r/VSTi

NOTE: THE SEARCH HAS ENDED, I have found 12 great people with a mix of different hardware and approx 50% Windows and %50 Mac OS X. Thanks to everyone that sent me and email, and to those who came too late, just keep an eye out for a soft synth called "Shunt" in a couple of months...
I will post here once it's released.

Hi everyone,

I am writing this post to see if there are any synth enthusiasts here that would like to be guinea-pigs for my new soft synth plugin.

I would like to have a group of say 10 people who I can invite to join a forum to help me test and provide feedback/ideas for my soft synth, which I will provide to the group continously, modified by the group's comments/requests.

The synth itself is a world-first, one of a kind and a completely new technology. Perfect for people who want an authentic retro analog synth experience... That's all I can say at this time in public, the early bird gets the worm and I want to be the first.

As a reward for helping me test the synth, which is going into beta-phase in a few weeks, everyone of the group will get a free life-time license when it goes commercial, in a few months...

Due to the unusual nature of the synth plugin, a fast multi-core CPU is required to run it.

This software is the product of years of very hard work, reverse-engineering and high performance C++ coding.

To be part of the testers, you will need AT LEAST the following hardware:

MS Windows 10/11: Modern Intel or AMD CPU, max 3-4 years old and at least 4 or 6 P-Cores (Performance Cores @ Turbo Boost of ~4.0GHz or more). A modern 8, 12 or 16-Core Intel i5/i7/i9 or the AMD equivalent is recommended.

Apple Mac OS X: Modern Mac with at Apple Silicon, and at least an M3 CPU.

Please note that the first 10 people to apply will get the account.

I will make the following plugins/apps available for testing (Starting with MS Windows first and a port for Mac OS X 2 weeks later):

- VST2 and VST3

- AU and AUv3 (Audio Units)

- Standalone (eg just the synth running in it's own process on the OS)

There will be windows 10/11 and Mac OS X (Apple Silicon only) versions available.

You will offcourse need a MIDI input for your computer and a MIDI keyboard/controller. Having a couple of CC knobs that can be assigned via midi-learn in my synth is also helpful.

If you are interested in joining,

please send me an email and introduce yourself and your hardware to terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com

Thank you for your time,

Yours,

Terrence

For background, I'm old enough that I remember Fairlights being a thing. (I became a coder around the same period).

I've got a bloody awful hardware sampler, Akai MPX8, and loads of alternatives in the box. I run Reaper so there's the gloriously named ReaSampleOMatic5000 (right?) and confusing scripts. But all these things seem really, really clunky in operation.

But I've been working on plugins a lot recently, for my own enjoyment - mostly generative, experimental things. It only occurred to me the other day that a major thing lacking from my home studio is a decent sampler (sic). So it's time I made one.

Right now it's minimal pre-release quality, but all open source so you might as well have the link : https://danja.github.io/downspout/plugins/campione/ (bookmark now, look in a few months).

What I'd like advice on is your experiences of a *good* sampler, if such a thing exists already. What does it do that pleases you? If you have a *bad* sampler, what should it do that it doesn't?

I know the immediate thing is, if there is a sound on the wire or a field recording/commercial pack file somewhere, it should be possible just to drop it in without thinking, either get a per-midi note one shot drum or whatever, or one or more tonal sounds that place themselves on the keyboard with pitch control. Basic editing for sure, so you don't have to spend an hour with Audacity just to normalise a cowbell.

Though I am wary of scope creep (I do have AI assisting me with the code, so it's very easy to go off on a tangent). Where should the sampler functionality stop when it comes to granular & wavetable synthesis, delay/looping? Or do you think, same infrastructure, make space for them as well?

Imagine your ideal sampler. Tell me what it looks like please.

Looking for something thats versatile, even if that means it doesnt fit a particular niche the best. From J-Rock solos to nasty nu-metal chugs.

Been eying the Hydra. Is that a good choice?

I'm a CS Major who has been composing and playing violin for 10+ years, and has recently started with music production. I noticed that there aren't many good violin VSTs, and the ones that are good cost a lot, so I'd figured that I'd take a crack at it this summer. I showed results to a couple of friends and they said it sounds fairly good, so I was toying with the idea to sell it for free/for non-free/have a donation box after I work on it some more.

I know AI is a controversial subject, so I want to pre-emptively defend myself.

Training data: All training data was recorded by me in my bedroom, i.e. no stolen/scraped audio.

Environmental impact: minimal since I trained the model on my laptop in a few hours.

No cloud-based service: large AI services are hosted by the companies themselves since they can't run on laptops/computers. This isn't an issue because my models are small enough to run locally.

Deterministic output: A concern that I've seen online with one of the existing AI-powered VSTs is reproducibility, since many of these methods are inherently random. I designed my paradigm to be inherently deterministic (the same, predictable audio output every time).

Controllability: In order to keep the expressivity of the violin, I have user controls for articulations, note shape (swells etc.), and vibrato per note.

AI coding: Yes, I used Claude Code extensively.

Demos

AI Violin only: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m6LslVGhvaJ_FGWjrhhykEfB_lG8GGa0/view?usp=sharing

AI Violin + piano + reverb: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mjvUi69j_cierGnj2fIiFTUw-bK1iBgz/view?usp=sharing

Real Violin Training sample: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g2UgDuXjqy7Yu4e8A3vnsCfcZcXx4iMD/view?usp=sharing

The current UI:

https://preview.redd.it/616oy8h77tih1.png?width=1371&format=png&auto=webp&s=cde44377df1b8728c284f599c627495b71caf9b0

What I want to know

Would you use this virtual instrument with its current quality/features?

If so, would you be willing to spend money for it?

If not, is there anything I can change/improve/add?

Is the current output quality acceptable? To improve it, I would need to record more training data. Do you think it would be worth it for me to get a better mic/use a real studio/find a better violinist?

Ultimately, this project is mostly for my resume as an aspiring ML researcher, but I also plan to use it for my own musical projects in the future. Thank you for reading, listening, and responding!

I want a destruction plugin but Im not willing to throw $88 dollars at something and not like it. Are there any good, complex mangling audio plugins out there that are cheaper or have a trial version?

I have absolutely fallen in love with the crow hill company's harmonic piano plug in (give it a listen, it's gorgeous), but it will not download on my computer. I have done some research and there are a few others who have had similar problems, but couldn't find any solution even after conversing with tech support for weeks. I was wondering if anyone had found either a solution or a good alternative vst because I haven't seen anyone talking about this plug in.

I enjoyed this video from the YouTube channel Red Means Recording (a real human channel, not slop), figured a few other people might as well. It covers the birth and evolution of VST's with it's ups and downs. Informative and entertaining IMO.