Thoughts on Matthew Friedrichs Floats module (clone of Make Noise Maths)?

:+1:

I have been notified of updates to Friedrichs’ modules several times over the course of the year. I don’t know if I’d say that development is brisk, but it is happening.

Right from the beginning, I have used some modules that aren’t in the manager, so that doesn’t bother me. My problem with Friedrichs is the reliance upon Facebook for all news and communication, as I don’t agree with their TOS. But it hasn’t been much of an issue.

I bought Floats when it came out. I contacted Matthew about a VCV 1.x.x compatible update a few weeks ago but have heard nothing back. Looks like my investment in Floats and Hot Bunny has tanked. Would be great to get an update but to be honest, I was throwing money at most of the plugin developers back in the early days when the VCV world was like the wild west. Well worth it at the time to support and encourage plugin development but I probably wouldn’t buy anything that isn’t in the Plugin Manager now.

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You are probably right not to!

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KlirrFactory seems to be quite active…

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I would say take care, but one bad apple does not mean it’s a whole bunch of bad apples. KlirrFactory has been quick to update whenever bugs were found and has kept his plugins available over numerous Rack updates. I can’t recall whether they were ready the day 1.0 came out but if they weren’t they certainly weren’t out much after, and have found Hagen responsive to communications.

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As usual, caveat emptor.

the klirrfactory would be the only one currently outside the plugin manager that i would recommend.

they weren’t as he had to wait to be granted a commercial license. but he was eager to get it tho.

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Sorry, yes Klirrfactory is indeed an exception. I bought into the HOF early on and Hagen has always been excellent to deal with. That said, i’d still like to see them in the plugin manager :wink:

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That’s right I remember now. Thanks for reminding me.

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Looks like floats has been updated to v1. Will probably pick it up at some point now.

Does Floats not exist anymore?

Floats is now named Spike, here’s the link:

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This is the only module that comes close to maths, right?

I’ve read endless threads about comparison of beface and maths yet all end the same way: even if you own rampage, maths is an interesting module.

Are Floats customers automatically spikes customers?

yup

I think so, at least in the Rack universe, although I suppose one can mimic similar functionalities by coupling different Rack modules. Just a guess, but I’d also investigate whether in the NYSTHI collection there could be something near that…
Anyway, as I always try to resort to the manuals at some point, the Floats one gives several use cases and patching schemas, and those could also serve as a reference for alternative patching with no-Maths.
As of the hardware Eurorack world, I am not on that unfortunately, but I’d say that there are more competitors or analogies. If you are in the game, on the ModularGrid website I found this virtual assembly of physical modules for a “no-Math” comparation and it looks quite interesting!

The main value of Maths & Rampage in the hardware world is that they can do so much with clever patching, but does it matter that much in software, where you can have a collection of single purpose modules you can spam?

I’m often guilty of using multiple simple modules where a more complex one like Rampage would elegantly suffice, but is there any guilt to have about doing things the easy way, if I prefer the software workflow and have no plans to ever side-grade from software to hardware?

Even if you use VCV to learn the field before you commit to making hardware purchases, why not learn rampage, a very similar module ported with the blessing of the author, save your money for the real thing, and learn how it differs from Rampage? Does it matter enough to have Maths you’d pay for a clone, knowing that this money doesn’t support the creators of the original?

Might seem like I’m asking rhetorical questions here but I’m sincere.

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I have had Floats/Spikes for a while now, bought it when it was $10, and I never use it. At first, it was fun to try the patch examples in the actual Maths manual to see all the things you could do with it. It does have nice envelopes, like super snappy to seriously slow. However, for me it’s not very intuitive, unlike Rampage which always seemed intuitive. And, I’m not gonna sit there and build crazy self-patched single functions with Spikes when there’s easier modules to do that with. I agree with Aria, in real hardware this might be cool to have a Swiss Army knife module, but in Rack I see no point. That said, I still use and love Rampage, it’s just easy and fun to use.

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I truly admire your approach as much as I follow your works. Yet my setup does not allow me to exhaust my CPU to the limit.

As far as for the support - I surely do not want to support the creator of spikes since they did not work together with make noise. I’d rather pay makenoise for an online module (:

But thanks to you and @AdiQ I’ll stick with rampage for the time being.

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