Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[baconpaul]

Thanks Steve.
The hardest part about this project is the inconsistency of windows hosts with zoom. What we need more than anything else is a windows C++ developer who has grappled with hosts. I've never even heard of Sonar Platinum and don't know how to run it etc...

It's already published as an github issue by me.
Cakewalk by Bandlab is the successor of Sonar Platinum.

Gotcha. Thanks. https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge/issues/816 yup see it there.

Still no idea how to fix it. There must be some message that this host need that others don't which may or may not be part of the VST API. Like I said, if you have friends or colleagues who have done windows plugin development, run this host, and have grappled with these issues, we would welcome them on the project.

[AJYoung]

But: The command in the GitHub repo can be typed into a windows command line if you have python3 in your path, which if you install python3 using the windows installer, you should. Does that help?

Good news! I got it to work (sort of).

A couple of notes:

1. The call on Windows is actually "py", not "python" or "python3" as shown.
2. Python requires "/" for filepaths, not "\" (which is what Windows uses when you copy & paste a path).
3. Python doesn't like filepaths with spaces in them. So I had to wrap those folder names in quotes.

For example, this is the command prompt entry that worked for me:

Code: Select all

py Desktop/"Surge Wavetable Python Script"/wt-tool.py --action=create --file=C:/Users/"<User Name>"/Desktop/"Finished Wavetables"/BassTables01.wt --wav_dir=C:/Users/"<User Name>"/Desktop/"Reaper Conversions"/"BassTables 01"/

Now, comes the next issue:
My created wavetables crash Surge when I load them.
On latest Reaper, whole DAW just closes after a brief pause.

I ran info on it, and this is what it put out:

Code: Select all

contains  256 samples
  of length 2048
  in format int16

I think I remember reading that Surge doesn't support length 2048 (which is what Serum uses), so I shortened them all in half using Reaper, ran the script again and made sure via info:

Code: Select all

contains  256 samples
  of length 1024
  in format int16

Still crashing unfortunately

Edit: Would you like me to create a github issue and send you an example file that crashes Surge?

[baconpaul]

But: The command in the GitHub repo can be typed into a windows command line if you have python3 in your path, which if you install python3 using the windows installer, you should. Does that help?

Good news! I got it to work (sort of).

A couple of notes:

1. The call on Windows is actually "py", not "python" or "python3" as shown.
2. Python requires "/" for filepaths, not "\" (which is what Windows uses when you copy & paste a path).
3. Python doesn't like filepaths with spaces in them. So I had to wrap those folder names in quotes.

For example, this is the command prompt entry that worked for me:

Code: Select all

py Desktop/"Surge Wavetable Python Script"/wt-tool.py --action=create --file=C:/Users/"<User Name>"/Desktop/"Finished Wavetables"/BassTables01.wt --wav_dir=C:/Users/"<User Name>"/Desktop/"Reaper Conversions"/"BassTables 01"/

Now, comes the next issue:
My created wavetables crash Surge when I load them.
On latest Reaper, whole DAW just closes after a brief pause.

I ran info on it, and this is what it put out:

Code: Select all

contains  256 samples
  of length 2048
  in format int16

I think I remember reading that Surge doesn't support length 2048 (which is what Serum uses), so I shortened them all in half using Reaper, ran the script again and made sure via info:

Code: Select all

contains  256 samples
  of length 1024
  in format int16

Still crashing unfortunately

Edit: Would you like me to create a github issue and send you an example file that crashes Surge?

I’m glad you got it to work!

A github issue with the offending .wt file attached in a zip would be great. Things that make surge crash get my attention indeed, so would love to be able to try and reproduce it.

[AJYoung]

A github issue with the offending .wt file attached in a zip would be great. Things that make surge crash get my attention indeed, so would love to be able to try and reproduce it.

So I think I've narrowed down the issue. I'll write something up on GitHub here in a bit, but I think it has to do with wavetable file size. I can get the wavetables to work with lower numbers of waveforms in them, but it will crash with higher numbers (such as the 256 in a Serum wavetable).

[planetearth]

Thanks Steve.
The hardest part about this project is the inconsistency of windows hosts with zoom. What we need more than anything else is a windows C++ developer who has grappled with hosts. I've never even heard of Sonar Platinum and don't know how to run it etc...

It's already published as an github issue by me.
Cakewalk by Bandlab is the successor of Sonar Platinum.

Thanks, @Saffran. And @baconpaul, you can get a free, full-featured version of Cakewalk by Bandlab for testing--no strings attached.

From what I've seen, Cakewalk by Bandlab handles VST implementation the same way Sonar did, since they're mostly the same code. For the most part, Bandlab just renamed the DAW when they bought Cakewalk's assets. They've since added their own stuff, but they didn't re-code the DAW from the ground up.

Steve

[planetearth]

Thanks Steve.

The hardest part about this project is the inconsistency of windows hosts with zoom. What we need more than anything else is a windows C++ developer who has grappled with hosts. I've never even heard of Sonar Platinum and don't know how to run it etc... VST2 also has wildly inconsistent resize support (VST3 is a bit better) but the api to host to resize is also not uniformly implemented. If you would like to, please feel free to add Sonar as a mis-zooming host in a GitHub issue though.

I do test FL20 in my regular windows testing (along with bitwig) and can tell you that with this release FL20 VST3 works fine.

As to the installer being 3.5x the size from January: The January build shipped with zooming but not with high res bitmap assets. So it shipped with about 408k of bitmaps. In late january we moved to bitmap assets (8164k of bitmaps) and in this release changed to SVG (2840k uncompressed). You are correct they would compress well and we ship them uncompressed now. If you would like to add the compression/decompression code I'd be happy to walk you through how I would do it! It's a bit tricky to make it work with mac, windows and linux since they all have different asset loading paths - but not impossible.

But it isn't what's causing the growth. The biggest change in the size of the installer from January is that we have added about 20mb of new wavetables and patches as esaruoho worked to find patch packs which people donated, and layzer added a bunch of wavetables from his work doing various modeling. Hope you enjoy the new content.

Thanks for the explanation of the size issue. Now that I know it's mostly just new wavetables (which I appreciate!), it make a bit more sense. I just wanted to make sure the .ZIP file or internal executable(s) weren't somehow corrupted.

Steve

[zzz00m]

Thanks Steve.
The hardest part about this project is the inconsistency of windows hosts with zoom. What we need more than anything else is a windows C++ developer who has grappled with hosts. I've never even heard of Sonar Platinum and don't know how to run it etc...

It's already published as an github issue by me.
Cakewalk by Bandlab is the successor of Sonar Platinum.

Cakewalk by BandLab is free (Windows only). Get it here: https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk

[baconpaul]

Thanks! I added that to the github issue. Would still be great if we had a windows dev who could debug it! But if not, perhaps I can take a look one day when I have nothing else to do. (Right now I’m in the middle of the VCVRack Surge adaptation which is super exciting but not gonna fix bandlab!)

And appreciate all the feedback. But please do remember if you know C++ devs who would like to help also happy to help onboard them!

[baconpaul]

A github issue with the offending .wt file attached in a zip would be great. Things that make surge crash get my attention indeed, so would love to be able to try and reproduce it.

So I think I've narrowed down the issue. I'll write something up on GitHub here in a bit, but I think it has to do with wavetable file size. I can get the wavetables to work with lower numbers of waveforms in them, but it will crash with higher numbers (such as the 256 in a Serum wavetable).

Oh yeah there’s some upper limit. But surge should give a clean error message in that case not a crash! If you can add that fact as a github issue I can take a look and at least make it tell you “sorry” on the screen with a clean message.

From the code: looks like these are the limits

const int max_wtable_size = 1024;

const int max_subtables = 512;

[PietW.]

Is it allowed to post the 1300 wavetables in wt format from Arty here?

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Is it allowed to post the 1300 wavetables in wt format from Arty here?

Yes why not?

[PietW.]

ARTY 1300 Wavetables in WT-Format
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2dokrzoh9kviu ... es.7z?dl=0

[cantaloupe]

Is microtonal support planned for this? Having an up-to-date freeware synth of this complexity and quality with microtonal support would be fantastic. I find the sound quality of this thing endearing, almost like a lo-fi 90s digital vibe. And i love the GUI and workflow so much.

[zzz00m]

"Lo-fi 90s"?

What kind of earbuds are you using?

[baconpaul]

Is microtonal support planned for this? Having an up-to-date freeware synth of this complexity and quality with microtonal support would be fantastic. I find the sound quality of this thing endearing, almost like a lo-fi 90s digital vibe. And i love the GUI and workflow so much.

I actually have a branch that reads .scl files and retunes s the synth accordingly. I plan to get it in before 1.6.0 - that is before the summer starts. There’s a github issue on it you can follow if you want to be updated