VAgary Mini - just another VA synth

[noisenerd]

A little bit of fun:



It's a pretty basic VA synth, with some inspiration from classics such as the Juno 106 etc. in the architecture. It's basically the product of me coming up with some basic building blocks with which to construct something bigger. I haven't had the motivation to do a proper manual, so here's a few notes:

GENERAL STUFF: There is saturation in strategic places, which can sometimes help it sound more analog, and (in my opinion) is just generally fun to have. Keep levels low to avoid it if desired.

OSCILLATORS: The basic core is Martin's wonderful bandlimited oscs which can be found here:
http://www.dsprobotics.com/support/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2871

The Triangle is just the basic Triangle. The Saw here is a mix of the Saw and Parabolic waves, with some tweaking to approximate a real analog saw (based largely on a DIY osc I built, but similar to some famous ones too). The Pulse wave uses the old trick of mixing two out-of-phase saws. The controls should be pretty familiar. Note the FM knob, which modulates Osc 1 by Osc 2.

Osc 2 is simpler, and can only be crossfaded between Triangle and Square shapes.

FILTER: There are two filter types, each with Lowpass, Highpass, and Bandpass modes. The "S-K SVF" is a tweaked version of the 2-pole filter I posted here, and the "Ladder" filter is Martin's version of Mystran's "cheap" ladder filter, tweaked to include the extra modes. Please note that this may not be the best way to do what I did with the S-K filter (sin approximation for saturation in the feedback path), I will gladly accept education in this area.

There are a few things that could use tweaking, but I'm putting this out there while I work on figuring that stuff out (and most likely mess around with some other stuff too). The link below contains a zip with the schematic and a VSTi.

Download:

Dropbox link

Enjoy!

[martinvicanek]

Hey noisenerd,
thanks for sharing! Always good to see such creative posts. Glad that you find some of my stuff useful.

[noisenerd]

Thanks for the kind words, Martin, glad you like it!

Glad that you find some of my stuff useful.

Indeed! Thanks for all the goodies.

[Spogg]

I really like this.

You've chosen to include all the essential elements to make a very versatile synth whilst avoiding the excesses that are always so tempting. This keeps it all lean and mean and easy to understand and tweak.
I also like the range of presets you've made to illustrate some of what's possible. The front panel looks good without being too ostentacious and distracting. Finally, and importantly, the sound is really good!

Here's what I would personally like to see added, in order of importance, first being most desirable (IMO):

Pitchbend wheel support.
Modwheel support as a modulation source.
A velocity response option on the ADSR
A voice count setting higher than 12 maximum.

Thank you for sharing your work and keep on creating!

Cheers

Spogg

[noisenerd]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, Spogg!

You've chosen to include all the essential elements to make a very versatile synth whilst avoiding the excesses that are always so tempting.

Thanks, that's what I was going for here... but in fairness, the excesses are coming too. Hey, I think you just helped me come up with the name: VAgary XS. I'll be posting an update to this one (and likely some other stuff) before that gets done though.

As for your suggestions (all of which I like, some were already planned):

Pitchbend wheel support.
Modwheel support as a modulation source.

Pitchbend is easy, as I see there's a prim there for it (and I can't believe I forgot it ). I don't see any direct answer to the modwheel thing though, other than assigning it to a knob. Maybe this could be done with Ruby? I'm gonna have to see if I can find some info on this, thanks for bringing it up!

A velocity response option on the ADSR

This is in the plan.

A voice count setting higher than 12 maximum.

No problem here either, that's just where I stopped typing.

Also planned: going through and assigning unique controller numbers to each knob.

I'll post again when I do the update. Cheers!

[BobF]

Hi noisenerd,

Nice synth, I really like some of the presets. I played with it for sometime and got some really cool sounds. I also put it through my DFP Combo Flanger and got some very cool flanging sounds with some of the base presets and some harmonic filtering.
The only thing I would add besides what Spoog suggested would be a Ring Modulator for those bell/metal sounds.

Keep up the great work and can not wait to see VAgary XS!

Later then, BobF.....

[noisenerd]

Thanks Bob!

The only thing I would add besides what Spoog suggested would be a Ring Modulator for those bell/metal sounds.

Heh, great minds think alike! Big brother already has a second osc similar to Osc 1 here, but with an AM knob where the Noise level knob is. It will also probably end up being possible through the mod matrix, as I plan to make the oscillators mod sources, and amplitudes mod targets... but I also like to "hard-wire" certain useful things like that. I'll see if I can squeeze it in when I update this one though too, since there's been a request.