Absynth wish list for future versions

ok, some personnal wishes

It would be important to "Re-Think" the midi controls
which are really reaaaally messy !
for example you just have well programmed some multisliders, fine, then,
trying to modify or just add one of them, totally blows the CC assignements
(that makes me really nervous...)
...fixing the well known bugs before inventing some
other (great no doubt) functions, I'll (we'll) appreciate

...also, making some serious test which Max-Msp, that would be nice,

...making the retrigger parameter controlable by midi ??not a bad idea I guess
... ...
thank you NI team if your can ear that

 

Hi Norman - how's it going anyway?

It won't happen because of business restraints.

But the time is not the problem I believe. Cakewalk for instance shows that it's possible to release a new version every year and to keep up on the bug fixing nevertheless. They're highly respected by their customers because they show that they care. Their staff, in particular CTO(!) Ron Kuper, is present on the forums and answers questions on a regular basis - and these are not official support forums either.

Noone can expect software to be perfect in our glitchy world, that's true. But it would help a lot if NI would decide to keep us, their customers, informed about development and explain the problems. There are many people here who'd be willing to help sort out the problems and make the software better, for the benefit of all.

werner

 

Not sure what you mean, care to elaborate? I have no problems with the CC assignments.

You mean retrigger on envelope page? Yes, that'd be interesting.

werner

 

i've said it before, and i'll say it again, simple onboard eq and compression! or some way to easily hear patches run through other effects in standalone. absynth is great but it desparately needs a good reverb (like spacemaster2 in reaktor). i know that i can just put them together through sonar (or whatever sequencer program you're using), so it's not an end of the world concern, but i would love it so much to be able to program in standalone.

this is a total pipe dream, but it's much more significant. i wish they would but a full blown fm matrix in absynth so you could have the oscillators modify one another, especially if they could feedback to modify themselves. that will really and truly never happen, but if you could smash fm7 and absynth together it could turn out to be the ultimate soft synth. imagine being able to set voice one to an fm pattern with each oscillator modifying itself, and then using that to modify voice two, and finally having a third fm pattern for voice three. that would RULE. i can't pull it off in reaktor, but it would dominate my synth rack forever if someone could make this work.

 

For your compression use the master waveshaper, jopy. By keeping the input levels to it fairly low it'll work as a simple compressor.

The FM idea's an interesting one; I like that.
You COULD pull it off in Reaktor, but if you're using enough multipoint envelopes to get Absynth- style control I'd hate to see the CPU usage ...

ew

 

I also have a small suggestion.
I use absynth quite allot for making drumloops. or other kind of loops. and to keep everything in time I have to use the grid. but what if you could set the grid to a timesignature instead of just in seconds. for example 3/4 or 5/6 or something so you can easily sequence something with the envelopes in the timesignature you're working in.

 

Use the retrigger mode. Then, your grid is in 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32, depending on what you select. If you don't want the envelope to retrigger, just set the beats to the maximum...

ew

 

I think I'm getting it now. Do you mean that the MIDI sliders on main page can change their position and even may disappear if you add more CC assignments? If so:

• Absynth doesn't show all assigned controllers as sliders. They're limited to 11, including volume and pan. Additional assignments will work nevertheless when operated with a controller. And yes, this IS annoying!
• The sliders are sorted according to the CC numbers. And this is annoying as well. It would make much more sense if the user could determine a fixed order.
• If you disable a channel in the patch window and switch to main page, all sliders that are assigned to envelopes of this channel disappear. They're back again after re-enabling the channel, but the labels are gone. And this I consider a bug.

werner

 

I'll agree with that, Werner...

ew

 

I figured you might... ;-)

 

Dreamkeeper:
The sliders are sorted according to the CC numbers. And this is annoying as well. It would make much more sense if the user could determine a fixed order.

****

Yes, that's what I meaned by "messy"
but you had well clarified the things

E

 

bah, i want full on multiband compression!

 

Aside from fixing the hanging note bug the only change I would really like to see is the ability to to modulate the input to the effect unit instead of just having the dry/wet mix at its output

 

Oh yeah another thing the ability to create your own snap grids in the envelope window for easily creating grooves... or multiple breakpoint selection where you can select breakpoints in the same way you select files in windows by control clicking i.e. any particular breakpoints and not just one after the other.

 

While we're at it, let's import groove templates.
And now we can select multiple breakpoints, it would be good if we could copy and paste them. And can we have twice as many breakpoints please.
A delay on each oscilator would come in really handy and lets bump that noise generator.

 

My suggestions so far:

- Addtional effects such as convolution and maybe something along the lines of Spektral Delay in there (wishful thinking).

- Grids in the envelope window that can be user definable and not just synced to beat division. I would love for the grid to be displayed as milliseconds as well.

 

Another one which would be seriously useful... I know somebody has already mentioned bi-polar envelopes which is essentially what I'm suggesting here but I'll say this anyway. When using several envelopes to control a single parameter I've found myself quite irritated at the fact that any envelopes after the first (well the first too when I think about it, I've just gotten used to it) can only be used to subtract from the current value of the parameter it is controling, which is quite a hindrance when it comes to composing evolving melodies by using pitch envelopes of varying lengths.

 

The hanging notes! I thought it was just me with my Protools rig, this is common then ! Ahhh....

Ok - my wish list today has MIDI Controlled Slope points on it, would be fab for putting a bit of expression in.

And some stereo options on the Unison mode would be nice ...

 

You have MIDI controlled slope points already. Click on a breakpoint and click on the MIDI tab. You can set controllers for amplitude and time for each breakpoint that way...

ew

 

I've got that, it's the curvy-ness I want to play with not the time or the amplitude of the points themselves.