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Digital synth love


jmbf44

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So how much does this thing cost anyway?

 

fucking hell, just when i thought i was ahead of the physical modeling curve and exhausted every hardware possibility. Looks pretty great, wish it wasn't so physically large. Its going for around $550 retail, although some places are saying $700 (which is incorrect)

 

 

So how much does this thing cost anyway?

 

 

Only price I could find was on modulargrid - $709

 

i dont know why it's listed so high, that's not the price from the preorder links ive been given to various vendors here in the US

 

bonuses for elements: has an ext in for the striker/exciter which is pretty awesome, that makes it kind of like Kaivo and Sculpture in the sense where you could use it like a send effect, throw a drum loop or something else into it.

 

pairing up 3 of Elements with one of Toppobrillo quantimator modules would be beautiful

 

image_37990.jpg

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JE, I've changed my tune about physical modeling. You were right. Lotta potential in the right hands.

not sure if my hands are the right ones, but I've tried to explore a lot of unexplored territory using phys mod synthesis

 

check out the last 20 minutes of this mix (all physical modeling hardware + a pinch of Sculpture and Tension with some analog modular & a bit of roland JD-990 sprinkled in)

https://soundcloud.com/fluorescentgrey/laustin-space-upcoming-recordlabelrecords-mix-2015

 

this one is an improv set from a couple years ago with nothing but physical modeling synthesis

https://soundcloud.com/fluorescentgrey/candlelabra-live-opiate

 

here is another more simple piece using a phys mod breath controller synth and a looper

 

depending on how you use it phys mod synthesis can be great for emulating (realistically) the unpredictable nature of an acoustic instrument like a violin or for just weird 'acoustic' sounding sound design. Certain phys mod synths can get more into 'electronic' sounding territory, but most are better suited for acoustic style sounds.

Within these clips the best 'emulation' part is 53:14 of the first clip (violin fuckery)

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Stuff sounds good, JE.

 

I like the prospect of pulling unnatural sounds out of them. I'm only slightly interested in the 'modeling real things' aspect.

If I had a modeling synth I think I would mostly treat it like a subtractive synth that has schizophrenia.

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just ordered

Oh shit i've actually got the keyboard version of that. Never looked into it cos the big selection wheel doesnt work and a key is broke so mostly used as midi keyboard. My brother bought it off a friend of his for 50 dollar ha.. Need to look into getting it repaired........

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the newer physical modeling stuff coming out seems to be leaning more towards that direction, weird and interesting textures that have a hint of realism (meaning they sound like they could be coming from some sort of acoustic device). Kaivo is great for that

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just ordered

Oh shit i've actually got the keyboard version of that. Never looked into it cos the big selection wheel doesnt work and a key is broke so mostly used as midi keyboard. My brother bought it off a friend of his for 50 dollar ha.. Need to look into getting it repaired........

 

its a great synth, really nothing else like it even in the software arena. I'm hoping some day people do a hybrid of the korg model of affordable small hands on devices with digital synth techniques like the K5000R instead of really old analog synth schematics

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the newer physical modeling stuff coming out seems to be leaning more towards that direction, weird and interesting textures that have a hint of realism (meaning they sound like they could be coming from some sort of acoustic device). Kaivo is great for that

 

that sounds fucking awesome...exactly what I'm talking about

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I owned K5K for a couple of years, but honestly it mostly collected dust. I found programming it to be a real chore, and the best patches I came up with I could never get to fit into a mix. If you just like listening to long evolving drones by themselves I guess this is the piece of kit to get, or maybe I'm just retarded.

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just ordered

Oh shit i've actually got the keyboard version of that. Never looked into it cos the big selection wheel doesnt work and a key is broke so mostly used as midi keyboard. My brother bought it off a friend of his for 50 dollar ha.. Need to look into getting it repaired........

 

its a great synth, really nothing else like it even in the software arena. I'm hoping some day people do a hybrid of the korg model of affordable small hands on devices with digital synth techniques like the K5000R instead of really old analog synth schematics

 

 

the thing i dont like about software synths is that computers are doing a lot of other things. it would be great if one of these consumer DAWs would make a dedicated hardware version of itself with an operating system that doesn't share processing with irrelevant services and stuff. thats one think that's so cool about hardware and I don't mind paying through the nose for it.

 

I owned K5K for a couple of years, but honestly it mostly collected dust. I found programming it to be a real chore, and the best patches I came up with I could never get to fit into a mix. If you just like listening to long evolving drones by themselves I guess this is the piece of kit to get, or maybe I'm just retarded.

i know what you mean, some of these synths make full frequency stuff that are basically songs in of themselves. im bracing myself for the daunt. :) one thing about digital synths is that they really lend themselves well to patchmaking right?
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one thing I've said before is most analogue synths will sound good in one way or another no matter what you do with the knobs by way of being analogue. digital synths have a wider spectrum of possible sounds but there are also a lot more unpleasant sounds IMO.

 

obviously this all depends on what synths you are playing with, but I believe a lot of the 'bad' sounds we associate with digital synths are due to mathematical imprecisions that are by nature inharmonic and in most contexts non musical.

 

i've found upsampling in the digital synthesis process goes a long way to smoothing out a lot of these artifacts. it's silly that people are dismissive of sample rates above 44.1 just because we can't hear above 20khz but when you consider the number crunching going on in the process it's worth considering the benefits of higher resolution audio.

 

You might be on to something. Take the intellijel shapeshifter. 192KHz (i think) resolution and it has loads of sweet spots compared to , say, my jp8000 which can sound awful when pushed.

 

Amazing oscillator

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ooh! pretty sure that's the one my friend has. i was very impressed with the sound and even the most 'digi' physical modelling oscs were super present and almost tangible. also my theory extends to the yamaha tx81z because it's so goddamn clear and glassy sounding. good quality digital, man. might explain why the midi buffer sucks, too much computing going towards making the sound special and not enough left to process notes and sysex quickly

 

I'm starting to feel this sound quality of the TX81Z which has been pointed out already in the FM thread. I tried to made a kind of acid bass with it for the track I'm currently working on and I didn't suspect it would sound so nice. Clear is definitely the word that comes to my mind. I love that synth already!

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i was so psyched about it when I understood how you can use the performance mode (combining different patches for more complex sounds or simply make different patches play different things). then I realized it's a really common thing for synths but it never titled in my head with the CS1X I bought like one year ago because I never had a great gut feeling with it. it's another story with the TX.

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imo get the tx before it goes way up in price and wait for the monomachine to go down

Too late, I already have a monomachine on layby. The prices kept going up so I said 'fuck it' when the black weeks sale was on.
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i was so psyched about it when I understood how you can use the performance mode (combining different patches for more complex sounds or simply make different patches play different things). then I realized it's a really common thing for synths but it never titled in my head with the CS1X I bought like one year ago because I never had a great gut feeling with it. it's another story with the TX.

yes, multi-timbre functionality is a lost art these days. well, not entirely, as we have new ways of layering sounds and ableton has instrument rack etc. but very few vsts offer it as a built in function though!

 

modey, which monomachine did you get? must be a new one to layby it rite?

 

 

i know what 'layby' is now. (we dont get that here in the uk, we just create interest debts). seeing a kiwi girl..

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i was so psyched about it when I understood how you can use the performance mode (combining different patches for more complex sounds or simply make different patches play different things). then I realized it's a really common thing for synths but it never titled in my head with the CS1X I bought like one year ago because I never had a great gut feeling with it. it's another story with the TX.

yes, multi-timbre functionality is a lost art these days. well, not entirely, as we have new ways of layering sounds and ableton has instrument rack etc. but very few vsts offer it as a built in function though!

 

modey, which monomachine did you get? must be a new one to layby it rite?

The mkII with +drive included. Prices went up just before december but the black weeks sale took it back down to $1444.. so I figured they're only gonna get more expensive if I buy new.
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i'd be going for a second hand one, but all my gear is second hand (cept the volca and my monitors)

 

new gear is for people with the sort of jobs that ensure they never have time to play with new gear, is this you modey? hehe

Yeah, if I'm spending that much money I'd rather get something with a warranty.

 

Hah, I work in publishing. The pay is shit. I have plenty of time to play with my synths, thank you very much :P

That said, I will probably take a week off when I get the monomachine just so I can get blazed and do sound design all day hahah

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i'd be going for a second hand one, but all my gear is second hand (cept the volca and my monitors)

 

new gear is for people with the sort of jobs that ensure they never have time to play with new gear, is this you modey? hehe

Yeah, if I'm spending that much money I'd rather get something with a warranty.

 

Hah, I work in publishing. The pay is shit. I have plenty of time to play with my synths, thank you very much :P

That said, I will probably take a week off when I get the monomachine just so I can get blazed and do sound design all day hahah

 

do you use reaktor? I have made a front end/CC knob panel for all 6 monomachine synths as one ensemble. Full/semi random/mutated patch generation on the monomachine is ridiculous.

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