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Future Audio Forums » Music and Audio Production

1. cassiel
   Member

   Hi, I bought Circle online today. I have one or two comments/questions, if I may...

   • The envelopes appear to be unipolar, while some common destinations are bipolar: this means I can't (for example) use an envelope to mix between two oscillator waveforms and get to the extremes - or is there something I'm missing in terms of setting up the modulation? (Actually, am I right in assuming envelopes are 0..1 and LFOs are -1..1? And that there's no normalisation at the destination?)
   • LFOs and sequencers appear to be monophonic, and yet respond to keyboard position as a modulator - last note down is used as a monophonic source, with built-in glide. Is this correct? (I don't have a major problem with this, although per-voice LFOs can be useful. Perhaps the mono/poly status could be indicated in the UI?)
   • Sequencers: it might be nice to have the loop start and end locations be modulation destinations... it might also be nice to have the start step be possibly somewhere other than the loop start, useful when retriggering.
   • Cosmetics: Ableton Live does a nice thing when you apply a clip envelope to a modulation destination (clip envelopes always act as attenuators): the dial shows a visual indication of the clip envelope's attenuation. It would be nice to see the results of modulation in a similar manner in Circle.
   • Patch editing: MOTU's MX4 shows when a patch has been edited (it italicises the name), which is useful when coming back to a saved state in a VST. (I very rarely actually save edited patches - I just let the VST host preserve the edit in a dedicated track.) MX4 also has a "revert" button.
   • Circle's DSP load seems a little high: an unscientific test comparing Circle and MX4 playing thick chords of modulated pad voices seems to show Circle consuming up to twice the CPU of MX4. Are there plans to improve this?

   Hope that doesn't sound too negative - it's a really nice piece of work and I look forward to using it...

   Posted 3 years ago #
2. GavinFAW
   Admin & Help

   Hi Cassiel,

   Glad you like Circle and hope this helps to answer your questions

   1) Yes, the envelopes are 0->1 and the step sequencer are -1 / +1 but remember you can have negative modulation amounts.

   2) Lfo's and sequencer are not per voice, but are retrigged by last note played. We choose this to keep the CPU consumption as low as possible.

   3) That is an idea and one we we're thinking about, I'll add it to the feature request thread.

   4) You mean feedback around the knob of what the modulation is doing?

   5) Thats an idea and one I'll add to the feature request. Also a "*".

   6) Have you tried switching on the cpu econ. mode in the settings pane of the bottom panel.

   No problem, we appreciate the feedback!

   Gavin.

   Posted 3 years ago #
3. cassiel
   Member

   Hi Gavin, thanks for the quick follow-up.

   • Modulation: yep, I know about modulation direction, but it still appears to me that I can't route (say) an envelope to waveform mix and get the full range of modulation at the destination: that would required something like a "* 2 - 1" to happen somewhere. (I'm pretty sure I've come across other synths which normalise to get round this issue, but I can't offhand remember which.)

     I'm still trying to get my head around how modulation is scaled. I attach one envelope to waveform mix and I get the behaviour I describe. I attach a second envelope to the same destination, but with zero modulation amount, and the effect of the first envelope is cancelled. Shouldn't a modulation with zero amount be equivalent to no modulation at all?

   • Ableton knobs: yes, when a clip envelope attenuates a knob setting, the colour band of the knob recedes while the knob setting itself stays put. At the moment, Circle shows me what the modulation source is doing, but gives no feedback at the destination. (This relates to the point above: I'm still trying to visualise exactly what happens when I start routing multiple sources to one destination: whether it's something like a voltage-control model or something different.)
   • CPU usage: yep, I played with economy CPU - definitely helps, but obviously impacts the sound. Definitely useful, but I do a lot of live work where I need the softsynths running at full resolution and with respectable latency. I notice that the formant filter is pretty expensive (and, of course, polyphonic). Above all else (for me, anyway: everyone else's mileage will vary) Circle's high CPU utilisation is an issue...

   I also posted about the problem with popups and Ableton Live in fullscreen mode, before noticing that you have that one logged already. Sorry for the noise...

   Posted 3 years ago #
4. GavinFAW
   Admin & Help

   Hi Cassiel,

   No noise at all, we appreciate ( and need! ) the feedback as it makes Circle better.

   1) While on the surface the modulation is simply a circle, behind the scenes there is alot going on depending on the type of source you are using. I'll drop you a mail and explain things in more detail.

   2) I see what you mean. You mention MX4 in another post. I know that this also shows how the modulation is effecting the knob via visual feedback. I did look at this when working on Circle and felt that the usefulness of the feedback was not important once you have made the connection and set the amount. You move on to do something else, but if we were displaying the modulation moving around each knob, it would still have a distracting visual effect. If you have lots of knobs with lots of connections, then it gets very busy looking very fast. The end result is that you loose some of the understand at a glance that we feel is very important.

   You could say that it should be user settable, whether or not to show this information, but a general rule which we try to adhere to is that if some feature of the interface could be user settable, then it is not important and adds only to complexity. Generally, if you design things properly on the interface the use for user settings should not be needed. A good example of this problem is the user definable task bar in microsoft word.

   3) We're working on improving the CPU usage.

   Posted 3 years ago #
5. cassiel
   Member

   Hi Gavin,

   Yes: absolutely agree on the topic of user settings - if one needs a lot of user preference options then it's almost certainly a sign that the device is too complicated or badly designed. And last time I looked, no hardware synthesisers have user preferences (except, perhaps, an LCD contrast knob or the option to attach a pair of rack ears).

   Regarding visual feedback of modulation: the Ableton analogy perhaps doesn't apply so much because mix automation is generally much simpler than synthesis modulation. I think my main - albeit minor - issues with Circle's (lack of) feedback at the modulation destination are (i) the display will often show the incorrect modulated setting (such as currently playing waveform) and (ii) I don't fully understand the scaling of (multiple) modulations to the same destination, so I'm probably looking for a visual solution. But I should probably listen rather than look; one can get too fixated on visual feedback rather than using one's ears.

   CPU usage: this is probably the major issue affecting my use of Circle at the moment, so yes, any and all improvements are welcome...!

   Posted 3 years ago #
6. raphael
   Member

   CPU usage is an issue. Once it is fixed Circle will be my best friend I'm pretty sure. For now I can't use it live :-(

   Posted 3 years ago #

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