RAPID Synthesizer | Rapid 1.8.0 released | Free "SP - Granular Elements"

[Soundplex]

EDIT: Changed "developer" to "sound designer" because the Parawave post above made it clear that he's not the developer. I assumed he is part of the development team because he also posted the question about the new filters.

No no you're right. I too remember him writing pretty clear he's part of the dev team, not just the sound guy. I know that because until that point he only advertised the synth and spoke positive as if he was not part of it, only a beta tester or so. Then suddenly he mentioned being affiliated with the company and the product. Later on revealed being part of the dev team spending time coding stuff. Then I couldn't take his praise for the product serious anymore due of the bias.

[docbot]

About the "bitch" thing again. I think the problem gets lost in translation - both developers are german, I speak german as well and get the feeling the relation to english swear words is a different one for german people, for them they are maybe not perceived to be as strong, they mainly experience them in movies and music, so whenever they get used, it's more a thing that verbally links to a sort of heightened reality from entertainment and is meant to be ironic.

To maybe understand why some people find this offensive mirko/rene here is a simple question:

Would you put in a preset called "Räum mein Zimmer auf Hure!"? I very highly doubt it. And yes there's also german rap artists like Bushido using such language, while still being in the Top 10 - still very unlikely someone would use that language in german for presets at a respectable company.

[parawave]

On a side road, I am now very curious about the relationship between the Developer (@parawave, who I now assume is Rene) vs @Mirko_R who is the sound designer, as represented above.

With Vengeance I know their Rene K does the programming and Manuel does the sound design. There is a clear cut differentiation between the sound designer and developer.

It's not really that important, since it doesn't affect this discussion.
The developer / vendor of Rapid is Parawave Audio, which is in legal terms a company.

Mirko Ruta is a freelance sound designer and developer (aka https://ruta-sound.com) who works for various companies, including reFX, Vengeance, NI. Contract based.
He developed parts for Rapid, but is not the developer/vendor. There is an important legal distinction, since he is not an employee but a seperate entity. Hope that clarifies it. Anyway. Even if contracted, he deserved the credit, right?

To my knowledge it's similar with Vengeance. René K. is not part of Vengeance. He is from Keilwerth Audio and develops parts for Vengeance. Not sure, but it could also be described as developer and publisher. There are two logos, never noticed that?

[Mirko R.]

Is there anyway this thread can return to the topic?

Yes please, lets return to Rapid. I am thinking about to develop new special filter-types.

Ideas:
- filtertype morphing (hp/bp/lp)
- filter combis (lp+notch)
- some special lowpasses
- new bandpasses/highpasses (that was in discussion here in the past)

Any wishes or ideas for some special stuff?

I want a per Oscillator Pitch knob right now you can only map an LFO or envelope to the pitch of the entire patch if you want to go into crazy territory (more than 12semitones).

What do you mean? You can modulate the "semitone" with a mod-source (like LFO). The "semitone" parameter is stepless in the modmatrix and goes from -96 up to +96 semitones.

[parawave]

EDIT: Changed "developer" to "sound designer" because the Parawave post above made it clear that he's not the developer. I assumed he is part of the development team because he also posted the question about the new filters.

No no you're right. I too remember him writing pretty clear he's part of the dev team, not just the sound guy. I know that because until that point he only advertised the synth and spoke positive as if he was not part of it, only a beta tester or so. Then suddenly he mentioned being affiliated with the company and the product. Later on revealed being part of the dev team spending time coding stuff. Then I couldn't take his praise for the product serious anymore due of the bias.

This is probably a misunderstanding or was a wrong wording.

Initially he was not involved at all. Then he became one of the first beta testers.
Since he is a sound designer that lead to him creating sounds for it. Due to good collaboration and his constant feedback it lead to more contract work and finally to him coding parts for Rapid. Not being part of the dev team, since he is not an employee. I'm not sure how common this knowledge is, but you can develop standalone DSP algorithms without touching another project.

Would you say the developer zPlane is part of this or that plugin because a company bought and included a license for an algorithm? No. The same with Rapid. And there is really no reason why we should explain all of these legal and licensing matters to our customers. Does NI do this? No, they have a credits list of involved people. Are they all employees? Maybe some. The thing is: No one asks!

Of course he is biased. Anyone involved in a product is biased, since he is somehow profiting from it. That's part of the reason why we can't take some Rapid critics seriously when we clearly see their repertoire is highly biased to another synth.
You can still look at the product and assess it for yourself, right?

The thing I'm getting at. Please stop writing things like: He was lying or deceived people. That's just not true. It was just a fluid process and the type of involvement changed over time. Hope that is understandable.

[zvenx]

On a side road, I am now very curious about the relationship between the Developer (@parawave, who I now assume is Rene) vs @Mirko_R who is the sound designer, as represented above.

With Vengeance I know their Rene K does the programming and Manuel does the sound design. There is a clear cut differentiation between the sound designer and developer.

It's not really that important, since it doesn't affect this discussion.
The developer / vendor of Rapid is Parawave Audio, which is in legal terms a company.

Mirko Ruta is a freelance sound designer and developer (aka https://ruta-sound.com) who works for various companies, including reFX, Vengeance, NI. Contract based.
He developed parts for Rapid, but is not the developer/vendor. There is an important legal distinction, since he is not an employee but a seperate entity. Hope that clarifies it. Anyway. Even if contracted, he deserved the credit, right?

To my knowledge it's similar with Vengeance. René K. is not part of Vengeance. He is from Keilwerth Audio and develops parts for Vengeance. Not sure, but it could also be described as developer and publisher. There are two logos, never noticed that?

Hence indeed why I said side road

And yes I do notice the two logos, which is why I was much clearer on that relationship. Although I guess the difference is that here the developer is parawave and the product is under paraware whereas avenger is manuel's vengeance product but the developer is not from vengeance.

I was just curious.
Thanks for explaining same.
rsp

[yellowmix]

Looking into this and checking about 2500 preset names, the only mention of "Bitch" or other probably offensive words is in the Arpeggiator preset Clean Up My Room Bitch [...]

It's easier to memorize patches if you can visualise things or even tell a small story.

What kind of story are you visualizing when you read that preset name? Help us understand where you're coming from.

[rezoneight]

Someone said well its ok to say bitch because they do it in rap music. They also say the n-word a lot and last time I checked that one isn't ok (so much so I wont use the real word here). "Bitch" applied to the context of a person is offensive. You can joke about it or whatever but its offensive. If that's what you want to be known for, one preset out of thousands or not, that's your choice but I don't see Roland or Moog naming presets that way.

[MissOptimyst]

While I appreciate the men trying to defend the honor of women...

It’s a preset name. It’s a joke, guys. I’m a female and I started cracking up the first time I played the B Clean My Room preset. That sound with that name. Pretty provocative.

There are some things I can be a bit PC about sometimes too, but this ain’t it!

[SoundHunterrr]

If the developer responded correctly, acknowledging the point which he should consider looking at to the benefit of the product being sold, then there wouldn't have been several pages on this and the discussion would have moved onto something else.

Sorry for all the normal people and user that had to bear this.

Now the official developer commented. But it did not really make situation any better.

1. Developer was accusing user for making them look bad. But! The user did not make the offensive preset name yes?

2. Developer did not apologize for using offensive words. Instead called some people “normal”. OK! I am NOT normal since I also find this behavior offensive, it is not only the word used in preset name but this very behavior.

3. I am not native English speaker, and even I know word like b*tch is not a good word.

4. Rap music is rap music. It is not a VST instrument aimed for everyone to use. Rap music is quite often insulting lyrica/words.

[AnX]

if it was called bitch bass, or bass bitch for example, it prob wouldn't be seen as offensive by most

'clean my room up bitch' seems to imply (from what I can gather here) that it's a man telling a woman to do a job

so the term (bitch) becomes more offensive in the context of "cleaning is womens work" and the manner is which it is said (an order, not a request)

so its not the word itself, but the context....

am i right? is that what's causing the uproar?

[SoundHunterrr]

if it was called bitch bass, or bass bitch for example, it prob wouldn't be seen as offensive by most

'clean my room up bitch' seems to imply (from what I can gather here) that it's a man telling a woman to do a job

so the term (bitch) becomes more offensive in the context of "cleaning is womens work" and the manner is which it is said (an order, not a request)

so its not the word itself, but the context....

am i right? is that what's causing the uproar?

This but also not only, also the response from sound designer & now also developer.

[AnX]

if it was called bitch bass, or bass bitch for example, it prob wouldn't be seen as offensive by most

'clean my room up bitch' seems to imply (from what I can gather here) that it's a man telling a woman to do a job

so the term (bitch) becomes more offensive in the context of "cleaning is womens work" and the manner is which it is said (an order, not a request)

so its not the word itself, but the context....

am i right? is that what's causing the uproar?

This but also not only, also the response from sound designer & now also developer.

yes, just read the parawave response, comes across as a total bitch*


*not offensive, he said so himself

[parawave]

...