Oh my goodness - that patch is brutal on the CPU! It is the first one I have run across that I cannot run at 48kHz on my M1 MacBook Air. Not on my Windows machine either. Both work at 24 kHz however - not ideal, but better than nothing. Of course the Instruo module is missing in ARM mode on the Mac.
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Yes, the patch has become a bit too large. (It was just too much fun to add more and more voices and Benjolin expanders 
) Same problems for me, at some point I had to go down with the sample rate to continue working on the patch. The recording is made with 44.1 kHz, and not listening to the crackling on the audio output while recording. Luckily just the start button click and the fade-out at the end was needed to record.
Good to know, thanks.
I have a new Venom update almost ready to go that significantly improves performance of the Benjolin Volts and Gates expanders. But it doesnât really help your patch. Your patch has a large number of Surge XT and other modules that are relatively expensive. No one module is particularly bad, but it collectively adds up.
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I love the VCO LAB! Iâm always looking for the best goto analog oscillators for me and this one is a really solid choice.
Only gripe I have with it is that itâs so big - i think a mini VCO LAB with just one oscillator with morphable waveform would be a very nice addition.
Maybe with just one row of the modulation matrix, without the offset and instead a waveform shape mod input.
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Interesting idea - thanks. I too sometimes lament the size.
Iâll have to think on this one. No promises.
Interesting that you call VCO Lab an analog oscillator when it is pure digital with very pure and exact mathematical implementations, without any analog modeling. I wouldnât know where to begin to create a VCO based on analog modeling.
But I do agree it consistently produces welcome tones, regardless what modulation you throw at it.
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By analog I just meant non-wavetable basically
Ideally I would have one oscillator that does everything thatâs possible so I never have to make a choice about which module to replace it with⌠your oscillator covers everything that would be possible with analog oscillators I think, plus the phasemod, donât know if thatâs possible in analog.
Plus the DC filter kind of âanalogizesâ the waveforms, and together with the shape it covers a lot of range.
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VCO Unit is almost complete! I just have to work out the dynamic configuration of the Shape Mode control as the waveform changes.
Thanks for the suggestion @Schabbes . Soon I wonât feel so âguiltyâ using a Venom oscillator for simple use cases. This will be in release 2.10. I have some more VCO Lab enhancements, as well as a couple additional new free modules planned for this release. I will start a Venom Development topic soon, with this upcoming release as the opener.
In the mean timeâŚ
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Venom 2.9.1 has been submitted to the library with some relatively minor Benjolin Osc and expander enhancements:
2.9.1 (2024-09-08)
Enhancements
- Benjolin Oscillator
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Added menu option to configure Rungler DAC to use bits 6,7,8 as Rob Hordijkâs original design instead of bits 2,4,7
My default use of bits 2,4,7 provides for more variability to the available Rungler patterns, but I figured I should make the original design available.
-
Significantly improved CPU usage of Volts and Gates expanders
-
It still has not hit the library yet, but you can download the binaries yourself at
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v2.9.1 just hit the library late last night!
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Also like analog in that there is very little aliasing?
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Thanks Squinky - that certainly was a goal
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Very nice!
I donât know what you mean by âthe dynamic configuration of the Shape Mode control as the waveform changes,â though
I thought it would be best to continuously morph between the waveshapes, and since the offset doesnât make too much sense with only one oscillator, maybe get rid of it and make this the morphing between the waves instead, so that could be modulated, too.
FYI - I have moved development discussions to a Venom Development blog
I think the offset still makes a lot of sense for LFO mode, so I donât want to lose that.
The Wave switch selects the base waveform.
For shaping, Sin, Tri, and Saw will preserve the log/exp, J curve, S curve, rectify, and normalized rectify modes. Square will preserve PW 3%-97% and 0%-100%. This is what I meant by dynamic configuration of the shape mode - square has different options than the others.
I plan to add the following additional shape modes:
- Saw: morphing from square to saw to even - demo at Constructing a Befaco even waveform with VCO Lab - #5 by DaveVenom
- Square: morphing from triangle to square to saw
- Triangle: morphing from sine to triangle to square
So no one waveform will support morphing between all waveforms. But three of them will offer interesting morph transitions to two others. I specifically chose those combinations because I like how the timbres/harmonics morph. Most importantly, the saw morph mode provides access to the even waveform found in the Befaco Even module.
I demonstrate these transformations in my development blog, which is a good place to go if you want to continue the discussion.
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I just upgraded from Venom 2.9.0 to 2.9.1 and measured CPU load before and after the upgrade with my large âPlanet Runglerâ patch above (many Benjolin Expanders): At 48 kHz sample rate, it went down from average 140% to 130%, so about 10%. Not so bad, good work, thank you! 
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The Benjolin Oscillator is a lot of fun! It really puts out a lot of instant industrial sounding goodness!
I am wondering if maybe it could get the option to change the length of the locked rungler sequence, to get sequences of length x/2x instead of just 8/16 steps, or maybe to reset it with a pulse, or both.
Just an idea to get even more out of it, it is really cool the way it is.
No, not really possible. The 8 or 16 step patterns are the result of the underlying architecture - an 8 bit shift register that can loop the last bit back as input for the first. For an 8 step pattern the 8th bit is preserved and looped. For a 16 step pattern the 8th bit is inverted before looping back. Chaos and evolving patterns are caused by sometimes (or always) allowing pseudo random values as input.
There is no concept of pattern stop and end, so there is no way to reset to the beginning of a pattern.
To allow for longer lengths would require making the shift register larger, but then I donât think I would still call it a Benjolin Oscillator. Also, that would not work well with the existing expanders that expect exactly 8 bits in the shift register.
Thatâs fine, it would also complicate the interface, and itâs really nice and convenient the way it works and itâs possible to extract different nr. of steps other ways - or to just use a touring machine for other lengths of sequencesâŚ
Thought it might be like with the Touring Machine, that the nr. of bits gives the length of the sequence and could be changed.
I believe the Turing Machine uses a second, cascaded 8bit shift register (like a kind of buffer) that can be locked. You can select which bit is outputted when looping, hence the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,12,14 and 16 length (not 9,11,13 or 15)
You are correct - changing the number of bits in the shift register would change the sequence length. That certainly could be done. But as I said, that would also impact the expanders, and stray from the Benjolin architecture in a way that does not meet my goal for the module.
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I am working on your wonderful âSolar 42â patches from patchstorage and wonder why new patch connections are always in orange. No matter what color you choose, the color of the connection is always orange and I canât understand why this happens.