development outside

[Toby Emerson]

cool cant wait to check those out Jimmy!

[marzzz]

Some general thoughts on the subject at hand....

-I am a huge fan of Urs Heckmann's work; I own Zebra2 and DIVA, they are just fantastic. It would be great if somehow he can be brought on board with writing code for the Solaris.

-Regarding emulating a CS-80, for a period of about a year I owned both an Alesis Andromeda and a CS-80. Using the SEM filters including mixing in some bandpass, I was able to get some pretty amazing CS-80 emulations, especially with a string patch I called "Vanjealous." I have not been impressed by any of the software CS-80 emulations; the Arturia CS-80V in particular is pretty dismal. Even the StudioElectronics Omega8 with their CS-80 filters, just didn't have "that sound." I think Jimmy is right in that giving the current filters a chance, we may be able to get some pretty nice CS-80 like sounds. Certainly the Solaris will allow us to emulate the parallel architecture of CS-80, as will having a ribbon controller! Of course, Heineken is correct in that polyphonic aftertouch will be key (as I glance over at my VAX77.....!).

-If anything, with Moog and Oberheim filter emulations already in place, I would personally prefer to see something like a Roland Jupiter 8 filter structure; that would certainly be taking things in a different direction. But I also agree, things like polyphony counts and multimode need to be taken care of first. Overall, the most important thing is the basic sound of the Solaris itself. I am actually more interested in seeing what kind of new sounds I can do, as opposed to doing exact analog emulations. The Solaris has that same kind of sonic "weight" that a New England Digital Synclavier has; even though it is digital, it sounds very full and warm. If anything, I would like to be able to program in "imperfections " that are inherent in most analog gear.

-John, you do owe Jimmy something for being a cheerleader for the Solaris!

[galaxiesmerge]

Hi Hein,

I would appreciate if you could see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guzvcHNwJOI

I am not sure you will state with certainty the CS80 is thin sounding. Many CS80's are actually "broken" machines - the oscillators and sound path are messed up with degraded caps and resistors that have over time, through heat or temperature, changed enough that the waveforms have all the low end harmonics lost. Look at Micheal Jackson's use of the CS80 - his machine did not sound thin in a mix ... and there are a lot of other examples, but most folks don't even know, like I see on Youtube, that there crappy sound is NOT how as CS80 should sound. And many folks who play one, at least in the last decade, get disappointed because the oscillator electronics are messed up with electronic "rot" (well I call it rot, but it amounts to changing the waveforms from what they used to be to fizzly little versions that do sound thin).

Each machine was built different sounding which is something I have found bizarre - why Vangelis owned 8 of them!!! Well, also for backup, but they do sound different.

My CS80 in the video, and for which I got a lot of comments about the sound, is likely one of the fattest sounding analog synths. Of course, there is another CS80 video by Gavin that sounds awesome, not thin at all. But then, Gavin rebuilt the CS80 in his video and so you get to hear what it *should* sound like. For an example, get yoru good headphones and listen to his video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR_c6fPnlFA

On the other hand, these synths need to be very highly maintained, always kept well. Mine is, right now, with someone that needs several months to change the few thousand part to keep it pristine, add in an external tuning unit, remove the power-supply for external mounting (to get rid of the temperature problems) and with the Kenton MIDI kit ... so it aint cheap However, as far as the SOLARIS is concerned, I could not agree more --- of course, even though I own a CS80, I would like to see its filters emulated and, in particular, the fact the CS80 adds in sub-harmonics (the sine wave oscillator) which add a lot to the sound - and I have seen a lot of machines that are actually broken and the owners did not even know that their CS80 was broken - they just thought it was very thin!

The SOLARIS as it is, and without anything, is already an amazing machine - I would say that with 4-voices (osc's) that it is already in a way multi-timbral but I understand the need by some for true multi-path multi-timbrality. In my case, I have a lot of synths so I don't mind have mono-timbral synths.

The SOLARIS is an amazing piece of machinery that deserves to be in the hall of fame already.

I have the Urs U-He synths and, quite frankly, they are "okay" - in fact, his best synth, and one that I can highly reommend is the Zebra - it is amazing. However, the DIVA is nothing short of *DISAPPOINTING* with capital letters and I cannot shout it out louder - the problem is that Urs has earned too much money being lazy now that he has "made it" with sales so he doesn't need the hassle of SOLARIS --- he has focused on marketing and his target is PROPELLERHEAD. I own Propellerhead software and after 24 tracks of that shit the sounds starts to get irritating and degrade in that way that only digital sound degrades to the ears. But, they sell a lot of software.

My recommendation is that SOALRIS can do much to find a new synth DSP coder to add to the team and go with that than Urs or some other mainstream---- new blood is needed, not more of the same. The problem with success is that robs innovation away from the individual in seeing the possibilities beyond marketing. I think Vangelis stated that in his interview on his concert in Quatar.

I would recommend that someone do a movie soundtrack or a hit record using SOLARIS ... then watch Urs and the others ask to be a part of the development team

Cheers!

But then I went to a 4 Guitar/Drummer stage, and the CS80 was buried, no thick Monophonic capabilities,
Ankyuvarymush.

True.
When I said "CS80 sounded significantly different compared to the US synths" it was all about the CS80 is truely a thin sounding synth and it´s strength was poly AT usable by local weighted keys keyboard which was an extremely rare feature already at that time.
There were some minor specialities in the CS80 synth architecture, but it would never be possible to mimik these by just only adding a CS80 filter to an exisisting digital synth w/ the lack of a fully weighted velocity sensitive action and poly AT, so IMO adding such a filter could be more or less obsolete or OTOH implemented at any time because some purists want it.
I myself, I won´t need it urgently.
A CS80 sounds so thin it can easily be emulated by a VSTi and the one which does it best is the cheapo Memorymoon ME80.
I like it more than the Arturia.

So yes, John should know best what to do for future improvements.
I´m happy to read he´s busy figuring out MIDI multi mode and optimisations of the already existing features.
Personally, I hate all these update cycles I know from other brands products, mostly adding new features but rarely fixing existing bugs, instead produce new ones w/ the new features require more CPU cycles,- products which never will be finished in the end.
But optimising code, speeding up things, bring the horsepower for MIDI multimode and 5 more voices (eventually),- that would be great improvement !
Can´t wait and look forward winter NAMM and Musikmesse news !

Hein

[HUROLURA]

While discussing with Clemens Heppner, one of the U-He teammate, he told me they were thinking about changing their Diva Controller prototype to a true standalone hardware synth based on DSP.
Then I suggest him to meet SC team (especially as I heard about the GMI card) as they were just a few meters away but he told me they prefer to do everything in-house.

Reminds me about the Arturia team when the decided to launch the Origin and realize afterwards that designing and producing hardware is not as straightforward as designing and selling VSTi ...
I think it almost killed Arturia at that time. The Minibrute adventure would probably have a much more successful result.

Regarding the Solaris evolution, I am still waiting for a first multitimbral implementation before ordering it (and, hum ... I also need to spare some money and sell a few gear first ).
This is also something I sometimes "complain" about the ASB, but I found a solution there by using my 2 NOAH Ex to get extra parts (when not wanting to switch on my Xite and computer).
This is the only reason I found after testing it not to order one straight away (and also the money maybe, but I do think the Solaris is worth the price it is asked for).

The Multitimbral implementation could be limited to fixed assignment of set of 2 voices and this would already be great and enough to me, keeping the predictable fixed voice allocation behavior rather than the more disturbing dynamic voices allocation (which would be more complex to implement anyway).

I do own an Arturia Origin and a Virus C for example and I am still looking for the place where I could set the number of voices allocated to one part.

[John Bowen]

Yes, I fully expect U-He to produce a version of DIVA in hardware. the Solaris is more like having the Zebra software in hardware (for example, the 4 channel flow is very similar), but some of the features would be a challenge to show without the full graphics of a computer screen...but not impossible to do. I'm curious to see what direction they will choose to go.

As for the Multitimbre and voice allocation - I discuss our plans for multi timbre function somewhere else on this forum, so I won't repeat myself here, but you will basically have some user selected voice allocation for each of the 4 parts.

[Hein Eken]

As for the Multitimbre and voice allocation - I discuss our plans for multi timbre function somewhere else on this forum, so I won't repeat myself here, but you will basically have some user selected voice allocation for each of the 4 parts.

Talking multi timbrality and voice allocation,- does that mean you plan it for local control only or will the parts work over MIDI too ?
In fact that requires some more,- like key-windows, transposition, MIDI CC assignments, local controller assignments as well as freely selectable MIDI RX channel receiving individual MIDI Prg.-Ch. commands per part and in addition to user selectable voice assignment.

Hein

[John Bowen]

Yes to all that above.

[galaxiesmerge]

Hi,

Well - I guess Urs will learn the hard way, as everyone is cursed to repeat other people's lessons instead of benefit from them. I can hear the difference between 44K and 96K, just using my KYMA Pacarana and also the Pro-Tools HD interface. The entire line of the KORG Legacy series uses direct circuit-component modeling which is an old and well established technique (which Urs claims in his advertisements has never been done before) and it works well, but, listening to the KORG MS20 on my Mac Pro and comparing it to the KRONOS, well, I have to say the KRONOS does better ... I wonder why ... maybe it is my converters? Maybe the KRONOS is hardware optimized?

I think this is where the naivete of software-developers that have not suffered the agony of hardware development shows up and I do wish all the best to Urs and his team, but, he would be better off choosing an existing hardware platform - and there are several available - than to roll his own.

Mostly, however, I think it is his onw personal need than business sense to go it alone in developing hardware.

As an FYI - after I spent 20 years building studios and working on Film and Television as well as record production, I went back, for the last 10 years into software engineering and coding (DSP on other non-musical platforms - so I cannot write about DSP for music) - but many of my friends are music DSP coders, and any of them will tell you (especially some of my friends that wrote the software for the NED Synclavier) that building hardware, while laudable and very important, is one of the toughest challenges anyone can ever take on, especially without the VLSI infrasrtructure that KORG or ROLAND have at their disposal --- Arturia failed because professionals pay for hardware that is superlative and unsurpassable in software, and, the Arturia Origin is a nothing piece of hardware that any software can surpass (i.e. their choice to go 44KHz *does* make a difference to the paying market much as they would like to convince themselves it does not, the market spoke and they made few sales) --- that is why I bought KYMA Pacarana (and before that, Capybara) and why I bought the SOLARIS ... if I could get that all in software I would never waste one cent on those hardware units!!! But I cannot, so I pay the price for it.

Having purchased Diva, I liked it the first day, then I turned on the other synths I have, and did a compare. There is nothing in DIva that is enduringly exciting and its set of filters, especially after a several overdubs sound rather similar to each other and loose their definition - when I compare multiple overdubs of KYMA or SUNSYN or the other synths, they do not loose their definition.

ZEBRA gives you *everything* that Diva provides and when I did a compare (A/B on making same sounds) there is no real difference --- so I would say to stick with Zebra ... Diva is good marketing effort and it works as such --- I don't see any of the stars buying it though I can see Zebra as a good VST. Diva cannot beat Zebra and a hardware version of an analog VST? Not one professional person will actually pay to buy what Diva is, as is, as a VST without some real extras, since Virus and others can do it all - for example, extras like a 192KHz version with a significant emphasis on the DAC conversion path. Like adding a discrete Tube pre-amp into the path ...

In ay case, I am sure that putting a SOLARIS through a Chandler Germanium Preamp and Tone or through an SPL Tube Charisma or Thermionic Culture preamp will will all that is needed for amazing tone.

Cheers.

-G

While discussing with Clemens Heppner, one of the U-He teammate, he told me they were thinking about changing their Diva Controller prototype to a true standalone hardware synth based on DSP.
Then I suggest him to meet SC team (especially as I heard about the GMI card) as they were just a few meters away but he told me they prefer to do everything in-house.



Reminds me about the Arturia team when the decided to launch the Origin and realize afterwards that designing and producing hardware is not as straightforward as designing and selling VSTi ...
I think it almost killed Arturia at that time. The Minibrute adventure would probably have a much more successful result.

Regarding the Solaris evolution, I am still waiting for a first multitimbral implementation before ordering it (and, hum ... I also need to spare some money and sell a few gear first ).
This is also something I sometimes "complain" about the ASB, but I found a solution there by using my 2 NOAH Ex to get extra parts (when not wanting to switch on my Xite and computer).
This is the only reason I found after testing it not to order one straight away (and also the money maybe, but I do think the Solaris is worth the price it is asked for).

The Multitimbral implementation could be limited to fixed assignment of set of 2 voices and this would already be great and enough to me, keeping the predictable fixed voice allocation behavior rather than the more disturbing dynamic voices allocation (which would be more complex to implement anyway).

I do own an Arturia Origin and a Virus C for example and I am still looking for the place where I could set the number of voices allocated to one part.

[HUROLURA]

That was also my point.
Hardware design and production is just a complete different job than VSTi design.
Moreover, hardware design and hardware production is also quite a different job.

Regarding available DSP platforms, they tend to disappear with the ever growing computer power.
SC and UAD are some of the last who provide such DSP based solutions (also with Metric Halo).
Focusrite, TC and SSL discontinued their products and went fully native.
Or they are completely proprietary like the one used in the Access Virus (we saw TDM and PowerCore versions of the Virus but they are not available anymore).
So it wouldn't be that easy to find a DSP platform open enough.
That was the reason why I suggested them to meet SC team.

And Clemens told me that they would rather design their own DSP platform at the las Musikmesse, but that was not what Urs told during an interview at last January Namm show that they were evaluating both solutions (homemade or with third parties). Maybe they made up their mind between the 2 shows.

[scope4live]

Here's some new presets w/ snippets of SoLarry.
I recorded these dry since that's the way I use this synth.
I will share presets when the 50 I use are completed with additional controllers, etc.
Each preset will have a snippet.
It's the least I can do for having such a magnificient synth made for us.
This Dog Will Hunt.

http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/jaws-octave
http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/lpf-sweep-internal-lfo
http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/lfo-repeaters
http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/super-bpf-ribbon-sweep

[Zahush76]

Here's some new presets w/ snippets of SoLarry.
I recorded these dry since that's the way I use this synth.
I will share presets when the 50 I use are completed with additional controllers, etc.
Each preset will have a snippet.
It's the least I can do for having such a magnificient synth made for us.
This Dog Will Hunt.

http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/jaws-octave
http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/lpf-sweep-internal-lfo
http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/lfo-repeaters
http://soundcloud.com/jimmyvee/super-bpf-ribbon-sweep

Thanks!!! Keep 'em coming (and the pics)
If possible - i would really appreciate it if you could enable the download on these demos, and the demos to come.
Thanks!

[Toby Emerson]

thanks jimmy - man those filters sound good

[scope4live]

Exactamente...The Filters, realtime controls, and ability to mix Analog Oscillators w/ Waldorfs is just sick.
And the ribbon allows a realtime performer to use his eye / ear coordination to control dynamics in ways not available on other synths. I just can't say enough good things about the MMode Filters, they should be asking Bowen to let them use HIS stuff, not the other way around...

My days of shopping for a realtime Windows synth are over, they do not exist.

1) Their parameters cannot be modulated in realtime with equal precission.
2) The Filters are just not as Buzzy/Drippy
3) The Low end is unfocused and will not track the Resonance properly
4) Added notes lead to some type of compression.
5) Most presets where Chorus, Reverb and Delay are disabled suck.

Other than that, they are great synths...

Tomorrow I have the Hybrid Waldorfs and FAT BASTARDS Monophonic/Seperate Oscillator Lead Stuff.

[galaxiesmerge]

Hey scope4live,

Your sound examples are great and really, really welcome as a difference to all the sounds we've already heard.

Maybe make a new thread on SOUND DESIGN EXAMPLES? Just a thought

Please keep 'em coming!

-G

Exactamente...The Filters, realtime controls, and ability to mix Analog Oscillators w/ Waldorfs is just sick.
And the ribbon allows a realtime performer to use his eye / ear coordination to control dynamics in ways not available on other synths. I just can't say enough good things about the MMode Filters, they should be asking Bowen to let them use HIS stuff, not the other way around...

My days of shopping for a realtime Windows synth are over, they do not exist.

1) Their parameters cannot be modulated in realtime with equal precission.
2) The Filters are just not as Buzzy/Drippy
3) The Low end is unfocused and will not track the Resonance properly
4) Added notes lead to some type of compression.
5) Most presets where Chorus, Reverb and Delay are disabled suck.

Other than that, they are great synths...

Tomorrow I have the Hybrid Waldorfs and FAT BASTARDS Monophonic/Seperate Oscillator Lead Stuff.

[John Bowen]

Yes, these should really be posted under this Topic: viewforum.php?f=7

john b.