Bazille 1.0

[pdxindy]

When I first got into Eurorack, I was mostly experienced with well behaved synths which would always perform as expected. Getting started with my first modular synth was frustrating because things didn't always work the way I'd expect and it was often difficult to get predictable results even with conservative settings and simple sounds. Rather than giving up on the modular, I ended up embracing the chaos. I found that when I couldn't predict the outcome of a patch I was more inspired and I thought less about the technical details. I forgot (or maybe just neglected) the notion of a "correct" patch.

Bazille is the first soft synth I've used that rewards that approach. I think it has as much to do with the limitations as with the deep flexibility. It's like any great set of tools, more than the sum of it's parts. I had hoped that Bazille's sound and features would appeal to others as it has to me. I'm glad to hear it's been successful.

Bazille is what is saving me from the many thousands of dollars for a modular system! That and my inherent laziness (Bazille saves patches)

[T-CM11]

I have never heard a VST that sounds like this, because normally when making presets, almost everybody who makes them, tries to make them sound good. And musical. I was amazed at many of the presets that came with the demo.

Many of Bazille's presets sound good, AND musical.
So wait until somebody makes presets to your liking, or move on. I'm sure there's enough plugins that have the sounds you like. But is there a point you haven't made yet, because you've been repeating the same thing over and over again?

[basslinemaster]

Why spend time ignorantly pissing in other people's pool when you could happily be swimming in your own ? (pool, not piss)

"ignorantly"... LOL. So in other words, we have to say we like what we hear, or shut up... Who is "pissing" in anybody's "pool"? What are you talking about? If it actually sounded good to you, you wouldn't be bothered at all by anybody saying it sounds pretty 'unmusical'. (That's being generous).
I'm sure most synths could be made to sound as 'unmusical' as the sort of demos of Bazille that are in this thread, but nobody wants to make those sorts of sounds... Suddenly with Bazille, 'bad' is 'good'.

[cwig]

Well, I hope so. I can't believe it is only (or mainly) capable of what I (and I'm sure the majority of people - i.e. people who listen to music, not just Bazille owners.... LOL) consider 'not very musical sounds'...

What do you mean by "musical sounds"? Care to name some of your favourite music?

[pdxindy]

Some more Bazille...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/B62.mp3

[T-CM11]

Anyway...
For me, there's only one thing that I would like to see added: Audio input as modulator.

[Numanoid]

Hope the u-he team can do some magic with the CPU usage too, it is rather craving

[V0RT3X]

Hope the u-he team can do some magic with the CPU usage too, it is rather craving

Considering what it's capable of I'm surprised there isn't actually more CPU usage. I imagine they will find code optimization though, like they did with Bazille. I'd like to see a oversampling algorithm implemented in it to let you render really high internal oversampling to reduce aliasing for some sounds.


Btw I love how if you plug a cable into the last sequencer it turns it into a 16 step sequencer! This is brilliant!

[ghettosynth]

When I first got into Eurorack, I was mostly experienced with well behaved synths which would always perform as expected. Getting started with my first modular synth was frustrating because things didn't always work the way I'd expect and it was often difficult to get predictable results even with conservative settings and simple sounds. Rather than giving up on the modular, I ended up embracing the chaos. I found that when I couldn't predict the outcome of a patch I was more inspired and I thought less about the technical details. I forgot (or maybe just neglected) the notion of a "correct" patch.

Bazille is the first soft synth I've used that rewards that approach. I think it has as much to do with the limitations as with the deep flexibility. It's like any great set of tools, more than the sum of it's parts. I had hoped that Bazille's sound and features would appeal to others as it has to me. I'm glad to hear it's been successful.

Bazille is what is saving me from the many thousands of dollars for a modular system! That and my inherent laziness (Bazille saves patches)

I remember feeling the same way about the first Nord Modular. I was right in the midst of deciding to build/buy a hardware modular when I bought the Nord. That thing saved me a lot of money over the years because it allowed me to learn what I needed in a modular. I almost certainly would have had the giant pointless modular. Now I have a very small analog modular and I use DIY to keep it that way.

I agree about the limitations though. When the Nord first came out you were limited to 44 modules. While I was very happy to see that limit removed, it taught me a lot about rethinking overly complex patches and how to use modules in novel ways.

One of the things that I really liked on the Nord and is not present on Urs' synths is that the gate/trigger inputs were also totally modular. For me, this is a big part of what makes modulars interesting, it's not just the audio path, it's modularity in the control path.

[Numanoid]

I only got an i3, playing a chord (three notes) in Bazille, brings the CPU meter up to over 50 in FL Studio.

Good job I can uncheck the HQ option, but still with that done it can reach dizzy-ing heights.

[pdxindy]

One of the things that I really liked on the Nord and is not present on Urs' synths is that the gate/trigger inputs were also totally modular. For me, this is a big part of what makes modulars interesting, it's not just the audio path, it's modularity in the control path.

That has been a repeated request for a couple years... maybe in a future update!

[V0RT3X]

I only got an i3, playing a chord (three notes) in Bazille, brings the CPU meter up to over 50 in FL Studio.

Good job I can uncheck the HQ option, but still with that done it can reach dizzy-ing heights.

My i7 quad seems to handle it fairly well.

I guess you'll have to freeze your parts for now

[pdxindy]

I only got an i3, playing a chord (three notes) in Bazille, brings the CPU meter up to over 50 in FL Studio.

Good job I can uncheck the HQ option, but still with that done it can reach dizzy-ing heights.

My i7 quad seems to handle it fairly well.

I guess you'll have to freeze your parts for now

Yeah, I wouldn't expect the cpu use to go down. Audio-rate modulation and the modular nature just uses more cpu...

[liv]

Anyway...
For me, there's only one thing that I would like to see added: Audio input as modulator.

While at it, four outputs.

[ghettosynth]

Hehe, what amazes me the most is that after two weeks of release we had sold more Bazilles than we had sold Divas in a year. For some reason, "awkward for some" is the new analogue. We hadn't expected this, but one can imagine that we're very happy - it's our most successful product release, by far.

That is an interesting tidbit of info. Perhaps with Diva, people felt that had similar bases covered with other synths (even though obviously Diva has great sound and some tricks up it's sleeve).

With Bazille, there's not much out there like it.

One has to control for the expected growth of the brand in a general sense. It's very difficult to asses these kinds of things experimentally, i.e., you can't reverse the order of the releases. You also have to control for how much awareness of the product was generated by the quite long public beta and discussion.