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Forums > C64 Composing > Plogue Chipsound VSTi

2009-10-18 13:04

neilbaldwin
Account closed

Registered: Sep 2009
Posts: 48

Plogue Chipsound VSTi

Following on from my (possibly misplaced) post about Plogue Chipsound plugin;

Plogue Chipsounds is released.

I spent this morning trying to "recreate" the sound of a C64 whilst trying to adhere to the limitations of an actual C64.

I got a bit fed up in the end so I gave up and mixed down what I'd managed so far (using Logic Studio on Mac). It's still quite buggy: sometimes it seems to forget your sound settings, sometimes you edit the parameters and they don't change and so on. The wavetable stuff seems especially temperamental and that's where you'll spend most of your time. It could do with a lot of work on the user interface on that bit too.

Anyway, I made a "song" with 3 tracks, track 1 being the bass and kick, track two being a simple minor arpeggio chord plus the snare, track 3 being used for the lead. I just repeated the few bars and used the MIDI controller change to switch different filters on and off for the lead sound, using a continuous MIDI controller (74) to modulate the cut-off in real time.

Something that I found frustrating was the way that you just have 8 "slots" in the VSTi to put sounds in. Because it's not like having an actual set of instruments as you might in a tracker, you can't easily switch sounds in a track (e.g. when using a kick+bass sound in the bass-line or switching from the arpeggio chord sound to the snare in the second track). I had to set it up using MIDI keymaps (define particular key-ranges to tracks where I needed multiple sound switching). Not very user friendly and makes setting up sounds pretty slow.

It's a bit cheesy and deliberately "old school" and could do with a lot of tidying up but as I said, it started to piss me off because of the buggy interface. Though it is only V1.0 and actually pretty usable for throwing the odd "chipsound" into your mix.

Funnily enough, what I'd spent about 4 hours trying to do could be done in about 30 seconds on something like SDI :D

http://dutycyclegenerator.com/sound/C64/chipsound64.mp3

2009-10-18 14:07

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

First sid tune by Demon in 21 years :D
Well, then do it in SDI ;D

Yes, if the VST has slots with sounds, then you must use a keymap. in renoise this is in the instrument editor. it is also used to have multiple samples in 1 sound, f.ex you have 8 samples of a piano, each starting on a C-0, C-1, C-2 - so your sound dont get faster as you press the keys upwards.

The easiest to do, in renoise, is simply: put the VST on each track (load it 8 times), and use only 1 sound in each instance. it eats maybe CPU, but it works.

2009-10-18 14:31

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

Its best to have 1 sound/VST pr track, than using the slots inside the VST anyway..

If you have a filtered bass, broken off with a snare on the beat, you will have to constantly set the filter and reset it, and continue from where it went to when bass comes again. All in all, too much work.

The host wont use considerable more cpu time, just because you run the VST 8 times with 1 slot used, than 1 VST with 8 slots used.

2009-10-18 14:47

neilbaldwin
Account closed

Registered: Sep 2009
Posts: 48

Quote: First sid tune by Demon in 21 years :D
Well, then do it in SDI ;D

Yes, if the VST has slots with sounds, then you must use a keymap. in renoise this is in the instrument editor. it is also used to have multiple samples in 1 sound, f.ex you have 8 samples of a piano, each starting on a C-0, C-1, C-2 - so your sound dont get faster as you press the keys upwards.

The easiest to do, in renoise, is simply: put the VST on each track (load it 8 times), and use only 1 sound in each instance. it eats maybe CPU, but it works.

:)

I only did this as an experiment, it's certainly not something I'd recommend in it's current form. I just wanted to see if you could :)

As I said in the other thread, i think the VST's strength is in creating unique sounds with an 8-bit flavour rather than emulation, certainly where the SID is concerned (though the author has said better filters are on the way - you can hear in my MP3 that they sound quite harsh). Trying to make it sound like a C64 is do-able (or will be once some of the bugs are ironed out) but it's certainly a lot of work.

And my comment about the 8-slot structure of the VST probably came out wrong. I just feel that it could've been better done if you created like a GM bank-style setup and then used program changes to select each sound - it would've made it easier (and more like working with proper hardware) to create "multitimbral" tracks. It's only if you're trying to copy the traditional way of working on the C64 that it becomes frustrating. Something I'm sure the author didn't intend.

Of course, just loading the VST several times is the obvious thing to do, I know that :)

2009-10-18 17:41

DRAX

Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 225

Come on, Neil, make the sid burn... You guys should check out Neil's NES music... Quite cool stuff :D

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