Discovery AUv3 Synth by DiscoDSP (Released)

Samu

@NeuM said:
but I don't recall if Apple has libraries for procedural textures to create surface detail without rasterizing them.

If I'm not completely mistaken it's possible to use metal-shaders to draw the entire App UI including texture generation on the fly but that takes a bit more effort

NeuM

@Samu said:

@NeuM said:
but I don't recall if Apple has libraries for procedural textures to create surface detail without rasterizing them.

If I'm not completely mistaken it's possible to use metal-shaders to draw the entire App UI including texture generation on the fly but that takes a bit more effort

Ah, you are referring to Metal™, their "close-to-the-metal" API they developed for games. Haha.

garden

@Samu said:

@Edward_Alexander said:
When I’m using it, it’s like I’m looking at a picture of a synth app. And it seems like it’s ever so slightly out of focus.

Anyone else?

It's the depth effect of the knobs that does it, it tricks the eyes (and yes, a 'Flat UI' option would be most welcome).

I’m not sure it is just the knob graphics. I noticed the blurriness too, but wasn’t entirely sure what I was seeing. The text itself, on the flat surface, is blurred.

Edit: I just saw your note about the anti-aliasing. Nod. Still kinda naff.

tpj

I love all the discodsp apps but I want to call on all auv3 synth devs.

Auv3 does not mean the keyboard is a by product.

Please spend just as much time on the keyboard design/layout.

**Make sure users can hide it / show it.
Resize it. Add scales. Add octave up down.
**
Pretend it will be used as a full screen app as well.

Some examples of devs that get this.

Look at Yonac please. Your apps will be better.

And final point. MIDI OUT is always welcome. Notes/CC.
Midi out seems to be disabled in the minds of auv3 devs.

midi out is not just the task of auv3 midi generators.

Your auv3 synth is a midi generator too.
The on screen keys/controls are midi generators too.

Why is Animoog the only synth that does it right?

Thank you

Poppadocrock

Dam I wish this was universal. Even though I have both my iPad is getting up there, so been going back and forth bet Devices.

If I recall correctly, It mentions parameter automation in the App Store description. Maybe just means internal on the synth and not exposed in a host like they should be…

Poppadocrock

3,500 presets! How are the on board patches? Sound quality? Usability?

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Gavinski

@Poppadocrock said:
3,500 presets! How are the on board patches? Sound quality? Usability?

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Yeah the presets are seriously good and there’s a crazy number of them. Sound is fantastic. There are still a lot of ways in which this is a bit rough around the edges. It’s a sloppy port, no question. Nevertheless, the presets alone probably make it worth grabbing for $20:

Poppadocrock

Last couple things…

How’s the randomization feature?

How’s the CPU pull relative to your device and sessions?

Poppadocrock

@Gavinski said:

@Poppadocrock said:
3,500 presets! How are the on board patches? Sound quality? Usability?

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Yeah the presets are seriously good and there’s a crazy number of them. Sound is fantastic. There are still a lot of ways in which this is a bit rough around the edges. It’s a sloppy port, no question. Nevertheless, the presets alone probably make it worth grabbing for $20:

I was literally just going back and forth between your video and this thread, lol. Cheers mate.

Gavinski

@Poppadocrock said:

@Gavinski said:

@Poppadocrock said:
3,500 presets! How are the on board patches? Sound quality? Usability?

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Yeah the presets are seriously good and there’s a crazy number of them. Sound is fantastic. There are still a lot of ways in which this is a bit rough around the edges. It’s a sloppy port, no question. Nevertheless, the presets alone probably make it worth grabbing for $20:

I was literally just going back and forth between your video and this thread, lol. Cheers mate.

Ah haha, yeah I saw you there just now in the comments, thanks pop

ALB

@Edward_Alexander said:
When I’m using it, it’s like I’m looking at a picture of a synth app. And it seems like it’s ever so slightly out of focus.

Anyone else?

Yep - it looks like junk to me. Like a picture of a picture.

reasOne

I really can’t decide if I should buy this since or not based on all the feedback. The background looks pretty rough and not having many parameters exposed kind of useless.
Appreciate the video you made Gav, maybe I’ll wait and see what they do with it
For $10 I’d buy it right now

ecou

I was looking forward to this but now I don’t know anymore.

Gavinski

@ALB said:

@Edward_Alexander said:
When I’m using it, it’s like I’m looking at a picture of a synth app. And it seems like it’s ever so slightly out of focus.

Anyone else?

Yep - it looks like junk to me. Like a picture of a picture.

It's horrific looking, quite frankly, and that upper left part in particular strains the eyes to look at

uncledave

Hi @Gavinski . I wonder if the funny option selectors (3 lights to select from 5 mod destinations) replicate the original Nord Lead 2. Seems a bit unnecessary though, replicating original hardware limitations.

Edit: Yep, the option selectors are the same as the original, as are the other odd features like the LFO2/Arp.

Also, I noticed that the value of the control being adjusted is shown in the LED display. So you really can set things like osc tuning accurately. But the LED display looks blurry in your video; not ideal.

For saving a user preset, you may need to navigate to a bank and slot, then Save to put the current settings in the slot. And, because selecting the slot loads the contents, you may need to Copy the current settings first, so you can save them. Hard to know without experimentation. The "Lib" banks may be the user banks?

cuscolima

The UI is not perfect by far… but it sounds amazing and at the end this is what I am expecting personally. I can live with a tough face…

Luxthor

@Edward_Alexander said:

@Samu said:

I guess it'll be fixed in due time. I won't be refunding the purchase but it's very close.

Same here. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to get a refund for an app, but it crossed my mind with this one.

I really want to like this, because some of the sounds are amazing, but if I can’t stand looking at it, or “touching” it, it might not get much use (or love) from me.

Let’s hope they at least add some exposed parameters.

@Luxthor said:
I just lost my working preset by accidentally pressing that red preset LCD display while using the modwheel (close to that display). 😔 There is no darn undo button. The same modwheel dial is half responsive, does anyone else have a similar experience?

Yeah, I’ve noticed that it takes more than a couple tries to get that mod wheel to respond to touch. That, and there’s quite a few other little things that are hit or miss to touch response, like the little red “sync” lights (like the one between the left and right delay controls), and how to switch the “delay” to “gate”??? Yeah, it’s that tiny red light next to the word “GATE”.

And there’s no SETTINGS anywhere? Audio? MIDI?

I can only guess why this is happening. It’s probably because UI was designed for mouse cursors on displays with 800x600 resolution. So clickable regions are too small for finger touch.

Slush

@Gavinski said:

@Poppadocrock said:
3,500 presets! How are the on board patches? Sound quality? Usability?

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Yeah the presets are seriously good and there’s a crazy number of them. Sound is fantastic. There are still a lot of ways in which this is a bit rough around the edges. It’s a sloppy port, no question. Nevertheless, the presets alone probably make it worth grabbing for $20:

Great vid. Another strange UI anomaly I noticed. Look at the up left, lfo section how the little lightbulbs not switch off but just disappeared.

Gavinski

@Slush said:

@Gavinski said:

@Poppadocrock said:
3,500 presets! How are the on board patches? Sound quality? Usability?

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Yeah the presets are seriously good and there’s a crazy number of them. Sound is fantastic. There are still a lot of ways in which this is a bit rough around the edges. It’s a sloppy port, no question. Nevertheless, the presets alone probably make it worth grabbing for $20:

Great vid. Another strange UI anomaly I noticed. Look at the up left, lfo section how the little lightbulbs not switch off but just disappeared.

How strange! Maybe shoot the devs an email if you have time 🔥

ZankFrappa

@Poppadocrock said:

It’s Really cool you can import actual Nord Lead 2 patches too. I’m sure there’s free ones out there in the ether somewhere, anyone try that feature yet?

Found several sysex files on the www. Discovery couldn't import them at first, until I realized that the files must be in the “Discovery” folder on the iPad.
I have now created an empty bank (select any factory bank, press “Reset -> Bank” in the menu, then save as “empty bank” in “Discovery -> Assets” on the iPad. The banks saved there are always loaded when the app is started).
After selecting the empty bank, I import a sysex file, then export the bank with “File -> Export” (not “Export Program”) in “Discovery -> Assets”.
There were also approx. 1700 individual presets with the file extension .ngf. These are loaded as sysex, but it's too much work to organize them in banks... The banks with file extension .mid cannot be loaded.

ZankFrappa

After some experimenting, I found a way to create my own bank with my own presets:
First select a factory bank, then press “Reset -> Bank” in the menu.
Save this empty bank as (e.g.) “my presets” in the “Discovery -> Assets” folder on the iPad.
Assuming you have changed a factory preset and want to save it in the “my presets” bank, do the following:
press “Copy -> Program” in the menu, then load “my presets” in the bank menu.
Select an empty memory location and then “Paste -> Program and Save” in the menu.
Attention, before changing to another bank, export the “my presets” bank again and overwrite the old one, and this after each new preset.
All in all a nightmare, but it works :-)

rapidfire

@ZankFrappa said:
After some experimenting, I found a way to create my own bank with my own presets:
First select a factory bank, then press “Reset -> Bank” in the menu.
Save this empty bank as (e.g.) “my presets” in the “Discovery -> Assets” folder on the iPad.
Assuming you have changed a factory preset and want to save it in the “my presets” bank, do the following:
press “Copy -> Program” in the menu, then load “my presets” in the bank menu.
Select an empty memory location and then “Paste -> Program and Save” in the menu.
Attention, before changing to another bank, export the “my presets” bank again and overwrite the old one, and this after each new preset.
All in all a nightmare, but it works :-)

Thanks for info, I found an easier way, just open the Files app/My iPad/Discovery/Assets, just long press on any folder and select Duplicate, long press on duplicate file and rename it (change bank number to last position).
I found resetting the current Bank reverts back to original after closing, but your preset saving method works and is easy to just overwrite any preset in the selected bank 👍

thesoundtestroom

@ZankFrappa @rapidfire I just uploaded this little tutorial for your patch bank info.
So I give you both a big shoutout in the video, top job guys, it works great.

rapidfire

If anyone is interested in using the exposed Midi in AU3 mode (Cubasis 3) here are all the available CC#s. The two 24s on the two tabs are not a mistake, CC24 operates both tabs at the same time. These tab CC# work like this:
CC17 followed by a 0 or 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 and will scroll through the octave ranges, the same applies to all other tabs but the amount of single numbers may differ.

Samu

@thesoundtestroom said:
@ZankFrappa @rapidfire I just uploaded this little tutorial for your patch bank info.
So I give you both a big shoutout in the video, top job guys, it works great.

I've not checked yet, but do the preset changes made in the stand-alone migrate to the AUv3?

Technically it is possible for an AUv3 to access files visible in Files.app (the AUv3 just has to ask for permission the first time it's used and store the security scoped URL for future access).

Access to Discoverys iCloud folder doesn't require any explicit permissions to be set but even though I've set Discovery to use iCloud in the system-settings it insists on using local storage?!

Hopefully we'll get some Discovery updates to polish the rough edges.

Cheers!

thesoundtestroom

@Samu I had a couple of comments on my video about the banks.
One person couldn’t even get it work, although that me be user error, I’m pretty sure it a solid workaround, at least for the standalone version.

Which brings me to another point.
Apparently, although I haven’t tested this yet, it still doesn’t show up the user bank presets when using Discovery as an AUv3.

So, I too hope we’ll get some updates soon, I’m sure we will 🤞

ninobeatz

v6.1.1 update is currently pending approval

thesoundtestroom

@ninobeatz @Samu Well there you go 🤣

Samu

@thesoundtestroom said:
@ninobeatz @Samu Well there you go 🤣

Hehe, thanks, wish you all a nice Sunday

Luxthor

@rapidfire said:
If anyone is interested in using the exposed Midi in AU3 mode (Cubasis 3) here are all the available CC#s. The two 24s on the two tabs are not a mistake, CC24 operates both tabs at the same time. These tab CC# work like this:
CC17 followed by a 0 or 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 and will scroll through the octave ranges, the same applies to all other tabs but the amount of single numbers may differ.

Fantastic work. Thank you for this infographic. 🤩