Developer Fund

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niversen
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by niversen »

I would be a huge fan of that idea,John. My interest in the Waldorf Quantum is precisely to have playable, keyboard accessible ability to make and play those sounds. Same with the Yamaha Montage. I don't really need another sampled piano and such. The updated FM engine and the thoughtful real-time control capabilities seem quite nice.

Analog (generally speaking) and virtual analog (on the Solaris) are in wonderful shape in late 2017. Software developers are still timid about burying multi-core CPUs in pursuit of sound quality. I wish someone would build something that crushed 8 or 10 cores and used 16G of RAM if it needed to, but sounded amazing and had real subtlety of expression and nuance. So much synth modulation is coarse and lacks the natural variation of playing an acoustic instrument - there is so much room for someone to invent a better envelope scheme than ADSR. Something like a harmonic envelope that varies the individual harmonics over time - like an acoustic instrument. Wolfgang Palm is on the journey, but there is so much room for real innovation and creating the next "big thing". There's no way his VST is using 1/4 of the power available in the Solaris DSP. Things that resonate don't do so equally, and crude filter and amp envelopes are never going to get synthesis where it is capable of going for expressivity.

My sense is that the Solaris is pretty much the only hardware synth with enough DSP on board to truly go after digital synthesis modes at an extreme quality level. The control surface on the Solaris is large enough that there is room to map an extended set of non-analog parameters. Sysex means that iPad and software control over things is possible. Without making a new hardware box, the bones are there to re-invent the Solaris and give it a different heart. I'd be perfectly happy to boot it up in VA mode, shut it down and then boot it up into some brand new mode that fundamentally re-configures the DSP to make a different instrument. You would no doubt be swamped with people asking to have their cake and eat it too, but I'm sure there could be a special "oscillator" that when selected, reconfigured the machine. The next patch could be VA, like normal.

I believe there is a definite opening for playable, hardware, keyboard digital instruments. There is the new Quantum. There is the Montage. There is the C15 from Non-Linear Labs, which is wildly cool, and clearly capable of much more than has been demo'd, but without MIDI, I'm just not interested. I wouldn't include the Modal 002 in this list- it has "digital" waves, but is really just a very full-featured subtractive synth. That's not a long list, or in any way exhaustive coverage of the digital possibilities. I don't think we have yet reached the point where VST's can match 6 SHARC chips for realtime work. Maybe Zebra? Despite the renaissance in modular synths, cheap mono synths, etc, the future of synthesis is surely digital - we have not yet figure out the possibilities or the control surfaces. What is the next logical step that bridges us from where we are to the future? Too far,and you have a Haken Continuum that is awesome, but limited due to its unfamiliarity. The Solaris architecture certainly seems capable of being that bridge to me.
david
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by david »

Any news on this?

I’d love for someone to get started on a utility/librarian.

I keep putting off organizing presets cause it’s no fun :(

Keep us updated.
amongstmyselves
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by amongstmyselves »

I'd gladly pay for a new OS.

Something not mentioned that I would love to see is multisample playback based on something like a SFZ file which allows multiple samples, loop points etc. I understand we are limited to 32M of memory for samples but that would be fine. The resulting SFZ multisample would be a waveform option to all 4 oscillators.

Steve
John Bowen
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by John Bowen »

david wrote: Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:15 pm Any news on this?

I’d love for someone to get started on a utility/librarian.

I keep putting off organizing presets cause it’s no fun :(

Keep us updated.
OK Everyone! I have a response from MIDi Quest regarding a full-fledged editor software package. The estimated cost is $10,000-$14,000 to develop it. This would be $50-$100 per person, depending. Please let me know how many would be interested.

John B.
david
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by david »

John Bowen wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2018 8:06 am
david wrote: Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:15 pm Any news on this?

I’d love for someone to get started on a utility/librarian.

I keep putting off organizing presets cause it’s no fun :(

Keep us updated.
OK Everyone! I have a response from MIDi Quest regarding a full-fledged editor software package. The estimated cost is $10,000-$14,000 to develop it. This would be $50-$100 per person, depending. Please let me know how many would be interested.

John B.
I’m definitely in for $100 for an editor!!

Only question is whether Midi Quest is the best shop to build it

I think I heard their stuff can be buggy

Maybe you can also get some other programmer options

Editor / Librarian has got to be 100% solid
Weston Underwood
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by Weston Underwood »

$200 is fine. Only thing I'd add is a nice implementation of Karplus Strong.
Benoist Guitton
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by Benoist Guitton »

I would *** INSTANTLY *** pay Jim Hewes for the job already done on the Solaris OS and Solarium further development ( provided he has the time )
The Solarium approach is the most effective for a complex synth like Solaris, Jim has a Solaris and has successfully tweaked the OS for the benefit of all existing owners :D

Instead of wires though, I would use names slots for the in ports ( inspired by Vaz Modular ) because on "dense" presets it looks like on a real modular :(

That would require " horizontal compression " because the full Vaz Modular approach won't cut it vertically to have it all without scrolling ...

Add some customizations for fonts / background and I would very happy ( like LFOs green background, font color per LFO ) 8)
minorguy
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by minorguy »

Just to explain my thinking...because I believe someone else was also not liking the wires too. The intention was to show things graphically rather than by text. I thing it's easier and faster to get a sense of how a preset is set up by seeing graphic connections. Looking at text requires a different side of your brain, analytical thinking rather than creative thinking. Also, looking at Vaz Modular just as an example, while it's easy to see which modifiers are affecting, say, a filter because they are all together there, it's not as easy to see what all is being affected by the joystick. Or, "Is the ribbon doing anything in this preset?" In Solarium you click on the ribbon element and its connections turn red, so it's easier.
Finally, don't forget that you can fade the wire outs if they get too busy---I also sometimes thought presets were too complex and there were too many wires. The nice thing about building your own software is that you get to do what you want. :)

Further, if you're going to show the connections as text anyway, then the hardware UI is already good for that!

Jim
Last edited by minorguy on Tue Feb 13, 2018 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Solaris #249
david
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by david »

Benoist Guitton wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2018 12:50 pm I would *** INSTANTLY *** pay Jim Hewes for the job already done on the Solaris OS and Solarium further development ( provided he has the time )
The Solarium approach is the most effective for a complex synth like Solaris, Jim has a Solaris and has successfully tweaked the OS for the benefit of all existing owners :D

Instead of wires though, I would use names slots for the in ports ( inspired by Vaz Modular ) because on "dense" presets it looks like on a real modular :(

That would require " horizontal compression " because the full Vaz Modular approach won't cut it vertically to have it all without scrolling ...

Add some customizations for fonts / background and I would very happy ( like LFOs green background, font color per LFO ) 8)
What if we gave Jim Hewes a budget to supervise other programmers to do the detail work?

This would enable him to build out his vision, but minimize time spent on the more tedious details, and speed up development time.

Good point on fonts, I just that ask you can make the type BIG and maximize the space it takes on the screen.

I am. Having a harder time looking at screens for programming as I get older ... err I mean ... wiser. So I use BIG font. Some plugins can’t do that.
Benoist Guitton
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by Benoist Guitton »

@david : I'am for whatever works / can be done without reinventing the wheel / recoding / wasting time and money... etc :)

@jim : I understand why you stick with wires so I'll deal with it ! I hope though you'll consider some kind of " branching " to reduce the amount of wires, most simple case is Seq A modulating one module of each " type " : single wire inport / outport running left to right instead of 5 + wires to inports

Visuals could be complicated vertically ( imagine LFO1 modulating everywhere ) : one link for upmost modules then halfcircles for connections below ( first thoughs on implementations )

Below 2 scary presets displayed in Solarium : Bank 3 - Prog 67 and Bank 5 - Prog 46 ( why an editor can help ... a lot ! )
https://image.ibb.co/eLFNBS/Bank_3_Prog ... Pulsed.jpg
https://image.ibb.co/jZDLy7/Bank_5_Prog ... orf_02.jpg
jfinstad
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by jfinstad »

Just found this thread - I'd be in for $200.
niversen
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by niversen »

I'd be happy to chip in for an editor. $100-$200 is fine.
inaheartbeat
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by inaheartbeat »

Just tripped over this thread so I apologize in advance if I post a bunch of replies instead of one lengthy one. I absolutely would contribute $200 to this effort.

Regarding separate versions of the OS for those that contribute to this effort and those that don't, I am a software engineer by training. I am wildly against that idea even though it would on the surface seem unfair. I think it would cause the code to be less stable to have multiple branches and a stable Solaris is important to me. It would also mean wasting time and money incorporating a licensing scheme into the system which is just one more thing that can go wrong.
John Bowen
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by John Bowen »

Yea, we don’t really want to have two code bases to keep up. As for a licensing scheme - the Solaris has internal code that allows for secure operating system management, so that someone who didn’t pay for the upgrade would not be able to use the OS.
inaheartbeat
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Re: Developer Fund

Post by inaheartbeat »

John Bowen wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 7:00 pm Yea, we don’t really want to have two code bases to keep up. As for a licensing scheme - the Solaris has internal code that allows for secure operating system management, so that someone who didn’t pay for the upgrade would not be able to use the OS.
So if you agree with me that you don't want to have multiple code branches then how would you even work out a licensing scheme? What would you be licensing? It's a genuine question and not a statement disguised as a question.
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