# Flowstone - VST creation including physical modeling and effects.



## Markrs (Sep 11, 2022)

Has anyone used flowstone before? @lychee posted a physically modelled organ made in Flowstone by Rex Basterfield, a website I had stumbled upon before but then forgot about. Rex has a large array of physically modelled instruments which sound pretty good.





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Home - Flowstoners






flowstoners.com









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FlowStone | Overview


Software and Hardware for DSP and Robotics Applications and Education



www.dsprobotics.com







It cost $99 for the full version but they do have a free trial. Is this something you have tried @doctoremmet ?

What is interesting is that Flowstone seems to have been born out of FL Studio as FL SynthMaker before being rebranded and becoming a separate install.





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FL FLowstone (FL SynthMaker)






www.image-line.com





Like Reaktor it looks like development on it stopped many years ago with the last version being Version 3.0.8 released in April 2015

I was wondering if there was a time when physical modelling synths were very popular as such as Flowstone, Reaktor, Max4live, Ircam, etc and if so why they are no longer as popular as they were?


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## lychee (Sep 11, 2022)

I had already seen the Flowstone software the first time I heard of Quilcom and with my small brain I ended up forgetting its existence.
But when I plunged back into the world of Quilcom recently, I inevitably fell back into that of Flowstone.
I haven't watched your video yet, I might be interested but I just hope it doesn't require programming knowledge, because I don't know the subject.
Maybe that's also what made me not keep Flowstone in my head, the fact of not knowing how to program.


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## Markrs (Sep 11, 2022)

lychee said:


> I had already seen the Flowstone software the first time I heard of Quilcom and with my small brain I ended up forgetting its existence.
> But when I plunged back into the world of Quilcom recently, I inevitably fell back into that of Flowstone.
> I haven't watched your video yet, I might be interested but I just hope it doesn't require programming knowledge, because I don't know the subject.
> Maybe that's also what made me not keep Flowstone in my head, the fact of not knowing how to program.


It seems quite a bit like Reaktor where you can just link modules to create something but you can also use script if you want to go deeper into what it can do.


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## lychee (Sep 11, 2022)

I've always been scared of the Reactor interface and always thought it was a programmers thing, so there too I didn't take the time to get interested.
But having finally seen your video of Flowstone and having understood that it was easy to design things, I would find the time to look into the case of these two softwares.


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## lychee (Sep 11, 2022)

On the other hand, your title is misleading, Flowstone allows all types of sounds and not just "PhyMo".
I think "Flowstone: create your own VST" would have been more accurate.


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## doctoremmet (Sep 11, 2022)

I was unaware of this one. I think that the people who have persisted in physical modelling are all on Reaktor, M4L, IRCAM Modalys, Kyma and C++ - and even Reaktor isn’t 5% of what it once was in terms of “activity”. So strictly based on a gut feeling I’d say the handful of people who are still active in the field are all rooted in academia, and are mainly developing certain pieces of software as a means to illustrate certain things for the papers they want to see published.


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## Markrs (Sep 11, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> I was unaware of this one. I think that the people who have persisted in physical modelling are all on Reaktor, M4L, IRCAM Modalys, Kyma and C++ - and even Reaktor isn’t 5% of what it once was in terms of “activity”. So strictly based on a gut feeling I’d say the handful of people who are still active in the field are all rooted in academia, and are mainly developing certain pieces of software as a means to illustrate certain things for the papers they want to see published.


Indeed. Given that all of these platforms are all quite old, there must have been quite a bit of interest in physical modelling about 10+ years ago for these software products to have been created, but I think interest in it has declined quite a bit.

One reason could be the complexity as more bedroom producers have started to create music as software synths have remained popular. I also think as sampling has improved and become much more effective to the point most listeners would not realise a live instrument is not playing, that the benefits of physical modelled instruments has reduced.


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## doctoremmet (Sep 11, 2022)

True. But we did see the release of Friktion and Plasmonic recently, and the instruments and reverbs by Physical Audio. So there is some new development still undertaken. I think one of the main reasons is a lack of interest, so apart from a handful of enthusiasts there’s not really a big enough market.


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## lychee (Sep 11, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> True. But we did see the release of Friktion and Plasmonic recently, and the instruments and reverbs by Physical Audio. So there is some new development still undertaken. I think one of the main reasons is a lack of interest, so apart from a handful of enthusiasts there’s not really a big enough market.


I think that if the market is small it is also because it is more difficult to create a convincing instrument in physical modeling than to simply sample the instrument itself.
This requires investing a lot of time and research not to be sure of the result.
I regret this observation but we cannot blame the developers for not investing in it.


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## Markrs (Sep 11, 2022)

lychee said:


> I've always been scared of the Reactor interface and always thought it was a programmers thing, so there too I didn't take the time to get interested.


Here is some tutorials on Reaktor if you want to explore:




And a free course on Reaktor:








Sound Synthesis Using Reaktor | Kadenze


Learn subtractive, FM, granular, wavetable, drum, and additive synthesis using Native Instrument's Reaktor in this online sound design course from CalArts.




www.kadenze.com


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## LA68 (Sep 11, 2022)

Just a sidenote, one of the synths I posted in the freebie thread a while back was also made in Flowstone. It's called Asper. https://www.kvraudio.com/product/asper-by-zone-sk

Idk, maybe it's interesting to check out because of that...Seems quite nice, but hasn't been particularly stable for me. :/


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