I have been testing a lot of the vsti synths to see which would be best to make classic beefy analog bass sounds. I'm disappointed to see a lot of the synths (like Alpha) don't have the hard sync feature. Synth 1 seems to be really good. Any suggestions? It is so hard to determine which synths to go with as there are so many.

H

For hard sync I usually go with Pro53. For other synth bass sounds I like Triangle or Pentagon. TauPro sounds good but I am holding off until the update when they add pitch bend.

Robert

Perhaps try RCG's Triangle II, which does have sync as well as a host of other features. And it's free.

http://www.rgcaudio.com/Triangle_II.htm

Hi

What's "Hard sync" ?

dor-x wrote:

Hi What's "Hard sync" ?

Someone else can give you the technical answer, but if you listen to the opening synth part in Let's Go by The Cars, that is hard sync. The Sequential Prophet 5 was famous for it back in the early 80's. It is almost like a talk box sound.

Robert

Triangle II and z3ta+ both do great bass. z3ta+ in particular has some delightfully evil hard sync presets

Quote:

TauPro sounds good but I am holding off until the update when they add pitch bend

mmm... pitch bend has been implemented in the last update (2 weeks ago)

For the ultimate bass synth as well as acoustic & electric basses you should check out Trilogy: http://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/trilogy.html

it's a killer

Quote:

TauPro sounds good but I am holding off until the update when they add pitch bend.

We added pitch bend to Tau Pro back in January...the update has been available on all platforms for some time

...and without wishing to sound too salesy, Tau Pro has hard sync (as does our Electron synth too).

Cheers
Dave

I'm curious: Trilogy aside, how does the Novation K-Station (hardware) stack up to your favorite vsti's as a Bass synth module? I just heard one, and I was impressed overall, and it only costs around $700 new. And it would be nice not having to worry about cpu headroom. (And let's not get into a hardware vs. software war here. Just interested in what you think of the K-Station...)

Whadaya think?

V-Station.

Forever,




Kim.

dor-x wrote:

Hi What's "Hard sync" ?

When you sync an oscillator to another,you force the first oscillator to start its cycle at the same time as the second.Because the cycles per second determine pitch,if the oscillators are tuned differently,the first oscillator will have the same PITCH as the second,but a different harmonic structure
ew

leaping frog wrote:

mmm... pitch bend has been implemented in the last update (2 weeks ago)

Muon Software Ltd wrote:

We added pitch bend to Tau Pro back in January...the update has been available on all platforms for some time Cheers Dave

How did I miss that? It must have been while I was on vacation.
Anyway, that's what I have been waiting for.

Robert

Jeez wrote:

V-Station

Nah, I'm using so many vsti's that I'm pushing my cpu too hard. If a K-Station is cheap enough, it makes a lot more sense to me than another vsti.

So I ask once again: Anyone have any comments about the K-Station?

Try the VAZ Plus demo-that's an amazing synth for the price.
ew

hard sync or not, try Iblit. really really really really punchy.

cnegrad wrote:

Jeez wrote: V-Station Nah, I'm using so many vsti's that I'm pushing my cpu too hard. If a K-Station is cheap enough, it makes a lot more sense to me than another vsti. So I ask once again: Anyone have any comments about the K-Station?

How about a CPU upgrade? Or a 2nd computer That would be a much better way to spend the money IMHO.

Forever,




Kim.

cnegrad wrote:

I'm curious: Trilogy aside, how does the Novation K-Station (hardware) stack up to your favorite vsti's as a Bass synth module? I just heard one, and I was impressed overall, and it only costs around $700 new. And it would be nice not having to worry about cpu headroom. (And let's not get into a hardware vs. software war here. Just interested in what you think of the K-Station...) Whadaya think?

You also dont have to worry about loading more than one at the same time with the K-station . But, I have a friend who just bought the K-station and we've been playing with it for a couple of weeks now. It sounds really good. I recommend it if you dont mind it being mono-timbral. The effects are really nice. And its super easy to program also. Good luck in your bass quest.

Hard sync may lock the oscillators pitch-wise but the timbre still changes when they drift a little, that's why analog VCO's still have a one-up on most digital synths in this dept. You can get around this a bit by modulating the sync'd oscillator ever so slightly to simulate the effect.

The K Station is rather thin sounding as far as hardware synths goes. That said, it's thin, cutting, & effected sound makes it the ultimate trance synth, how come more trance guys don't use that thing?

Uncle E wrote:

Hard sync may lock the oscillators pitch-wise but the timbre still changes when they drift a little, that's why analog VCO's still have a one-up on most digital synths in this dept. You can get around this a bit by modulating the sync'd oscillator ever so slightly to simulate the effect.

Well, to me that's really the whole point of using hard-sync: not so much to lock the oscialltor pitch per se, but to get that distinctive timbre-shift as one oscillator changes pitch in relation to the other.

But even when I was using nothing but analog synths way back when (ARP Odyssey's and 2600's, Rolands, Prophets, etc....yeah, I'm that old ) this effect wasn't being created by random tuning drifts due to using analog VCO's per se (though that was certainly there, and certainly sounded cool! ), but because of deliberate changes to pitch over time...such as modulating one oscillator's pitch via an envelope.
And these days that kind of thing is certainly easy enough to do with digital oscillators (I can get some screaming hard-sync out of z3ta+ and Pentagon 1, just as much as I could out of my old ARP ).

Don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing with you about how well analog tuning drift worked with creating interesting hard-sync effects....I'm just used to doing such things intentionally rather than relying on happenstance events like unintentional oscillator drift to create the effect....and that sort of thing can certainly be done with digital oscillators these days.

Thanks for the explanation (hard sync).

I think I know what you mean, but is ther any article on the net about that? is it the sound The Cure got in "The Walk"?

Jeez wrote:

cnegrad wrote: Jeez wrote: V-Station Nah, I'm using so many vsti's that I'm pushing my cpu too hard. If a K-Station is cheap enough, it makes a lot more sense to me than another vsti. So I ask once again: Anyone have any comments about the K-Station? How about a CPU upgrade? Or a 2nd computer That would be a much better way to spend the money IMHO.

That or a sequencer upgrade! Tracktion has a "track freezing" option that is quite a bit more cpu friendly than the new Logic one. With Tracktion, you get the advantages of rendering tracks without loosing your options.

Laurence Kingston

dor-x wrote:

is it the sound The Cure got in "The Walk"?

Yep, that's the one. Perfect example.

Let's see, a few other well-known examples of hard-sync:

• "One Thing Leads To Another" and "Red Skies At Night" by The Fixx both used hard-sync on a Prophet 5 (though sometimes Rupert Greenall would make it sound even wilder by running it through a vocoder)
  
  
• The synth-solo on Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell"
  
  
• There's a few hard-sync accents near the very end of the studio version of ELP's cover of Aaron Copeland's "Hoedown"
  
  
• "Buffalo Stance" by Neneh Cherry (if I'm remembering correctly)
  
  <EDIT>=============
  
• Roger Powell's killer guitar-style synth solos on the Utopia song "Caravan", from the album "Adventures in Utopia" (he does the other half of the back-and-forth solos at the end with Todd Rundgren on guitar, as well a cool one in the middle of the song). Instead of going for the typical Jan Hammer-style overdriven solo sound, he went for a sound closer in timbre to a clean Strat by interesting use of hard-sync.

I'm sure I could think of a few more in a bit....

Sure, I built a patch in the Pulsar modular synth that used slowly modulating sync'd oscillators for pads & evolving textures (as opposed to the normal hard sync lead & bass sounds), it's still my go-to synth for that sort of thing. The thing is that when most people think hard sync, they're thinking Randy Numan & Eurasure, & in those cases there's not much creative modulation going on like you're suggesting (don't quote me on that, just spouting off from the top of my head ).

Uncle E wrote:

The thing is that when most people think hard sync, they're thinking Randy Numan & Eurasure, & in those cases there's not much creative modulation going on like you're suggesting (don't quote me on that, just spouting off from the top of my head ).

True, though the old classic (overused? ) Prophet 5 hard-sync "oww" sound that was used to death back in the 80's was usually just simple oscillator pitch modulated by envelope. Not really what I'd call overly "creative modulation" per se, but certainly effective enough to be heard a lot back then.

Heh....that just reminded me of an old interview I read with John Fogerty (from CCR) about that specific sound: he said it reminded him of "an old accordian sliding sidways". That always stuck with me for some reason....

<EDIT> I'm trying to remember a Randy Numan (I'm assuming you mean Randy Newman?) song that used hard-sync? Or did you mean Gary Numan...?

Got me! Or was it the guy w/ the spaghetti sauce?

Har wrote:

Let's see, a few other well-known examples of hard-sync:

The synthesizer lead-line in that Van Halen/Sammy Hagar song..... that I forgot the title of

... but I'm sure someone (Har ) can fill it in

Uncle E wrote:

Got me! Or was it the guy w/ the spaghetti sauce?

ROFL!!

crimsonwarlock wrote:

Har wrote: Let's see, a few other well-known examples of hard-sync: The synthesizer lead-line in that Van Halen/Sammy Hagar song..... that I forgot the title of ... but I'm sure someone (Har ) can fill it in

Hmmmm.....I honestly kinda stopped listening to Van Halen once DLR left; can't remember it, really.

But knowing EVH, I'll bet it was probably done on an Oberheim of some kind....

IT'S GOT WHAT IT TAKES
SO TELL ME WHY CAN'T THIS BE LOVE
STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART OH TELL
ME WHY
CAN'T THIS BE LOVE


....you mean this one?

My picks for really good bass-lines [the thing that I always use to judge a synth]:

Iblit - listen to PWMbass01 [or maybe 02] and you will know what I mean. And its only using 2 of its 3 oscillators!
Junglist - seemingly bottomless bottom end
PlastiCZ! - also has a pretty huge bottom
Scorpion - generally sits very well in a mix

My ultimate bassmachine is WaspXT but you need ORION to run it in. You could also try some of my SynthEdit synths [link in my signature].

Jump.

Guys, what's the difference between all these vsti you mention. When will you use that or the other? If you like Iblit so much (for example), why don't you always use that?

If you're referring to the VH tune-no,Jump's just an OB-Xa preset;no sync.
TrekStar's right there...that's classic sync.
As to why use different VStis for bass instead of the same one constantly,it's just like why you use different guitars for different songs.Sometimes you want a little cleaner sound,sometimes you want more growl,etc.The sound of a synth can make a difference in what you play,too-it becomes a completely different song with a different bass underneath.
ew

dor-x wrote:

Guys, what's the difference between all these vsti you mention. When will you use that or the other? If you like Iblit so much (for example), why don't you always use that?

Different instruments have different strengths. e.g. Most of the time I use WaspXT because its Resonance is so good but I can't use the LFO on the filter and PWM at the same time so if I need to do that I will use Iblit. If I want a big, hairy bass with the filter wide open then I will use something like JX Synth because its oscillators are so huge [but its filter is not so much to my liking].

Thanks all for the great responses. I was trying to do a simple patch comparison between some of the synths. I took a single osc with a sawtooth wave, then applied a filter envelope for a bass sound. I disabled all the effects and eq to get only the wave and the filter. I started with Synth 1, Crystal II, and Triangle II. I couldn't believe the difference between Crystal and the others. I don't know if I was programming Crystal correctly (as I am a newbie to it) but it just didn't sound anywhere near as good as the others (although is sounds great for other patches). I also tried using the same filter type when I could choose (24db). I wish I would have thought to save the patches for each instrument to post. It would be a great tool to check out.

If you're a crystal newbie, try the Full of Bullets preset for great sounding sawtooth with a filter sweep. I use that a lot as a starting point.