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Bt phobos update 1.1.4

While I'm very excited by this creation, I'm going to wait till the "teething" issues, dinky GUI, and browser/saving deficiencies are corrected. All too often these days I find developers jumping to the next project /revenue stream, even some of my favorite companies, neglecting the carefully articulated concerns voiced by users

Not a criticism of this brilliant work per se. I do love it's innovative approach and the sample set is exciting to contemplate. However, I find if I can't see it, I don't use it! All aging eyes know this to be true.

Look foreward to V2... I have Phobos in my heart
Have to chime in and say that I'm quite pleased with how Spitfire handles this. They revamped Sable strings, and fixed a few quite minor issues within the GUI and the samples themselves about a week and a half after I emailed them, along with a host of other "under the hood" things. They seem like one of the few companies that actually care about releasing and maintaining good products. I have yet to see where they ignore user concerns.
 
Have to chime in and say that I'm quite pleased with how Spitfire handles this. They revamped Sable strings, and fixed a few quite minor issues within the GUI and the samples themselves about a week and a half after I emailed them, along with a host of other "under the hood" things. They seem like one of the few companies that actually care about releasing and maintaining good products. I have yet to see where they ignore user concerns.

Thanks Rohann!

Just a sneak peek.. Martin has just outputted a quick screencap showing the resizable UI.

He's also implemented the patch next/prev buttons and we are working our way through a variety of possible enhancements. Phobos is going to be around for a long time.. Its a pretty deep synth!

 
Just a sneak peek.. Martin has just outputted a quick screencap showing the resizable UI.

That is excellent news! For the last 5 years I have been using a 27" monitor running at 2560x1440 resolution (its native resolution) and I must say I have been struggling to see some parts of the Phobos interface. You're right Christian, the Kontakt interface is small - certainly on my system about as small as I would want to go, but in comparison parts of Phobos are even smaller, which just tips it over the edge for me. The analogy I'd use is when watching a TV show where the dialogue is just a little too quiet relative to all the other audio - you can hear it but it takes that little bit more extra effort, when all it needed was a 1 or 2 dB boost. Your forthcoming resizeable GUI will be that extra 2dB (maybe even 6dB! ;)) boost that I need. Christian, I'm sorry you consider talk of the GUI "a bit buzzkilly", but for this user, who happily invested in this amazing new paradigm of synthesis with no regrets whatsoever, it has been a genuine cause of frustration. However that looks to be changing soon! :) Roll on the next release and thanks for addressing this as quickly as you seem to be doing - not something all developers would necessarily do.
 
Just a sneak peek.. Martin has just outputted a quick screencap showing the resizable UI.

He's also implemented the patch next/prev buttons and we are working our way through a variety of possible enhancements. Phobos is going to be around for a long time.. Its a pretty deep synth!

i'm very happy to see that you're working on those two issues! and i'm sure you have the missing options to save user patches in the native format on the list as well.
 
Hi Vastman,

There are no 'teething issues' for a hugely successful V1.0 release...

CH

I'm glad to hear thousands of folks are successfully using this. That's worthy of some celebration. I do also hope that you don't forget the unfortunate few of us who haven't even been able to get this product even downloaded, or opened successfully yet. That's a little more than a 'teething issue'. Maserati isn't sputtering at the first corner, let alone screaming along an Autobahn - its still dead in the garage with clean tires.

Fingers crossed you're able to fix the windows 7 and VEP compatibility issues soon. I'd have to caution folks using that combo here in the meantime.
 
Hi Windyweekend -

We do have a number of users on the W7 / VEP combi platform working very happily so I'll let the support team continue to try and diagnose with you what is happening in your case.

Thanks,

PT

(edited: I'll let support work out what the issue is!!)
 
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Thanks Rohann!

Just a sneak peek.. Martin has just outputted a quick screencap showing the resizable UI.

He's also implemented the patch next/prev buttons and we are working our way through a variety of possible enhancements. Phobos is going to be around for a long time.. Its a pretty deep synth!



Brilliant, just finished a track yesterday where Phobos nailed the sound, perfect blend of moving pulsing underscore with is constantly evolving subtly or not if you want it.
 
Love the update news, Christian... And I most definately have your new "moon" on my must get list... And will happily pay full price as the concept and sounds are wonderful. That's why I carefully crafted my thoughts... to incourage, not disparage.

And I do love your attention to details and customer requests...
 
Hi Windyweekend -

We do have a number of users on the W7 / VEP combi platform working very happily so I'll let the support team continue to try and diagnose with you what is happening in your case.

Thanks,

PT

(edited: I'll let support work out what the issue is!!)
I think my woes are all tied to the memory leak. This only happens as VEP is loading Phobos. After a lot of tinkering today, if I'm fast enough and I get Cubase connected before VEP runs out of RAM then it looks like it can eventually open Phobos, but leaves me with the RAM stuck at that peak. Sounds like the update will fix this, which will be great.

In the meantime, I at least have a workaround and can start using this. A few comments now I've started playing with this though:

1. I think this UI is the most intuitive I've ever used in a synth. This thing makes total sense. Easy button - CHECK.
2. My previous suggestion of having stars to rate presets (ala eDNA) - don't bother. After two hours of playing, I've yet hear anything in here less than 5/5 - which begs the question, how would one go about tagging so many fantastic sounds? This is light years better than Absynth, Zebra and a number of others I've (ab)used. Zero bloat - CHECK. No need to ever use another synth again - CHECK CHECK.
3. I've heard others have issues with the size of the UI. Personally I really love it as is. If you do end up tweaking it in future, i hope it isn't too much. Easy on the eye - CHECK.
4. My only request - ability to upload your own wavs in here. Then we'd be talking being able to do some insane stuff (...imagine a polyconvolving Charlie Clouser Que Lestas ?!?!).

Overall, I think the sounds are simply jaw dropping and oh so inspirational. This is a beautiful piece of work!

(...Worth every penny - Spitfire released product at too low a price point? - CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK...)
 
4. My only request - ability to upload your own wavs in here. Then we'd be talking being able to do some insane stuff (...imagine a polyconvolving Charlie Clouser Que Lestas ?!?!).

Overall, I think the sounds are simply jaw dropping and oh so inspirational. This is a beautiful piece of work!

(...Worth every penny - Spitfire released product at too low a price point? - CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK...)
While I'll probably get it anyway, I think this is really what's preventing it from becoming the synth in my eyes, instead of one of the options. I wouldn't be considering any others if this were possible.
 
I think instead of being allowed to feed it your own wavs, it would be amazing if if it offered an input for the daw to feed into it (almost like a sidechain). That way you could craft any sound within your daw and feed it into the convolvers. THAT would be cool !

Also, 3/4 beats would be really nice. XD
 
I'd also like to chime in and ask for a preset browsing function i.e. a forward/backward button easily accessible on the main screen. I am terribly lazy with this stuff so I find myself not even bothering to open presets and sometimes avoiding the plugin altogether because of the extra steps. Love everything else otherwise. Great work.

charlie
 
I'm glad to hear thousands of folks are successfully using this. That's worthy of some celebration. I do also hope that you don't forget the unfortunate few of us who haven't even been able to get this product even downloaded, or opened successfully yet. That's a little more than a 'teething issue'. Maserati isn't sputtering at the first corner, let alone screaming along an Autobahn - its still dead in the garage with clean tires.

Fingers crossed you're able to fix the windows 7 and VEP compatibility issues soon. I'd have to caution folks using that combo here in the meantime.
I also have the memory issue with Windows 10 and VEP 6. This seems more like a VEP windows issue versus a Window 7 issue.
 
I HAVE Phobos and talk of it becoming "THE SYNTH" is just hyperbole! So is the incessant call for sample import, the same comment repeated in almost every library/synth thread...ain't gonna happen, especially with companies who's survival depends on kicking out more sample libraries.

Phobos, at best...is a very good sound effects/sample playback/synth platform with a unique convolution twist. Lovely stuff but on a totally different plane than the heavyweight Omnisphere or an amazing pure synth like Zebra.

A unique addition? DEFINITELY! Game changer? BLATHER...

Photos is NOTHING more than a closed set of BT samples surrounded by a very unique but also extremely limited set of manipulation tools. This is vastly different than a pure synth like zebra or the big kahuna [O2] which, as Skippy notes, goes beyond anything ever imagined and can take advantage of totally new sample sets (which the Guru team is very good at creating) and manipulates them within the grandest synthesis architecture yet devised.

To use an analogy, O2 is like a bakery shop while Phobos is a single slice of pie... a very tasty slice but...
 
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I HAVE Phobos and talk of it becoming "THE SYNTH" is just hyperbole! So is the incessant call for sample import, the same comment repeated in almost every library/synth thread...ain't gonna happen, especially with companies who's survival depends on kicking out more sample libraries.

Photos, at best...is a very good sound effects/sample playback/synth platform with a unique convolution twist. Lovely stuff but on a totally different plane than the heavyweight Omnisphere or an amazing pure synth like Zebra.

A unique addition? DEFINITELY! Game changer? BLATHER...

Photos is NOTHING more than a closed set of BT samples surrounded by a very unique but also extremely limited set of manipulation tools. This is vastly different than a pure synth like zebra or the big kahuna [O2] which, as Skippy notes, goes beyond anything ever imagined and can take advantage of totally new sample sets (which the Guru team is very good at creating) and manipulates them within the grandest synthesis architecture yet devised.

To use an analogy, O2 is like a bakery shop while Phobos is a single slice of pie... a very tasty slice but...

I agree with you. But if enough customers ask for it they may add sample import just to boast that they can do this and hopefully sell more base units. They know many want this yet once they get it (like in O2) most end up buying expansion packs or 3rd party samples anyway, since great recorded content (especially made for sample instruments) can be hard to come by. Only Native instruments are foolish enough to perpetually ignore customers longing for scripted sample import (a common Kontakt complaint). ;)
 
I agree with you. But if enough customers ask for it they may add sample import just to boast that they can do this and hopefully sell more base units. They know many want this yet once they get it (like in O2) most end up buying expansion packs or 3rd party samples anyway, since great recorded content (especially made for sample instruments) can be hard to come by. Only Native instruments are foolish enough to perpetually ignore customers longing for scripted sample import (a common Kontakt complaint). ;)

Just could never pull the trigger on BT Phobos BUT was so very close many different times. Now this appears a reasonable hesitation and will watch as SA decides how to proceed.

It's like a 'genre-choice' thing, but I listened to hours of BT streaming content while evaluating Phobos and it did not resonate as something truly impressive. Would welcome some other impressions, as I try to remain as open as possible to change and different paths ......
Maybe not just BT, as the huge content received with eDNA 01, Glass and Steel, has be just that, huge. Hope there will be many needs down the road, but $$$ would have been better spent elsewhere ..... Ha! just IMHO :blush:
 
Just could never pull the trigger on BT Phobos BUT was so very close many different times. Now this appears a reasonable hesitation and will watch as SA decides how to proceed.

It's like a 'genre-choice' thing, but I listened to hours of BT streaming content while evaluating Phobos and it did not resonate as something truly impressive. Would welcome some other impressions, as I try to remain as open as possible to change and different paths ......
Maybe not just BT, as the huge content received with eDNA 01, Glass and Steel, has be just that, huge. Hope there will be many needs down the road, but $$$ would have been better spent elsewhere ..... Ha! just IMHO :blush:

I totally agree with you... It really is a niche market, like Red Cola... Both of which I bought during the discount period. My circumstances are very good at the moment... Otherwise I would have passed till the GUI and browser issues are fixed
 
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