http://numericart.com/index.html

This would have made an awesome realtime plugin if it had ever been fully developed. As it is, the demo is still of some interest. I was told that similar results could be achived using a variable vocoder, but as I have never had access to one of these, I haven't been able to check out the claim. From the info given on the website, the morphing is achived through some kind of spectral interpolation algorithm. It brings to mind the question though: Why is no such plugin available commercially? It would open up a new world of sonic creativity.

If you like those, you'll probably get a kick out of these as well (check out "morphs" or "HarpGuitarDog"). The other stuff should give some ideas to VSTi designers as well...

Kyma Audio Examples

As for "similar-minded" VSTi's being developed, I'm right with you on the desire to see more stuff like this come out. I do, however, have a bit of "insider" information on a new instrument being developed by Sonic Syndicate (the people who bring you Orion Pro) called "Ultran", which seems to process sound somewhat similarly to these examples. From what I understand, it uses soundfonts, and blends/morphs from one entry to another. There are audio examples posted to the Yahooo! Orion group, but if I find a link to an "outside" source (eg. not "members only"), I'll post it.

Brittnell

--------edit---------
I just posted the .mp3 Ultran examples from the Yahoo! group on my website... Have a listen:
Example of Ultran Sound Morphing
Example 2: The drums are from the Orion Platinum CD and everything else is ULTRAN (created by Bones)

[ 23 September 2001: Message edited by: brittnell ]

[ 23 September 2001: Message edited by: brittnell ]

Any word on why this plug was never fully developed? I really like the interface with the graphical morphing.
There is alot of programs that can do morphing, not as much for windows though. If you have access to a mac you can grab soundhack for free. There is some cool software from IRCAM for mac that has some spectral stuff like this.
Actually i really hope this is the direction Native Instruments goes with the spektral series. A VSTI based entirely on resynth ideas would be completely insane

Yes, I'm familiar with the Kyma system already - a little out of my price range though! I'm also familiar with soundhack, though I've never benn able to try it as I dont have access to a Mac. Is the quality of the morphing any good?

Ultran sounds interesting, but something identical to DiMorph whereby you can use Wave files as source and destination would be better. Especially if you can use them in your favourite Waveform editor in real-time.

As to why it was never fully developed - not sure. I heard rumours that it was something to do with Prosoniq and possible competition with Orange vocoder, though I can't verify this.

If NI do develop a resynth plugin like the one you mentioned then it's sure to be hot if their Spektral Delay plugin is anything to go by! I'm sure something of this nature will eventually surface from an adventurous plugin developer.

kyma is nice, really. but if you dont need all the realtime bou-shiiz - check out UI's MetaSynth app. IMHO one of those less known "a class of its own" apps. Cheap, funny, pretty odd but...oh well, just DL the demo. Compared to kyma...ummm, the nice thing with kyma (part of of been pretty darn fast!) is that if you know what you want - you can mostly make it with kyma - whereas with metasynth i personally think the results get greater if you dont know what you want. Oh well...both have wicked morph algorithms. I still miss the EMU III morph function...never heard anything like it :/

metasynth (they have a demo in there...somewhere) http://www.uisoftware.com/PAGES/acceuil_meta.html

Ultran sounds like exactly what I'm looking for next. :-)

Do you happen to know whether it's being created as a separate VSTi like Scorpion or whether it's going to be a proprietary generator in the next version of Orion Pro?

Although you mentioned Platinum - is that the next version of Orion. I guess that means I'm going to pay another upgrade fee. I probably will even though I hardly use the damn thing. God I'm useless.

hmm,
if you don't have 300$ for metasynth at the moment you may try VVocoder from Vellocet
it is fft based so it is more morpher than vocoder but this is dos command line app so use is sort of PITA.

michu

[ 24 September 2001: Message edited by: michu ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Caleb Blake:
Although you mentioned Platinum - is that the next version of Orion. I guess that means I'm going to pay another upgrade fee. I probably will even though I hardly use the damn thing. God I'm useless.

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This could be your lucky month!!

See the competition on the front page

quote:

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Although you mentioned Platinum - is that the next version of Orion. I guess that means I'm going to pay another upgrade fee. I probably will even though I hardly use the damn thing. God I'm useless.

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Orion has been through several upgrades that have all been free; and I'm not sure that it's necessary to have to upgrade to the platinum version as such - it's just packaged as a bundle with other thingummies. Sorry, ran out of words.

H

Orion Platinum is the next level of the Orion family, Orion, Orion Pro, and now Orion Platinum (and the new Orion Lite just released here for the new competition!!) Each one adds some extra functionality, so you won't have to upgrade unless you require those new features.

I don't know what Platinum will offer apart from what I saw mentioned in the KVR news on the front page: Rewire, samples and a CD by the look of things, nothing really to tempt me to upgrade, yet!!

But wait ... there's the 'Ultran' generator ... which is a soundfont morphing, combining dealy(from what i gather) ... now how much would you pay! (sounds like an infomercial).


Doug

It looks like people don't really seem to know whether Ultran is going to be in Orion Platinum or not from the posts.

I'm surprised there's no mention of either Orion Platinum or Ultran on the actual Sonic-Syndicate site. I would have thought that was the obvious place for news like that.

Perhaps we're all so involved in forums that we don't remember to update our webpages. (Not a serious remark)

Oh well, guess I'll wait and see what happens.

Hi Caleb,

Ultran is going to be on the Orion Platinum CD, along with a bunch of SF2's to use with it. There has been no response as to whether it will be released as a VSTi. Much of this information is probably not up on the site since Orion Platinum is still in development (and thus, so is Ultran). From my experience, Sonic Syndicate has never been keen on offering "sneak peeks" on their website, leaving that information for the boards-n-such. Usually there will be a big announcement on the site the day of release.

On another note, I'm including the original post (thanks Bones!) from the Orion Forum that should add a bit more detail to Ultran's description.

Enjoy,

Brittnell

quote:

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I am just bustin' to tell you all about Rich's incredible new ORION Generator, ULTRAN Wave Morphing Sampler. It has been in and out of the beta versions for some time now and, because of the way it works, it seemed interesting but not overly useful.

That has now officially changed. The new ULTRAN WMS is close to the best instrument, soft or hard, i have ever used. It is seriously FAT, SQUELCHY and everything else that you might want it to be.

It works by taking each individual sample from a soundfont and playing them in order, end to end. You can control the start-point, blend-point and blend time between samples. It has 4 oscillators and a great filter. With the huge array of sf2's on the PLATINUM CD designed to be used with it you can do ANYTHING! It does great basses, analogue or DXish, and leads and even more amazing pads and atmospheric effects. There is nothing this baby can't do and it is very CPU efficient [about the same as WASP in "dual" mode].

If you can't see any other reason to buy the Platinum CD then Ultran WMS is well worth the expense because you really need the soundfonts to get the most out of it.

Sorry to do this to you but i just spent all weekend playing with this baby and i don't think that i'll ever need another softsynth again. Even if you have to wait a couple of months for it, it will be well worth the wait because the better the samples on the CD, the better the whole package works. So just be a little patient and give Rich and us beta-testers time to make it as good as it can be, not just good enough to release.

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Thanks for that Britnell. It certainly sounds like something I want.

Don't know about buying the CD though. I'm a big fan of downloads and I've got soundfonts coming out of my proverbial.

We'll see if they'll like to ship to Australia though eh?

:-)