Synths and Synthesis MkII: All gear is shit, Hail Satan

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wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

I guess I'm going to be the voice of reason in this thread, recommending staying away from synth hardware in favor of ITB solutions. Sup!

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 11:41

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:32

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

WorldWarWonderful posted:

the only room for my synths is on the half of the bed I don't use

What a marvelous thread title!

# ¿ Mar 22, 2014 10:27

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Stay away from M-Audio!

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 07:56

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eigT6DvHJo

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 14:50

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

sliderule posted:

How prevalent are free-running oscillators in VA synths? The KingKorg annoyingly seems to have them, as combining two oscillators in a single Timbre produces different waveforms for each gate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se00IabOYQI

I was unable to capture the audio, but the effect is evident. Sounds like garbage anyways.

This timbre has 2 oscillators, each an identically configured pulse oscillator. The "Analog Tune" parameter is set to 0, and I think it's applied at the Timbre level anyways. It's not a tuning difference, because the waveform is static. They're simply offset a different amount at each gate.

It's been a really annoying feature, as creating a voice using in-tune oscillators is more or less destined to fail.

With rising numbers of voices in unison, freerunning oscs is something you want, actually! If they're all in sync, you'll get a flanging effect on the beginning of a note. Massive for example has an optional sync feature that can do either free-running or sync for all oscs (unfortunately not PER osc, but at least you can adjust the initial phase per osc).

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 19:05

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Some of the best times I've had were spent on designing kick drums

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 11:17

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

snorch posted:

The best kick is a Buzz plugin.

Deadmau5 built his career on this kick, and the dimension of variation that can be had from it is crazy.

I've used Kick XM plenty when I was on buzz and it really is a nice machine, but the most comprehensive system I've seen so far is the Nicky Romero thing. You aren't limited to (somewhat malleable) adsr envelopes but you can actually have free form envelopes, and they made the x axis logarithmic so you have awesome precise control over the crucial initial milliseconds while keeping an overview of the big picture.

The problem I see with parametrized envelope generators is that you really have to combine shapes to get some very basic sounds out of a pitch envelope. One of my favourite bassdrum types is the hard trance kick that starts with an initial sharp decay in the pitch curve, then has a softly sloping plateau and a second, longer decay phase that leads into another plateau and finally into the release toward the base frequency. To parametrize that properly, you need more than ADSR.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 12:06

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Heads up, Cakewalk is running a promotion, I just scored z3ta+2 for �36.75

# ¿ May 23, 2014 22:23

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Flipperwaldt posted:

Hey, Wayfinder, is this you?

Pretty trippy track.

I was on the MAZ Tracked Worx cds too as Cantaloup.

Hah! Took a break from the forums at exactly the right point

Yeah that's me! I still have that CD somewhere tucked away in a box :P

# ¿ Jul 31, 2014 23:13

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Flipperwaldt posted:

Cool! The track works fine without filters, for what it's worth

DosBox doesn't do MMX, I found out shortly after that post. I've set up a Dos machine on VirtualBox, but I've got to choose between stuttering or sample preview/envelopes not visually updating, which annoys the crap out of me. 20 years on and I can't emulate a Prentium 166 MMX 100% in software, what the gently caress. Plus exchanging files with the system is a hassle.

Well, back to SchismTracker's rough approximation.

Anyway, you had some good poo poo on there, you should revisit them some day.

Thanks

All this stuff from 20-15 years ago now looks so alien to me...

# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 12:12

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

So I've decided to actually make something in Ableton, which means I need to force myself not to get hung up on perfecting individual sound to the point of not making anything. That said, right off the bat I'm running into a problem I've had for a while which is that I keep hitting the volume limit with just the bassline and kick/hats:

Keep your kick channel at about -12 or -10 dB and mix to about -8 or -6 overall. Leave your master at 0 dB.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2014 22:30

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

FLX posted:

I'd really love a "basic mixing for dummies" post! I know about band-passing stuff, compression, etc. but I'd like to know how to use these things properly. Same with mastering strategies. I know what the things do, but I'm never sure if I use them in a way that will make my stuff sound okay on all kinds of speakers.

The 5-minute basics are:

- your two best friends are the spectroscope and the level meter
- everything but the kick and the lowest bass should be high-passed with a not-to-steep filter (6-18db), at a frequency that removes not the essence of the sound, but the unheard parts
- carve out distinct freq ranges for every element, with EQs. When two elements have to share a similar space, work with stereo placement, volume automation (including sidechaining), and phrasing/rhythm to separate them
- use compression only, ONLY when you understand what it is doing! Compression as a mixing tool (as opposed to using it for creative effects) is rarely if ever necessary with synthesizers, since you have much finer control over a generated sound in the synth's parameters than you have over a recording, with compression. Work with volume envelopes!
- catch stray peaks on a track with a limiter, set it so that it doesn't change the sound perceptibly
- shoot for a clean mix, even loudness in similar parts and distinctive, audibly separate elements

- amateur "mastering" (bit of a misnomer but I won't go into that) is today usually mostly volume maximization, and there's any number of plugins to do that very well, very transparently, and perfectly adequately for enjoying the music, shopping stuff around, playing it parties, and giving it out for people to listen. In the event of a "proper" release, do spend the 40 quid on a great mastering engineer's time and expertise. Mastering and production are very different domains with surprisingly little overlap in knowledge.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2014 00:50

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

I bought Z3TA+2 earlier this year and only now got around to delving into it, these are my initial impressions:

Good:

- 2x oversampling and highest precision mode sounds awesome
- performance playing and real time control options are probably the most configurable and advanced I've seen so far in anything
- loads your own wavetables, LFO shapes, arp patterns if you want
- that arp's really quite powerful
- flexible FX order
- useful EQs out the wazoo
- good factory content

Bad:

- 2x oversampling and highest precision kills CPUs dead, compromises must be made
- Shittily parameterized, inflexible reverb that as a result sounds bad in many situations because it's impossible to dial in the sound you want (for instance, predelay and room size are not configurable other than by choosing one of 5 reverb types, and then they're stupidly linked to each other so you cannot have a long reverb tail without a long, mushy predelay)
- the arp fucks with playing and testing patches - if the host isn't playing, for example, the arp will not play the sequence but just one note, and unless you know what's happening it feels as if the patch is inexplicably monophonic. this is exacerbated by the overreliance of the factory content on the arpeggiator
- modulation usability kind of breaks down with very small values (like those necessary for subtle vibrato)
- unintuitive modulation lingo has to be learned by heart and is otherwise pretty much unusable without the handbook (you're constantly going like, wait what the gently caress does BLINEAR- mean again)
- patches and especially modulations can get incredibly intricate (which is great!), but there's no way to comment patches or at least name modulations sensibly, which limits preset usefulness and accessibility
- distortion effect is weak
- delay time counting seems off by a factor of 4, at least compared to my host and other synths like Massive. Perhaps it's not a bug but unintutive naming, like "1/4" not meaning "1/4 note" but "1/4 of the length of the currently loaded arp pattern" or something
- the GUI has these multiple choice fields everywhere, you're supposed to left click to go to the next value, right click to get to the previous, and that sucks balls. Some fields, with no discernable pattern, get a nifty and useful dropdown menu in addition, but most don't

I guess that list looks overall more negative than positive, but I wouldn't say the points were all equally weighted, much of the "bad" stuff is workflow related and doesn't impact the sound much. I'm pretty happy I picked it up and it's definitely possible to get kickass sounds out of it. I won't however do what I did with Massive, I think (which is build a 500+ preset sound bank). Also, to me personally the live performance capabilities, really one of the strongest points of the software, are perhaps less valuable than to others, since I am not a great instrumentalist and prefer sequencing and automating asynchronously to performing and recording live.

Overall (preliminary) verdict: 7 out of 10 cats

# ¿ Nov 12, 2014 05:06

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

I've had 5 of these automated copyright blockings in the past months, all bullshit of course. I wrote an email to their copyright team asking to not auto-block hits from the bot, but have not received an answer.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2014 10:15

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Flipperwaldt posted:

I pine for pre-Adobe Audition.

The coolest edit

# ¿ Dec 5, 2014 13:29

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

God I hate the 303 and every little detail around it, its cult and its followers.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 22:55

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

toadee posted:

the purity of that timbre

Lmao you're hilarious

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 00:12

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Real talk my mom heard a track with a 303 in my car and thought that it was a barking dog sample

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 01:21

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

What the gently caress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUu0iRMsme0

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 15:48

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

ExiledTinkerer posted:

Part 3 and 4 of Lim's grand update on Impulse Tracker's history of intrigue may have sneaked by my page refreshing skills and are nowhere near as loaded as the prior 2 from way on back:

http://roartindon.blogspot.com/2014/10/20-years-of-impulse-tracker-part-3.html
http://roartindon.blogspot.com/2014/12/20-years-of-impulse-tracker-part-4.html

But on the other hand: Ancient Nightmarish Source Code under a BSD license!

https://bitbucket.org/jthlim/impulsetracker

MAn dosbox really screws up my notedots demo

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 09:57

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Xfer Serum comes with a bunch of them. There are also quite a few wavetable packs for Serum with waveforms from classic and modern synths from sources like Massive, the Waldorf Micro Q and PPG, Oberheims and many more.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 15:40

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

A MIRACLE posted:

These face swaps never get the size of the features in relation to the head completely right, do they

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 17:57

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

The Picard song or Taking The Hobbits To Isengard, eh? That's actually one of the things that don't come up that often in this thread. Here's what I can tell from analyzing the sort of things you mention: I think mainly you just piss on a keyboard, then poo poo and piss inside your computer's case, poo poo all over your monitor and then poo poo and piss and vomit onto the source material. Then you shove it all up a dog's rear end in a top hat, wait until it shits it back out and finally upload it to youtube. Those are the basics, although the specific workflow you'll end up with is probably going to be slightly different, adapted to your needs. Finding your own workflow is one of the most important things you'll do as a musician!

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 18:49

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Wow this has never happened before a musician going out to buy a little pot

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 11:28

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Don't confuse "stereo effects" (as in effects used to make mono material sound like stereo material) with "stereo effects" (as in effects that take a stereo input, work with two channels internally and output stereo).

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 23:03

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Sizone posted:

If you need effects then you do not know how to patch your synths. Effects are for guitarists and other children who don't grab raw sound from the ether and shape it to their wills.

That may have been glib but it's actually not THAT inaccurate.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 13:38

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

And reverb is a matter of vol env, filter env, stereo image and extra notes

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 18:38

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

I agree that reverb and delay are effects that are stupid to do without effect processors, but compression for example is almost never needed when you're using a synth

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 20:06

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

In the end, nobody gives a poo poo how you came to make the sound, unless you're some aphex-twinny wanker in which case it's part of your genius, naturally.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 01:33

wayfinder: Jul 7, 2003

Why do some (cool and good) people write "bus" correctly, and others write "buss", which is clearly wrong and incorrect and feels like something they'd want to retcon into being sort-of-torturedly justified when it really, really isn't?

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 14:32