Now that it's been almost exactly a month since my big music project came out, I'll start this post by reflecting.

Brok: The InvestiGator is doing well. In fact, while CowCat Games has repeatedly expressed concerns about it not being viral, I honestly feel it's doing far better than I expected for something I was involved in. Granted, part of the publicity was the result of discovering scammers posing as Steam curators, but even beyond that, I'm honored to be involved with a project that's doing as well as it is.

All this in mind, I received an interesting offer from CowCat the other day that ties into my hobby-level interest in technology in general. As of that day, I'm also doing a chunk of the porting of Brok to the macOS platform. To clarify, however, I'm not touching the code for the most part: we just reached an agreement to use my 2019 Mac Pro, which is apparently newer than the Mac Mini he has, for compiling and deploying it all.

The process has been interesting so far, to say the least. First, until this point, I was used to compiling Mac programs for personal use and thus didn't need to worry too much about Apple's steep validation requirements: all I needed beforehand was a valid Developer account in order to compile, and codesign locally. Now, however, I have multiple certificates on behalf of CowCat Games, plus, the apps need to be submitted to Apple's servers for notarization, an aspect that, unfortunately, the engine used to make Brok (GameMaker Studio) cannot handle automatically.

Second, it was only as of late last night that we finally managed to get the Steamworks API cooperating with the builds. Granted, this phase isn't required for DRM-free stores such as GOG and itch.io, but even so, initial builds saw failure to load the API properly: XCode debugging revealed that it would look for the library in the wrong place. For any other gamedevs hoping to build Steam games on Macs via GameMaker Studio, I only barely found the solution: while a Hardened Runtime is required for notarization, there need to be two runtime exceptions specified:

-"Allow DYLD Environment Variables"
-"Disable Library Validation"

In my experience, only the latter option is required for testing builds, but the other is required for when it's submitted for notarization.

I realize this is a long read over matters that are technical but not musical, and I apologize for that, but in the end, this is related to a project I did compose for, so I feel it is worth a mention. Needless to say, an official Mac build of Brok is also guaranteed in the works.

There also is more on my plate, but I'll save that information for a future entry. In the meantime, Brok is currently available for Windows via Steam, GOG, and itch.

First of all, Happy Holidays and an early Happy New Year to everyone!

I've been in touch with the co-creator of the recent point and click adventure game Zniw Adventure. While he and I both established that my services aren't needed for their next game, we have started to become friends through our shared interest in older technology.

That in mind, he also motivated me to try to pick up this blog again, so may as well update with something, even if not terribly interesting to many.

Few people know more than Mac users like myself how crucial software emulation will be in the future, especially for noteworthy older programs and games. However, the gist of this blog is for a readily overlooked aspect that is theoretically possible: virtualized/emulated older musical synthesizers.

As the focus, despite their seeming refusal to participate in the VST game, Yamaha was actually among the first to explore the idea of virtualizing hardware synthesizers with their S-YXG series MIDI drivers. The most noteworthy of these in terms of sounds offered is the S-YXG100PVL: to my knowledge, it's the only attempt to make a software-based clone of the readily-overlooked yet immensively innovative VL synthesizers from the early 90s (one of them, the VL-1, being used for the game soundtrack to Riven), and, as a bonus, with 8 voices of polyphony, whereas the original hardware was duophonic at best (though there was a polyphonic prototype).

Having found a copy of the software, while I was able to set it up, I discovered several huge caveats not only with the software itself, but also with the status of emulating older MIDI-involving programs at all...

1. With only one or two exceptions, the entire S-YXG series consists of MIDI output synthesizers meant for General MIDI playback, not VST's verbatim.

2. For the most part, the entire series is also meant exclusively for Windows 95, 98, and ME.

3. Serious latency issues. This seems to be by design, because even after disabling most forms of DirectSound acceleration, I could only safely get the buffer size down to 2560 samples before glitching happened, at best. Granted, the 100PVL needs more CPU than the rest due to the exclusive sounds being based on the innovative physical modeling synthesis instead of sample playback, but even so, it's a huge CPU hog.

Problems #1 and #2 can be overcome by running a virtual machine of the supported Windows platforms, but therein lies the source of my major frustrations atm....QEmu has terrible performance: couldn't even test fully.

DosBox-X proved more promising as a work in progress: I was able to get mildly adequate performance within the machine with enough testing, but not only does it not support MIDI input for unknown reasons (especially strange because it does support MIDI output!), networking is so limited that you're out of luck streaming the MIDI commands across the network as well because even traditional forms of communication between the guest and host are impossible, at least on a Mac.

VMWare proved the most successful of my tests. Best latency tests were mostly in this virtualization program, and unlike DosBox-X, while it doesn't support MIDI in either unless you have an ancient driver for actual MIDI hardware lying around, it does support full networking, meaning I was able to get by, sans latency, by using Cocko's ReaStream VST (which supports as far back as 98!) Unfortunately, this possibility will only be temporary, since VMWare has made it clear they have no interest in supporting X86 emulation on Apple's new Apple Silicon architecture...

Needless to say, while emulation and virtualization of software has come a long way, especially in the world of gaming, it still needs a lot of work in other resource-heavy departments...

Regardless, that was all I needed to get off my chest. If anyone else wishes to give their input about the matter, feel free to reach out to me about it, especially if you somehow found a way to pull it off better than I did.

Again, Happy Holidays to everyone!

First of all, Happy Holidays to everyone, and hope everyone has a happy new year and decade!

One way my Christmas proved interesting was learning that Korg finally made another VST clone of another of their ROMplers: the Korg Triton series. For me, they do hold a place: my first ever professional-quality synthesizer was a Triton Extreme, which I had received in light of my interest in its predecessor (the Trinity series). Needless to say, I was excited to see this in a VST form.

The Triton VST seems based on the Triton Extreme for the most part in that it includes not only the standard programs and combinations, but also those of its eight expansion cards, which means quite a fair number of waveforms alone to work with! The sounds it does come with are pretty impressive as well, even if some are a bit dated for today's standards, and speaking as a past hardware owner, I failed to notice any major sonic differences!

The interface seems fairly straightforward to use, especially relative to the hardware. The original Triton series made use of touch screens, a tradition that was started with the Trinity, so it felt a little strange to me not focusing on a pixellated display to make my edits to sounds, but I'm not complaining there.

Sadly, that's not to say I don't have any criticisms. Granted, most of the editing limits, such as no choice for multiple filters per oscillator like even the Trinity, were the case in the original hardware, except for one software limitation that I honestly was hoping for: sampling. At least some of the Triton models, including the Extreme, were capable of some small scale sampling, with a whole bank of blank sounds meant specifically for them. Unfortunately, both the sampling and the sample-based patch bank are nonexistant in this VST, which I imagine is especially a blow for Trinity fans like myself since not all of the Trinity ROM waveforms were included in the Triton (though a small number of those reappeared in their later M3). I sincerely hope Korg addresses this later, especially since I imagine it will help prolong the life of this particular VST being able to run your own samples through its impressive effect processing (much better pitch-shifting than the RolandCloud VST's, for instance).

Still, overall good job from Korg, and I look forward to using it occassionally in my future work! For more information and to buy, feel free to go to the below link:

https://www.korg.com/us/products/software/korg_collection/triton.php

One of my most successful YouTube videos is, instead of one of my songs, a demo video I made of the Roland JV-2080 (viewable at the bottom of this post), a synthesizer I since sold in favor of the XV-3080. While there are no plans to make VST’s officially of either model to my knowledge, RolandCloud, a subscription based service by Roland for VST’s and sound libraries, has recently released the next best thing: a VST of the JV-1080, which both the 2080 and 3080 are based on.

Anyone who’s owned any JV synth knows how sophisticated the 1080 onward were: a minimum of four banks of 128 presets, not only with resonant filters (unusual for late 80s and early 90s ROMplers) but also many modulation options and a huge variety of effects, from the usual chorus and reverb, to pitch shifting with feedback. All of these options also control up to four sample-based waveforms at a time. Needless to say, these features, combined with its large library of expansion cards, made them very popular among electronic musicians, especially 90s game composers.

Upon installation, my first disappointment came in: only the factory 1080 presets are included. While the expansion cards would probably take a while to fully implement anyway, it still would’ve been nice to get some presets exclusive to the XV series, especially since the VST advertises additional included waveforms, though I haven’t had the time to confirm differences in the waveform list between it and my XV3080.

Still, overall, it’s both useful for music production and very faihthful to the original hardware. In all honesty, the interface makes it easier to navigate than even the screens on the JV-2080 and XV-5080. Because of this, admittedly, it took the easy-to-use interface to make me realize that the JV synthesizer line allowed modulation of one waveform, no matter how complex, with another (hard sync).

Most of the sounds are useful, especially when processed enough, and most of the essential 90s pop sounds are there. My only complaint about the sound, that said, is the pitch-shifting effect. Not only does it sound a bit glitchy to me, especially when shifting up, the original hardware used a better-sounding pitch-shifting implementation. Hopefully RolandCloud will address this issue, as even some of the presets are negatively affected by this.

Still, overall, it’s a good job from Roland’s software development team. Even better is that they recently announced SRX Orchestra, which is based on the SRX-06 expansion card, which, in turn, compiles sounds from the SR-JV80 02, 13, 16, and, to a lesser extent, 07 cards for the JV-1080. Most of these sounds were obviously dedicated to orchestral sounds. Expect me to review that VST shortly after it comes out as well.

The JV-1080 VST is exclusive to the RolandCloud subscription service. More info about RolandCloud and its catalog can be found here:

http://www.rolandcloud.com/

I realize it's been quite a while since I've been particularly active musically. In my defense, it probably is for the better that I not be overly obsessed with getting compensated for my efforts, but the reasons for that decision of mine are best saved for elsewhere.

In the meantime, I think it's safe to assume I've nearly perfected a lo-fi sound without the excess aliasing or using too much CPU. Using a mock-oversampling formula and combining it with some light real oversampling, I managed to make a nearly perfect recreation of variable sample rate clocks heard in early samplers such as the Fairlights. As you'll see in the below pictures, which make use of a sine wave sampled at 880 Hz and pitched down, the aliasing harmonics are relatively in control within the second image: all obvious aliasing (which is still under -70dB) within that particular image is still above 11 KHz, meaning 2x oversampling would effectively resolve that much. Observe for yourself.

1. Two octaves down

2. An octave and three whole steps down, a note difference prone to aliasing in sample playback

I managed to pull off similar results using the generators for Plogue's chipsounds (which, unfortunately, require the source samples be a mere 8-bit) and, 8-bit noise aside, I achieved very similar results. Hopefully my process will be deemed more convenient for people who wish to play back their own samples, though, because aside from 8-bit quality, chipsounds also limits many of its sound editing features to text files over a fully editable GUI.

My only real problem with Reaktor now is its relative lack of support for saving presets that contain samples. As of Reaktor 6 (what I used to make my ensemble), it's possible to store single samples transposed across the keyboard within snapshots of a single ensemble, but the problem is that this obviously does not account for multisampling, which can easily render drum sample snapshots, for instance, extremely inconvenient if not impossible to make. Thankfully, that isn't the biggest deal for my particular ensemble, since it is intended to be reminiscent of samplers that tended to have only one sample across the keyboard range anyway.

For any Reaktor users, musicians, and sound designers who enjoyed this read, I should be able to share the rework of my ensemble to the general public soon enough. Stay tuned!

Another sampler VST I bought somewhat recently is Renoise's Redux.

Those of you unfamiliar with Renoise, it's first and foremost a modern music tracker product; it focuses on sequencing much like the mod tracker files of several 90s computer games, such as most games based on the original Unreal engine.

With Redux, however, it appears not only have they allowed their work to be used with other DAW's, it focuses less on the sequencing and more on the sound and sample design, which is probably why it's a bit more affordable than the full Renoise.

What probably attracted me the most to Redux in the first place is its and Renoise's multiple sample interpolation modes. It's the only solution I'm aware of beyond the quirky Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V that offers no interpolation when pitched down but also resorts to bandlimiting when pitched up. While the latter process is a relatively modern innovation in sound design, the result is not that different from the Fairlight, Synclavier, and Waveterm, which had higher playback sample rates than recording sample rates in order to attempt to control the high note aliasing for those systems. Such a sound I have yet to see implemented even in the recent TAL-Sampler.

Alas, every product has at least one drawback, and Redux is no different. The sound designing process is more technical and less conventional than one would expect for a VST. For instance, merely applying modulation to a filter is not exactly straight-forward because you use mathematical operations to combine everything, and even then, there is no parenthesis command I can find, which can make certain aspects of traditional sound modulation even more difficult to accomplish. The amplitude envelopes also do not have an exponential curve like for most other VST's; it's linear. Fortunately, I have heard that Renoise plans to address the latter problem.

I had had another quirk with Redux: its default instrument setting is monolith, meaning it copies every sample used into one file, and there's no way to change that from the VST itself if, for instance, you're tight on disk space. However, I did learn of an interesting hack that Renoise themselves informed the public of.

http://forum.renoise.com/index.php/topic/11892-accessing-the-xml-and-sample-files-in-xrns-xrni-and-xrnt-files/

Judging from this post, I'm assuming it might be possible to trick the XRNI files into reading samples that are not inside the archive, though I'm going to test that theory later today and update this post with the results.

Regardless, kudos to Renoise for the interpolation modes, and provided one has a good technical and mathematical background, I can easily recommend this VST.

Well, may as well write up something new while I attempt to get more original musical ideas.

A month or two ago, TAL released a sampler VST. Unlike its high-end competitors like Kontakt, it's advertised as an attempt to recreate old-skool samplers over multi-gigabyte sample library playback.

Probably the most notable feature it has to implement this retro intention is its multiple DAC emulations, one of which seemingly based off of the Emulator II. Other modes consist of an AM6070 chip emulation, and a Sample-Hold mode that results in the lo-fi sound so many retro nuts are used to. There also is a Linear DAC mode, but this has resulted in tuning issues for me, a bug I hope will be fixed later.

Filters are overall great, though I can't hold back the criticism that there's only one filter for all of the layers. Same for the envelopes, though the modulation section makes up for it a tad via how many options and combinations are available.

No presets come built into TAL-Sampler other than a few waveforms. However, there are some presets freely downloadable separately, including a ton of samples taken from the archives of the late Steve Howell/Hollow Sun. And, should you wish to import and export your own samples, it works with compressed audio as well, particularly FLAC, which is a lossless compression format for audio.

The TAL-Sampler is available from TAL's website. There is a demo version available, though the price for the paid version is relatively affordable.

http://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler


Enjoy, fellow retro sampler nuts!