Synthesisers

[Dave2002]

Maybe an interface like this one - connect it up to a steam synthesiser or two ....

[MrGongGong]

One of my mates built this

https://www.owlproject.com/Turbidatron

and this

https://edcarter.net/portfolio/flow/

[MrGongGong]

It's very important to check that the name of your product works for all the places you plan to market it

This does look rather cool (though it doesn't really do anything new)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timetosser/timetosser-presented-by-alteraudio?fbclid=IwAR0gGUShdkjpEDHF9qa95qXLG8bfJUYRCxzsUkvYDlvynH9Uq5CfhDGJbPY

[Dave2002]

It's very important to check that the name of your product works for all the places you plan to market it

This does look rather cool (though it doesn't really do anything new)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...H9Uq5CfhDGJbPY

Is that real?

Timetosser doesn't sound like a very good name ...... well .... it depends ....

Perhaps vouchers for this with copies of Playboy - now seemingly online only.

[Dave2002]

Yet another one - based on a Korg

This is a Fury-800 synth based on a Korg Poly 800



There are some quite good presets in this one. The image shows one with a name which amused me.

Installing it does seem to require actually restarting the computer - MacOS, otherwise nothing shows up.

[MrGongGong]

I used to have a Poly800
regretted selling it
and, finances permitting, am planning on buying an old one

The 6 stage envelope generators are wonderful
and it's a great instrument

BUT I wouldn't bother with the emulation .... it's like vegan "cheese"

[Dave2002]

I used to have a Poly800
regretted selling it
and, finances permitting, am planning on buying an old one

The 6 stage envelope generators are wonderful
and it's a great instrument

BUT I wouldn't bother with the emulation .... it's like vegan "cheese"

Last price for one from Japan was around £300 including shipping - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Korg-Poly...r/324084832387

You have lots of experience, and with real hardware as well as emulations. Given that the one I posted is pretty much free, and there are some presets which seem worth having, I would suggest that others who may be interested do give it a try. I would agree though that it's not worth paying a lot of money for most of these software synthesizers - though if there's a really good one maybe that could be justified.

Roland are currently offering a year's subscription for one of their software synthesizers - Zenology - for about £30 per year. I don't know if it's worth the money, but I think some people may think it is.

https://www.roland.com/us/products/rc_zenology/

[Dave2002]

OK - so LMMS isn't the greatest DAW out there, but it does have some interesting features. Well, actually it may not be any more intereresting than most of the others, but sometimes looking at different software highlights concepts which do exist in other tools, but one hasn't noticed, or maybe they are just missing.

I found this tutorial video about a synthesizer plugin within LMMS - https://youtu.be/_gTRX_IWrAQ
Some features of the interface for that plugin are interesting, such as the ability to draw any arbitrary waveform. Another interesting observation is that virtually all the waveforms are pretty dull - some are slightly more interesting than others. This is commented on in the video, and this suggests that what we hear in any sound, such as a fork dropping on a plate, or door slamming, or wind chimes, is not just a short waveform repeated.

How is it, for example, that synthesizers can approximate the sound of a violin, or a bell - sounds which we might find much more pleasant or interesting? This must be because of other time varying aspects of the sounds, which are controlled by other features in each synthesizer.

Apart from the technical details of how to tweak a synthesizer to give a particular sound, there must be complex ways in which our brains interpret the resulting waveforms - which have probably come about because of evolutionary modifications.
Why, for example, is resonance something we notice? There was possibly some survival value in that millennia ago. We notice "ambience" not just because it makes listening to music more pleasant, but it probably gave us an ability to locate threats (if "we" were being predated), or possible animal food sources if "we" were hunting.

Some of our perceptual mechanisms may not have arisen simply because of survival value, but because of interactions between neural systems. This is something which can be seen in the visual system, where optical illusions are often thought to have arisen because of the way different aspects evolved. Sometimes evolution takes short cuts - which are beneficial - but they have side effects. For example, if something is coming rapidly towards us, it may be more important that we avoid it, than that we analyse what it is. Our eyes and brains are optimised to do some things very quickly, but that does sometimes give rise to illusions - a side effect of an evolved survival mechanism. The evolution of hearing is almost certainly based along similar lines.

[Richard Barrett]

Blasphemy alert: I had withdrawal symptoms after my bout with a Synthi 100 in February so in the meantime I started to investigate the Softube Modular, which is a VST instrument consisting of digital emulations of various Eurorack modules by Doepfer, Buchla etc... and I have to say it does what I want it to do, at a fraction of the cost (and space) of an equivalent physical setup. Some highly promising results so far.

[Dave2002]

Blasphemy alert: I had withdrawal symptoms after my bout with a Synthi 100 in February so in the meantime I started to investigate the Softube Modular, which is a VST instrument consisting of digital emulations of various Eurorack modules by Doepfer, Buchla etc... and I have to say it does what I want it to do, at a fraction of the cost (and space) of an equivalent physical setup. Some highly promising results so far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMS_Synthi_100

Watch out Richard, you'll have MrGG chasing you up soon enough.

What are you running it - the Softube Modular - in? Would it make any difference, anyway?

I don't know enough about these things to know whether they are worth paying for, though there are several modules available here - https://www.pluginboutique.com/meta_...odular-Add-Ons

Did you have to buy a bundle, or are you adding modules one at a time?

[Richard Barrett]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMS_Synthi_100

Watch out Richard, you'll have MrGG chasing you up soon enough.

What are you running it - the Softube Modular - in? Would it make any difference, anyway?

I don't know enough about these things to know whether they are worth paying for, though there are several modules available here - https://www.pluginboutique.com/meta_...odular-Add-Ons

Did you have to buy a bundle, or are you adding modules one at a time?

I run it in Reaper, although any DAW would do just as well. I started with the basic setup - which isn't quite as basic as it looks because of course you can add as many modules of the same type as you want (so as for example to have every parameter of an oscillator controlled by a different LFO) - and I've added a couple of modules since then. The "Braids" module is going to be very useful. (The physical version of it is itself actually digital, so I guess the virtual version is identical to it in pretty much every respect.) I wouldn't want to say this system is one I'll stay with for a longer time though. What I tend to do is use some software or other for a particular project and then move on to the next one.

[Dave2002]

I just found this about hardware modular synths - which I'm sure you now already. I don't know this - yet - so I thought I'd flag it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXEyEIo-WtA Andrew Huang.

When you've got some results with your software emulations it'd be good to hear some examples - I'm guessing you might put a few up on SoundCloud.

[Dave2002]

Here is another demo of a modular synthesiser - https://youtu.be/n3K_fZDvINs a Moog.

I’m somewhat puzzled as to what is happening after 5 mins 50 seconds. The player seems to be twiddling a few knobs, but the machine appears almost to be doing its own thing. How does a player figure out what to set up, and how to do the real time knob and other interventions?

[Richard Barrett]

How does a player figure out what to set up, and how to do the real time knob and other interventions?

How does a player know where to put their fingers on a violin?

[Richard Barrett]

When you've got some results with your software emulations it'd be good to hear some examples - I'm guessing you might put a few up on SoundCloud.

All three items currently my "binaural" playlist were made using software synthesizers of various flavours, although the third piece disquiet is the only one that uses only the pure output from one of these, consisting of a mix of up to 11 layers created with the Arturia Arp 2600. Vermilion Sands was made using Reaktor to create material that was then further processed, and luminous has various sources of raw materials: a voice, a recording of one of my ensemble pieces, and sounds from both the Arturia Arp 2600 and Synthi AKS.