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flora project
Hey everyone,
I thought I might keep you all in the loop regarding the current project, flora, that myself and Paul Mathews are working on. It comprises of a series of Audiobus and IAA compatible audio effects designed to be simple, inexpensive and CPU efficient.
The project was originally conceived to help us learn some lower level signal processing, but we had a few key principles to adhere to. The most important idea is that audio effects should be simple - when I open an effect it is usually with a clear intention. I want to be easy to explore what it has to offer and easy to dial in the perfect sound.
This means we need sensible, simple GUI elements such as faders and radio buttons. No knobs (a pet peeve of mine for touch-based controllers). A small number of parameters to tweak, consistent user experience between effects and lightweight performance. The combination of these things will give us effects that contribute to my work flow without overtaking it.
We currently have five offerings:
- Phlox Phaser
- Cactus Chorus
- Buttercup Bitcrush
- Dahlia Delay (released this week)
- Saffron Saturator (released yesterday!)
We have updates in the pipeline for all the existing apps which significantly speed up the audio processing We have been focusing on optimising the audio because these are mostly designed to run in the background. The next step is upgrading the GUI to make it snappier and hopefully more intuitive.
We are also working on two new effects:
- a harmonic tremolo
- a grain delay
and we have a few features that we are integrating into all the apps:
- MIDI CC control.
- Native flora presets, rather than relying on the audiobus preset system.
- Better IAA integration to allow easier switching between apps.
The reason we’re posting is we want some feedback and have a couple of questions we would like to pose to the Audiobus community. Firstly, what audio effects are missing from iOS - what would you like to see? What features would you like to see in the flora platform?
Timothy J. Barraclough
Comments
Good to see you here and I applaud the simplicity of your approach. I hope that others more technically gifted will share their thoughts.
I like the lack of confusion your apps cause me. I have the phaser, saturator and delay. All seem good, the last two I like particularly. They work best (for me) because their relative subtlety causes me to think what it is I actually want to do rather than simply pouring sauce all over the plate.
I suppose the one thing I would like would be a reverb that encouraged others to believe I might be Sam Cooke in some as yet unbuilt chapel. I rather think there would be others willing to spend 99 cents for this also.
A good reverb wouldn't hurt. One thing that is important to me are well made presets in effects. I'm a noob when it comes to effects so I like to start with the presets and go from there.
Thanks for the feedback.
@JohnnyGoodyear - Paul & I have been thinking about making a reverb, we're still not entirely sure on the best way to do it. It's a tricky balance to find something that sounds great but also meets our efficiency requirements, whilst also being both versatile and simple. Are there any specific hardare or software reverbs that get you the sound you're after?
@mkell424 - not really something I'd considered, but I think it's a great point and definitely something we'll do. I'm sure lots of others would have their own great presets, which makes me wonder if having a preset sharing system (in some capacity) might be a cool feature to add?
A Particle reverb would be very welcome, the Line 6 original is amazing but the Zoom aint too shabby either
I do not think it would be possible to replicate this reverb so as to be efficient processor wise but maybe when you are finished with your flora project you could do a ParticleVerb in a similar style to the brilliant Crystalline app.
Great to see a developer asking such questions here. I think it's a tricky area, in that the more standard effects are already pretty extensively covered on iOS. My suggestion is to go for the more esoteric - but still sonically usable types effects. I find that on the desktop, Reaktor has a very varied sonic palette for effects, perhaps that's worth looking at, and NI's Molekular / Live's effects.
These two sound cool:
a harmonic tremolo
a grain delay
@wizardjenkins @all I would encourage cleverer folks than me to chime in here on the subject of a reverb within the simplicity of form/resources Mr. Barraclough is thinking about...
Hi all -- I am the other developer working with Tim. Great to hear from you all and thanks for the input, definitely giving me some good ideas.
@Igneous1 I agree with you, although perhaps I'm biased but it's a lot more fun for me to make something novel than smash out the same old choruses and whatnot. I'm definitely inspired by Molekular in particular, they have some great stuff which still keeps a simple interface and a single sonic contribution which means that it just does what you want it to and nothing more or less. This is pretty much exactly our angle for Flora; we've got a few fairly standard effects and I'm hoping now to move into more arcane territory and very much appreciate the suggestions (also fyi the harmonic tremolo is getting very close to submission and I'm loving the prototype grain delay).
@banjofran I would dearly love to make a particle reverb, thank you for the inspiration, so I am absolutely going to investigate the viability. Gives me the idea of doing something more akin to a fancy Electro-Harmonix Freeze pedal as well which should certainly be doable, probably triggered by an envelope follower and maybe stacking on some modulation to get some long-range shimmery effects without needing to buffer up massive amounts of sound...
Anyway, definitely a lot to think about, really appreciate all the suggestions and feedback. Might try post back in a week or so with a few audio samples if I don't get too busy with real life
I would really wish for a multi fx app something like Audiodamage Automaton...
https://www.audiodamage.com/effects/product.php?pid=AD020
@supadupa555 That automaton looks nuts! I would totally be keen to work on something like that maybe a bit further down the track. I think sequence-able effects give some of the best versatility to sound. My go to is illformed Glitch 2, but i might have to check out automaton.
If you have a bit of a google you can find a lot of Electro-harmonix pedal schematics around the internet. I have a few that i've been looking at to see if it would be possible to reverse engineer some of them and add our own spin to them -- I've always loved the cathedral reverb and the POG that they do.
I think in general i'm the same as you, @pfcm, excited to do more interesting and esoteric effects. I'm thinking about the possibility of doing some side-chainable effects too, for things like vocoding, formant filters and side-chain compression. What do you guys think about that?
Also, an update for Dahlia delay came out today -- i'm hoping to finish the harmonic tremolo in the next couple of days too!
Thanks for the note. Glad to hear/see about the preset saving thingie. I'm fond of synchronicity in almost all of its forms
As an added and separate gee-up, there seems to be a lot of hotness (technical term) for AU amongst the brethren here and your addition of the same would not only make elegant sense for your suite, but also perhaps stimulate further interest etc.
I have had my small share of EHX pedals, and love your idea of a rethought Freeze since I use the Superego with a modulated reverb and chorus in the insert.
Give us a POG or HOG or other awesomness.
I vote for Rosebud Reverb: and put Orson Well's face on it for the icon. I almost burnt my last house down trying to get rid of a bunch of Hibanobambusa!
It's been a long time since I've posted here, but I'm happy to announce that after slowly updating everything over the few months, all the current apps have been updated to be AUv3 compliant. After working on the infrastructure for the past year, all the apps are a lot more modular and maintainable. I'm currently working through the updates to make all of them discoverable as Audio Units within AudioBus 3 (which is absolutely spectacular).
We're currently working on some new apps, namely a compressor type effect and some more interesting pitch based delays, as well as looking at ways to transport the flora aesthetic to generator apps, rather than just pure effects. But what else would you all like to see in the AudioUnit eco-system? What is missing?
What features would you like to see added to the flora suite? Paul and I are really open to feedback and would love to hear everyone's opinions!
Our updated website, with video demos, is at www.flora-creative.com
I'm a big fan of the flora project and the updates are really appreciated, many thanks.
If generators are under consideration for a next venture, I can say as a synth nerd I look forward to any and all of the possibilities y'all come up with.
However, the notable gap in generators available for iOS is in the area of samplers: there are a few but none have what would be considered (around here) the complete feature set as of yet (or the sampler is swell but is embedded in a DAW). Our friend @kobamato is one member here that can summarize what's missing in current offerings...and a quick forum search of "sampler" will also yield some good information for a sampler project (there's probably a thread called "Why isn't there a good sampler for iOS?" But the same sentiment pops up in many other threads). Given the elegance and feature set of the flora project, I'm sure your team are up for the sampler challenge.
I wouldn't mind seeing a standalone Acoustic Sim effect.
Ranunculus reverb: A shimmering reverb with warm sustain and slight signal boost maybe?
Peony pitch shift: A pitch shifter that lets me add a 3rd or a 5th in varying degrees with my original guitar tone. Nobody has this yet (that I'm aware of)
Waterlily wa wa. Obviously a wa wa effect.
One last one, Begonia backwards effect: yep.
@NoiseHorse re: peony... have you looked at ZMH-1 or Harmonizer?
Two areas of opportunity:
Rich Drum sampler in AU format. Would be nice
Also Convolution Reverb as AU
Thanks everyone for the suggestions and feedback. I've had it in my mind that we'd start making a Pitch delay relatively soon (working title, Peony Pitch-Delay), as well as some harmonizer type effects, because we haven't really played around with pitch too much.
One of my biggest concerns with moving towards generators and reverbs is that they are quite computationally expensive, compared to the other apps we have already. In saying that though, our new infrastructure is about as lightweight as possible so I'm definitely very keen to start exploring some of the more computationally expensive effects e.g. reverbs (both tap delay based and convolution based), convolution based simulators, etc.
Most all of my audio hardware devices are samplers, so it's kind of surprising that I haven't really thought to head in that direction... yet
...
Thanks, I had no idea. I've just been a mess since I gave up coffee. Nonetheless I am looking forward to any new sprouts out of the flora project, I love and use all of them; like I used to drink coffee..