TheTechnobear's SSP development

[thetechnobear]

EDIT:
this topic is for a discussion about my software for the SSP - releases, plans, what Im up to.
please feel free to dive in with your thoughts etc.

I realised however, one ‘drawback’ of this, is my announcements of releases gets a bit lost in comments.
so Ive not created an announcement topic, which (hopefully) will be free from comments, so easy to navigate… you can come back here to discuss releases etc.

TheTechnobear’s Announcement Topic - do not post to it

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I’ve just got my SSP, and I plan to release a few VSTs for it.

The first will be Rngs - a SSP VST version of Mutable Instruments Rings.

I’ve done quite a lot of open source development for many other platforms which Ive always given away free - however, as you can imagine, Ive made quite an investment purchasing a SSP for this development, so I considering ways that user might want to ‘buy me a beer’ , so small donations - perhaps in exchange for ‘early access’ to vsts.

note: I’m under no illusion it’ll pay either my investment in time, or the ssp, but perhaps it might help me fund other development - who knows

before… you get to download
a quick shout out to @bert and @celine for the incredible work they have done on the SSP , its a credit to them and their work, that within a couple of days of owning the SSP I was able to get a fully functional VST up n’ running, and shared to the user base.
thank you !

shaky instagram demo
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCPH12FKf5G/

oh, remember to subscribe to my youtube channel… i tend to preview stuff their

TheTechnobear

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anyway, to kick off and have some fun I thought id give you a little taster, and also see test the waters for demand.

This is a pre-release so some things are not finalised yet e.g. saving of presets, and the display is not 100% finished, I need to test things like v/oct scaling - but its functional - so i thought id share it.

note: I do not need bugs reports etc, as its still under development - I’m just sharing for fun, and also to see how much interest there is.

Download

contained in the zip is the vst, to be place in plugins directory, and a preset with it.

rngs.zip (1.8 MB)

preset note: assumes a gate on IN 2

Usage Notes

to understand the VST parameters its best to look at the mutable instruments rings website.

the buttons

Audio, Strum, v/oct are used to determine the excitation source.
off = internal, on = external , so one of the inputs
(its a bit odd, on the rings modules this is actually done by inte

VST inputs (in order)

audio in
strum
v/oct
fm
structure
brightness
damping
position

VST outputs (in order)

out 1 = odd
out 2 = even
(note: check rings manual for how poly affects this!)

[FuzzedOut]

This is exciting news, I’m looking forward to trying it out tomorrow.

Would also have no problem supporting you with a donation for you’re work on vst’s if they are something I’d enjoy using…and rings looks exactly like something I’d enjoy using in the SSP!

[NeilParfitt]

oh man this is awesome!!

Think you’ll tackle Braids or Elements at some point?

[wavejockey]

great development!
super

[thetechnobear]

Think you’ll tackle Braids or Elements at some point?

who knows … I don’t make commitments to future development projects
(but given I ported Braids, Elements, Clouds & Rings to Pure Data and Axoloti… perhaps there is a clue)

the way I do things, is I do one test project (rings in this case) to learn what the best approach is to development, and also to build up a kind of template/framework for that platform. once thats done, its easier to develop new VSTs as I can concentrate on the DSP, without having to spend quite so much time on things like the UI and infrastructure.

In this case, whilst doing this ‘test’ project Im also learning a lot about the SSP existing modules, the way they work, the way they look n’ feel - as I really want my VSTs to feel like a ‘natural’ extension, ‘just’ another SSP module.

beyond MI, I also have quite a few other ideas for VSTs that I think would be really useful on the SSP.
(and of course, there is a whole other source of inspiration for modules from things like VCVRack)

of course, these things all take quite a bit of time to develop, but it’d be awesome to help increase the scope of SSP - the SSP is a hugely flexible platform makes sense to leverage that.

my immediate plan is… finish off rings, clean up display - adding missing functionality, tidy up code a bit, so that it can be re-used on future vst, testing (esp v/oct tracking) s…also have a better preset(s) and documentation for release.

oh, and of course just explore the SSP and its fantastic modules.
yesterday, after I posted this - I had a huge amount of fun creating my own patches integrating Rings with all the other modules using STE to sequence it, using ENV/LFO to modulate parameters.

its funny, the first day with the SSP, it took me a while to gel with it, to the point of creating ‘patches from scratch’, but since Ive been making quite a few patches over last couple of days - I’m amazing at how quick it is, once you are used to it - there are so many cool features (like scopes everywhere) which make it so easy, even if you ‘forget’ something - also the ‘new’ ability to be able to offset/scale inputs/outputs is SO useful.

so yeah… development may take longer, as often I get lost in patching

[Kent]

This is cool. It will be lovely to see where you take this.

[analoc]

This is just awesome!

[FuzzedOut]

Spent most of yesterday playing about with this and pinging it through reverbs and delays.

Great fun, thank you.

[MOTOKO]

Thank you for sharing your wonderful work. This is really awesome!

[thetechnobear]

thanks, I’m really glad everyone is enjoying it

of course, I’m ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ - @bert & @celine work on the SSP, and Emile work @ Mutable Instruments… we live in great times for audio software!

good news, the ‘release version’ is nearly ready…
code tidied up, improved UI, preset saving implemented, and the v/oct tracking has been corrected (*), fixed some small issues with parameter to mutable mapping.

just some final testing, create a couple of presets to show it ‘in use’ and gather some notes for documentation.

the ‘polishing’ has taken a bit longer than I expected , but it does feel much improved - yesterday, I did some testing comparing to a mutable instruments rings in my eurorack and feels ‘spot on’ now, and very playable (thanks to the improved tracking)

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(*) thanks to @bert for helping me on this, showing me some sample code for how SSP modules are scaling the cv for v/oct.

[BENDY]

This is awesome news!!! I just knew there must be a really smart person out there who would want to create some cool VSTs for the SSP community!! Bravo!

[Gee]

Fantastic!
And inspiring that this is actually happening! (I.e. independent devs making stuff for our Percussas)
Thank you very much, Technobear

[klausfre]

Love it… and happy to donate… thank you…

[thetechnobear]

k, rngs is released

Rngs : Resonator, by TheTechnobear (vst)

Rngs release - please use this topic for any questions/issues and tips for other users. This is free for everyone, and once I get sorted out, I’ll release the code as open source. If you can afford a donation to my ko-fi account that would be great, and encourage me to develop more SSP VSTs Have fun patching… Mark note: Ive included instructions in the zip file, but this topic may include more up to date information. Rngs : Resonator Change Log 1.0.1 fix model persistence, add inpu…

there are a lot for changes from the pre-release, include proper v/oct tracking, preset save/load, better ui, so recommend you download it.

I’ve think for release purposes it’s better for each VST to have its own topic, so that specific issues can be easily discussed addressed.

so… I’ll use this topic more for general news/updates and thoughts about all my plugins.
(@moderators feel free to move this to a category or rename, if you feel something more appropriate)

other news…

I’ve setup up a ko-fi account for donations.
I want all my software to remain free and open source, but hopefully this will allow those that can afford to make a donation to offset some of my costs.
I also hope that I can build a bit of community around ko-fi supporters, as currently my support and efforts are distributed over quite a few different forums (each platform has its own forum).

What next?
I think, I’m going to next work on Clds (aka Clouds).
I traded and sold a number of modules to be able to afford the Percussa SSP, and Clouds was amongst these modules - so it would be nice to have it back within the SSP

after that… so many ideas, my head is a bit dizzy…

[thetechnobear]

THANK YOU to all those that have made a donation to me on ko-fi, I really appreciate the support - it’s lovely to see that my efforts are appreciated

It very much motivated me to get on to the next VST…

here is a little demo on my instagram account :
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCd2k9oKRrd

of course the first demo has to be rings into clouds (all on the SSP of course) just to fulfil the cliche,
but I actually like clouds with quite a few sources - I thought the PMM module sounded nice.

(tip: the PMM into rings is tasty too )

anyway, it’s still early days, quite a few things need refining and fine tuning, including working on the other modes of clouds - but its nice to hear it basically working.

[MOTOKO]

It’s amazing! I’m looking forward to your Clouds.

[bert]

great work @thetechnobear !

[thetechnobear]

TheTechnobear’s Rngs VST Sound Test

I can help slick up the GUI of what you’ve already got there. Would be nice to add some visuals using the available scope code in the example project and help take better advantage of the large display area there.

@2disbetter probably better to discuss development possibilities here… rather than me hijacking another topic

adding scopes is very straightforward,
however, I’d not do it at the expense of cpu load (and so loading more modules!), after all this is first and foremost a synth module not eye candy

its great that scopes are all over the place in SSP, they are really useful in the network screen, and things like the granular and sample need them , so you can visualise things like start/position…

I don’t think adding scopes really adds anything to rings/clouds, since the output is already viewable on the network page. of course, if they were free in cpu cost (its not ;)) then sure id chuck 'em in .

that said, I want to optimise the display, and look at scope data in that regard, and also consider ‘optional’ ui elements (that could be off by default) - so that might change.

also … i do think there are still quite a lot of ways to improve visualisation on rings.
really the idea for me, was to initially replicate SSP modules, to get a feel for them.
(I’ve only had the SSP for 2 weeks (?) - so this is an important part for me)
once, Ive done a few there, I’m sure my VSTs will develop a bit more along lines that I think will help them.

in fact, Ive got a couple of ideas for vsts (perhaps after clouds), that will be much more visual

anyway… early days

[2disbetter]

I agree with the practicality of your approach 100%. The GUI elements would be toggle like.You could have them on to configure things, and then disable then. When the modules is not being displayed, then the GUI elements aren’t a hit on the cpu anyway.

I don’t think adding scopes really adds anything to rings/clouds, since the output is already viewable on the network page. of course, if they were free in cpu cost (its not ;)) then sure id chuck 'em in .

To me it is just about having so much blank space on the display. It is an OCD tick, but I can get over it because I agree the grunt would be better used for processing audio.

Heck anyway just wanted to congratulate you on getting the first VST-ish on the SSP! Seriously job well done!

[thetechnobear]

Yeah, I agree I’d like to find a way to use more of the display, for me it’s a matter of finding something that adds to the user experience - hence the ‘feeling’ myself into it a bit

I think the large numbers work quite well, since I think with modular you don’t really want to be looking at tiny numbers.
Though, for they don’t need to be quite so large.

One area I think that’s a bit lacking is an overview, eg there are quite a few parameters that are small at the bottom of the display - this makes sense for ‘context’ , but seems odd they are so small when there is so much space.

On the flip side, I thought the ‘help’ screen worked really well, it feels like the luxury of a big screen made sense with it - So, I’d like to expand this , so that all parameters of my module has help ( rather than just IO)

So completely agree, need to find a useful way to use the display nicely.

As a bit of an aside, but related, Ableton when they release Push2 similarly , initially underutilized the display, similarly just numeric display - but increasingly they’ve been finding more uses … sometimes waveforms, but also graphic icons/symbols - that’s kind of where I how I see the SSP I guess.