vsti like Ensoniq Fizmo ?

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If you do get it going try my "ooops I did it (again)!" bank for Steam:

http://fingermarks.co.uk/Music/Steam.zip

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aMUSEd wrote:If you do get it going try my "ooops I did it (again)!" bank for Steam:

http://fingermarks.co.uk/Music/Steam.zip
got it working perfectly now, and thanks for the bank for steam,
gonna download it now and check it out..think I'll fiddle with this
and see if I can conjure up a bank myself...I've only had it up and fully running for about 10 mintues now.

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O.k. have had a little play with Steam, and
it's a very interesting synth.

So some say this was inspried by the Fizmo ?
the first thing that popped into my mind when
I started playing some of the patches in Steam
was " Sophia " it sounds very simular to Sophia
does it not ?

then can was also say that Sophia is " Fizmo " sounding
was well ?

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D N A wrote:maybe something like this ?

http://www.puremagnetik.com/index.php?o ... Itemid=155

Ableton Live only
Dead link, but I found it... and I think I bought it, though I got no email so far confirming it. I figured for $15 it would be a bit of fun.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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OK, I'm guilty. I'm reviving a long dead thread. :hihi:

I was thinking earlier about a Fizmo as it was brought up in another thread. It's one of those instruments I wanted when it was released, but was too broke and I already had a TS-10 that I was happy with. Then rumors of it's bad build abounded and I had moved on... but I always sort of longed for this weird little beast.

So, this got me thinking. I ordered the Puremagnetik Live Waveframe so I had samples of the waveforms... or at least in the neighborhood. But I also thought while I was reading the manual, "aside from the vocoder (which I have in other software) Zebra has pretty much all the features of a Fizmo... if only I could use this scrappy modular to build my own Fizmo..." I know it wouldn't be a 1:1 copy, but we could get in the ballpark, no? Maybe add effects from a separate plug. Has anyone tried this? I was dismayed to find the Fizmo manual did not have a signal flow chart I could use as a guide.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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Well, unfortunately I have not seen a single plugin that would even come close to Fizmo sound even if they seem to have some technical similarities. Fizmo was just not a simple wavetable synth. Alot of the characteristic sound comes from the Ensoniq ROM waveforms and how they are scanned. Fizmo could loop and modulate playback inside a transwave freely back and forth. Also Fizmo was made for real time sound manipulation.

The best plugin to get Fizmo like sounds is actually VirSyn Poseidon. You can use the free EPS Transwave generator to make transwaves (or use Ensoniq samples) and Poseidon can do a similar slow speed wave scanning and loop modulations inside a wave. This is as close as you will get to Fizmo in any VSTi.
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As an original EPS-16+ owner, I'm very curious on how Transwave actually works. Is there any literature about this ? it's not just a wavetable thing... Did Ensoniq patented Transwave ?

Hmmm, this could be a fun to do proof of concept VSTi !

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I think Zebra should be able to accomplish similar transwave scanning, provided a suitable set of waveforms. What you won't get is the aliasing, poor D/A conversion, and the same filters (Curtis?).
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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Ensoniq was all done with analog filters by the time the Fizmo came along - digital all the way.

As far as Transwaves go, while there may be some differences in the implementation, it pretty much sounds like a variant of wavetable scanning to me. Seems like I read something to the effect that Transwaves are focused on an interpolation between the first and last cycles of a wave sample so the transition tends to sound more smooth, whereas in Waldorf wavetables you have multiple waves that can be totally different from the adjacent ones, sometimes resulting in more jarring timbral jumps. Or something like that. Guess the result is that the Fizmo is a little more forgiving maybe, whereas the Microwave XT can get wilder but can also get ugly fast without a bit of care in programming.

At some point in the past, somebody (maybe it was on GS) went into the various things you can do with the TS-10/12, like custom Transwaves and even creating full-fledged wavetables and doing Ensoniq's version of wavesequencing, etc. But it all sounded so convoluted to accomplish vs. programming a software synth like Zebra that I found myself thinking that I'd just never have the patience to deal with it.
Last edited by Vectorman on Sun Jul 06, 2014 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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New album, Chasing Fire, out now on Amazon, iTunes, etc.
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duplicate post
http://www.davidvector.com
New album, Chasing Fire, out now on Amazon, iTunes, etc.
Bandcamp: https://davidvector.bandcamp.com/releases

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zerocrossing wrote:Dead link, but I found it... and I think I bought it, though I got no email so far confirming it. I figured for $15 it would be a bit of fun.
Here is a working link, just to help somebody else just in case ;)
http://puremagnetik.com/post/7487044669 ... -live-pack

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An accurate VSTi emualtion also need to incorporate these flaws right?:

"the Fizmo was much criticized because of its unfinished operating system, editing peculiarities, unreliability (concerning problems with the external power supply adapter and/or the Fizmo's internal power supply DC regulator)"

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A lot of synths may feature-wise be similar to it, but a fair part of the Fizmo's goodness is in the transwave sets.

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robotmonkey wrote:Well, unfortunately I have not seen a single plugin that would even come close to Fizmo sound even if they seem to have some technical similarities. Fizmo was just not a simple wavetable synth. Alot of the characteristic sound comes from the Ensoniq ROM waveforms and how they are scanned. Fizmo could loop and modulate playback inside a transwave freely back and forth. Also Fizmo was made for real time sound manipulation.

The best plugin to get Fizmo like sounds is actually VirSyn Poseidon. You can use the free EPS Transwave generator to make transwaves (or use Ensoniq samples) and Poseidon can do a similar slow speed wave scanning and loop modulations inside a wave. This is as close as you will get to Fizmo in any VSTi.
Oh, interesting. I'm a big Poseidon fan. I like the sound of it's resynthesis engine a lot. IMO it's better than Alchemy for sure. I was so focused on the wavetable aspect of the Fizmo I didn't think to look to another form of synthesis to try to replicate it but now that you say that it makes sense.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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Vectorman wrote:Guess the result is that the Fizmo is a little more forgiving maybe, whereas the Microwave XT can get wilder but can also get ugly fast without a bit of care in programming.
Yeah, I've been listening to as many XT and Fizmo demos as I can and the XT seems to have the tendency to sound really ugly to me, where the Fizmo has a much sweeter and more musical quality to it.
Vectorman wrote:At some point in the past, somebody (maybe it was on GS) went into the various things you can do with the TS-10/12, like custom Transwaves and even creating full-fledged wavetables and doing Ensoniq's version of wavesequencing, etc. But it all sounded so convoluted to accomplish vs. programming a software synth like Zebra that I found myself thinking that I'd just never have the patience to deal with it.
Yeah, I had a TS-10 and I loved it, but stuff like custom Transwaves were beyond me at the time as I was more focused on guitar. I kind of wish I had the ol' beast back. Even just as a MIDI controller. The keybed was pretty good if memory serves. I got rid of it when I started relying more heavily on a DAW for sequencing and Absynth for abstract pad sounds. I think I replaced it with a Virus C.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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