Gosh, this Synth

[Aelyn]

My apologies beforehand, but this has to be one of the most underwhelming releases of a new Synth ever.
I was fairly excited when I heard about v2, but that makes it only more disappointing.

Don’t even know where to start…, let’s see…, ok CPU usage is nuts.
Below a 1:1 comparison with Serum 2, which is kinda infamous for being a CPU hog:

… and …

Crazy. I somehow suspect it has to do with the fact that CE2’s Oscillators can’t be deactivated (why the heck??). The volume is turned down on the Mixer, but that’s about it.
So it seems all four OSCs are always processed at any time, which would certainly affect CPU performance.

And there’s so much more…

Still no resizing options between 100% and 125%. I can’t read sh*t on 100%, and 125% doesn’t even fit the 1920x1080 screen (already reported four months ago…).

No Macros, which is odd for a brandnew Synth these days.

“Scale Lock”: nice to have, but apparently not really working.
Below you can see Pitch/Degree on OSC 1 modulated by a S&H LFO, scale is locked to Eb Minor.
But the output pitch is random, like in the screenshot it’s E2

(it’s just an example, the output notes are allover the place)

There’s still no documentation about the file specs for importing own WaveTerrain images. After four months…
Not even one word which file types (.png, .jpg, …) are supported. Also the slider for resizing disappears after importing images. Entire thing already reported ~four months ago.

I’m awfully missing a Latch/Hold mode on an otherwise sophisticated Sequencer/Arp.
This is especially annoying because at the same time the Seq is blocking CC64 Sustain…
So no way to latch the Seq…

Thank God there’s a onboard Limiter, because a large portion of the factory presets are clipping like hell…

You can only adjust the main volume in “Advanced” mode…

There would be more of course, but I guess it’s enough for now.

It’s a bloody mess.
Frankly I got no clue what the folks down there at Scaler Music were/are thinking…

[aggghost]

@Aelyn

modulated by a S&H LFO, scale is locked to Eb Minor.
But the output pitch is random, like in the screenshot it’s E2

Never used this synth, don’t know anything about the rest, but this specific thing isn’t a Scaler Music issue. That’s just fundamentally how a sample & hold circuit works:
You get random noise (pseudorandom, but that’s not super important) continuously running the background, some sort of trigger also external to the S&H circuit (MIDI clock, gate, another LFO, VCO, etc.), and the S&H circuit itself.

1. Noise is fed into the S&H circuit.
2. The trigger tells the S&H to read the value given by the noise at that exact moment. This is sample.
3. The S&H’s memory device does what memory do best; it retains the sampled value. This is hold.

There’s nada tostada in that pipeline to quantize those sampled & held values into bins that align with specific notes. I’m old, so let’s just say your S&H’s output can be any value from 0-255. It lands on 69. What note is that? The S&H doesn’t know. Until it’s triggered to sample the noise again, all it knows is 69. Nice.

So somewhere between the S&H and the destination is where you’d have to “auto-tune” your 69 to a value that is pre-mapped to cause the destination, whether it’s a filter, oscillator, or a thawed veggie burger with an electric probe shoved in it, to produce a note in Eb Minor.

I’mma take a wild guess that when you hit scale lock, it transposes incoming midi notes into the scale on-the-fly. It probably also makes the Degree knob snap to pre-set frequencies which are in that scale, right? And your expectation is that Degree should snap to those frequencies still when it receives a value from S&H, correct? I don’t think you want that.

Why?

Degree just knows the value being sent to it. Your MIDI notes are quantized to Eb Minor, you can only turn the knob to frequencies in Eb Minor, but S&H can send it whatever value is equal to 84.23Hz. Degree doesn’t know, understand, or care where that value is coming from. Degree just knows the value being sent to it. So why doesn’t scale lock do its job and smack my pitch up to 87.307 where it’d be in key? I don’t think you’d want that either.

Why (part two)?

Switch S&H to triangle if that’s available. Does degree smoothly sweep up and down, or does it snap to frequencies in Eb Minor the whole way up and down? My intuition is that it’s smooth. My intuition is also that you would very much expect it to be smooth, even with scale lock on, regardless of whether you’re sending it to gain for a tremolo effect, to degree/tune for vibrato, or to a filter for wahs and wubs. But it’d be super counterintuitive for LFO values, especially the famously randomly stepped output of S&H, to default to a wack, diatonic, logarithmically scaling type of aliasing. Certainly cool sound design possibilities, but it’d be hella confusing.

Again, I don’t know this piece of software at all outside of your screenshots. Maybe it has a module in there that can take your S&H value and map it to in-key frequencies for any parameter you’re trying to control. That’d be cool as heck. I just couldn’t sit idly by and let someone bully an innocent little manic pixie S&H LFO. It’s sOoOoO rAnDoM on purpose and it can only remember one number at a time! Be gentle!

Source: Impatiently bashing my head against soft synths and ROMplers for a quarter century instead of actually taking the time to learn what was going on under the hood along the way.

[davide]

Wow I think there’s some constructive feedback amongst that diatribe. Let’s hope you are not a primary school teacher! So if I break it down:

1. CPU intensive - it certainly can be when using the musical filter and unison (64x instances) but one note on our setups works exactly like other synths. You don’t mention your specs but I assume something not modern.
2. You don’t like the resizing. I would like this improved but there are always development constraints and we are looking at 10% increases so this should make you less grumpy.
3. You would like to be told that you can import .png image files into WaveTerrain - I mention this in my videos and the manual talks about importing images - when you import what file types are allowed in your browser?
4. You would like a Latch?
5. You don’t really understand how Scale Lock works?
6. You don’t like the synth

I think there’s a few good points in there but hard to decipher when it’s wrapped up in the bathwater. FYI - we love CE2 and worked very hard to make something different which it certainly is. I still use Serum and all my other synths alongside CE2 but if I am making grooves whilst Sound Designing there’s nothing like it. Is it perfect - of course not and like all of our products we will improve it. Especially with nice people giving us good feedback.