Any future plans for VM

[woau]

Hey everyone

Really like VM and have been using it a lot. To the developers: was wondering if there are future plans for adding features and updates to the program. Or are you guys mainly focussing on new stand alone synths?

Also will there be another 'year' collection this year from cherry audio or cherry audio/mrb?


Greetings

[huggermugger]

Two things I'd like to see:
1. A DSP meter, program-wide at least, and preferably module-specific.
2. "Smart" cable colouring option. For example, in the Nord Modular, audio cables are red by default, CV cables are blue, and logic cables are yellow. Colored cables are great, but function-based colors make it easier to follow the signal paths of a patch than a random mess of colours or all one colour. Also, in the Nord you can show and hide cables by function, so for example, you can hide all the logic cables.

[Steve W]

Reference to prior suggestion removed.

[ColinP]

In my opinion Voltage Modular (with all of its faults) is the best software modular synthesizer environment available but Cherry Audio don't seem to appreciate this.

They keep knocking out simulations of forty or fifty year old technology instead of promoting and improving the shining jewel sat right in front of them.

To be honest I can understand this. It's far easier to copy something that you know people like than it is to innovate. And given people's apparent enthusiasm for synthesizers that I think belong in museums it probably is the wisest thing to do from a purely commercial point of view.

But I keep hoping that Cherry Audio will change tack.

Here are some of the things I've suggested to CA...

Metering so we can optimise patches.
Removing the restrictions on poly cables.
Making Plug-in hosts able to locate Voltage Modular automatically regardless of whether running on Mac or Windows.
Making it possible to cleanly enable and disable Plug-In hosts with a gate signal in order to make larger patches possible by selectively shutting down sub-patches.
Allowing users to opt into a standardized cable color scheme as described by Huggermugger.
Support for skins.
Improved scrolling so it's not so ugly moving around a large patch.
Making SVG work properly.
Fixing broken links and out of date info in the documentation.
Fixing bugs in VMD.

I'd also like to see foreign language support and countless over improvements but nothing ever happens so I've stopped wasting time making any more suggestions to CA.

It was probably not very sensible to post this but I feel quite frustrated with Cherry Audio. None of the above will make me any friends at CA but I get the impression that they see me as some kind of a crank anyway.

Sorry if this comes over as a bit of a rant and I realise that many of you may see things totally differently .

[woau]

They aren't obligated to do anything more to it of course. They already provided nice software. I can imagine they have to consider long term viability, investment, and whether it will bring enough money in. Not everyone is into modular, and there is some strong competition. But as someone who invested in the platform, it would be nice to see them wanting to develop it further themselves, that it is worth the investment for them as well. And for them to possibly differentiate the platform further from the competition in a unique way.

My addition would be I wish we could connect modules together by dragging them onto a cable port. The con of modular is that it is often slow. Rearranging effects takes a while. If you can simply drag a module on the left cable output for mono connection, and right output for stereo connection, and have them automatically wire that would speed things up quite a bit.

[oslin007]

Can only give a thumbs up for performance metering.
Also, would like to see the VCV function to "cntrl/cmnd-drag" a whole section of modules at ones

[huggermugger]

Also, would like to see the VCV function to "cntrl/cmnd-drag" a whole section of modules at ones

Do you mean to copy them? If so, you already can.

[222d]

Further optimizations for M1 native. Some modules are not usable atm (FM for example), even on M1 Max.

[basa333]

hi,

I wish
a) simply duplicate moduls (or selected group of moduls) with drag/drop (+ Ctrl?)
b) metering CPU
c) obligation for developers to publish basic patches and sound for new modules (where it makes sense) - for some modules without instructions this is sometimes not easy

but I want to express my satisfaction, VM brings me a lot of good mood and excitement!

thanks tom

[MRBarton]

Just wanted to chime in regarding the ideas for standardized cable coloring like on the Nord Modular. I've got a couple of Nord Modulars and the reason they can have a cable color scheme is that they differentiate between signals. There's audio, control, gates, and I forget if there's anything else. These signals are treated differently in the software and probably run at different sample rates. That's not the case in VM. In VM, like in the real analog world (except for Buchla), a signal is a signal is a signal. Every signal in VM runs at 48KHz. There's absolutely nothing to stop you from running the output from a filter into the gate of an envelope generator, and that's the way it should be.

So you can see that with this kind of universality, standardizing colors would be difficult if not impossible. Also, in developerland, a jack is a jack. You get the idea.

BTW, filter to env gate is not a stupid thing to do. Tune the filter real low with high resonance. Pulse the input, and as the filter rings it will trigger the env gen multiple times. Instant ratcheting. Ain't modular grand?