The Sound Board

Falcon 3 is out, a free update for existing users.

Version 3 sees the addition of 3 new oscillators including VOSIM (formant), Bowed String, and Harmonic Resonator, 4 new effects including Opal, Ladder Filter, Dispersor, and Harmonic Resonator FX, MIDI Out support, new scripts, numerous workflow improvements including UI snapshots, launch screen, and more, and an updated and refreshed factory library.

Promo price of €199, including a €100 voucher for other UVI products.

Note - the new factory library didn't install for me, The UVI Portal swore blind I was up to date but I wasn't. I manually deleted in the UVI Portal and on my SSD, then I re-downloaded which resulted in an error. On the fourth attempt it installed.

I've never got on with Falcon, I'l confess, and sadly I don't think version 3 is going to change old grumpy-chops here. The UI and workflow look essentially the same, and the random testing of the few factory sounds (with the same ye olde Y2K-style browser) reveled the exact same icy brittle coldness I've never got on with.

On the plus side it is free, and the inclusion of midi out might give its many sequencers some wider use.

I beg to differ.
It has one of the clearest sonic signatures I know. And the workflow has gotten much better with the templates and other UX changes. Plus, Inlove the new oscillator additions. They even added their newest Opal compressor, easily the best optical comp around. I love Falcon to bits now.

I think people either get on with Falcon or they don't, and I'm definitely a don't.

That said...

Simon Stockhausen of patchpool is making the kind of sounds that I've always thought Falcon SHOULD make. Someone at VI-C tipped me off, and I found his single Oud library.



That's better than anything in the factory library, and indeed anything in the expansions that I've found thus far (may have missed some there).

Part of my bewilderment with Falcon is that the Factory Library is essentially a synth workstation from the late 80s, and arranged in an unrefined tree menu dating from much the same era. Yet the thing is a sampler - where's all the acoustic instruments that are given synthesis makeovers? Answer - at Patchpool it seems - https://www.patchpool.net/machfive.html

Simon also did this mini tutorial, again making a sound that is interesting to me.



I followed it - took me about an hour to figure out what he was doing, and on that score Falcon still seems pretty impenetrable and the steepest of learning curves. But it got me further than I ever have before (hey I even assigned a control to the modwheel on my own! Whoo!)

Simon did say that "The possibilities to process sampled sources and to layer them with complex electronic sounds really have expanded in Falcon 3, that's a motivational boost to create more patches for this machine". And for that reason alone, I'm not selling it, because I was on the edge before today. If Falcon finally takes hold as a host for really good organic samples given a cunning twist, it'll find a place in my stuff - though I strongly doubt I'll be doing much patch creation and tweaking on my own.

Version 3.1 is out now as a free update, and finally Falcon has a 21st century file browser. You need to download the separate Tags library from the portal. I also needed to manually add a lot of expansions within Falcon itself it seemed to forget about, including the factory library (which the portal assured me I already had installed). Then finally everything showed up.

It's MASSIVELY better for basic browsing. The audio previews are a godsend for quick auditioning. My main gripe - if searching multiple tags in a field (such as Timbre) the logic is OR - so selecting Analog and Sub adds both results together, not the far more useful AND logic where you'd only get results that match for both. Still, it's a start.

I doubt I'll be in love with Falcon now, but at least I have a cat in hell's chance of finding a patch if I ever want to.

Just a heads up - 3.1.1 adds the ability in the browser to switch the search logic between AND or OR (it's the symbol that looks like a stereo field oddly). This is a good thing!