John Bowen Synth Design

by **B787** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 4:35 pm

I think we shouldn't get distracted here, it's easy to see a new powerful synth and go "hmmm, I wonder what can be done with 16,32 even 64 megs of RAM?" but let us remember the scope other powerful DSP products, no samples (long ones that is). 16 Megs for wavetables is more than enough. The joy of working with a machine as extensive sonically and programing wise as the Solaris, is the ability to take simple waveforms, or wavetables and produce earth shattering and ground breaking results.

I have over 30 gigs of samples, but no where satisfied as I know I can be with a machine as the powerful as the Solaris. At the end of the day, one must load them up, either use DFD or sample RAM, and hear the same static samples all over again, with a little editing here and there. Grain synthesis, FM, wave tables, sines, saws, sawtooth, square and triangle waves, filters-24, 48 db ,comb filters, moog filters, OB filters, multiple modulation routings-Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ! ! ! pure synthesis.

Cheers guys.

by **Mr. Black** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 5:29 pm

Just knowing that's it's possible as an update/ option down the road is nice,make the rompler or sample playback secondary is a good kick in the ass to other companies" you know who i mean" not that i should care what they do anyway,a few bell like sounds and plinks and plunks would come in handy though! by the way the ORION ROCKS!!! demos are great.

by **Pighood** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 5:10 pm

That makes sense. At some point, it would be great to have a Yamaha SY77 sort of thing going on where instrument samples (wheich can very well be lo-tech...think Kawai K1) can be modulated at full audio rate by wavetables, and vice versa.

by **John Bowen** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 3:51 pm

Those of you familiar with the plug-in know that sample playback was not a major feature of this synth! It is also not a main focus of the hardware, as there are plenty of other products on the market that can handle all the details of sample mapping and key range, velocity switching, etc. On-board RAM is going to be used for a number of things, not just sample storage.
We can consider some way to have expandable RAM, I suppose, but I'm really afraid this sidetracks the project into a whole other beast. Once you start down the path of trying to be a sampler, you have all sorts of issues, such as sample editing, looping and processing, etc., etc., etc., all of which will definitely add delays to finishing it up for a timely release.

That is not to say, however, that future versions of the OS could not contain such functions; just that, for now, we have to focus on getting the main body of functions working correctly.

regards,
john b.

by **faxinadu** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:05 am

i too would love to be able to load samples , as mentioned strings, choirs, groans, moans and fx.

no need for any drums or anything rompler-like.

by **Mr. Black** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 11:26 am

8 Megs of ram is a good starting point the sounds would not be compressed you don't have to worry about enough space for drum's and other conventional sounds,plus the ram could be expandable adds a lot of layering possibilities.

by **synthetic** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 10:36 am

A lot of the sounds in the Spectrasonics Atmosphere plug-in, mentioned in another thread, layer sound design with traditional strings, voices or analog pad. We know that it will do the latter, but some basic sample playback would really add to it.

How much RAM did the Wavestation EX have? 4MB? It wouldn't have to be much more than that, say 8MB of 48k samples. Not the 32k and lower sampling rates in most ROMplers. Quality, not quantity.

by **Pighood** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:40 am

Plus....can you imagine a sustained choir sound stuck in a rotor with a wavetable, a sawtooth and summut else?

by **Mr. Black** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:39 am

I think expandable sample ram is a great idea i would pay for it!! having high quality realistic choir and string sounds would just increase it's already powerful sound potential.

by **Pighood** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 5:00 pm

synthetic wrote:
John Bowen wrote: I'm also interested in the idea of using e.g. a choir sample with heavy processing (FM, reversed up three octaves, etc.) for pad sounds. It doesn't have to be a large sample, I'm going to melt it anyway.

What he said.

by **mitchk1989** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:45 pm

I personally would wish/hope for at least 16mb of sample memory, just enough for some nice digital voices, sampled strings to mutilate, ect... No need for massive piano multisamples or anything of course...

Will the sample memory use standard RAM? Couldn't it be expandable so those users who do want larger amounts of sample memory can have it?

by **synthetic** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:24 pm

John Bowen wrote:Depends on sample memory. Solaris is not meant to be a "rompler" type instrument, though.

That sounds familiar – I'm sure you're still frustrated about the piano/drums/accordion upgrade ROM for the Wavestation.

This is not as mass-market, though. But you might want to throw in a piano sound just to be safe!

I'm also interested in the idea of using e.g. a choir sample with heavy processing (FM, reversed up three octaves, etc.) for pad sounds. It doesn't have to be a large sample, I'm going to melt it anyway.

by **Pighood** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:35 pm

I realize that...but it's always been a fascinating concept to me to FM "traditional" instrument samples with synth waveforms, wavetables etc. Such huge potential for wrong sounds.

Please consider even a truncated list of short samples, like the Korg MS2000 had...DWGS style from the DW-8000.

by **John Bowen** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:44 am

Depends on sample memory. Solaris is not meant to be a "rompler" type instrument, though.

-john b.

by **Pighood** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:38 am

Will there be sustaining samples like strings & choirs?

John Bowen Synth Design

FM capabilities

Post a reply

Expand view Topic review: FM capabilities