Originally I started making them because I had a specif need for a patch. However quickly it turned into something I was doing just because I hadn’t been programming in ages and really enjoyed diving into it again. That also means that I honestly haven’t used my own modules outside of one single patch I use for testing.
Because of this I don’t really know if they are all that useful to others - and I would love your thoughts so I can improve them.
Some of the things I would love to know:
Which modules do you find the most useful? And why?
If you could make a small change to a module, what would it be?
Are there any modules similar to the ones I’ve already made, that you are missing?
Feel free to add any other comments you feel like.
First, congratulations on your modules, they look both useful and well designed.
If I had one suggestion, maybe it’s not the most rock and roll feature request, but a manual on what each module does would be great (even if it just a couple of lines, really )!
Hi Thomas,
first a big thank you for your modules and your effort to make something usefull for VCV.
I like your modules, imho they are a nice addition in VCV environment.
Tho I like they simple UIs, I would like that they would bea bit easier to distinguish.
and a dark edition would be cool.
@23volts - Yeah, you’re right. I’ll make sure to do that @rsmus7 - I very much agree, they are a bit hard to distinguish - I’ve even had this problem myself during testing. Will definitely look into this. And a dark theme should be doable as well
Ok, so three things on the list I’ll definitely do:
Dark theme.
Some design alignment issues (reported at Github).
I’ve done a little exploring on them. I find them pretty intuitive and useful. I personally never use single-waveform oscs in patches (I usually want to experiment), but I’d find more use in a “Tiny Osc” that included multiple waveforms. Bonus points if it had Octave and Coarse tune knobs.
Waves took some figuring out (“where are the Wavetables…oh wait…oh I get it…this is cool!”) but that will be super handy. That’s one that could probably use a manual the most. Also, I’d LOVE the ability to export wavetables as .wav files if that’s at all a possibility. Seems like it could be an interesting wavetable generation tool for other synths.
Could you elaborate a bit on how ‘Octave’ and ‘Coarse’ tune knobs are different than the existing ‘Freq’ and ‘Fine’?
Just wrote a section on Github about the Wavetable Oscillator. Probably needs improvement, but should get people started.
How would you expect the WAVs to be exported from the Wavetable Oscillator? Just three single cycle waveforms, or with a number of intermediate waveforms as well? Or is there an actual wavetable WAV format that I’m unaware of?
@thomassidor The current frequency knob has a 3 octave range right (-3 to +3)? But how would I just quickly tune it to a fifth or a minor third? Whereas something like Bogaudio’s Stack snaps to semi-tones and octaves. That’s what I was basically envisioning.
Multiple waveforms can exist in a single .wav file to create a wavetable that can be read by other synths. Usually there’s a fixed length (in samples) for each waveform (256, 512, 1024, 2048 probably the most common), then other plugins/synths can load the .wav file as a wavetable. I believe Serum and Hive both default to 2048 samples per waveform, the latter of which can even accept different sizes.
For instance, from the Hive Wavetables.PDF…
Hive can load wavetable files in either .wav or .uhm format.
The former is easily described: Mono or stereo WAV files are interpreted by default as having a cycle length of 2048 samples per frame – the number of frames is calculated from the total size of the file and is limited to 256. To specify other samples-per-frame values, the file name must end with “-WT” followed by the number e.g. MyWavetable-WT512.wav (or 64, 128, 256, 1024).
I find your Tiny Tricks modules very interesting to work with, the simple uncluttered design works well for me and often I look for 3HP. Have been experimenting with “Shepard - Risset Glissando” and it is not uncommon for me to use many oscillators. Having the oscillator sync is a welcome addition for this. 3HP fits so well on a small screen with so many modules to adjust.
The stochastic nature of your modules enables me go further with this effect and am intrigued by the possibilities. Organized chaos is fun.
Being new to modular am picking up so much knowledge, and was eagerly awaiting your wavetable oscillator – I saw the image on your github – as I knew it would enable me to learn more about the subject. I believe the simplicity of it’s design has helped and was pleasantly surprised to find the wavetable saved inside the preset, 6125 lines of numbers. And am fascinated how this relates to the sound we hear. On Wikipedia it gives me a good start, although I have a way to go. I would be keen to know about the basis or history of your module if any and if that is the correct question
it would be a nice addition imho if we could choose the range of the S&H and Generator modules, like it it is possible in the Bogaudio ADDR Seq for example. In the right click menue you can choose the range from -10v/10v
to many different ranges like 0v/1V, -3v/3v etc… (please have a look at the Bogaudio modules)
and one more question, when I set the Modulation Generator to Uni it still gives positiv and negative values, I would expect this to be Bi, is it intended to work like that? What is the Bi/Uni switch for then?
@Tony: Honestly there’s not much thought behind the wavetable module other than “hey, it could be cool to do a wavetable like module… I’ll do that.” The reason it became a module where you had to record your own waves was (1) because I thought that would be useful and (2) because I didn’t want to create a whole bunch of wavetables to include. I’m glad you noticed that the wavetable is part of the save file - that’s perhaps the part with the most thought behind it as I wanted it to be part of the save when people share their projects.
@rsmus7: A more controllable S&H module has been on my list of ideas for quite a while. I’ll move it further up
@rsmus7 and @Yeager: I’m not able to reproduce this. When I set it to UNI i only get values somewhere between 0 and 10.
Could you try to screenshot your setup?
It could also not be a bug, but be an example of why a manual is needed? The way the module works is basically to give you a LFO with random frequency and shape or a random S&H value (if the S&H switch is at 1. There’s a 50/50 chance you’ll get either a LFO or a constant S&H) when it’s triggered.
VAR sets how different the settings for the LFO and S&H will be when regenerated.
E.g. setting VAR to 0 will give you a LFO with the same frequency everytime (although the shape of the LFO changes).
BIAS is defining the average of the values generated.
Think of BIAS as being a centerpoint and VAR as a spread to both sides.
)!
The reason it became a module where you had to record your own waves was (1) because I thought that would be useful and (2) because I didn’t want to create a whole bunch of wavetables to include. I’m glad you noticed that the wavetable is part of the save file - that’s perhaps the part with the most thought behind it as I wanted it to be part of the save when people share their projects.