LinPlug

BlackWinny · Post by **BlackWinny** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 3:07 pm

Hi Peter

I love LinPlug VST's. I'm a user of them.

But why only 16 notes of polyphony for Spectral ?

Spectral has huge qualities... But despite all these qualities there is ONE thing (only ONE thing) that will keep me from buying Spectral for the moment. Is is its very little polyphony : only 16 voice polyphony! It is very surprising when we know that all the other LinPlug products are 24, 32 and even 64 voice polyphony. With only 16 voices... Spectral becomes the plug-in having the most little polyphony in all the LinPlug catalog!

16 voices... it is very, very, very quickly reached when we use the sustain or layers or when we have a rapid and dense playing.

Look at the high point of illogism: with only 16 voice polyphony... Spectral features 4 oscillators and even an arpeggiator! Mathematically there is something illogic because it will necessary lead to ruptures in the envelopes, loss of notes, and obviously gaps in the play in something as elementary as a single chromatic scale ascending! A current figure within so many others for a keyboard player...

Nowadays polyphony is very very very important with the new styles of music (even with the old "classic", "jazzy" and tons of "rock" styles)... and it's even a top critical parameter for many musicians!

I really hope that Spectral will be improved to at least 24 voice polyphony, it is the minimum nowadays. If not, I and many other musicians will certainly prefer to keep from buying Spectral or will very soon leave it in the depth of their computer... and it is absolutely certain that it will be really a big, big shame for a product that has so many qualities!

I really love LinPlug VST's... But with only 16 voice polyphony, as many other musicians I shall not buy Spectral until an improvement to at least 24 voices, because (and for this lonely reason) I already know that with only 16 voices the polyphony is far too little for my playing and the playing of many, many keyboardists. Particularly for an instrument providing 4 oscillators and even an arpeggiator!

Is there a hope to improve this very quicky or at least in a very short term?

Thank you!

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 3:18 pm

Particularly for an instrument providing 4 oscillators and even an arpeggiator!

what relevance is the number of oscillators it has to its polyphony?

ariston · Post by **ariston** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 3:23 pm

Just guessing here, but I'm pretty sure it's on purpose so as not to overload most folks' cpu. Spectral can really tax your system, especially when using a lot of voices.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 3:25 pm

True, but it's a valid point. Why not have 32- or 64- note polyphony for future, more powerful CPUs?

Ameyah Audio · Post by **Ameyah Audio** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 3:49 pm

EvilDragon wrote:True, but it's a valid point. Why not have 32- or 64- note polyphony for future, more powerful CPUs?

i ask myself the same here. it runs good on my 8core AMD CPU.
i see hardly a difference when turning on more voices on 1 OSC.

im sure we will get an answer on that.
64 voices sounds for me really good.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 4:34 pm

I don't get why you need more than 16 voices of polyphony for a single instance of Spectral.

The polyphony setting in Spectral is a global setting for the whole patch. The polyphony setting is also independent from the voice number set for the different oscillators. More voices in the oscillators will not have an influence on the number of notes that could be played but it has influence on the CPU load.

Based on that even with maximum voices in the oscillators usually a polyphony of 4 is already enough for playing chords. It will become a problem if you want to play more than 16 notes at ones but that usually should not happen.

Ingo

Peter from LinPlug · Post by **Peter from LinPlug** » Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:57 am

Thank you guys, the next version will have 32 notes. It not really costs to have them available, it only costs to use them

BlackWinny · Post by **BlackWinny** » Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:06 pm

A big thank you, Peter!

For new products it's always better to think with the close future (not necessary far) rather than to fix limits according to the present stock in use (do we say "fleet"? I'm french). In the next two years, almost all the living computers will be able to use 32 voices with their CPU (the Moore's law remains valid for about 5 next years before its death), either by the natural replacement of the computers... either by the single replacement of motherboards (and CPU's) definitively out of order. And for the current CPU's that will be still living it remains always still possible to autolimit oneself the voices to use in the VSTs in one's computer. Everybody will be happy to have yet a 32 voice VST the day the computer or the motherboard/CP is replaced.

solidtrax · Post by **solidtrax** » Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:19 pm

Peter from LinPlug wrote:Thank you guys, the next version will have 32 notes. It not really costs to have them available, it only costs to use them

In my experience, Spectral can be very DSP hungry. I would love to be able to configure it to run on lower quality, so that I can continue to play a track containing multiple instances, without the need to freeze tracks. Maybe this option is already implemented, but I didn't find it.

I'm having a LOT of fun with this amazing synth, that's for sure!

Ameyah Audio · Post by **Ameyah Audio** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 9:36 pm

Peter from LinPlug wrote:Thank you guys, the next version will have 32 notes. It not really costs to have them available, it only costs to use them

32 this will bring my CPU to cry if i let them all play

thanks Peter!

LinPlug

KVR Audio

Spectral : Why a so little polyphony?