OK thank you very much for the replies to the vocoder question guys . I completely take back any negative comments I made about the Psycle boards. Sorry for being a Jerk about everything....If you are from the US, happy thanksgiving!

have fun acydl

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heatseeker.
2 whisky valent mieux qu'1 !

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LEt me put it in black in white for you Hazuku, Ive been using psycle and buzz for a lot longer than most of these people so i can finally tell you the truth.

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Was this directed at me? :p

Anyway, I completely agree to the 'if it works for you' philosophy. Especially when there's no real competion between freeware programs. It's not like one's going to 'outsell' the other, you know? That's the only reason professional programs are in competition...to make more money than the 'other guy'.

At any rate, I've still been browsing around at other programs and happened upon ReNoise. I must say, very nice program, especially in the sampling department. It has two features that I love and would REALLY love to see in psycle...

1.) note command to play sample in reverse from the point it's playing...in ReNoise, it's 0B00 to play backwards, and 0B01 to play forwards. You can do a rhythmic pingpong of a drum loop or even do a makeshift 'rewind' on the fly. Actually, more sampler commands would be welcome overall...some I think a few people (if they haven't voiced requests yet) would like are:
coarse and fine pitch slides, the sample reverser (as noted above),

command column controlled loop points tweaking for both start and end points (renoise doesn't even have this, but it has crazy posibilities) once the sample setting editing is ironed out and fully implemented,

sample 'width' (kind of like panning, but one speaker plays sample just 'slightly' after the other speaker so you get an automatic 'stereo' effect from a mono sample...Impulse Tracker had something sort of like this and Renoise has a track 'width' slider...very nice,

vibrato for getting a little more expressive

...more?

2.) multiple commands per note (and elimination of 'tweak commands'). The way renoise is set up is you can expand and collapse effect columns (you can do this with notes-per-track, but that's irrelavant in Psycle, really). I found it really nice to combine sample effects (i.e. offset drum loop to a snare AND retrigger x times per note).

Either one of these would be an excellent and very useful additions to the Psycle interface. I checked the 'to-do' list and sadly, the sampler commands seem to be abscent. At heart, psycle is a tracker...I would hope that tracking functions would come first.

Anyway, just for the sake of 'what really happened' with the buzz community...

I posted a question about whether there existed some hack or plug in that would allow buzz instrument interface to use knobs instead of sliders. I think that was a cue to flame me...evidently, knobs are for n00bs and 14m3|25.

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Copy and paste this link to hear random audio by me, mostly unfinished:

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Original by Hakyoku Seiken
[...]
At any rate, I've still been browsing around at other programs and happened upon ReNoise. I must say, very nice program, especially in the sampling department. It has two features that I love and would REALLY love to see in psycle...

1.) note command to play sample in reverse from the point it's playing...in ReNoise, it's 0B00 to play backwards, and 0B01 to play forwards. You can do a rhythmic pingpong of a drum loop or even do a makeshift 'rewind' on the fly. Actually, more sampler commands would be welcome overall...some I think a few people (if they haven't voiced requests yet) would like are:
coarse and fine pitch slides, the sample reverser (as noted above),

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Original by Hakyoku Seiken
Hey there. New here. I'm currently in the middle of a personal crisis of which to use...Buzz or Psycle. I was using Orion Platinum, but I decided I'd not use anymore pirated junk and stick to truly freeware for my music projects (that way I can get real user and/or programmer support and help if I need it... )

Anyway, I've gone through a list of pros and cons to each and I ask that on any of the items on the list here you wish to add something to that you feel is relevant, please do.

1.) GUI -
* Buzz - ugly, but works.
* Psycle - very nice and customizable to boot.

Winner here is psycle. Graphics go a long way with me. And no flickering when moving around machines either...whee!

2.) Sound Quality -
* Buzz - very harsh with bare sound, but workable to enough to get a wide variety of sounds.
* Psycle - ultra nice. Actually has better output quality than Orion at the same output frequency. Very warm and inviting, but tweakable to get meaner.

Winner here is psycle. Without any effects at all, a sketch song sounds more polished than some mixed down buzz tracks. Some people with good ears may recognize the tool, though, if they use it, however, such as fruityloops is very recognizable in it's 'sound'.

3.) CPU Usage -
* Buzz - can easily handle a large array of machines at once and show little sign of struggle. I've seen songs using upwards of 30 machines and barely crack the 5-10% CPU usage mark.
* Psycle - a bit taxing on the CPU, but really no more than the average VST host.

Winner here is buzz. Though buzz does start to eat up a little CPU with it's VST loader. Pscyle's built in instruments seem to be generally more taxing than buzz's native plugins.

4.) Interface -
* Buzz - seems daunting at first, especially if you've never used a tracker before. The first time I used it, I was well into my second year of tracking and it still made me scratch my head for a while. However, once used to it, the interface was very well thought out, and the ability to stack patterns of different machines next to each other in a non-linear style made for greater flexibility and less wasted effort in writing.
* Psycle - seems daunting at first glance as well, but is actually pretty simple, even for a tracker, as everything can be controlled by the mouse, if the user is so inclined to be so lazy and not learn the keyboard short cuts. Everything you could possibly need has a button or easily accessable menu. However, patterns are set up in old tracker style, so songs have to be written one pattern at a time, all instruments sharing the same patterns.

Winner here is neither. Buzz may be annoying to figure out, but the pattern offsetting more than makes up for it. As well, you don't need the manual for any machine as you can see in what each column and even each perameter does AS you change it or move the cursor. Psycle's lack of pattern offsetting is kind of a step backwards...and a separate text file is needed for the sampler commands, but everything else is easy to figure out.

5.) Stability -
* Buzz - with so many machines, sometimes it's a wonder that it can keep from crashing at all...however, it can't fight bugs and win everytime. It crashes on me at least once a jam session.
* Psycle - Although I haven't played around with loading a lot of songs or even vsts, it hasn't crashed on me once, though sometimes the sound pops and clicks or goes out altogether (happened when I was making a 4 to the floor kick track and I set the steps to 4 and held down a key with the built in drum synth selected...had to create a new song to fix it).

Winner here is psycle. To boot, it's actually still in development. Buzz does have a huge user base due to it's age, but with no one who wrote the program giving a flying flip about it anymore, it means the bugs that plague it have found a permanant home.

6.) Ease of Use -
* Buzz - I buzzed quite a bit when it was first released, so I was already familiar with it by the time psycle came out. It seems natural, and even coming back to it 3 years later having not touched it, it was like riding a bike and I was able to jump back on it like I hadn't missed a day.
* Psycle - with all the menus, you'd think it'd be flawless in this department. However, as noted, I've had to keep notepads open to reference certain items as they come up during usage. Also, there's no official manual, so it becomes a little frustrating and time consuming searching for solutions to problems that come up.

Winner is neither. Buzz is only friendly to me because of the time I invested in it long ago. Psycle is quite easy to jump into, but some key elements are missing to make it usable with no manual needed (I like those kinds of programs...hhehehe)


So as you see, I can't decide. I've been playing around in psycle off and on for about a month now and I've also been toying again in buzz. The stuff I produce in buzz is more intracte, but the sound of psycle is just so pleasing, even if the music made itself is utter crap, it just sounds better....so I'm stuck...

If anyone has any personal experiences or different viewpoints on the matter, I'd love to hear them. I want to stick with one. I think switching back and forth between two programs like I've been doing is hindering me as I'm not quite comfortable with either tool and it affects my time with it. Instead of nothing but uninterrupted brain to sound transfer, there's a bunch of 'what does this do' detours...

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for suggestions and help.

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Synth1 and Psycle, what more could someone ask for ?

just for the record... the bad quality sound people always talk about with buzz isn't due to the programme, it's due to the people using old (crappy) machines. the newer machines acutaly sound pretty good (so im told)

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www.chinfacerecords.tumblr.com

Psycle has always had good realtime playback, whereas BUZZ needs the extra resources to playback realtime with any quality. From what I'm told, BUZZ has always had good renders. But Psycle's renders sound pretty much the same as realtime. It's not a case of "which sounds better", because it can be argued that rendering sound quality is equal. However, realtime playback in BUZZ seems to be unoptimized in comparison. Psycle typically offers more in the area of "What you hear is what you get" with realtime playback vs rendering...

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I thought you beat the inevitability of death to death, just a little bit...

I'm also a fan of the ASIO support of Psycle, which I couldn't get on buzz...i don't know if it's not available as a hack or if it just doesn't like ASIO4ALL (what I'm using), but no go on it.

Also, you can't just 'mess around' in the machine view with the instruments.

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Copy and paste this link to hear random audio by me, mostly unfinished:

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Buzz looked promising except when it crashed every second and when I could'nt get any sound out of the generators, despite trying several different configurations.

I guess this is not likely to change, as Buzz has not been updated for a long time, whereas Psycle has.

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Synth1 and Psycle, what more could someone ask for ?

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I could'nt get any sound out of the generators,

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www.chinfacerecords.tumblr.com

false. Psycle allows to play notes in Machines View.

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Am i going to be the same next year???? Will i use Psycle next years?? :rolleyes:

adding to what sampler said, you just have to make sure that you have selected (i.e. clicked on ) a machine (so that it is selected in those wonderful black brackets)...then you can play notes with your keyboard to your heart's content!

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www.quantinuitymusic.com

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Original by sampler
false. Psycle allows to play notes in Machines View.

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www.chinfacerecords.tumblr.com

oh. true. In Buzz you have to be in pattern view.

This is one of features we all love from Psycle and that Buzz should have.

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Am i going to be the same next year???? Will i use Psycle next years?? :rolleyes:

I agree. Is'nt this one of many reasons why Hakyoku Seiken should choose psycle instead of Buzz ?

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Synth1 and Psycle, what more could someone ask for ?

RIGHT!!!

A very important feature imo.

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Am i going to be the same next year???? Will i use Psycle next years?? :rolleyes:

my 2 cents:

i used buzz for about 1,5 years, but now i'm searching for alternatives because:
1. the developing of buzz is stopped
2. the GUI is boring
3. incompatible with my new vst plugin(or backwards)
4. just want something new

i never thought that buzz is the best tracker, i thought it was only one there!! seriously! but then i searched and found many other tracker. the main thing is that if you go to other tracker you are just a beginner and have to learn about it. and that is my problem yet

Well, if you've ever become familiar with any tracker, which it appears you probably are, makeing a switch isn't all that hard. Basically, you just learn it's nuances and shortcut keys. After that, it comes down to exploiting it's specialities. In this case, it's quality of the output audio. God, I can't get over how smooth it sounds.

__________________
Copy and paste this link to hear random audio by me, mostly unfinished:

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It's like learning a new language (In my case, programming language).... After you know 2 or 3, it becomes easy...

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I thought you beat the inevitability of death to death, just a little bit...

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Original by DMNXS

TS-404 (maybe still downloadable at old version

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