Surge synth-- excellent, powerful, MPE, FREE and open source

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I just discovered a marvelous, powerful, MPE, free and open source synth called Surge:

https://surge-synthesizer.github.io

Here's what I like about it:

* Very wide variety of continuous timbre variation for the 3 oscillators, with classic waveforms, FM, wavetable, and a unique variant of wavetable called "window". The continuous malleability of these oscillators make them excellent targets for both pressure and Y-axis modulation.
* Two filters, each of which can be one of 8 filter types, including (one of my favorites for Y-axis control) a comb filter.
* Just about anything can be modulated by just about anything.
* Very flexible audio routing.
* Two "scenes", each of which includes all of the above.
* A simple and logical one-screen UI that belies its power.
* Plenty of effects including delay, reverb, EQ, phaser, rotary, limiting, frequency shifting, vocoder, and a very well-designed distortion processor that is easy to make sound like a guitar amp because of its pre-EQ (to simulate a guitar amp's tone stack), soft clipping and post-EQ (to simulate a guitar amp's speaker cabinet).
* It runs on Windows, Mac and a Linux version is coming.

The MPE-focused preset sounds are limited but I'm hoping people will contribute more expressive MPE sounds to the project. I know I will.

Here are a few tips, all accessed from the "Menu" button in the lower-right corner:

1) Turn on MPE mode.
2) Either change the default MPE Bend Range from 48 to 24 to match LinnStrument's default, or change LinnStrument's Bend Range to 48.
3) The UI is pretty packed so I recommend zooming it up to 125% or 150%.
4) There's a link there to the manual, something that every synth should have.

I wondered who created this marvelous piece of code, so I did some digging. It put a smile on my face to learn that it was originally created by Claes Johanson, the principal creator of Bitwig Studio.

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Nice! 🤘

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The KVR one synth challenge just finished yesterday... Lots of inspiration for that synth. It seems that the synth jumped off since it was open sourced...

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Wow! This is a fantastic synth, from having just messed around with it for a couple hours. It's pretty cool that anyone who buys a LinnStrument can know that they can have an MPE synth of this quality for free. Thanks for the heads-up about this one Roger.

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Thanks a lot Roger! I had read about Surge before, but never knew it was MPE.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 6:29 am The KVR one synth challenge just finished yesterday... Lots of inspiration for that synth. It seems that the synth jumped off since it was open sourced...
This is a link to the 37 submissions for the One Synth Challenge #122 if you are interested in what others are accomplishing with Surge:

https://soundcloud.com/kvrosc/sets/one- ... -122-surge
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I noticed today, while trying Surge in Bitwig, that Bitwig considers Surge to be a "redundant" plug-in. It won't show in the devices list unless you click the "Show # redundant plug-ins" at the bottom. I'm not sure, but I think that Bitwig may consider it to be redundant with its own built-in Polysynth, even though they have different presets for them.

Also, I could not get Bitwig to pass MPE data to Surge. Or rather, I couldn't get Surge to do any pitch bends at all in Bitwig. Curious if any of you have further insight in this. I was able to get pitch bends using Surge in Ableton, with Ableton's known limitations in MPE support.

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It shows up here as all other synths. You have to put MPE mode on in Bitwig, it does not know it automatically...

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There is a VST canDo() string for "MPE", I just looked at the Surge source code and it is supported:

Code: Select all

VstInt32 Vst2PluginInstance::canDo(char* text)
{
   if (!strcmp(text, "receiveVstEvents"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "receiveVstMidiEvent"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "receiveVstTimeInfo"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "receiveVstSysexEvent"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "midiProgramNames"))
      return -1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "2in2out"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "plugAsChannelInsert"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "plugAsSend"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "MPE"))
      return 1;

   if (!strcmp(text, "sizeWindow"))
       return 1;

   return -1;
}
So Bitwig must be messing up somewhere if you have to manually set it up!
Bitwig, against the constitution.

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Looks capable, but those presets are pretty bad. Not very Linnstrument-friendly, hardly any pressure effect.
Last edited by mbsq on Fri May 10, 2019 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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[deleted]

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@Tj Shredder & BobDog

Thank you for your insight. Took me a bit, but I found the setting in Bitwig 2.5. It's not called "Force MPE Mode" anymore, as shown in the tutorials I found online. Now you have to select the device at the bottom of the screen (not the track) and then the device options appear in the left panel. Then you can select the "Use MPE" option. I hope that is helpful to someone else. I couldn't find any help articles on the subject.

I wrote up a very lengthy post about trying to get Surge to work with MPE in Ableton, detailing all the truly bizzare pitch bend behavior I was getting (it was completely ignoring the MPE Default Pitch Bend setting in Surge, among other things), but I deleted everything I wrote when I figured out what was wrong. After trying things out in Reaper, I realized that it was just Ableton's terrible MPE support that was messing things up. I had also tried it with Juhot's MPE_Util script, but it still wasn't working right. Came to realize that for some reason Surge only shows 3 MIDI In channels in Ableton, so if you want any MPE support in Ableton you have to limit Linnstrument to only cycle 3 channels in ChPerNote mode. It works properly if you do that. I wasted most of the evening figuring that one out.

I'm getting great performance in Bitwig now. Reaper seems to get buffer-underruns quite easily with the same driver settings as Ableton and Bitwig, so I have to figure out that mess. With that MPE setting checked in Bitwig though, it's the best experience I have with Surge out of the 3 DAWs.

Surge sure doesn't seem to use the Ch. Pressure much. Maybe it's just the presets. Going to have to try to make my own, since the current MPE presets leave a lot to be desired. "Sticky" is fun though.

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I just want to take a second here to thank you guys...

You know, for reminding me why I almost exclusively use hardware (smirk).

Cheers!

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+1 for Surge. Great and expansive open-source synth. A lot of depth to this one and a perfect compliment to the LinnStrument!
Duality without regard to physicality

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I've attached five sounds I made for surge, mostly recreations of sounds in my Logic sound file. To use them, open the Surge window then in the lower-right corner, click Menu > Open User Data Folder. Place these sound files in that folder and relaunch Surge.

The sounds are:
LS Blues Harmonica
LS Lead Guitar (not a great guitar tone nor great amp sound, but a nice start)
LS Wurly
LS Z>Filter Y>PulseWidth
LS Z>Octave Y>Chorus (actually Y>CombFilter that becomes chorus if you move your finger a lot)
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