V Synth Sounds

[Artemiy]

Hey OS X folks, plays fine here on 10.4.5. Safari fires up QuickTime inside the page and plays it.

[gvance]

Hi Guys,
OSX should work fine , i'm all mac, anybody having problems, please feel free to email me gerald950@btinternet.com
I will gladly send a short mp3 demo. New site almost ready to launch, will keep you all posted.

Gerald d Vance

[pier]

Hi Gvance

are the patches samples or programmed?

BTW I would be very interested in 909 and 808 drumkits (not sampled). I would pay for them!

I got my V synth XT one week ago and its my first Hardware synth. I'm totally dumb with synthesis.... I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that will be interested on your patches.

Oh and do you know of any good book or website to start learning synthesis?

Regards

Pier

[gvance]

Hi Pier,
Actually thinking about doing a classic drum machine bank, I have many samples, when you say not sampled, do you mean just the raw wav files? I have loads of drum machines sampled into my Fairlight series III, including TR808 and TR909, these are actual originally made by the pet shop boys, they sound awesome. I also have samples of the elusive Minipops 7, as in the ddrum machine use by jean micheal Jarre, oxygene. loads and loads of cool stuff. If anyone else is interested let me know and I'll get on to it, shouldn't take long to create the bank.

Gerald d Vance

[hi-tech]

How many patches are included in the banks? How many waves? Whats the size of the prj file?

Thanks

[pier]

Hi again

When I mean 'not sampled' I mean the sounds are made with oscillators, and not pcm waveforms. So we can tweak the sounds as if it was an analogue synth/drum machine.

Regards

[anti_pulse]

I think the only thing in the 909/808 that was synthesized was the kick and snare- the rest of the drum machine was pure samples... shouldn't be hard to do, it's just that the 909 was analogue, so it had that nice warm punch- so in essence, the v starts with pcm samples due to the fact that it is digital anyway- so no matter what, you are going to get samples- there is no way around pcm's with a VA. Any synth can emulate it, kicks are a snap to make, snare the same- if you are willing to pay somebody to make an emulated kick and snare for you, then you may as well have them sampled with the rest of the kit, but a variety of them. Tweaking a simulation of a 909 would just be going back to square one with making a kick from scratch in the V, the only difference would be that it started out sounding like a stock 909 made out of pcm samples. See where I'm going? But hey- more power to gvance, hook him up and get that $$!! The only way I can see that we could get anywhere near a pure synthesized 909 kick or snare would be to sample the waveform that the 909 used to generate the sound in the first place (argue with me if you want- what is in the v and what was in the 909 looks different in an o-scope)....

http://www.myspace.com/11505663

[pier]

You see, I'm really new (1 week) in this world of synthesis.

I thought the analog waveforms in the vsynth where mathematical algorithms. A kind of phisical modelling, but much more simpler.

So how is gvance making the patches? using a pcm sample of the waveform and then aplying cosm/envelopes/fx ? ... or using the full legnth sample and simply trasposing it?

Regards

[anti_pulse]

here, let me school you a little. The difference between the something like the V (digital) and the 909 (analogue), is it's circuitry. Analogue produces smooth waveforms straight from it's circuitry, it's a lot more mechanical. Digital synths work on the same premesis that any computer does- binary, 1's and 0's. So it has to emulate analog waveforms mostly by means of sample based oscillators wich just play a small snip of a sampled waveform repeatedly. It's waveform will look more like a stair case going up and down in a sine like wave or ramp (depending on what waveform is being made)- the reason it is like a staircase is due to it's relationship with binary and bit rate- the higher the bit rate- the smoother the wave will look due to their being more steps closer to each other- think of it as a higher resolution of sorts. So when you see a VA, you now know it is not analogue- it's virtual analogue, an emulation. I personaly like digital synths more due the ability to have way more control and stability. Crazier things can be done with 1's and 0's in terms of making newer crazier sounds than the limitations of straight up circuitry ruling the sound generation domain. But it is nice to have non steping and zippering filters and oscillators. Analogue sounds alot warmer and seems to produce a softer warmer distortion (good distortion). The 909 was analogue controlled digitally in conjunction with alot of digital features. I think the only reason people seek the 909 these days is for the kick and snare part of it. Personaly, I would rather just have the samples and save myself a thousand bucks- people who arent producers aren't going to be able to tell the difference between a sample and an origional 909 in a mix anyway (80% of your dynamics will be lost in the end). Purists will tell you different, but that's because they have trained ears and look for that sort of shit to be picky about, plus they are delusional- I'm sure gvance will be able to make you some more than satisfactory kits. Have fun producing and don't get too gear crazy- at least you got a nice V to start with- I would have killed to have this when I first started making music. Hope that helps.

http://www.myspace.com/11505663

[pier]

anti_pulse:

I found this info on an article of the v-synth

"Each of the two oscillators per Patch zone can
be set to one of three oscillator types:
Analogue, PCM, or Ext In. Analogue, as you
might expect, generates a digitally-modelled
analogue oscillator, with nine waveforms to
choose from plus associated pulse width, fat
(low frequency emphasis), and impact (attack
sharpness) parameters."

Much better than using a pcm waveform and trasposing it (in my humble opinion).

Regards

Here's the url: http://www.musictechmag.co.uk/mtm/revie ... nd-v-synth (download the pdf)

[anti_pulse]

Please don't misconstrue the advertisement- they aren't analog OK?? They are modeled (ie- drawn digitaly or sample based)- they don't need to be stetched, you need to understand the relationship between pitch and frequency- they are the same thing. When you play a sound (or sample) at a faster frequency (measured in hertz) what you know as pitch gets higher sounding. You can generate the same effect by using a very very short sample in pcm mode and set it to loop and it would pretty much be the same thing, a shorter sample means it will loop "faster" and the result will be a higher pitch/frequency. Try it and you will have a super ghetto idea of how the analogue modeling is done. Somebody please say "dude, anti_pulse is right". If the v turns analogue over night supernaturally, I will send you a million bucks- don't be mistaken, it is pure D-I-G-I-T-A-L buddy. Plus the transposing isn't what you think it is due to the whole thing that sells the V synth- variphrase. This is the boards selling point, you can change the pitch without messing with the length of the sample. I'm just guessing it's the same thing as before, but roland has done something to the effect of stretching the sample and filling the unatural sounding gaps with portions of the same sample. Try playing a sample that has been encoded with the variphrase and then play it at the lowest octave- you'll hear what I'm talking about.

Anyway, just buy his kits and be happy mmmkay?

[pier]

Hello again, you are on your own right to think we're arguing. I just want to understand this thing.

Dont you think there is a difference between a generated waveform (mathematical algorithms) and a pcm waveform (series of 1 and 0)? Those are very different things. Maybe you can ask your teachers so they explain to you.

One thing is a digital signal at a certain samplerate, with a certain bit depth. An another is an algorithm that generates a new digital waveform depending on parameters (pitch, amplitude, etc). I know there are synths that use pcm samples for waveforms, instead of generating them. But I think it's not case with the v-synth. At least that is what is written on that article. Maybe someone else can give his insight on this. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I dont a know anythign about sythetizing a sound, but I know about digital audio and acoustics. I studied audio engineering a few years ago.

Btw, english is not my primary language. I'm sorry if you thought I was arguing with you.


Regards

Pier

[anti_pulse]

ok- I'm going to tell you this one more time- it's all ones and zeros, end of story. ALL 1's AND 0's!!!! NO SOUP FOR YOU!! Everything that this computer does is based on 1's and 0's no matter what- the math used to generate the waveforms, the sampled waveforms, the effects- EVERYTHING- we aren't arguing because this is simply facts- nothing to argue, rather I am just trying to enforce the concept of how computers work with audio. Don't mean to be hard headed sounding, but it's how computers work- on and off = 1 or 0 to a computer. I think you may have forgotten quite a bit of your schooling. Not trying to be rude. But it's not a debatable thing- it's a fact,. You should go back and ask your teachers about this yourself. I'm not meaning to sound like an ass or anything, but there is just way too much too explain for a simple concept. I would consider a math based waveform even closer to the binary (1's and 0's) than a recorded sound considering that they have been modeled in the computer to begin with making it more digital, rather than something that came from acoustic or mechanical energy and converted into electric energy and digitized in the computer. And this right here is the only difference between the two waveforms, none-the-less, they are both digital and are both treated pretty much the same way with the exception of using variphrase with user waveforms if the user decides to use it.

[Artemiy]

pulse:

Here you are a little wrong.

It is all zeroes and ones, correct. But the way these zeroes and ones behave is different for PCM samples and waveforms which are generated on the fly. A few examples:

1. Let's take a sine wave, as a sampled waveform and as a realtime-generated waveform. To pitch a sample, you need to interpolate it, play at higher rate, and resample it at the original rate. When you use a software waveform generator, you just increase/decrease the frequency parameter in your formula(s).

2. On the sample rate and bit depth: when you have a sample at, say, 44.1 KHz and 16 bits, resampling it to 192 KHz and 24 bits doesn't give you any increase in quality. However, with on-the-fly generation/modeling, you are not limited to some sample rate / bit depth as compared to samples. You only do a conversion to some rate/depth at the end when you send it to a DAC or save a sample, and again, you can have 384 KHz 32 bit float or more if you want.

3. Can you change/modulate the pulse width of a sampled pulse wave? I guess you can't. Not the case when you generate this waveform on the fly.

Here are just some small differences, which indeed apply to synthetic waves. We all know you can't have a naturally-sounding acoustic drum beat or human vocal generated on the fly from math formulas (at least not yet).

[pier]

Thanks artemio

This is why I was thinking that maybe the patches offered at the beggining of this topic were programmed (using analogue modelling) rather than sampled (pcm wavetable).