Ochen K?

[TritoneAddiction]

Just tried out 4mer for the first time today. Played around with the presets and tweaked some of them to make them my own.

I don't know if Ochen K did it intentionally or not but this synth is lo fi heaven. I love it. It has so much character.
It's fun to see the difference on an EQ spectrum when trying it with 44100 Hz sample rate compared to 96000 Hz. With 44100 the aliasing is absolutely crazy and with 96000 all that is gone and the highest frequencies doesn't even exist Everything becomes all warm sounding. It's fun to play around with the oversampling settings on the back too. That changes the sound a lot. For some sounds the 2x and 4x settings are actually preferable depending on the sound you want.

I would love to make a warm lo fi sounding EP with this synth. Of course I would have to run Reason in 96000 Hz sample rate to get that sound I like from it.

The reverb is horrible to be honest, but that just adds to the charm imo.

Weird, I always assumed this synth wasn't for me simply because I was hoping for something like Expanse when it was released. Perhaps that what the intention from Ochen K. Well whatever the intention was this is one charming character synth.

Probably have to get it.

[Gorgon]

I love my Chip64!

[Zac]

I probably have more OK devices than most of you. I got some for free because I participated in a forum thread or beta.

I'm sorry but my opinion remains. The synths look fantastic but even though it's low in price, don't I deserve to have the best version of it that's possible?

[jayhosking]

"Deserve"? You purchased a product as is. Developer support is nice and encouraging and definitely makes me want to buy more products from that developer, but we certainly don't deserve anything more than we have a month to trial.

[FLVZ]

The nature in which criticisms are dished out in these forums is so distasteful, its no real surprise that some people are probably going to keep away from making REs and move on to developing VSTs. The way the thread for 4mer synthesiser got handled was a little bit bullish. There is quite a lot of lack of empathy when communicating through a computing device. I've seen this occur with other threads like the Aqiuos x4 thread where the focus of conversation was seeing who could be the most creative at insulting the design of the device. This is another example of bullish behaivour imo. If you want these independent part time developers to stick around, why don't you send your complaints by email instead of childishness over forums. I just don't think being mean is ever necessary!

[Zac]

I really shouldn't post when I'm drunk. I bought his synths they are what they are. It's obvious that some people like them the way they are, so I'll shut up.

[devilfish]

I always thought the A-Series should have been brought as default devices in Reason...

This!

[aeox]

The nature in which criticisms are dished out in these forums is so distasteful, its no real surprise that some people are probably going to keep away from making REs and move on to developing VSTs. The way the thread for 4mer synthesiser got handled was a little bit bullish. There is quite a lot of lack of empathy when communicating through a computing device. I've seen this occur with other threads like the Aqiuos x4 thread where the focus of conversation was seeing who could be the most creative at insulting the design of the device. This is another example of bullish behaivour imo. If you want these independent part time developers to stick around, why don't you send your complaints by email instead of childishness over forums. I just don't think being mean is ever necessary!

Most criticism anywhere is distasteful, regardless of what forum, RE or VST, etc.

[etyrnal]

The nature in which criticisms are dished out in these forums is so distasteful, its no real surprise that some people are probably going to keep away from making REs and move on to developing VSTs. The way the thread for 4mer synthesiser got handled was a little bit bullish. There is quite a lot of lack of empathy when communicating through a computing device. I've seen this occur with other threads like the Aqiuos x4 thread where the focus of conversation was seeing who could be the most creative at insulting the design of the device. This is another example of bullish behaivour imo. If you want these independent part time developers to stick around, why don't you send your complaints by email instead of childishness over forums. I just don't think being mean is ever necessary!

In situations where the Ends justify the means, if the Ends aren't justifiable, the means definitely aren't justifiable either.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[FLVZ]

The nature in which criticisms are dished out in these forums is so distasteful, its no real surprise that some people are probably going to keep away from making REs and move on to developing VSTs. The way the thread for 4mer synthesiser got handled was a little bit bullish. There is quite a lot of lack of empathy when communicating through a computing device. I've seen this occur with other threads like the Aqiuos x4 thread where the focus of conversation was seeing who could be the most creative at insulting the design of the device. This is another example of bullish behaivour imo. If you want these independent part time developers to stick around, why don't you send your complaints by email instead of childishness over forums. I just don't think being mean is ever necessary!

Most criticism anywhere is distasteful, regardless of what forum, RE or VST, etc.

I disagree, I welcome criticism of my work. If someone criticises what I'm doing, I'm open to hearing what they have to say. I wouldn't regard them or their criticism distasteful. But the manner in which the criticism is dealt determines the taste/distaste. The fact that we are not able to communicate face to face means there will always be a lack of empathy due to lack of physical body language, lack of vocal tone etc etc. Its easy to insult someone over text, but the reality is most of us don't have it in us to do it at some random person's face. Life would be an awkward experience if you dished out scathing attacks to everyone who got on stage to deliver a product or presentation to you. My experience has been that most people are actually alright when met face to face.

[aeox]

Most criticism anywhere is distasteful, regardless of what forum, RE or VST, etc.

I disagree, I welcome criticism of my work. If someone criticises what I'm doing, I'm open to hearing what they have to say. I wouldn't regard them or their criticism distasteful. But the manner in which the criticism is dealt determines the taste/distaste. The fact that we are not able to communicate face to face means there will always be a lack of empathy due to lack of physical body language, lack of vocal tone etc etc. Its easy to insult someone over text, but the reality is most of us don't have it in us to do it at some random person's face. Life would be an awkward experience if you dished out scathing attacks to everyone who got on stage to deliver a product or presentation to you. My experience has been that most people are actually alright when met face to face.

I was referring to anywhere on the internet

[etyrnal]

[deleted accidental redundant post]

[etyrnal]

Most criticism anywhere is distasteful, regardless of what forum, RE or VST, etc.

I disagree, I welcome criticism of my work. If someone criticises what I'm doing, I'm open to hearing what they have to say. I wouldn't regard them or their criticism distasteful. But the manner in which the criticism is dealt determines the taste/distaste. The fact that we are not able to communicate face to face means there will always be a lack of empathy due to lack of physical body language, lack of vocal tone etc etc. Its easy to insult someone over text, but the reality is most of us don't have it in us to do it at some random person's face. Life would be an awkward experience if you dished out scathing attacks to everyone who got on stage to deliver a product or presentation to you. My experience has been that most people are actually alright when met face to face.

Nailed it.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[jayhosking]

Flavolous, your points are awesome and well-worded.

[TritoneAddiction]

Maybe I should try out some of his stuff just to see what I think about them. Driver, 4mer, EDS06s Drum Synth. Still haven't tried them.

Just tried them all out this last week.

Here's a track I wrote using 4MER (everything except the drums) and EDS06s Drum Synth for the beat.

https://soundcloud.com/tritoneaddiction

4MER I quite liked. Might get it sometime.
Driver synth I didn't really like too much.
EDS06s Drum Synth is alright but not something I'd use very often.

[jayhosking]

I don't know if it's 4MER's inclination or yours, Tritone, but this strikes me as having both a retro and contemporary sound. Good work as always.

[TritoneAddiction]

I don't know if it's 4MER's inclination or yours, Tritone, but this strikes me as having both a retro and contemporary sound. Good work as always.

Thanks. Yeah it definitely has some retro vibes. Probably mostly my fault, though I do think 4MER has some sort of lo-fi-ness to its sound.

[Zac]

I like bitcrushing and other techniques to give those hi-freq overtones as much as anyone else - lo-fi can sound so good. But I like to have the choice of it being there or not. Not just having it there due to aliasing. I really will shut up now.

[flightONE]

I love my Chip64!

Me Too! although i have encountered a couple bugs which were confirmed by Ochen but there were no plans for fixing them

[electrofux]

would love to have a 6track drumsequencer RE that plugs into EDS006 with 5 CV outs per track and trig conditions.

[kungubu]

would love to have a 6track drumsequencer RE that plugs into EDS006 with 5 CV outs per track and trig conditions.

Just use 3 PDT2...

[ochenk]

Hey all.

Just seeing this thread. I don’t swing by here too often, so I’ll just dump a bunch of answers in one go.

Yep, still alive!

4MER thread:
Yeah, the 4MER thread was a little weird, but I didn’t take any of it personally. It’s the nature of making things that you share with the public. A bunch of people like it. A bunch of people hate it. That latter group is always more vocal. You just gotta roll with it. Knowing that doesn’t make things like that thread any more pleasant when it’s happening, but at least it helps to keep things in perspective.

4MER's oscillators:
4MER’s sound was very intentionally designed. Folks may know that I only created REs to meet my particular musical needs, and that I didn’t release every RE that I made. I only released the ones that I thought might be useful to others. I use 4MER for bass sounds exclusively. To my ear, antialiasing kills the edge of hard bass sounds, and at the time, I couldn’t find a Reason synth that could create the edgy bass I was looking for. I was also looking for ways to slowly evolve the sound over time without having to settle for filter sweeps. So I made 4MER, and I still find it really useful. Nicely antialiased oscillators are not that difficult to make. But plenty of other Reason synths already have nice clean oscillators, so I never had any need to make one.

Bugs:
Whenever I released a new RE, I stayed pretty present on the prop forums, and then when those were closed down, I stayed present around here. All bug reports that came in right after launch were addressed. So were a lot of feature requests. But once a new SDK version comes out, if you make an update to the RE, you have to use the new SDK, which means that your RE won’t work on older versions of Reason. So at some point, a dev needs to decide whether a certain bug or feature is worth cutting off the still significant number of users who are using older versions of Reason. I don’t know that I’m making the right call there, but that’s my reasoning.

Future RE development
And yeah, I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I’m not actively making any REs anymore. As a Reason user, VST support is awesome and I love it. But it completely cuts the knees off of the RE market. The only viable path for a RE dev to continue is to become a VST developer, but I have no interest in that. I love Reason. I’ve been using it since version 1 and the product boxes are all still proudly displayed on my bookshelf. I have no interest in supporting other DAWs. And my musician brain is now wired the way Reason works, which sometimes doesn’t translate to other DAWs, so I don’t know that my ideas would even translate. But there’s just no way to make enough off of REs any more to compensate for the time it takes to make them and test them and market them and support them. It’s the same with the Rig bundles and RE subscriptions. As a user, I think they’re awesome. But they make it pretty impossible to recoup even the cost of development, especially as a RE-only dev.

I hope that covered everything.

Thanks for the kind words.

Ochen

[MannequinRaces]

Future RE development
And yeah, I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I’m not actively making any REs anymore. As a Reason user, VST support is awesome and I love it. But it completely cuts the knees off of the RE market. The only viable path for a RE dev to continue is to become a VST developer, but I have no interest in that. I love Reason. I’ve been using it since version 1 and the product boxes are all still proudly displayed on my bookshelf. I have no interest in supporting other DAWs. And my musician brain is now wired the way Reason works, which sometimes doesn’t translate to other DAWs, so I don’t know that my ideas would even translate. But there’s just no way to make enough off of REs any more to compensate for the time it takes to make them and test them and market them and support them. It’s the same with the Rig bundles and RE subscriptions. As a user, I think they’re awesome. But they make it pretty impossible to recoup even the cost of development, especially as a RE-only dev.

Saddened to hear that you won't be making any more new REs. I really enjoy the ones you have made and that I own (Glitch, Chip64). From a business standpoint that is completely understandable but I hope other RE only developers do not feel the same way!! It's good to hear from you and happy music making!

[wendylou]

But there’s just no way to make enough off of REs any more to compensate for the time it takes to make them and test them and market them and support them. It’s the same with the Rig bundles and RE subscriptions. As a user, I think they’re awesome. But they make it pretty impossible to recoup even the cost of development, especially as a RE-only dev.

Ochen

The same can be said for music making today: income has been reduced to fractions of pennies by streaming single songs, subscriptions, etc. Gone are the days of album sales from CDs and LPs, for the most part. I'll never recoup my investment in Reason, REs, VSTs, hardware I/O, MIDI keyboard, let alone the time spent. Obviously, I'm not in it for the money, fame and glory Sounds like it's even worse for RE developers. "I woke up this morning and both cars were gone. Oooh, I got the suburban blues!" Anyway, glad you're still alive!

[chimp_spanner]

Nice to hear from you man! I understand how the VST thing could negatively impact RE developers, although it's been really nice to see some cool and creative instruments coming out in spite of 9.5. But yeah obviously it's not feasible for everyone. Still really enjoy your devices, and for the price I'm really tempted to nab 4mer. And it's interesting to hear about the design choices you made in its oscillators. I do like a bit of character in my synths. Otherwise past a certain point everything starts sounding the same.

Also I feel you on the whole "brain wired to use Reason" thing. I had to use Cubase for a job this weekend just gone, and I felt like a total noob. Nothing made sense any more What kind of music do you do?