Plugin Boutique's Carbon Electra

[EJRAudio]

Two weeks later I haven't heard back from squigls regarding their "issue".

No one involved in this project has been able to reproduce such an issue on any of the systems, OSes, hosts and configurations available to us. Being able to reproduce an issue is needed in the process of identifying the cause before a solution can be found.

There are two possible ways in which the plug-in could act in such a way:

1. If the host loads the project then instructs the plug-in to switch to another preset (obviously the plug-in would obey)
2. If the serial key is invalid and the copy protection does not operate correctly (it would operate in demo mode)

Unfortunately I have requested that sqigls provide me with a copy of their user bank file to diagnose this issue but this was met with a flat refusal and I haven't heard back from them since a few hours after my last post.

We had a similar communication via the support channel near the beginning of this year with the same outcome: the user refused to follow instructions and wasn't heard from again.

If anyone ever were to run in to a similar problem or any other problem with this plug-in; please contact either Plugin Boutique support directly (they handle a wide variety of products) or you can contact myself (the author of the main parts of the plug-in) via this account.

[ttamelbon]

Hi EJRAudio,

I also experience the same issue with Carbon Electra and would be happy to give you whatever help you need to figure out the issue. Please let me know what you need and how I can transfer it to you, and I'd be happy to do it. I quite like the synth, but the number of patches I've created and lost makes me shy away from it in a project.

Cheers,

Matt

[sqigls]

Two weeks later I haven't heard back from squigls regarding their "issue".
...
Unfortunately I have requested that sqigls provide me with a copy of their user bank file to diagnose this issue but this was met with a flat refusal and I haven't heard back from them since a few hours after my last post.

yeah, KVR a user contacts me, with 0 posts at KVR, requests me to send them one of my system files (admittedly at first i thought was a keyfile and a scammer, but was simply a user bank), sorry if my refusal was a tad blunt, but dude, searching your email address led me to a few random weird websites and not to anything related to Carbon Electra. So alarm bells were ringing. After that, coupled with the fact that apparently mouse wheel support is gonna take weeks to implement and probably never going to happen, I sold my license. I'll buy it again when mouse wheel support is added. I can't use plugins without mouse-wheel support anymore. I don't care how good they are.

[EJRAudio]

Technically the mouse-wheel works fine in the existing version. There is a disablemousewheel executed on startup if the plug-in is running on MacOS. That is because the typical Apple mouse configured with default settings has the threshold too low and will slightly nudge knobs when you move the mouse and the palm of your hand activates the wheel feature.

That was added by request by users of Apple mice. In retrospect I wish I hadn't so easily accepted this and I should have fought against it. Unfortunately it is now too late to "fix" such things by adding a lot of code that should have been implemented before the product was originally released. These are details that ought to be handled in the design phase and in this case the design specified that mousewheel would be disabled on MacOS.

[ttamelbon]

I just wanted to post that EJRAudio contacted me very quickly after I posted here and, with a few emails back and forth, was able to send me a new exe which seems to have completely cleared up my saving issue with Carbon Electra. He was a class act all the way. Too often we hear about the complaints but not enough praise when somebody comes through and solves a problem.

Anyway, thanks for everything and keep doing what you do!

Matt

[exmatproton]

so...is it fixed?

[EJRAudio]

Anyone with this issue should contact me directly via PM until such time as the fix is complete, confirmed and the version distributed by Plugin Boutique has been updated.

It seems some hosts send a set preset instruction to the plug-in immediately after loading the project. This causes the plug-in to follow the instruction and load a preset from the bank which overwrites the current preset which had been loaded along with the project.

The only solution to this problem is to ignore the set preset command from the host. I've been able to apply this to the plug-in on Windows and you can contact me for this beta/fix version as a temporary solution if you experience the problem.

[EJRAudio]

Plugin Boutique has released v1.5 of Carbon Electra which is a free upgrade to existing owners available through pluginboutique.com

This version should cure all known issues and includes many new features.

I'm sorry about the delay in a release of the official version. That's almost entirely on me so my bad.

The timing just didn't work out quite right and I regret that anyone had to suffer with those issues.

[sqigls]

Thank you Elliot!

[Teksonik]

Saw that it's on sale now. Installed the demo. Nice synth but drowned in a sea of competition....

[sqigls]

Carbon Electra is a tight and punchy synth. Very snappy. The effects are great too.
For $50, man, i don't care how many synths a person has. It's my go-to.

[Teksonik]

That's nice I'm glad it's your go to. It would struggle to make it onto a track here....too many other choices.

Doesn't mean I wouldn't buy it on sale just for a weekend's entertainment. Cheaper than going to the movies.

[EJRAudio]

I'm not sure what you're looking for in response to your post.

I agree there are a lot of plug-ins available on the market and I agree it gets to be hard to continue to droll on and on with more of the same old stuff.

I do think Carbon Electra has a few great things to offer that aren't available all in one place if you give it a chance. It's really personal preference. I would point out the new Sallen-Key filter modes which are interesting when you adjust the mixer levels (try -12 dB to +12 dB) and most of all in the way they self-oscillate and overdrive from RES 80% to 100%.

The "step envelope" also looks boring at a glance if you don't realize it's actually a unique combination of a graphical envelope you can draw with points and curves. It isn't the same old "bezier curve" thing either. This uses Davide's "step stencil" idea so you can very quickly rough-out the shape you want and then switch to edit mode to tweak curves or points.

Another main point is that if you compare synthesizers with "feature vs. feature" you can lose sight of what you're really aiming for. Carbon Electra isn't designed to cover every possible feature. It's designed to get you quick results without a huge amount of effort. Think in terms of "okay so I can route OSC 9 to LFO 12 using page 6 to adjust the blend mode with a delay on FX page 3 ..." I'm sure that's amazing and like heaven for some people. Just not for everyone!

[Teksonik]

I'm not sure what you're looking for in response to your post.

I'm not looking for anything. I'm simply stating my opinion.

you can lose sight of what you're really aiming for.

What I was aiming for when I tried the Carbon Electra demo was something I can't already do with the other synths in my arsenal. I did not find anything. Like I said it's a nice synth but drowned in a sea of competition here. Carbon sounds good just not good enough for me to reach for it over the other choices I have at my disposal. I would probably never use it in a track but I might consider buying it on sale just to have some fun creating patches for it.

[sqigls]

please, tell me more.
what colour sweater were you wearing?