Madrona Labs Sumu

[navernoe]

Finally. Congrats to Randy and all involved
It's $129 intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqs2u29NTE

[briefcasemanx]

He said in the email he had to "build a new plugin framework", lol, why?

[Dirtgrain]

Sumu or Zebra 3 - which will win award for longest time from announcement til fulfillment?

I wonder how many people bought ZebraHZ only to pass away before they get their free Zebra 3 upgrade. I'm writing my license into my will, just in case.

Then again, every moment, someone dies before something. I hope to at least see my son get through college and build a nice life for himself with great relationships around him. Zebra 3? I'm game.

[crawlingwind]

Jokes on me I guess. Way to go Randy! Take that Urs!

Sumu or Zebra 3 - which will win award for longest time from announcement til fulfillment?

[dayjob]

it sounds incredible. the manual is informative and well written. nice presets. congrats on release randy! this thing is smooth. i love the interface and how it works. looks great. sounds otherworldy. lot's fun awaits.

[masterhiggins]

$179? Inflation really is a bitch, innit? Goddamn.

[pekbro]

Definitely don't want to miss the intro price...

whoa, need a fast computer too seems like.

[foosnark]

I'm having mixed feelings.

It's not an immediately approachable synth, that's for sure. Took some time to figure out some basic things (like, plugging "time" into the dial instead of "+" lets you control the speed). I kind of bounced off the manual when I tried reading it; it feels weird to have a synth this advanced that opens up with trying to explain FM and additive synthesis, etc.

The noise in the demo is pretty seriously annoying for something that requires this much exploration to figure out. But putting that aside:

The sound isn't generally something I'm in love with. I've found some nice sweet spots but I'm not sure it's enough to convince me.

Pulses is kind of cool but also kind of a gimmick. There have been a few times I wanted two of them, so I could have a slow, broadband set of back-and-forth LFOs, but also a fast bunch of expo decays limited to a narrow range.

There have been a lot more times where I just wanted a couple more envelopes or LFOs (looping function generators would be perfect) and several times when I wanted VCAs to modulate modulation amounts. I just generally prefer simple modulation over complex. Also, a bit further range on the envelope high scale, and also a high scale control for the Partials amp output (sort of like a tilt EQ).

Aalto is one of my favorite softsynths for sure. What I love about it is, I can patch something I love to hear, from scratch, within seconds, and yet there's some depth there to explore. I bought Kaivo and Virta but don't feel the same about them, and barely use them -- they more time and work to find sounds I want to use. Sumu I think would be in the same boat.

To be fair, it's doing some unique and cool stuff for sure. Some of that inharmonic bending of the partials combined woth bending the FM ratios by their pitches... if anything changes my mind about this synth it'll be that.

...also I've been super grouchy today so I should probably demo it again when I hate everyone and everything less.

[crawlingwind]

Just for fun, I put the Studio Bundle in my cart to see how it played out, but it isn’t giving me credit for my Kaivo license. I have all the products, so they need to double check this.

[Dunc]

Crashes REAPER every time I try to load into a track - probably some fault with REAPER (though I've never had any other VSTi crash REAPER so quickly).
Tried in Blue Cat Patchwork...Loads up OK. CPU use is showing about 75% before I even touch a note on my keyboard...

Windows 10, i9 Intel with 32GB memory.

As it stands, not for me.

[masterhiggins]

Crashes Logic and bends my CPU over like a little bitch. I agree with Foosnark about it having a few sweet spots, but not really jiving with most of the sounds I'm getting out of it (yes, I know it's just me). It's strange. I use the hell out of Aalto and Kaivo and to a lesser extent Virta, but those synths have much larger sweet spots in my usage. I can see Autechre and Richard Devine creaming their jeans for this, though. $129 is still a bit steep for such a niche instrument.

[dayjob]

He said in the email he had to "build a new plugin framework", lol, why?

There’s a handful of devs who developed their own api framework for building plug ins. I think u-he has their own in house. It’s a way to avoid any turmoil or license weirdness that might crop up like seems to be happening with juice. I think Fors made choices based of what they had planned for interface graphics/animations. So, I think randy had specific design issues to overcome and perhaps going from scratch was the most common sense way to go about it. I’m just speculating though but suspect he had his reasons

[lnikj]

Just for fun, I put the Studio Bundle in my cart to see how it played out, but it isn’t giving me credit for my Kaivo license. I have all the products, so they need to double check this.

Same experience here - Kaivo missing.

[aMUSEd]

Me too - also Aaltoverb

[Beachboy]

I can't even load Sumu in Studio One (Windows 10), it crashes immediately and closes the DAW. I think I have to wait a bit longer for a stable version