OB-Xf by Surge Synth Team

Off-Topic
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Original post by EvilDragon

OB-Xf is ready to start beta testing!

To download the latest please visit this page.

OB-Xf is a continuation of the free and open source OB-Xd project. Surge Synth Team, expanded with a new group of team members, centralized several disparate efforts around the Web interested in improving this synth. We’ve undertaken a few months of work to continue, update, and improve the free and open source version of this classic virtual instrument with a variety of fixes, enhancements, and new features.

OB-Xf is and always will be free in all contexts and for all uses, with the source code available and modifiable, and the software usable in any context, free or commercial. The software is released under the GNU General Public License 3.0 or later.

It’s not a small project though, and as we head towards the 1.0 release we are interested in having folks from the whole wide world to help us with beta testing and factory patch design.

Features we’ve added include (in no particular order of importance):

  • Improved voice handling, updated the old VAM button to a menu that offers last/low/high note priority
  • Unison Voices parameter specifies how many voices will be used when Unison button is enabled, which makes polyphonic unison possible!
  • Separately adjustable pitch bend up/down ranges, Vibrato LFO can now switch between sine and unipolar square wave
  • Ring modulator and noise colors (white/pink/red) added to the Mixer
  • 4-pole filter now gained an additional Xpander mode, which contains the 15 filter types found on Oberheim Xpander!
  • LFO gains waveform crossfaders instead of on-off waveform buttons, adjustable pulsewidth for square/saw waveforms, invertable targets (the target buttons have 3 states now) and Volume as additional target
  • Second LFO is added which is functionally identical to the first LFO, except it is per voice instead of global for all voices
  • Some parameters have extended or modified ranges, LFO Rate now goes to 250 Hz, Vibrato Rate range is now 2-12 Hz, scaling of Noise volume now matches scaling of oscillator volume parameters, the range of Crossmod parameter was doubled, etc.
  • New Levels parameter in Voice Variation section, which mildly adjusts the output volumes of 8 voice blocks
  • Programmer section at the bottom, containing patch number (click to list all patches in the bank) and name (click to rename), previous/next patch buttons, initialize and randomize patch buttons, and 16 direct access buttons that allow selecting 16 patches across 16 groups
  • Awesome new GUI by satYatunes and arturrembe, and a simplified vectorized version of it by EvilDragon which is embedded into the binaries
  • Fully accessible implementation with keyboard navigation and screen reader support on Windows and MacOS
  • Loads of fixes and code quality improvements, infrastructure moved from Projucer to CMake, etc.
  • Available on Windows, MacOS and Linux, through CLAP, VST3, Standalone, AU and LV2 formats

There’s still a few things we are working on in the beta period:

  • The MIDI Learn UI/UX is pending further improvements
  • The default install has no patches, no banks (other than the initialized one :)), no MIDI mappings. If you are interested in contributing patches, please join our Discord server!

We hope to get to a 1.0 release well before Halloween. Giving the synth a test and sharing bug reports on GitHub or our Discord server is the crucial last step to get there. When reporting bugs, please use the Copy Info to Clipboard function on About page, which you can get to by clicking the OB-Xf logo in top left corner!

Thank you!

11 Likes
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New release from Surge Team :tada::tada:

5 Likes
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honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing buying soft synths anymore, awesome news

6 Likes
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Coolio! I have OBXD though. How is this an improvement? Just curious.

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Quote:

- Practically all hidden parameters that are useful are exposed to the front

- Ring modulator added in the Mixer

- Noise Color (white/pink/red) added in the Mixer (red noise not implemented yet)

- Separate pitch bend ranges in Control section

- Unison Voices parameter specifies how many voices from the total polyphony (set by Poly parameter) will be used when Unison is enabled (going to be implemented soon)

- The utterly opaquely named VAM parameter is renamed to Note Prio(rity) (it basically changes from low note priority to last note priority, and also adds high note priority)

- Filter Envelope can now be separately inverted at secondary targets (Env To Pitch and Env To PW)

- Second LFO (identical to LFO1, but per voice instead of global)!

- Added Volume as modulation target to the LFO

- LFO Waveform buttons became knobs, which act as a panner between sine/triangle, pulse/saw and S&H/S&G. At noon nothing is being put out by that particular waveform generator

- LFO Pulse and Sawtooth waveforms now have a Pulsewidth parameter (for Sawtooth it makes the ramp more concave/plucky)

- Voice Variation section got the Levels parameter, which mildly adjusts the output volumes of the 8 voices

- Programmer section at the bottom, with:

* patch number (click to open the context menu with the list of patches)

* patch name (click to rename)

* previous/next/initialize/randomize patch

* direct access buttons that allow you to select between 16 patches sorted across 16 groups (this required doubling of the maximum program count stored in FXB, from 128 to 256)

* direct access buttons have two LEDs, yellow shows which group is selected, red shows which patch is selected

Some other improvements you cannot see on the screenshot (some of them are still WIP):

- The synth now correctly produces 440 Hz when playing middle octave A key, previously it was one octave higher

- Increased maximum polyphony to 32 voices

- Finetune key modifier has been moved from Ctrl/Cmd to Shift

- For Osc tuning and Transpose parameters, Ctrl/Cmd snaps to semitones, Alt/Opt snaps to octaves

- Right-clicking the knobs shows a context menu with a value edit field to type the value in directly

- The arc around Filter Mode knob dynamically changes to show LP-N-HP or LP-BP-HP or 4P-3P-2P-1P depending on state of BP and 4-Pole buttons

- 4-pole filter mode now has an additional Xpander mode with 15 filter types

- The range of Crossmod parameter has been doubled

- The range of Env To Pitch parameter has been slightly increased to properly allow a full 3-octave modulation range

- The scaling of Noise Volume parameter in Mixer has been changed to match the scaling of Osc 1/2 Volume parameters

- The range of LFO Rate parameter has been increased to 250 Hz

- The range of Vibrato Rate parameter has also been changed to 2-12 Hz

- Tooltips are now always enabled

2 Likes
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I can’t seem to get it to show in Renoise in Windows 8. Will it run on Wondows 8 at all?

Yw…I am an old poor bastard…lol

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Maybe you got the wrong file ? It shows up after clicking “Show all assets” at the bottom of the list.

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Ya …there ar3 3 different exe files. One is just Windows (32?), a Windows-arm 64, and Windows.arm64ec. I tried the 64 and the just Windows one, to no avail. Gonna do a sweep and try it again. A bit confused.

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Hmmmm…tried ALL 3 Windows exe now. I don’t think it likes Windows 8..:sob: back to OBXD 2.5.1 it is then.

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Looks like it has support for Oddsound MTS-ESP :smiley:

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Hm, the ~Windows.exe without ARM in the name at the bottom of the list should work (VST3 64bit). But I can’t test it, because no Windows 8 here.