Ochen K?

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Aosta
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30 Sep 2017

Any idea if this dev is still active?
Was playing around with the glitch RE he made and as far as I'm aware the last thing he released was 4MER last year. I liked his effect REs as they were usually very practical.
Hope he hasn't given up or something.
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Loque
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30 Sep 2017

Nothing heard since 4mer
Reason12, Win10

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TritoneAddiction
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30 Sep 2017

I use his Carve EQ Ducker in pretty much every song. Not all of his stuff is for me but that one was one of my first rack extensions and it's still one of my best purchases for sure. Super useful. Has saved my mixes many times.

I also own his Chip64 synth which is cool but very buggy unfortunately.
Seems like some of his stuff suffers from that, bugs, or at least so I've read. Though I've never had any bug with Carve ever.

Still I appreciate the fact that he seemed like he wanted to come up with some different stuff and not just your standard devices and instruments.

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.

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miscend
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30 Sep 2017

He was a bit of a DIY coder. I think he said he learnt coding my making his REs.

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pjeudy
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30 Sep 2017

Not only that ..he got hammered with one of his RE's because of poor Aliasing and poor sounding fx section and bugs before Blamsoft Zero came out. OchenK had the first RE to get on that SERUM band wagon style wave shaping modulating display crayz inside the Bubble of REASON prior to 9.5. People where begging for an RE wavetable synth in those days :-)

I got the impression form him..that he felt the criticism versus the work he's putting into 4mer and the RE market was making it less enjoyable for him... Also I do remember some back and forth between him and eXode regarding the quality of his Oscillator.
Like I said, during that thread I got the feeling that he was not in a good frame of mind as far as developing for REASON anymore. Hey, but I'm not the guy...it's just an impression I had. So don't shoot!

{UPDATE} :
Oh shit...LOL...I did a search on the RE forum to look for that old Ochenk 4mer Thread and noticed That I actually started the thread :D those where the days where I was neck deep in the REASON/Rack Extension Bubble needless to say that bubble has since burst and I'm freeee :D ...so there you go have fun looking at the past. :D
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7493228&hilit=4mer

[side note] a lot of users don't take pride in creating a proper thread for new devices anymore :( I think joyeluck still does....but people just have the title of the device and a link !!?? like Dude if your gonna be the first to post about it at least put some details info on there pics/price/features/audio..Or better yet a video link if there's one...sigh.
Last edited by pjeudy on 30 Sep 2017, edited 1 time in total.
My opinion is that Propellerhead REASON needs a complete rewrite!
P.S: people should stop saying "No it won't happen" when referring to a complete rewrite of REASON. I have 3 letters for ya....VST
Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:53 pm

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Carly(Poohbear)
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30 Sep 2017

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

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pjeudy
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30 Sep 2017

Carly(Poohbear) wrote:
30 Sep 2017
I always thought the A-Series should have been brought as default devices in Reason...
I was so exited when he released those.!! bought them day one!
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My opinion is that Propellerhead REASON needs a complete rewrite!
P.S: people should stop saying "No it won't happen" when referring to a complete rewrite of REASON. I have 3 letters for ya....VST
Mon Dec 11, 2017 1:53 pm

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kuhliloach
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30 Sep 2017

Love Ochen K.! Hope for more.

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jayhosking
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30 Sep 2017

Jesus. After reading through that 4MER thread, if I were a community member here, I would have probably stopped making REs, too.

Which is too bad. I love Chip64 (and strangely haven't really run across the bugs people have mentioned).

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Aosta
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30 Sep 2017

pjeudy wrote:
30 Sep 2017
Not only that ..he got hammered with one of his RE's because of poor Aliasing and poor sounding fx section and bugs before Blamsoft Zero came out. OchenK had the first RE to get on that SERUM band wagon style wave shaping modulating display crayz inside the Bubble of REASON prior to 9.5. People where begging for an RE wavetable synth in those days :-)

I got the impression form him..that he felt the criticism versus the work he's putting into 4mer and the RE market was making it less enjoyable for him... Also I do remember some back and forth between him and eXode regarding the quality of his Oscillator.
Like I said, during that thread I got the feeling that he was not in a good frame of mind as far as developing for REASON anymore. Hey, but I'm not the guy...it's just an impression I had. So don't shoot!

{UPDATE} :
Oh shit...LOL...I did a search on the RE forum to look for that old Ochenk 4mer Thread and noticed That I actually started the thread :D those where the days where I was neck deep in the REASON/Rack Extension Bubble needless to say that bubble has since burst and I'm freeee :D ...so there you go have fun looking at the past. :D
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7493228&hilit=4mer

[side note] a lot of users don't take pride in creating a proper thread for new devices anymore :( I think joyeluck still does....but people just have the title of the device and a link !!?? like Dude if your gonna be the first to post about it at least put some details info on there pics/price/features/audio..Or better yet a video link if there's one...sigh.
Yes, shame he seems to have gone off the radar. His REs were always a little different and he stuck his neck out to make the first synth after that SDK update and he got toasted for it which seems unfair in hindsight seen as he was a one man show.
Guess 4mer was too much to bite off at the time for him?
Got to say his EDS06 drum thing and his probability drumming one is a great combo for some unique percussion patterns.
Hope he comes back at some point.
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motuscott
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30 Sep 2017

kuhliloach wrote:
30 Sep 2017
Love Ochen K.! Hope for more.
the same!
Who’s using the royal plural now baby? 🧂

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TritoneAddiction
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01 Oct 2017

jayhosking wrote:
30 Sep 2017
Jesus. After reading through that 4MER thread, if I were a community member here, I would have probably stopped making REs, too.
Yeah people can be pretty brutal with their opinions. It's actually the same behavior shown towards Propellerhead or any company/developer for that matter. People seem to forget that behind a company it's actual human beings receiving those harsh comments. I'm not saying you shouldn't give your honest opinion but most people wouldn't express it like they do if they met the developer face to face (well hopefully).

I can understand how a developer getting too much criticism might be scared away. I mean who in their right mind would keep spending all that time trying their best to make a cool product just to get crap thrown at them by a bunch of ungrateful people?

At the same, as any sort of creator/artist/developer you need to grow some thick skin and sort out what is legitimate criticism and when it's people just being A-holes. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with the product, it's just the wrong person using it.

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Zac
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01 Oct 2017

I have an opinion on this. To me Ochen is a very creative person and when you look his website he always has been. When he started REs he was making fairly simple ones at a low price point. He progressed rapidly and got into synths making. It is here that a few things seemed apparant to me: his creativity was not backed up with a desire to update devices when deficiencies were identified; subtleties in things like oscillator design were not of great interest to him.

IMO he lost interest when the intricacies and need to provide iterations of devices to improve/solve issues became apparent.

I'd love to see him back... Maybe in collab with a DSP wizard.

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Faastwalker
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01 Oct 2017

kuhliloach wrote:
30 Sep 2017
Love Ochen K.! Hope for more.
Same here. Definitely one of the more interesting & exciting RE developers. He has made some of the most useful and interesting RE’s available I’d say.

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bsp
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01 Oct 2017

Zac wrote:
01 Oct 2017
his creativity was not backed up with a desire to update devices when deficiencies were identified; subtleties in things like oscillator design were not of great interest to him.
I am not sure what deficiencies you are referring to but he did fix the bugs that were reported in the 4mer thread (e.g. the patch loading + mod issues), didn't he ?

To say that oscillator design was not of great interest to him is deeply insulting, IMHO. Has it crossed your mind that this lo-fi sound (some may even call it "vintage digital" ;)) was exactly what he was aiming for ?

Don't forget that a non-aliasing, surgically clean sound is not always what's needed -- aliasing dirt and imperfections are sometimes the exact right ingredients.

4mer can produce some really cool sounds that are impossible with other (Reason) synths, simply because they are too perfect.

Actually, I just finished multisampling my favourite 4mer patch. The wavetable conversion (my first attempt at capturing the sound) made it lose its "soul" (too clean) so multisampling was the only way to capture it.
(in case anyone wonders: the main reason why I rebuild that patch was that I needed more than 4 voices so the release phases were not cut off early)

I also made some other patches today where I used 4mer to generate wavetables. Since the "serum-style" wavetables have a very low frequency (~21.53Hz / 2048 sample frames), aliasing was not really an issue.


Anyways, I am not trying to stir up a big discussion here, just wanted to get this off my chest - and I too hope that we will see another RE from OchenK in the future.

Something like 4mer/Subtractor with a proper modmatrix and the possibility to draw osc shapes and combine (up to 4?) oscillators in various ways (mul, xor, and, fm,..) would be cool. I certainly won't mind if it aliases :-)

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Aosta
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01 Oct 2017

Zac wrote:
01 Oct 2017
I have an opinion on this. To me Ochen is a very creative person and when you look his website he always has been. When he started REs he was making fairly simple ones at a low price point. He progressed rapidly and got into synths making. It is here that a few things seemed apparant to me: his creativity was not backed up with a desire to update devices when deficiencies were identified; subtleties in things like oscillator design were not of great interest to him.

IMO he lost interest when the intricacies and need to provide iterations of devices to improve/solve issues became apparent.

I'd love to see him back... Maybe in collab with a DSP wizard.
I think you are right.
Would love to see him in collab with someone that could bring his ideas to full fruition.
Who knows what would come out of the SDK now?
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Zac
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01 Oct 2017

bsp wrote:
01 Oct 2017
Zac wrote:
01 Oct 2017
his creativity was not backed up with a desire to update devices when deficiencies were identified; subtleties in things like oscillator design were not of great interest to him.
I am not sure what deficiencies you are referring to but he did fix the bugs that were reported in the 4mer thread (e.g. the patch loading + mod issues), didn't he ?

To say that oscillator design was not of great interest to him is deeply insulting, IMHO. Has it crossed your mind that this lo-fi sound (some may even call it "vintage digital" ;)) was exactly what he was aiming for ?

Don't forget that a non-aliasing, surgically clean sound is not always what's needed -- aliasing dirt and imperfections are sometimes the exact right ingredients.

4mer can produce some really cool sounds that are impossible with other (Reason) synths, simply because they are too perfect.

Actually, I just finished multisampling my favourite 4mer patch. The wavetable conversion (my first attempt at capturing the sound) made it lose its "soul" (too clean) so multisampling was the only way to capture it.
(in case anyone wonders: the main reason why I rebuild that patch was that I needed more than 4 voices so the release phases were not cut off early)

I also made some other patches today where I used 4mer to generate wavetables. Since the "serum-style" wavetables have a very low frequency (~21.53Hz / 2048 sample frames), aliasing was not really an issue.


Anyways, I am not trying to stir up a big discussion here, just wanted to get this off my chest - and I too hope that we will see another RE from OchenK in the future.

Something like 4mer/Subtractor with a proper modmatrix and the possibility to draw osc shapes and combine (up to 4?) oscillators in various ways (mul, xor, and, fm,..) would be cool. I certainly won't mind if it aliases :-)
I can appreciate that low bandwidth sounds can be desirable. Aliasing can be a feature. But believe me 4MER was never portrayed in that way and I was in the beta.
Ochen simply never viewed aliasing and other issues raised as important as they never got recognition or resolution in beta.
Great guy. But not in the realm of Rob Papen (who has a team admittedly) who put out Predator and received major criticism but slowly but surely listened and improved rather than leaving a bunch of unfinished devices.

Likesay, love Ochen but he reached his limit. IMO.

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bsp
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01 Oct 2017

It's all good, his synth makes at least one sound that I truly love ;)


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aeox
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02 Oct 2017

bsp wrote:
01 Oct 2017
Zac wrote:
01 Oct 2017
his creativity was not backed up with a desire to update devices when deficiencies were identified; subtleties in things like oscillator design were not of great interest to him.
I am not sure what deficiencies you are referring to but he did fix the bugs that were reported in the 4mer thread (e.g. the patch loading + mod issues), didn't he ?

To say that oscillator design was not of great interest to him is deeply insulting, IMHO. Has it crossed your mind that this lo-fi sound (some may even call it "vintage digital" ;)) was exactly what he was aiming for ?

Don't forget that a non-aliasing, surgically clean sound is not always what's needed -- aliasing dirt and imperfections are sometimes the exact right ingredients.

4mer can produce some really cool sounds that are impossible with other (Reason) synths, simply because they are too perfect.

Actually, I just finished multisampling my favourite 4mer patch. The wavetable conversion (my first attempt at capturing the sound) made it lose its "soul" (too clean) so multisampling was the only way to capture it.
(in case anyone wonders: the main reason why I rebuild that patch was that I needed more than 4 voices so the release phases were not cut off early)

I also made some other patches today where I used 4mer to generate wavetables. Since the "serum-style" wavetables have a very low frequency (~21.53Hz / 2048 sample frames), aliasing was not really an issue.


Anyways, I am not trying to stir up a big discussion here, just wanted to get this off my chest - and I too hope that we will see another RE from OchenK in the future.

Something like 4mer/Subtractor with a proper modmatrix and the possibility to draw osc shapes and combine (up to 4?) oscillators in various ways (mul, xor, and, fm,..) would be cool. I certainly won't mind if it aliases :-)
Vintage digital!! :lol:

Like subtractor that makes boopy noises that are dirty and aliased to hell and back. (with a little help from outboard tube overdrive)

dana
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02 Oct 2017

Remember 4mer has an oversampling switch on the back, you can make it super-high quality 8x but it really pushes the cpu hard.

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aeox
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02 Oct 2017

dana wrote:
02 Oct 2017
Remember 4mer has an oversampling switch on the back, you can make it super-high quality 8x but it really pushes the cpu hard.
I think it was mentioned in a thread that even with x8 oversampling it still has pretty bad aliasing

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chimp_spanner
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02 Oct 2017

It is a real shame - A-series was actually one of my favourites of his. It just needed a couple of tweaks and fixes (to the envelope knob behaviour/range, an option for gate retrigger, little things like that) but sadly it never got it. And despite all the toys we have in Reason it's still the very closest thing we have to a Eurorack style experience directly in the rack. Crazy eh?

I remember the 4mer thread well. And I remember Ochen taking it quite personally. But people can be a bit entitled/confrontational, which seems really silly when there's a FREE 30 day demo. Nobody got swindled. Nobody's holding a gun to anyone's head. It was basically just a case of people not having their expectations met.

Anyway I hope he makes a return in some form. Even if it's in partnership or collaboration.

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bsp
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02 Oct 2017

aeox wrote:
02 Oct 2017
Vintage digital!! :lol:

Like subtractor that makes boopy noises that are dirty and aliased to hell and back. (with a little help from outboard tube overdrive)
hehe, nice one ! that's what I'm talking about!

here's a little sketch that uses two Subtractors and an Equation Junior (combines the two mono audio streams with a modulo operator). the result is then filtered with an AF-4:


total digital trash but I love it :D
chimp_spanner wrote:
02 Oct 2017
I remember the 4mer thread well. And I remember Ochen taking it quite personally. But people can be a bit entitled/confrontational, which seems really silly when there's a FREE 30 day demo
Oh, sorry to hear that. I feel a bit guilty myself but since then I am trying hard to refrain myself from posting bug reports and feature requests in public forums (I tried to reach him in private before that but got no reply, though).
chimp_spanner wrote:
02 Oct 2017
Anyway I hope he makes a return in some form. Even if it's in partnership or collaboration.
Yeah Ochen, come back !

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aeox
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02 Oct 2017

bsp wrote:
02 Oct 2017
here's a little sketch that uses two Subtractors and an Equation Junior (combines the two mono audio streams with a modulo operator). the result is then filtered with an AF-4:


total digital trash but I love it :D

That's sweet!

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