This is gorgeous. I love how simple and clean the UI is; so many music and audio tools are just skeuomorphic hell (and don't support scaling so are even worse on HiDPI displays). This looks great without trying to look like a real device. It very effectively simulates a modular synth experience, without the limitations. It even simulates the quirky waveforms found on analog synths in a pretty convincing way. This is just impressive as hell on many fronts.
I don't see how to use it as a VST, though I see VST mentioned in the docs as a thing that will be implemented as a plugin, so I guess it's on the radar. It looks like it'd be possible to hook it up to an existing sequencer/DAW as a MIDI device, though I don't currently have any MIDI software or hardware on my Linux system, so can't test that theory.
All around, though, I can't believe I'd never heard of this. It's a great piece of work and sounds great ("great" in the sense of, "it's fun to tweak the knobs and the sounds that result are roughly what I would expect based on my experience with real analog synths and modular synths) in the few minutes of tinkering I've done. I love it.
Specifically the ones with fake metallic coloring, tiny hard-to-read numeric displays, etc. So, while VCV Rack does use rotary knobs (which is a little questionable), it's not an offensive attempt to look like real hardware.
I guess complaining about skeuomorphism while praising a UI that uses simulated cables is sort of weird, but I can't think of how else one might represent those connections in a clear manner. So, I guess I should just say it isn't skeuomorphic in ways that I find offensive, while many VSTs are. I find a lot of VSTs and audio software, in general, horrible to look at and to use because so much of it goes to such great lengths to pretend to be hardware, and it all looks different from every other piece of software, so every new tool has a huge new learning curve just to wrap your head around what the new weird colorful shapes mean. VCV Rack is consistent across all modules; all of its user interface elements are used the same way and there's only a few of them. I knew what I was looking at within seconds of starting it (though admittedly that required me to have used real-world modular synths in the past).
It’s funny because a lot of those synths are considered best in class..
Massive was the first widely popular wavetable synth and was considered quite usable.. until Serum came out. I personally think despite the knobs, it’s one of easiest to use and understand synths out there. It shows you visually how the filters, wave tables, and various parameters are being modulated in real time, and you can easily add new modulations and customize the LFOs to whatever shape you want.
Sylenth was and still is a go to subtractive synth, and Spire is considered a spiritual successor to it..
Diva itself is a virtual analog synth intended to accurately replicate the sound of actual hardware synths, so it of all the synths pictured there should look like them.
I suppose that maybe I’m just used to the way softsynths look and feel, but I see nothing inherently wrong with using knobs and a metallic look. The main problem I have is when synths give you no indication as to how things are being modulated in real time, which is why Serum is my favorite synth - it does a fantastic job of that, knobs or not
Yes, they're all popular and well-regarded. And, even though I've used real synths for decades, I don't generally find the UI on these synths to be a nice experience. Some are better than others, but they're nearly all much harder to read than a UI that adheres to OS UI guidelines would be. Most are not scalable, and so are literally unusable for me (my eyesight isn't what it used to be, even with corrective lenses, and it's never been great), unless I change the resolution of my display. Even at 1080p many are too small on my 15" laptop, and I usually run at and prefer to run at 4k.
The type used is often abysmal. Pretending to be a squinty little LCD panel, for example, when we have infinite pixels is just plain stupid. The only reason old synths had those little panels was because big panels were expensive and graphical displays (CRTs) were too big to put into a keyboard form factor. It makes no sense to use the beautiful displays we have today and use them to reproduce all the compromises of a former era, but it is almost universal. Nearly all of the most popular VSTs impose these kinds of ugly restrictions on their UI.
In short: A lot of VSTs are barely legible, ugly, utterly inaccessible, and just all around stubbornly wrong on usability for the sake of looking "cool".
There's nostalgia for a simpler time, which I understand, and then there's the sadistic UI abuses found in many VST plugins (and audio software in general), which I abhor.
I liked Reason's approach, where the connections could be adjusted on the "back side" of the modules (skeuomorphism strikes again). Reaktor also keeps the wiring separate from interactive elements.
Gotcha. I agree non scalable 'photorealistic' design on audio plugins and apps in particular do hinder usability. And yes, rotary knobs on screen are not always great.
> I don't see how to use it as a VST, though I see VST mentioned in the docs as a thing that will be implemented as a plugin, so I guess it's on the radar.
Correct. For the time being, it is possible to do some audio/midi routing to make it work in a DAW using 3rd-party utilities. (Easier on a Mac which already comes with the ability to create virtual MIDI devices, and composite audio devices.) From there you can set it up as an "external" instrument in most DAWs.
VCV Rack is the most exciting thing to happen in the open-source audio world in years. The community support has been incredible: just do a search on Github for VCV Rack and you’ll find a wide variety of modules that have sprung up in just the past few months since VCV Rack's public debut.
If you're new to VCV Rack, I would definitely start with the included modules, but when you’re ready to branch out, take a look through the directory at http://www.switchedonrack.com.
I managed to crash it on macOS by having a second audio interface. After that, there was no output signal anymore (even after I deleted the second). I was about to give up, but impressed that the project I made was saved pretty much till the state before I added the second interface.
Do you know if its possible to get instruments like TB-303 and TB-808? Does anyone know a multi-platform MIDI keyboard to accompany this synth?
Multiple audio interface support is experimental. This is a feature even AAA DAWs do not have, and if so, they are "amalgamated interfaces" rather than separate simultaneous connections.
If you get into a crash-on-boot loop, remove the "autosave.vcv" file (or edit out the Audio Interface modules from the JSON with a text editor) and relaunch Rack.
That would fall under the aformentioned "amalgamated" interfaces. In Rack you can (theoretically) plug or unplug new interfaces with a different sample rates and block sizes without rebuilding your virtual interface, since they are treated as individual streams (one per Audio Interface module) instead of being multiplexed and synchronized. But I haven't reviewed the source for thread-correctness and tested carefully enough to deem multiple interfaces stable, so in practice, you might get jitter, crackling, crashes, etc. if you use this feature. Some interfaces work flawlessly though.
You could probably create a pretty 303-style voice pretty easily. One osc, a filter, a vca and an envelope should get you 80% of the way.
For keyboards are you meaning a soft keyboard or hardware? There are a ton of high quality hardware keyboards under $100 available and they'll all use class-compliant usb midi so work painlessly across platforms.
This is a nice surprise for Thursday evening! Just spent 15 minutes playing around with this and making some sounds; very good indeed - when the VCV bridge to VST hosts appears then it will be really useful (although I think there are some downsides to such an approach as I believe this will mean that patches will need to be saved in VCV as well as the host song setup, which is a bit of a pain?) - if I was still teaching Music Tech this would be straight in as a teaching tool as it's so flexible and you can make as simple or complex a synth as you want, pretty much.
Registered and downloaded other plugins simply and seamlessly; I have a new Macbook arriving tomorrow, so I'll get it on there and have a play with it over the weekend with any luck.
For now you can use inter-app MIDI and audio to use it as an external instrument in most DAWs.
I use it with RogueAmoeba's LoopBack (like SoundFlower, but less glitchy and way more flexible), and feed that into a composite audio device in the Mac's Audio MIDI Setup app. That gives me a stereo pair for assignment in Ableton's external instrument.
This is really not that cumbersome to setup. Once you setup the inter-app config, you never have to change it. I created an External Instrument preset in Ableton with the corresponding MIDI out and Audio in, so it's really just a two-step process to use it: Launch VCV Rack, and load the External Instrument preset.
It's exciting to see things like this come to Linux, Ubuntu studio out performs windows 10 by a wide margin so it's great to be able to play with this outside the os duopoly where usually only Mac and windows are supported.
Thank you for this! I'm trying to get deeper into open source audio software and programming, looking forward to spending some time with this on the weekend.
Here's a tutorial and template project for creating your own plugins. https://github.com/VCVRack/Tutorial The other resource is the collection of header files in Rack/include/.
This is really fun to play around with. I've got a pretty large eurorack, and while I can't see myself going 100% digital again anytime soon (I've done the MAX/MSP and Csound thing in prior year) it's a really cool playground. I bet some people could do some really great things in this eventually with VST support
This was super fun to play with, but I just wish at least the Fundamental modules were documented :(
I know jack about synths, so I kind of have to gleam what each module does by what it looks like, it'd be nice if there were a description of some sorts.
Also, how the hell do I connect a single output to a scope AND my audio device?
Yes, documentation is needed, so I'm collaborating with a few people to get everything documented.
You can hold Ctrl while clicking-and-dragging on an output to create a stackable cable on top of it, or drag from an input to the output, whichever you prefer.
The volume! If I had had my headphones in when I tried it, I'd be deaf for sure. I now have my system volume on the lowest notch and the mixer channel on the lowest notch. It's still pretty darn loud. Am I doing something wrong?
Yes, IMO. Modular is advanced, but it's the purest, most fundamental way of synthesizing sound. Many people complain that they never see modular artists make normal subtractive patches (the typical VCO > VCF > VCA, modulated with ADSR envelope generators), but the truth is that you can make subtractive patches all day with modulars if you want, but they only comprise about 0.0001% of the sonic design space, so poeple usually explore other patches instead. So yes, you can use the modular format to learn synthesis and build easy or hard patches all alike. VCV Rack simulates at a voltage level, so you can "debug" patches with the Fundamental Scope if you're confused about exactly what a signal (CV or audio) is really doing.
The most popular "how to synthesize" article series is Synth Secrets which ran in Sound on Sound Magazine over a period of years. You can find those online.
Regarding what tool to use, a modular like this(albeit in physical, analog form) is the "original" way to do it. Modular sound can do just about anything provided you have the modules and will to program it. Later on in the commercialization of synthesis manufacturers built smaller semi-modular or fixed-path synthesizers which don't let you patch anything anywhere but are considerably simpler to achieve a result with since their basic architectures expose all the essentials of sound character without being so much of a programming exercise: the Minimoog and Oberheim SEM, to name two, just sound good out of the box and generally sound good no matter how you turn the knobs, and their designs are widely cloned even today.
This era lasted roughly from the early 70s through the early 80s after which synth programming soon became complicated again, this time by digital technology allowing everything to be tweaked and patched and perfectly recalled from memory, provided you were willing to dive through menus. Synth programming turned into a speciality in this era; everyone who just wanted a sound used the built-in presets.
I would say modular can be more simple than a lot plenty of beginner-focused all-in-one subtractive synthesizers.
At its most simple, synthesis is no more that changing the pitch and amplitude over time. Not having delved into this example so unable to tell for sure; that set of features will already be covered by a single sound generation module, capable all sorts of wails, warbles and glissando- think of a theremin.
Now you can go many paths onwards from there, start with a complex sound and use a filtering module to shape the sound over time (subtractive synthesis) Or modulate the original signal and move into the world of AM or FM synthesis. All by just adding another single module.
I think simplicity or complexity with modular synths all lies in the hand of the user and I would certainly advise anyone to delve in.
I think Modular might be better for a beginner if the price were not so prohibitive. A modular is better for understanding how eery piece of your system can or does affect another, because you've manually plugged them together.
I guess it depends on whether you primarily want to "learn synthesis", or "make music with synths". The former, I think modular is worth a look, but for the latter modular is too much money and effort.
I'd compare it to learning C vs Python. I'd recommend computer science students get early exposure to C, but for someone writing simple scripts, jump straight into Python.
I mostly learned synthesis through free youtube tutorials with software synths. A lot of concepts are pretty generic and when learned in one synth can be applied to most others.
Well... It depends. Think about your goals first, and don't worry about cost yet. There is plenty of free or low-cost software options out there that can teach you the basics of either system.
If you would like to just get your head wrapped around the basics of synthesis, it helps to limit what you have to deal with.
With modular, to get a usable sound, you need to have at minimum: a gate/CV source (telling it when notes fire, and at what pitch), a VCO (voltage controlled oscillator), an VCA (voltage controlled amplifier), an envelope (to control the volume of the VCA), and an output (somewhere to send the signal - in this case, the audio-out of your computer.
Then you have to deal with routing the CV signal to the VCO so it knows what pitch to produce, the gate signal to the envelope so it knows when to fire, the CV signal from the envelope to the VCA so it knows when to turn the volume up and down for each note, and audio signal routing.
So it's a big bite to chew just to get started, BUT you learn a lot going this route, and there are a plenty of tutorials out there on modular that take you through it a step-at-a-time, most of which would apply to VCV Rack as well as to real modular equipment. If you start with the basics, tweaking knobs on a non-modular synth will be a piece of cake.
But if you would just like to learn the basics of how the various components work together first, you can start with a simple subtractive software synthesizer, of which there are plenty of free options. Once you get your head wrapped around oscillators, filters, and modulation, you could then dive into modular to gain a more in-depth understanding of what is happening "under the covers."
A lot also depends on what kind of music you would like to produce. If you are into generative music, where you are using devices to produce patterns in interesting and often unexpected ways, go modular, and don't look back. If instead your are mostly interested in driving a synthesizer with a keyboard, IMO, start with a basic subractive synth. Just keep in mind that no pre-packaged synth, no matter how flexible, can rival the sound-design possibilities of modular.
Utterly amazing, but why did you not develop this as a VST? It's of little use to musicians otherwise. If you are planning on a VST in the near future, count me as extremely excited!
Technical limitations of being a VST/AU plugin:
Sparse support of window resizing, lack of multiple simultaneous DAW integration, ability to only exist on multiple channels, ability to output/input its own audio/MIDI, limited number of automation parameters, ability to remain playing without hiccups after a DAW has been closed, future ability to exist on a completely different computer. Compare Rack to something like Reason instead of a single synthesizer, which has no plugin version.
Philosophy of a standalone application:
VCV Rack attempts to emulate not only the technicalities of modular synthesizers but the entire mindset and workflow. Most modular artists consider their instrument to be a composition tool rather than an element of a song, which more aligns with the title of a DAW. Eventually the need to use Rack in a DAW will nearly disappear, as more modules are added to compose and record a song from scratch to finish. However, many DAWs have ways of communicating with other DAWs, and Rack is no exception after the release of "VCV Bridge", scheduled to be included in Rack v1.0. More information:
Kudos for going the route of a VST bridge on this. I can see this becoming a necessity as this project grows. This is the route the Hauptwerk took for their pipe-organ software. They used to have a VST-version of their platform, but it was just too unwieldy, particularly if the DAW ever crashed, taking Hauptwerk down with it.
sorry, i meant cpu, not ram. my specs are OSX 10.11.6, 3 GHz Intel Core i7 , 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3. i'm using an external audio interface Scarlett 2i2 as well.
with only a couple of modules in my rack going, the rack process is hogging 50% of my cpu. about the audio glitches -
they seem happen whenever i use my os regularly outside of rack (switching between apps, scrolling and clicking).
I don't see how to use it as a VST, though I see VST mentioned in the docs as a thing that will be implemented as a plugin, so I guess it's on the radar. It looks like it'd be possible to hook it up to an existing sequencer/DAW as a MIDI device, though I don't currently have any MIDI software or hardware on my Linux system, so can't test that theory.
All around, though, I can't believe I'd never heard of this. It's a great piece of work and sounds great ("great" in the sense of, "it's fun to tweak the knobs and the sounds that result are roughly what I would expect based on my experience with real analog synths and modular synths) in the few minutes of tinkering I've done. I love it.