What VSTi to use to create cello/violin supersaws?

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If I have, say, three or five samples of a violin playing a C with the attack chopped off and I want to make a sort of supersaw out of them, what's the best synth to do it in? What's the best synth for emulating an impossible synth with physical violins for oscillators? The goal is to make a huge, shiny and organic lead sound.

There are many ways of doing this. I've been pre-mixing the samples and then resynthesizing the resulting file. Could also take the opposite approach of running multiple instances of a sampler and tweaking the panning and detune on each one separately, then have all the samplers play the same note.

But what a sane and efficient way of doing it?

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That's a very interesting idea. I might have to try similar ones myself now. The two ideas you listed are the most direct ways of doing it. You could try starting off with a "section" strings patch, like a GM Strings patch, to make things quicker. You could also try something like the (dontionware) "Superfake" VST from WOK.

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feed the signal into this    :wink:

 
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Whoa, that's definitely worth a try! And what a great name. It's a little different than what I'm ultimately going for - I want to use several different waves to have the variation between the waves be natural - but I should be able to put this to a lot of use anyway.

De La Mancha's Scylla also seems like a great option, if DLM ever reissues it as a freebie. It looks like it can load three samples, have independent control of each one, then feed them through a subtractive synth style effects section.

One thing surprised me - I get the biggest, fattest sounds by starting with samples of really quietly bowed notes. So far I've only done this with double bass samples, but I'm going to be sampling a cellist and a violinist soon anyway.

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Layered granular synthesis maybe. I'd try The Mangle or Alchemy.

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WOK wrote: 
feed the signal into this    :wink:

 
It is a strange plugin. With some patches it sounds great, with others horrible. I have found Detune settings beyond 10 o'clock not to be very useful.
Oddly, I like it best for synth basses, not for poly sounds.

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I believe the supersaw you seek is most commonly referred to as the string section of an orchestra.

But seriously, just throw the samples into Kontakt, and detune. Done.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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If I remember correctly, in Dune the modulation matrix lets you attribute properties to individual voices. This way one might change the phase of or add a slight delay to some voices, things like that...

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I suspect something like Alchemy or Kontakt is gonna be the answer for doing this precisely the way I want to try. Kontakt has a 15-minute fully functional demo mode, right? That oughta be enough to give it a try and see if it would sound good. If it does it might be worth buying Kontakt just for that.

I also downloaded Dune BE a couple of weeks ago but haven't spent much time looking at it yet... is it possible to load your own wavs into its oscillators' wavetable mode?

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DSmolken wrote:I also downloaded Dune BE a couple of weeks ago but haven't spent much time looking at it yet... is it possible to load your own wavs into its oscillators' wavetable mode?
Not yet but should be possible in Dune 2...

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Oh well. Kontakt seems like the next thing to try then. Btw this whole thing makes me feel all mad scientisty. Especially once I managed to make a pluck sound out of bowed bass samples, use it in a couple of tracks, and nobody noticed anything weird about them. I feel like...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snO68aJTOpM

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Well, if you're a rich guy, you could try Vienna Symphonic Libraries... :wink:

If you're a poor guy, there's still IK Miroslav Symphonik...

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Hmmm... what about omnisphere. you could use a violin on each layer. add unison or harmonia or just detune - up to 2 layers per patch, which would be up to 16 violins per multi or 48 if you use harmonia. I can even set it up and record an mp3 for you to hear if you give specific instructions. I actually was just doing this on a track with but with 2 violins on each note with a 5 note chord so it was like 10 violins.

Gladiator also has a violin wave sample in it's wavetable (or whatever they call it) and you could do a lot with it.

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An eventide on pop-punk vocals is the same idea too, right?

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Tricky-Loops wrote:Well, if you're a rich guy, you could try Vienna Symphonic Libraries... :wink:

If you're a poor guy, there's still IK Miroslav Symphonik...
And for creative commons there's this http://sso.mattiaswestlund.net/

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