesting non-modular monosynths of their day. Or maybe my take on the Yamaha CS-30 (kinda obsessed with 'dual line' synths [or, of course theKwad]).
Have you or anyone else following this thread converted an entire project from poly to mono - is it a huge headache?

[trogluddite]

Have you or anyone else following this thread converted an entire project from poly to mono - is it a huge headache?

I've only ever really done one whole synth that way plus a few little experiments. On the whole I didn't find it too bad, as most stream components are stream-type agnostic - they'll just follow whatever connector type they get plugged into. The two parts that need to change most fundamentally are the MIDI-to-voice assignment and the envelopes.

The simplest way to handle the MIDI-to-voice would be just to set the usual M2V to have only one voice of polyphony and then use Poly-to-Mono primitives on its outputs before they get sent to the synth. Alternatively, you could use something like the custom voice manager that I posted a while back; though for a strictly mono synth, that may be overkill, aside from allowing you select what note-priority you want and a few other parameters that the M2V doesn't have.

Envelopes would also have to be customised to use explicit gate/trigger connections, as the stock ones use the (strictly poly) "hidden" stage triggering behind the scenes. The download below is the custom one that I made for mono-synths; just a basic ADSR with gate input, but it work like a proper mono-synth envelope, where the attack doesn't reset to zero at the start of a voice, but picks up where it left off, to avoid that nastly "sucking out" of the sound when a new note interrupts a long release of the previous note.

mono_envelope.fsm

(1.23 KiB) Downloaded 1117 times

You then have a choice about how to implement multiple paths through the synth. Anything that will work with blue mono will usually also work with blue mono4. So if you have a module for generating a single oscillator/filter/etc., you can often get it to generate another three for free by using packing and unpacking primitives to pump in the parameter values from the additional controls - you can get a lot of "bang-for-your-buck" CPU-wise that way in a mono design.

[k brown]

Thanks for the 'mini-tut', and the EG; I'll have a play with the notion, but a whole synth will have to get back-burnered for a bit while I do some further work on the ESQ-1 inspired project that Spogg and tula started long ago and put so much work into. It was quite a project, and has all the actual sounds of the ESQ-1 and SQ-80 instruments.