Ursa Major Stargate 323 PlugIn

[krabbencutter]

I've spent the past 3 years analysing my Ursa Major Stargate 323 and have recently released an open source plugin, which you can find on my GitHub: Releases · ravettel/SG-323
The UI & UX still need work, but the DSP is a near bit-perfect emulation of the hardware. The plugin supports VST3 & CLAP on Windows, macOS (Intel & M1) and Linux.

Alex Ball recently did a great video on the Ursa Major devices

I hope you'll enjoy it and if you have questions/feedback I'll be happy to hear them

 

[thomasdf]

Many thanks for your work and philosophy. I tried opening it in Protools using a VST wrapper (Blue Cat) and I get an error message, so I suppose my OS is too old ? (10.13.6)

 

[krabbencutter]

Hey, thanks for trying it out! 10.13 should be the minimum supported version, but I'm pretty new to developing for macOS. Can you send me the text or a screenshot of the error message?
Edit: I've uploaded a tesbuild for macOS that should support 10.13. Let me know if it works: https://github.com/ravettel/SG-323/raw/main/SG-323.vst3.zip

 

[thomasdf]

This version is working ! The previous said that it was not a 64bit plugin which is a typical error I get with unsupported VST or AUs in this wrapper.

I've played with it a few minutes and it seems to sound great, congratulations. I like the test function, super easy to tweak parameters with this. I'll try it in a mix one of these days.

Thank you again !

 

[krabbencutter]

This version is working ! The previous said that it was not a 64bit plugin which is a typical error I get with unsupported VST or AUs in this wrapper.

I've played with it a few minutes and it seems to sound great, congratulations. I like the test function, super easy to tweak parameters with this. I'll try it in a mix one of these days.

Thank you again !

Great to hear that it's working. The build I sent you actually has some features I only use for debugging and the Test-Feature was inspired by Waves H-Reverb. But I plan to integrate this into a future release

 

[TwentyTrees]

What a brilliant thing to do, thanks so much for sharing all your time and effort on this. I'll certainly check it out!

 

[thomasdf]

I have no idea how plugins are coded and I'm not that great when it comes to coding, but if you need help with the UI / GX I'd be happy to give a hand. I'm pretty good at vector drawing, stuff like that, so I can help with the interface.

 

[living sounds]

Great idea! Unfortunately in Reaper on Windows it produces horrible glitches, e.g. amplification of 90 dB above digital zero (massive distortion) as well as extremely high levels of DC.

 

[krabbencutter]

Great idea! Unfortunately in Reaper on Windows it produces horrible glitches, e.g. amplification of 90 dB above digital zero (massive distortion) as well as extremely high levels of DC.

Hm, that's weird because Windows & Reaper are my main platforms for development and testing. Can you tell me which versions of Windows, Reaper and SG-323 you are using? I know that one of the early releases of my plugin had some bugs in the feedback path that could lead to the issues you're describing. But version 0.6.0 should work as advertised. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[living sounds]

Hm, that's weird because Windows & Reaper are my main platforms for development and testing. Can you tell me which versions of Windows, Reaper and SG-323 you are using? I know that one of the early releases of my plugin had some bugs in the feedback path that could lead to the issues you're describing. But version 0.6.0 should work as advertised. Thanks for the feedback!

This was using version 6.68 of Reaper and under a Windows 10 installation that is constantly kept up-to-date. The project sample rate was 44.1 khz.

 

[living sounds]

Just tried it again. It initially works, then massive busts of DC appear without apparent reason.

 

[Yash]

Some of Chris Moore's early work.

Little known fact: his later work can be found in Kurzweil's KDFX: in older V.A.S.T. synths (K2500 + KDFX, K2600 which has KDFX internally by default), the KSP8 rack multi-effects and newer V.A.S.T. synths. He worked on several of the Reverbs, which are absolutely fantastic.

Good to see someone tackling an emulation of the old hardware.

 

[krabbencutter]

Great idea! Unfortunately in Reaper on Windows it produces horrible glitches, e.g. amplification of 90 dB above digital zero (massive distortion) as well as extremely high levels of DC.

FYI I got in touch with living sounds and we nailed the issue down to Reaper's loop playback. As long as you're using any other DAW or aren't enabling loop playback in Reaper, it should work fine. I'll investigate and will hopefully find a fix for this. In the meantime I've released v0.6.1 which fixes the compatibility with older macOS versions.

 

[TwentyTrees]

I've had a quick play around with the plugin this evening - it sounds great! I've no experience with the original, but it's enjoyably different to my other "vintage digital" style plugins & IRs and I can certainly see it being a useful flavour to have. Sounded lush on some vocal and cello tracks.

It worked fine in Windows 10 / Reaper 5.9 here by the way. Thanks again for sharing!

 

[JMan]

Downloaded for use in Reaper on Mac, but it doesn’t want to scan the vst3 because it thinks the file contents could be unsafe. I know this must just be a settings thing, but I’m not sure how to get around it. Anyone have any suggestions? I’m keen to try this one out!

 

[krabbencutter]

Don't know, but I've just signed up for Apple's Developer Program and will see if I can figure out the whole code signing thing. Does it work with the CLAP version?
Edit: my developer account got approved and I've managed to sign the binaries for macOS. There's a signed VST3 beta for macOS on GitHub now.
Edit2: I also need to notarize it -.- will hopefully upload a working macOS package tonight.

 

[JMan]

I should update here as well (krabbencutter and I communicated a bit via PM). I did get the plug-in working on my Mac. In my case, I had to open the plug-in file with another application first, such as Preview (it doesn’t actually display any contents, this is just to trick the computer into trusting it), at which point scanning it in Reaper still generated a warning but now included an option to Open anyway. The plug-in is now up and running beautifully. Maybe the notarized update mentioned above will bypass the issue, but even if not, this is a solution.

I second the above discussion about the loop playback. Just leave Loop off when using, as when playback restarts the loop it creates a massive (80-90dB) spike.

I have never actually used the hardware or any emulation of it, so I’m unfamiliar with exactly what it’s “supposed to” sound like, but I’m finding this plug-in really fun and I like it quite a bit on many of the sources I’ve tried it on. Thank you so much for this amazing gift to the community, @krabbencutter !

 

[krabbencutter]

Thank you for the kind words I have finally figured out how to sign & notarize the plugin and the updated 0.6.2 download should now load properly.
I'm glad if more people can enjoy the sound of this reverb, because that was my main motivation behind this project. The Stargate 323 really sounds like no other reverb out there and as far as I know I'm the first person to actually emulate it. I'll eventually record some proper comparisons with my hardware, but you can take my word that it sounds already very close. The calculations for all the delay times and gain values are the same as in the hardware. The biggest difference will be in the "character" of the sound. While the plugin is much more hifi and works at any samplerate, the hardware has a fixed 32kHz sampling rate as well as all the analog characteristics that early 1980s circuitry adds to the sound.
Also here's a little secret: if you set the Decay to 0 you can use the Pre-Delay as slapback echo. And if you set Pre-Delay to 0 as well, you can use the different reverb programs for stereo widening.

 

[living sounds]

@krabbencutter Did you have any success in fixing the issue with Reaper? I'd love to try out the plugin but am afraid of the massive bursts of noise.

 

[JMan]

If you're in Reaper, the volume spike is significant enough that Reaper will auto-mute the channel (at least mine does -- probably can turn this on in Settings if yours does not), so in that respect, you don't need to worry about blowing your speakers/ears/soundcard.