Hi all,

I guess the title says it all: I've got a new vsti on its way, and am wondering if it makes any sense to add onboard fx's to it, since there are so many good effects available out there.
What would you prefer ?

BT

Big Tick,
I love onboard fx as long as they're relatively economical on CPU and as long as you can turn them off if necessary.

Doug

Hy, I think that some kinds of effects are one of a kind. But things like Reverber/Chorus we can get in a lot of places. I use most the Reverber/Delay of my sbLive-APS sound-card. But if you do some crazy/funky effects like the classic SimSynth and TauPro (MuonSoftware) this would be awsome to have on your synth. That's my oppinion.

I say yes because it is always easier and more intuitive to have the controls immediately to hand.

The Tau Pro's implementation is superb, you can disable them if you don't want to use them thus saving CPU.

I love onboard effects because you can be that much more creative when designing patches, and the synth is that much more inspiring when scrolling through patches and presets later. Plus, when you have an idea for a song, it's easier to just plug in a synth and go, than to spend time finding the right plugins to go after it. Even if you might end up using other plugins later instead of the onboard ones.

I would say don't put effects on.

The great thing about the plugin concept is that you can choose what you want and what you don't.

As soon as you start to bundle more than one module into a plugin you give people less choice. If they want to load the synth they have to have the effects with it and if they want to use the effects on another synth/channel they cant.

I suppose you could release the effects seperately...althought i think there are a couple of reverbs, delays etc available already.

i could definately live with bitrate decimation/crusher built into the next version of rainbow

RGC's Pentagon 1 goes the extra 10 miles and gives you a auxilliary set of outputs that carry the dry signal, so you can run the built in effects on outs 1&2 and the dry on outs 3&4.

Theres more to it as well but im stil just learning it. Perhaps the depest vsti I've ever seen, definately the deepest analog modeling one I've ever seen.

This is actually a really interesting question.

One of the huge selling points of VSTi was that you could integrate it with VST effects in your mixer and now we're getting synths with the effects conveniently included - are we spoilt or what?

I guess several questions have to be asked:

a) Are the effects included going to be better than the effects I already have and can add in my multi-tracker mixer?

b) Are they going to add to the cost of development and therefore, to the price of the synth?

c) Are they going to be able to be bypassed?

d) What extra resources in a system are going to be taken up by implementing an effects unit?

And now the most important question:

e) "You're working on a new VSTi?!?!?!?!?! What is it going to be? SPILL!!!"

I'm so surprised no-one has asked that question already.

My vote: Optional, as per Pro 52.

Sometimes delay and chorus/flange is handy to do on the synth, while sometimes it's not, and needs to be in VST (as in a busy mix).

While on subject of synth effects, Scorpion 2's Spectra FX stands out from the crowd.

Allright, Caleb Blake asked for it, so here's the story, I was longing to tell anyway

When working on Rainbow 3 I had to rewrite about 90% of the whole thing - and in order to test my new dsp and vsti core code, I started a little test plugin.

Now, this test plugin has evolved into a electric piano modeling thingie, currently in "alpha" status. So I can reformulate the initial question into: "What onboard effects would you want in an electric piano module ?"

Hi,

If it's going to be an electric piano then I'd love tremelo, vibrato and possibly a rotary speaker simulator, a good phaser like Supaphaser would be fun as well but only if these don't eat the CPU.

I would go for onboard effects but no delays or reverbs as I've always got a couple set up as send effects anyway.

Another bonus for me in having them built in is that Cubase doesn't currently support insert plugin latency compensation on VSTi's so if the effects are part of the VSTi output I wouldn't have problems with the whole part being delayed as I do when inserting.

I think that makes sense.

Cheers

Tim

quote:

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Originally posted by Greedy Soul:
If it's going to be an electric piano then I'd love tremelo, vibrato and possibly a rotary speaker simulator, a good phaser like Supaphaser would be fun as well but only if these don't eat the CPU.

I would go for onboard effects but no delays or reverbs as I've always got a couple set up as send effects anyway.

---

Right on with those effects! Sounds like a great idea and I give it the BIG TICK. Sorry, couldn't help myself.

In this case onboard effects would really be integral to the project I guess. You'll never manage a really successful emulation without them.

I will always applaud the idea of doing something completely different from what everyone else is doing. But I also love a decent emulation of a classic. I thought B4 was one of the most wonderful idea. I refuse to give Logic any credit for their electric piano creation however as I think they SUCK! Oops did I really write that?!

But a great electric piano VSTi would warm the heart on a cold night especially if it does a great Rhodes and Wurlitzer.

IMO Vibrato and O-Drive are really the only major e-piano effects required. EQ/Tone maybe. Verb and Delay, although nice for patching ease, are usually difficult to balance for quality, CPU utilization and features. There are lots of quality plug-ins available that balance that already. Spend your time on killer emulation. It would be awesome if we got a decent Rhodes/Wurly rig out of this.

My opinion is that the included effects should be integral to the type of emulation being provided. And, they should be of a quality to create the "users" perception of the sound that is expected. If you are going to add vibrato to an e-piano emulator, for example, then I have some pre-built expectations on what the vibrato features and tonal qualities would be based on use of an RL e-piano with a vibrato effect built in. If you start cutting corners on the vibrato because there are so many other plug-ins available that do the job well, then don't waste your time making a crappy vibrato.

To me if you are going to put in an effect make sure it doesn't bring down the quality of the rest of the emulation. There are many examples of this problem in existing VSTi even in the big dollar instruments.

Good Luck, Everyone project Rhodes/Wurly thoughts at Big Tick.

Rhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/ WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/WurlyRhodes/Wurly

[ 17 September 2001: Message edited by: Ben@KvR ]

I completely disagree,the thing I like best about my Korg hardware is the integration of effects into the patches,especially delay.It would take me forever to try and emulate that with my plugs.

Damn. Lots of different opinions there. This is not going to help

What about 2 compatible versions of the vsti, one with fx's, there other without ? Would it be the best of both worlds, or just another annoyance ?

BT

I don't see the problem with fx in a synth if you can turn them off. Infact I think that they are good, and add to the value of a synth.
dw

Onboard effects are good. They can often form the character of a patch.

I'm not that much into programming sounds from scratch, I like hearing presets and tweaking them. So onboard effects add an extra level of ways to tweak a sound to your liking yet retain the feel of what attracted you to the sound in the first place.

Maybe my original post was a little hard to follow. I agree with you guys on most of the issues. Let me see if I can unscramble my wandering post. The con section is longer but does not mean I am against built in effects.

PRO-Built in effects

There are some effects that are absolutely required to be in an emulation and built into the VSTi. And I agree that having the effects in the VSTi makes patch creation and recall much easier.
If there are built in effects it is important that we can disable them to save CPU.

CON-Built in effects

My previous post was based on the understanding that each effect has to be written into the VSTi and requires programming time that could be spent on the emulation itself. The effects on the Pro-52 are a perfect example, the delay section is a compromise. You can sort of get a reverb but it is thin and restrictive, it is passable as a delay. But you get a big CPU hit based on polyphony. I rarely, if ever use it unless I need to feed a beat to a mod source. I end up using either Waves or TC verb depending on the verb sound I'm looking for and one of several delay choices, again depending on what type of delay I am looking for. I even use internal effects and send the results to external effects.

SUMMARY

Some effects are required but trying to build a long list of every basic type of effect and then try to squeeze it into the emulation is a waste of Mr. Ticks time.

The original e-piano's had vibrato, spring reverb and a tone knob. Some had over-drive. With this minimal setup we got all kinds of great sounds. Musicians added Wah-Wah pedals and Delay Units as add-ins. If we can get passable versions of these I'm all for it, but why spend a month writing a delay section when there are 20 different delay's out there? What I (hopefully we) really want is a great emulation of those classic e-piano's. The plug-ins give us the ability to go wild after that.

Writing a simple delay (delaytime, feedback, lowpass) takes only hours, not a month. Heck, there are even free source-codes flying around on the web doing this.

Re: sj_digriz

Yep your points are all valid. I think theres a difference between emulation and creating more 'free' synths that aren't trying to mimic anything. Emulations may well need onboard effects somewhere to help it sound authentic. Unique synths like say Absynth are probably more of interest to people who want to create interesting patches from scratch, not standard studio effects.

A good exception is Tau Pro which uses onboard effects well to actually get away from the 303 sound its trying to be authentic to - so you end up with this great unit that has a much bigger pallate than a 303 simply because of the effects (as well as the other additions).

I agree the user should always be able to disable them for CPU reasons or just because she doesn't want/like them.

And its down to the developer really - if they like having lots of onboard effects, that might well help characterize the colour and appeal of the synth especially if they are easy to code and drop-in. However, flangers and delays are just that - they might create nice presets but when you get down to edit the sounds, if they're coloured too much by the effects, everything will sound similar to the presets.

Off-topic slightly - there could be various ways to implement them and thinking differently about how effects are used within rather than after a sound is made. I'm not sure if or how this might be possible but it'd be cool to insert the effects before say the filter in the signal path within the VSTi. So rather than tacked on at the end, they form part of the synthesis. I'm probably talking out of my arse here though.

RE Michael Kleps:

This is actually my point. The normal approach would be to put in the very rudimentary versions of a few standard effects. These are typically poorly integrated into the VSTi or so bad that they are unusable. Most of the delays that are imbeded into VSTi cause so many artifacts and phase problems that they cause a new sound instead of echoing the source. They also tend to be major tone suckers (the PRO-52 delay is a Mid/Bass black hole). I need another crappy delay like I need a hole in the head. There are, of course, a few people that think I need that hole, but that's a different story.

Michael Kleps,

In case you thought I was flaming you, I am not. Your bassline and other products are kewl and I know you guys work your butts off on these VSTi. I respect the amount of professionalism that is generated from a dang near hobby industry. You guys amaze me daily with the amount of creativity and passion that goes into your work. So please take my comments as opinions of a user who creates and tweaks patches every day. I am not however a competent programmer. So I try not to comment on code issues but rather funtional use issues.

@sj_digriz : The delay I mentioned is a simple "mix the previous data into the current data". There simply is no quality degradation as long as you don't filter anything. You can't raise the quality of a 1:1 copy. When you do more sophisticated stuff (filtering the signal before mixing) you get signal degredation and phase problems, but when the lowcut is 'off' there simply *IS* none. A delay per se isn't low quality just because it doesn't have the features you might know from other delay plug-ins. The best quality you can get is by simply mixing the "old" data with the "current" data.

Pentagon 1 has a Simulator fx section with 19 different speaker-type simulations, plus lo and hi cut knobs.

These make a big difference to the final sound. Worth looking at.

I purchased the P1 and it is probably the best synth VSTi right now. He picked 3 effects, delay, chorus and Over-drive, plus the simulator and EQ for tone control. Notice the lack of reverb (of course you can use the delay for approximation of that). I'm not sure if freeware vs payware is part of this debate or not at this point.

I guess, after further review, I really do want effects built in. I have just gotten used to working around the ones that are currently built into VSTi.

I think it'd be cool to have effects that react more to a synth. Like have parameters on the effect that are controlled by key velocity, or an envelope. Or sync them to a synth's lfo. Maybe even be able to route individual oscilators to different effects.