Quilcom OscVerb: Not actually a reverb!

[tulamide]

@tulamide

Thanks for the info about Reaper. I did what the video said and it worked. The current settings copied over and the copied plugin worked as expected. So I don’t know what to say about what you found!

Honestly, I doubt that you were very precise in your testing. It would have immediately drawn your attention.

Try this. Select a preset, one, that uses the default 1/2 LFO speed. Switch it to 1/8. Turn up the amp knob to get volume pumping on 1/8. Turn up the output volume to 100%. Increase the input gain of the sidechain. Now do a quick copy.

About the LFO sync thing: The signal goes into steep bandpass filters and their output goes into envelope followers for the oscillator outputs. It took some time to get the best settings, but one issue which would affect timing for beats is that the response time of the system varies with the frequencies being detected. This means that lower frequencies have longer attack times. The minimum is 20mS for higher frequencies but it gets quite a bit longer as you go down in pitch. I wasn’t too worried about this because the plugin is meant to operate more like a reverb, but that means you’ll never get tight rhythmic performance from the synthesised tail.
Me calling it “sync” is definitely misleading. I guess it’s a way to simply set ratios to the BPM and the LFOs to each other. I did find it useful to realise that a sine wave LFO (in a midi poly situation) will seem to come in late. That could easily be corrected by adding a phase offset, but would make no sense in the OscVerb.

Too bad. I still see a lot of sense in having an LFO that starts or ends (or both) at full amplitude. I understand the rest. Unfortunately, that also means, it is not more than a study, a proof of concept. Not a usable effect plugin.

[Spogg]

Try this. Select a preset, one, that uses the default 1/2 LFO speed. Switch it to 1/8. Turn up the amp knob to get volume pumping on 1/8. Turn up the output volume to 100%. Increase the input gain of the sidechain. Now do a quick copy.

I did exactly what you suggested in Reaper and it copied perfectly!
Maybe you could try it in Reaper…?

[tulamide]

Try this. Select a preset, one, that uses the default 1/2 LFO speed. Switch it to 1/8. Turn up the amp knob to get volume pumping on 1/8. Turn up the output volume to 100%. Increase the input gain of the sidechain. Now do a quick copy.

I did exactly what you suggested in Reaper and it copied perfectly!
Maybe you could try it in Reaper…?

I don't have Reaper, and don't want to install it.

But I tested with Waveform 13 (most recent) and FL Studio (most recent).

It worked just fine in both!

I made a quick test from scratch in Studio One again. Works just fine.

The difference is, I spent around 2 hours with my project, when that issue occurred at first. These tests didn't last longer than 3 minutes each.

Should there ever be a more refined version of OSCverb, so that it's of more use in a project, I will definitely use it under production conditions again. That should show, if it is something in OSCverb or not.But for now that is all, I can help with. I expect people not playing with it for hours, so I would say it is currently save.

[Spogg]

Ok thanks for testing more and getting back to me. I know these tests take time and probably interrupt what you really want to be doing.

What’s interesting is that Johan has had some strange behaviour with one or two of his synths. He uses an earlier alpha for development and export and tests in FL. One notable thing is that after playing for more than an hour one synth stops responding to knob changes and other things. On my PC I couldn’t reproduce it. I checked for memory leaks and denormals but everything was fine. This was only one synth, I think. Plus, it didn’t always happen for Johan.
If it had been reproducible, I would have reported it on discord, but it wasn’t.

In your case it looks like project running time might be a similar issue. It took me about 2 hours to make the video clips, including many outtakes, and the OscVerb didn’t hiccup, but also I didn’t try the copy thing.

[tulamide]

One notable thing is that after playing for more than an hour one synth stops responding to knob changes and other things.

This is an important detail to know! My brain is already warming up. Some background:
At the heart of programming is memory allocation. Every programming language has a stack and a heap to work with. While the stack is fixed in size, the heap is dynamic. The stack is used for all kinds of typical programming tool stuff, like local variables, method variables, and so on. If the stack is chosen too small, it can't reference those anymore and the program breaks.
On the other hand we have the specific environment of plugins in a DAW. Each plugin is always only ever loaded once. All copies are actually using the very same methods, classes, etc. Only the inputs and outputs differ. However, for several plugin instances, there is also a higher need for variables and such, when things have to run parallel.
It is totally possible, that the stack reaches its limit. Either in C++ (= Flowstone itself) or in Ruby. The latter has a GC, which is a tool that frees us from memory allocation and release. IIRC, a few months ago MyCo decreased the time, the GC is idle, significantly. The more it works, the more it might need on the stack.
I'm not saying, that this is the problem. But it could very well be.

[Spogg]

Very interesting.
I might not have the full picture, but could the issue be related to other programs on the PC hogging memory? I imagine that Windows should prevent that but I’m no expert on such things.

[tulamide]

Very interesting.
I might not have the full picture, but could the issue be related to other programs on the PC hogging memory? I imagine that Windows should prevent that but I’m no expert on such things.

Your instincts are correct. The issue is not related to other programs. It is the plugin, either because of Flowstone/Ruby, or because of us.

[Spogg]

Ok thanks.
I get the idea that as FS creators we can’t do much about it then, to either troubleshoot or avoid this kind of thing happening.