Open Source Spectral warping wavetable synth | Hacker News Reader

Open Source Spectral warping wavetable synth

vital.audio

117 pointsFannon41 comments

This free and open source software synth really blows me away. It's better than most paid alternatives and I really love how visual interactive and well laid out this synth is.

Due to it being free, there's a huge community growing around creating presets, sharing tutorials, and more. For example, here are many presets incl. audio preview: https://presetshare.com/presets?instrument=2&orderby=likes

Vital is indeed fantastic. But it's a little heavy on the CPU. Yet, the sounds it can make are indeed amazing.

I really love this synth, and I really love this software model.

You can support with a subscription, but it's not a scammy "we hope you forget to cancel this", you literally get the credit from your subscription to buy the full thing.

You don't have to buy anything! The code is free as in speech and in beer, but if you actually use the software for what it is used for, you get a lot of amazing benefits from doing so (ie; I'm a programmer, but if I'm making music I don't always want to be making presets, sometimes I just want to hear a bunch)

There's (less) danger of the company just going backrupt and being locked into their bitrot because the code can be forked and maintained (can is not will, but makes me feel better)

I had no idea this was open source. Vital is an amazing synth, and really gives Serum and Pigments competition.

It's apparently been open source for less than 13 months under GPLv3: https://github.com/mtytel/vital

As recently as the end of 02020 (two months earlier!) they were planning to not open-source it: https://forum.vital.audio/t/is-vital-actually-open-source/13...

Vitalium is the fork that removes the store etc.

https://github.com/DISTRHO/DISTRHO-Ports/tree/master/ports/v...

Thanks!

Surge is also another amazing open source synth that should be included at that level:

https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge

Team is super passionate constantly adding features which are already in thee wishlist zone.

Great synth! Huge sound possibilities and the visual aspect is great for visual learners who are learning synths for the first time!

I love seeing this stuff posted here.

Does anyone have any other similar plugins for synths/effects. I know that Valhalla does amazing work and there is VCV or whatever but I remember there being a bit of community issues with that one.

> there is VCV or whatever but I remember there being a bit of community issues with that one

Try Cardinal: a fork of VCV that offers a free VST implementation. It's still a little rough around the edges but it's great.

Surge vst?

this is more of a VCV type thing than a standalone synth but it has some helpful visual stuff going on https://www.bespokesynth.com/

Vital is one of the best free software synths out there. In terms of functionality, it competes with a whole lot of paid synths out there. For anyone getting started with making music or synthesis, this is 100% the recommendation I give.

There's a big difference between "Free" and demo versions. I've personally found that most music software makers always have an angle or strategy to up-sell when they say their tools are free, and that's simply NOT free. Now even demo versions of software give you no accurate indication of what happens behind the scenes.

Free plug-ins often install additional software, security tools (digital dongles) and drivers that can cause problems even once they are installed, especially if you don't purchase the full version. They also often don't uninstall correctly as well. I tried Vital months ago and found the free version to be limited in many subtle ways and processor intensive, which likely is not as much the case in the full version.

I am very cautious now about plug-ins and other software offered online as "Free" because after trying out the free version of Fresh Air by Slate digital a few months ago, it never managed to run and my DAW and computer experienced total failure and data corruption caused by their licensing tool, which cost me a lot more than the full version cost, but it also cost the company me, as a potential customer. Luckily I routinely make backups, I can't afford to lose my work and data by trying dodgy apps... No exceptions.

I'm curious to know what you found limiting about Vital's free (as in beer) offering. Other than fewer wave tables, presets and a limited number of text to wave table usages per (Day? Week? I'm not sure what the timeframe is) I am certain there is no difference compared to any of the paid offerings.

If you're interested in soft synths that are FOSS, you might want to check out these as well:

Vitalium (a completely FOSS fork of Vital, in a similar vein as Chromium compared to Google Chrome

Helm (developed by Matt Tytel as well, just like Vital) Surge (XT)

Zyn-Fusion (a FOSS additive synth)

You may have a point regarding some plugins, but complaining about it here isn't very fair to Vital:

>additional software, security tools (digital dongles) and drivers

Vital appears to install/require none of these things.

>found the free version to be limited in many subtle ways

Subtle how? It's all listed on their home page: there are less presets (you can make your own) and there are less wavetables (you can import your own). The only functional limitation is on using the "text-to-wavetable" feature to generate wavetables.

Otherwise, you have all the same modulation, filtering, wavetable morphing, & FX that the paid version does. If you choose to pay for it, you're basically just buying more presets.

This is one of the most important benefits of open-source software ("free software" in the FSF sense): the source code gives you an accurate indication of what happens behind the scenes, and if it contains "licensing tools" or other malware you can remove it, or run a sanitized version prepared by a trustworthy person.

Vital seems to have been open-source for less than 13 months, following years of dithering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30622014

In a world of iLok and countless other bloated license managers, your caution is warranted. But Tytel is one of the good ones. Vital's freemium model is based almost entirely on presets, with the core synth engine being free and open-source (the only thing other than presets is access to the cloud-based text-to-wavetable service).

I don't get the spectral warping part: is it similar to nonlinear distortion (e.g. Casio CZ-series)? Or is it a different concept? How does it work under the hood?

https://ibb.co/y0TL3SS https://ibb.co/Hn945Q0 You get multiple choices on 2 dropdowns with associated bipolar knobs. Best way to explain them all would be to just listen to a demo.

Nice, thank you, from looking at the 2 drop-downs it's possible to get a good idea of what it does. It seems like a very interesting synth engine!

I'm two months into writing a VST instrument, and I'm curious about business models and how much success this product is having.

I'd consider open sourcing, but I also feel like I've put in a crapload of work (and still have lots to do before I'd release, mostly UI work which I hate doing).

I had in mind perhaps I would create a fairly cheap commercial project and attempt to sell and market it myself. But it seems like this one has an interesting alternative models. Open source core, free basic version, pay for content? I wonder how successful it is in bringing in $$.

Looks like a boatload of work went into the instrument, too.

(The thing I'm making is a mix of additive + frequency-modulation synth. Uses a variant of frequency modulation [Modified FM] not present in anything else I've seen based on some papers I read some years ago [from Victor Lazzarini and Joe Timoney @ Maynooth University university]. A more regular linear pattern to the sideband amplitude during modulation. Sounds less "nasal" and "tinny" than classic Yamaha DX FM.)

I'm curious if you've seen/heard the Xaoc Devices Odessa (Eurorack and not software but is an additive synth with linear and exponential FM)?. Xaoc make a separate module for mid/side processing so $0.02 if you're in territory that boutique hardware makers are investing in that seems like a good sign.

Is the creator going to release updates on the github repository or is this the last version that's released as open source? Because the github seems to be out of date a bit.

Wait, open source but I have to make an account to get anything?

Public git repo or GTFO.

I found the source code for the synth here on GitHub[1], but it doesn't look like they advertise it on their site?

It seems to be compiling/linking fine on Pop!_OS, but I had to do some apt trial/error to ensure the right packages were installed.

[1] https://github.com/mtytel/vital

Let us know if you get enough for a usable system once you're done.

Hey sorry, for the late followup. I was getting compile/link errors related to Google Services dependencies. I think this is one of those situations where it's GPL-licensed, but not necessarily the most accessible.

In fact they seem to require a paid subscription.

The synth is free. Paid levels seem to be mostly for skins/presets/support. There are more wavetables in the paid version, though I don't know enough about wavetable synthesis to know how much that matters.

I'm at the free download and it's demanding I register. Which might still be "free" but isn't part of the terms of things considered "open source".

It's OSS they just aren't that up front about it. They want you to make an account. I feel like that's okay.

https://github.com/mtytel/vital

It doesn't look OSS to me.

I haven't registered and downloaded the software from their website but I doubt it would come with any licensing or OSS mention. The marketing doesn't mention OSS either.

There's at least one thread asking for clarification on the subject which, as far as I can tell, is not formaly answered.

The repo you linked is 13 months old but it's informative nonetheless:

> Do not distribute the presets that come with the free version of Vital. They're under a separate license that does not allow redistribution.

So my best guess is that the author is granting himself an exemption and distributing that software as a closed source software. Which is legal, it certainly helps that there's only one author.

If we really wanted to know what's going on exactly, we should download the software from their website. If it's advertised as being OSS and under the GPL, we should ask for a copy of the source code of the distributed software, as provided by the GPL.

It's universally accepted that aggregating free software with non-free data does not make the software non-free. The explanation in the repo about the licensing is correct and perfectly okay from an OSS perspective.

The software's copyright holder cannot infringe his own copyright by distributing the software from his own website, even if he also offers a GPL license. If he were accepting contributions from other people you might have a case, but he says he isn't.

The GP isn't saying that the author is making the software unfree by mixing it with commercial software.

The GP is saying that author is distributing that software as unfree with a different license since as copyright holder, the author can do whatever they wish. QT, for example, is distributed as GPL or with a commercial license.

Which is to say the GP is correct this is possible and it's a sleazy maneuver.

Which is unfortunate since I actually am playing with Linux audio software and I'd love to find a good free software synthesizer. LMMS is OK but this does seem pretty impressive.

Oh, because the distributed binaries aren't really open-source because they're made from a different version of the source? That's true, and it might come back to bite the author.

What do you think of Vitalium? I don't know enough about synthesizers to have an informed opinion.

I'm only getting my feet wet on synthesizers but it gives the impression that it has a lot of cool and unique features, even compared to commercial synthesizers or LMMS, the synthesizer I've looked at the most .

The problem is these people saying they're open source then playing game pisses me off much more than if they said they were commercial with a free version.

So I'm torn on trying them. And I can't get the github code to compile on Ubuntu 20.

Surge is an awesome open source synthesizer that is getting updated all the time: https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge

LMMS is a digital audio workstation, not a synth. If you're looking for another FOSS DAW there is Ardour.

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