New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

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akiz
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by akiz »

Where the VST is installed?
Ive downloaded .deb package and installed. Tracktion didnt find any new vsti :(.
I can see that there is lv2 but my daws dont have lv2 support so linux vst is essential for me. Thanks
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by bluebell »

To make it perfect even for "China" ore Lyle Mays like sounds (EG on one of the oscillators' pitch) to get beats/interferences we need a third EG. Since their assignment is variable they could be named EG1, EG2, EG3 instead of AMPLITUDE ENVELOPE and FILTER ENVELOPE. Having 4 EGs would be even better.

Of course I can use one of the two EGs. I attach a sample
hm1.txt
basic patch with EG'd oscillator
(3.11 KiB) Downloaded 74 times
where I use FILTER ENVELOPE – renamed because extension .helm is not allowed. But it would be better to have a third EG.
Last edited by bluebell on Sat Jul 11, 2015 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by akiz »

So ive tried lv2 version. My first impression:


GREAT modulation possibilities. The most universal and userfriendly linux free synth ive tried, hands down.
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by sysrqer »

bluebell wrote: Since their assignment is variable they could be named EG1, EG2, EG3 instead of AMPLITUDE ENVELOPE and FILTER ENVELOPE.
This seems a bit of a strange name for envelopes, I've never heard of that term before and if I hadn't read your post I would certainly have thought 'what on earth is EG?'
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by akiz »

eg = envelope generator
common term...
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by sysrqer »

akiz wrote:eg = envelope generator
common term...
Of all the synths I have I found only one that uses that term, and that is whysynth. Even Massive, which is quite obviously a strong inspiration for the gui, doesn't use this term. What else uses it?
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by rncbc »

sysrqer wrote:
akiz wrote:eg = envelope generator
common term...
Of all the synths I have I found only one that uses that term, and that is whysynth. Even Massive, which is quite obviously a strong inspiration for the gui, doesn't use this term. What else uses it?
the whole synth industry uses EG for envelope generator, even the moog modular back from the mid-60s :)

byee
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by fundamental »

It's a fun synth to play with and the modulation possibilities are pretty neat.
The UI is put together quite well, though it feels like a little more UX work needs to be done with binding modulators.
Even something as simple as using the status text box to show the user that they're in a mode might be helpful.
Some mouse over information might also be a solid addition and it looks like that's already receiving some discussion on the bug tracker.

Thanks for releasing this :)
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by wrl »

installed the AUR package and the VST is working nicely in renoise, cheers.

would be super helpful to have sync options on the LFOs for synchronizing to host tempo and song position, or at the very least synchronizing to gate. the oscillators also alias super easily, you may want to investigate a better interpolator for the wavetables (i looked through the code and couldn't get my head around mopo's routing/processing pipeline, so i'm not really sure what method you're using right now).
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by briandc »

Installed fine, but when it opens I don't see it in QJackCtl.
In the terminal it gives a "jack client new: deprecated" output.

Edit: works fine in Carla. :)

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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by glowrak guy »

Also worked for me with jalv and qtractor. Since it's beta,
perhaps the simplest host (jalv?) would be luckiest for testing now.
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by zettberlin »

Works perfectly in Carla for me.
The only issue I notice is some scratching noise when operating the curves directly while playing, other contrils work flawless also...

in short: great synth!

As I am about to test Tracktion 6 for Linux I made a little piece with it:

http://lapoc.de/demos/helmedEdit1_0715.mp3

Its helm in Carla output goes to Guitarix and Calf Multichorus, the drums are from Tracktions new step sequencer...

its far from perfect, contains two not-so-clean cuts and is still quite longish but I like, how easy it is, to make something like this using helms arp/stutter and its formidable ways to apply LFOs to arbitrary controls (in this case the mod, filter and stutter).

Thanks a lot for another cool synth for Linux!
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akiz
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by akiz »

Where to find linux vst? Carla and Helm are unstable for me in Tracktion (when opening helm gui in carla in saved project, tracktion crashes). Thank
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by tytel »

wrl wrote:would be super helpful to have sync options on the LFOs for synchronizing to host tempo and song position, or at the very least synchronizing to gate. the oscillators also alias super easily, you may want to investigate a better interpolator for the wavetables (i looked through the code and couldn't get my head around mopo's routing/processing pipeline, so i'm not really sure what method you're using right now).
Ah yea, I need to sync them LFOs. I'll put that in.

Yea it does alias once the cross mod comes in or if you're modulating a bunch. I need to improve that at some point before the 1.0 release.
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Re: New Free Synth - Helm - Now in Beta

Post by tytel »

akiz wrote:Where to find linux vst? Carla and Helm are unstable for me in Tracktion (when opening helm gui in carla in saved project, tracktion crashes). Thank
I'm not distributing the Linux VST for license reasons as the sdk is incompatible with the GPL. If you put the sdk from the steinberg website in ~/srcs then you can build from source for now. Probably the solution is having a separate VST distribution..
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