Is omnisphere still king?

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lionscub68 wrote:
mhog wrote:"Bread and butter sounds"? Omnisphere?! :o

Misleading, IMO. Omnisphere stands for "every atmospheric sound" (weird, strange, cinematic, sci-fi, pads, leads, electronic, vintage etc.). Of course you can find guitarish, pseudoethnic, fakeorchestral etc. But they are not exactly "bread and butter"!
You can make simple bread-n-butter sounds using the built-in synth engine by itself, without any sample sources.
Sorry, maybe a language barrier?... if "bread-and-butter" means "pianos, guitars, flutes, drums, strings" like in a GM module, I don't think Omnisphere is the right device. I think Sampletank, Kontakt, Halion and such are what one needs. If it means something else, Pardon.

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mhog wrote:Because of the different synthesis (a sampler plays recorded looped samples, on the contrary a rompler just exploits a very short sample in order to emulate the attack of a certain instrument).
Nobody uses these definitions other than you.

A sampler is not "different synthesizer" than a rompler, they're the same thing. If there is a difference, can you perhaps explain exactly what it is?

How short do the samples need to be? You'll suddenly no longer be able to call 99% of what we consider romplers a rompler anymore.

The D-50 and others like the fairlight do not have any limitation on the length of samples that would be considered "very short" and "microseconds" is so ludicrous I won't even bother.
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aciddose wrote:
mhog wrote:Because of the different synthesis (a sampler plays recorded looped samples, on the contrary a rompler just exploits a very short sample in order to emulate the attack of a certain instrument).
Nobody uses these definitions other than you.

A sampler is not "different synthesizer" than a rompler, they're the same thing. If there is a difference, can you perhaps explain exactly what it is?

How short do the samples need to be? You'll suddenly no longer be able to call 99% of what we consider romplers a rompler anymore.

The D-50 and others like the fairlight do not have any limitation on the length of samples that would be considered "very short" and "microseconds" is so ludicrous I won't even bother.
aciddose wrote:
gassle wrote:
aciddose wrote:
gassle wrote:And Omnisphere has VA oscillators.
Actually if this is how you've decided on use of the term, which is obviously incorrect, the vast majority of "VA" oscillators are in fact using wavetables identical to those used in what you'd call "ROMplers",

What is a "VA oscillator" ? Can you define this? Does it make sense to include this as a disqualifier in the definition of "ROMpler" ?

If you knew what a "VA oscillator" was you'd quickly understand it makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever.

All "ROMplers" are capable of using single cycle waveforms and effects like PWM if programmed correctly. Are you now going to describe the function of an underlying system based upon how it is programmed, what content it comes loaded with?
So now you also call all Wavetable synthesizers Romplers? :)
Yes, because they're the same thing. Unless you can load your own wavetables in which case they're samplers.

Only we don't care so much about that fact and focus instead of the fact they are synthesizers. Although in my particular case I would focus on the wavetable aspect, and call them like you have: wavetable-synthesizers. I place this in a more important location than synthesizer as I do not consider this type of oscillator to have achieved parity in the majority of implementations.

Wavetable-rompler-synthesizers, but since rompler is inherent to wavetable (actually sampler is, of which rompler is a more common variation) we don't need to say it.

I don't personally understand the point of trying to categorize synths this way. Rompler is a fancy but at the same time a non-sense word someone came with in old days. Like term Folktronica. A wavetable synth is essentially a wavetable synth. What's the point of pushing the term Rompler for it. And a VA synth is a VA synth. Doesn't matter how the oscillators deal with recreating Virtual Analog waveforms. Many VA hardware synths today use of wavetables instead of circuit modeling. That doesn't make them rompler either. Regarding Omnisphere... If you have to give it a name... It uses subtractive synthesis because it uses filters, it has granular synthesis, it has wavetable oscillators (if you wanna call it that way), it has multisample based oscillators, it has FM and RM. Your logic of wavetable synthesizers is flawed too. Like Zebra... Basically its oscillators are based on wavetables. Does it make it a rompler? Users can draw their wavetables and soon users will be able to import their wavetables. Does it make it a sampler of some sort? No. It's a synthesizer that uses various synthesis techniques.
Last edited by gassle on Wed Feb 05, 2014 4:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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aciddose wrote:The D-50 and others like the fairlight do not have any limitation on the length of samples that would be considered "very short" and "microseconds" is so ludicrous I won't even bother.
I think you are wrong. I guess the difference is in the length of the sample. The D50 had only 100 PCM waves: 75 very short attacks (called "partials" or smth) which were less than one second, and 25 "loops" (about one second). The factory sounds built with these were 64 (not 640 or 6400+ like in Omnisphere. No: 8x8 = sixty four! :) ). Nothing else. In order to shape the pattern you had to use subtractive synthesis for the rest of the ADSR process. Of course you could "loop" these attack "partials", but the results were rather poor. It usually worked only for organs and such. Modern "romplers"/"samplers" can load whatever sample, even 1 hour long, because memory is not a problem anymore. In 1987 this was the main issue, 1 single KB (not MB!) costed a lot, expecially EPROM. That is why they invented romplers. The Fairlight at the time was very expensive, and was not a rompler, but a sampler. Only rich musicians could buy it. Romplers were an attempt to emulate real instruments using PCM samples of their recorded attack (less than one second). The results were... well... "original". Nowadays even a mere iphone can sample hours of material. In 1987 emulation of real instruments was difficult, due to the lack of memory. I don't know exactly how long could the Fairlight sample, but I think... seconds? My old Mirage sampled some seconds 8 bit and every time you had to insert the floppy disk... "loading time" was a nightmare :hihi:

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The issue is that what you're using to qualify these terms is too subjective to be of any practical use. The terms exist with settled meanings that are already misunderstood often enough.

If you interpret them the way I suggest by using them to form a categorical hierarchy there are far less issues. Their meanings become explicit specifications of one objective criteria and when you use them you use them in an inclusive manner, as a list of some of the specifications of a thing, not an exclusive list.

So, like [A, B, C] are members of the alphabet, not a list of specifications exclusively containing the members of the list.

If you use an exclusive specification it means you need to start having these ridiculously long descriptions for things. We say "apple", not "ripe fleshy generally green to red colored patterned fruit born from a deciduous tree-class member of the rose family".

We don't use concrete meanings either since those are near useless. We need to find a practical balance of abstraction to fit words into a hierarchy that can be used to effectively convey what we mean.

Think I am wrong? About what? The Fairlight in 1980 had 16kb per voice, a massive amount of memory. The D-50 had far, far more.

Those limits only apply to the maximum size of a loaded sound, which was roughly 1/2 second. You could effectively do drum loops and vocal sounds with the fairlight without much effort at its maximum sample rate. If you reduced the rate to something more practical like 8khz, that would give you two seconds. That may seem like a low rate but it is not as we are only discussing the rate of the sample, not the playback rate. 8khz gives you plenty of room for all sorts of sounds.

Additional sounds would be loaded from disk, which at the time averaged about 400kb each, or tape which could store far more depending on length.

The key here is that with the very first samplers and romplers alike, the samples were measured in lengths of multiple seconds. This disproves your assertion that they should be "very short". Modern samples are measured in lengths of multiple seconds, most of the time you do not need more!

More importantly you made an assertion about "VA waveforms" without understanding the fact that in many cases we're dealing with short samples used to produce these, as short as two samples length!

If we use your definitions we'll be going backwards. Most of the subtractive software on the market today will be falling into the category of rompler, while most of the romplers of the 80s and 90s will no longer fall into the category.
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I think you are wrong about the "amount of memory". The D50 had no memory at all, if you wanted to save your patches you had to buy expensive empty eprom cards (in which of course you saved only data, NOT "samples"). There were even commercial ROM soundcards (containing 64 new sounds each), but they costed about 100$ each! Maybe you are referring to the first Akai samplers? (s900 and such)? Those were quite good, but were called "samplers", not "romplers". Romplers were called synths like the D50 and the Korg M1, because the only samples available were the very short factory partials. Nothing else. I guess "rompler" comes from this (samples in ROM).

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No memory at all? How on earth do you think it worked? Magic? It had DSP effects like most notably the reverb, and contained a big chunk of working memory for use by the synth.

The memory it included was the flash memory, of course. It doesn't matter if you call them "partials", they still don't fit your definition of "short samples".

Yes, the only reason it was called a rompler was that the samples were loaded from ROM, not customizable without a lot of effort. Nothing to do with how short the samples were, how much memory was worth or any of that other nonsense.

Therefore omnisphere is also a rompler since it loads samples from ROM, not customizable without a lot of effort. Yet like the D-50 it is also more than that as it includes the capability to shape samples and generate its own waveforms according to editable parameters.

I know you are wrong about samplers being only for "rich" because the a500 is an example of a four voice synthesizer attached to an advanced computer capable of sampling for under $1000 in 1988.

Don't start thinking it wasn't used that way either, because in fact some of the first soft-synths were written on the a500.

(...arguably the very first would be fairlight predecessors and their distant relatives.)
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aciddose wrote:
A sampler is not "different synthesizer" than a rompler, they're the same thing. If there is a difference, can you perhaps explain exactly what it is?

.
One can sample, the other cannot

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@ aciddose: I think you talk like an engineer, and my english is poor, so I don't know... I cannot understand you, sorry. For me "memory" means: "what you can save inside the synth", not the fact it has some factory ROMs which contain data and instructions ("working memory"). If I buy an mp3 player I call "memory" the amount of mp3 it lets me save/load/record, not the fact it's built with some working instructions put in some memory chip (which I cannot modify: so called "firmware"). So: the only memory "available" in D50 was on external eproms, never heard of internal user available memory. The same for the Akai: you had to save data on a floppy disk, there was no internal memory at all, as far as I can tell. More recent hardware romplers/samplers had on the contrary internal HHD in which you could save data (e.g. the latest Triton series which was either ROMpler or sampler). Not the D50, which was always called "a rompler", like the M1 and such (meaning: switch it on, the internal ROM containing factory sampled waves lets you play. You can only modify some parameters, not the waves). A sampler was on the contrary: "build your sound with YOUR samples". Just this.

Nowadays a (software) rompler can be a sampler and viceversa, thanks to multiple synthesis, huge amount of memory (internal, external... whatever) and computer CPU power. Not in 1987.

By the way, for me the new frontier in terms of realism has to be found in the phisically modelled synthesis (a few kbs, great results), not in romplers and samplers.

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Memory just refers to any component which can remember, that memory can be transient (volatile) or permanent (non-volatile).

Yes if you look at it from an engineering perspective, once you understand how these work you should understand the difference is only in how they are used. So every sampler is also a sampler-synthesizer. Every rompler is a sample-synthesizer, but "ROM" means only you can't edit some of the content. Maybe you can use custom samples or maybe create presets, but some of those are "ROM".

So you can have sampler-romplers if they include ROM samples, but we won't usually say that because it isn't important information. "Sampler" is already accurate enough for this. That doesn't mean it is not a "rompler" though, it isn't exclusive, it can be both.

All of these are different types of "synthesizer", an electrical device used to create variable sounds. You can also say a beeper is a synthesizer, but only capable of producing one tone with its "preset" configuration. So it is a "beeper" or "buzzer" which tells us some additional information about its limitations, but it is a specific limited case of synthesizer which is a more abstract term, many more types of things fit.

So my point is: what makes a rompler is simply that it contains some kind of rom, and in general we most often assume that rom contains sample data. It makes sense if you use it to mean "presets which can not be edited", but that will be confusing in most cases. Nevertheless it is accurate to call it that even if it is confusing.
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ROM= Read Only Memory
-pler = a suffix coined by contraction of 'player'.
A ROM Player.
Any device that can only read samples from its own memory without the ability to add more. Something that was addressed by most of the HW companies by first offering more ROM cards for additional samples and RAM cards to store patches (edits) made from them. As they evolved, they added more manipulation and transitional ways toblend, morph, etc. But they were still ROMplers.
The term has become more vague these days, just as 'sampler' has. But that was their original meaning.
What we have now is more based on how much a sample can be modified and by what method of synthesis.
Still, fundamentally, this makes Omnis a ROMpler, until it adds the ability to add your own, however random they may be.

I still consider it a Rompler fundamentally by definition of it being 'closed' to outside sample import, and at it's first level of programing, it certainly does it well, but the deeper levels of programming do add synthesis to it, even if most never venture there and keep it as strictly for ROM-play-layering.
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In my opinion the matter is much simpler: vst are still "models" of real gear. That is why soft synths like Nexus, Omnisphere, Sampletank and such are called "romplers": because if the were real people would call them ROMpler (samples in ROM). Just for this. It's all about the simulation while the software is running. At the same time, Kontakt is called "sampler" because if it was real it would be called "a sampler".

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So is Massive a ROMpler?
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Kontakt is a sample player, not a sampler, The same is true for Sampletank. Both have ways to manipulate the sample but no way to sample on thier own. The distinction between these differences must be maintain for the sake of clarity in communication. We use three hardware keyboards that all have built in samplers. That is, they contain a sampler with their own memory and mic/line inputs to record the samplers, plus they can import samples and wavs via USB.

All the software mentioned here, does not do that, hence, anyone saying they do, is either under-educated, misinformed, confused, or deceptive.
They really come down to where the samples are dictated from of whether they're romplers or sample players. So by this basis alone, if it cannot, at the very least, import outside samples (and it depends largely on factory samples for its sound)... it is a ROMpler. If it can import but cannot sample itself... it is a Sample Player. All of my ITB gems are for manipulation and processing, none of them sample. But my HW keyboards do.
Last edited by BBFG# on Wed Feb 05, 2014 7:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
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BBFG# wrote:ROM= Read Only Memory-pler = a suffix coined by contraction of 'player'.
I don't see a shred of evidence for this or even anything at all which might make one think it should be likely to have been the source of the term.

Sampler is "sample" with a standard English suffix transforming it into both a verb and new noun. "Sample" was in common use at the time and "r" was obvious, completely intuitive to any native English speaker.

ROM-player only makes sense in hindsight when hoping to adopt a new more abstract meaning for the term and again, if that were the case we would more likely be using ROMplar, at least until the coming June.

There is no reason to think that people would have both adopted the relatively new term "ROM" and accepted "pler" as a replacement for "player". Most accents a slurred "player" will become "plar", not "pler". Look at the relaxation of the middle of the tongue while pronouncing the "e" vs. "a", "a" is the neutral position.
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