about to replace C5000 with Cube 2

[mcdonalk]

To answer a previous question, I am primarily interested in making my own patches. Canned libraries are nice as examples, and are occasionally usable, but this is not of primary importance to me.

A point mentioned above addressed panning a program via a controller. This point is taken, but I'm also interested in being able to place the position of each part to create a stereo spread consisting of discrete elements.

I typically operate C5000 with all partials enabled.

I have no desire to buy another piece of software. I prefer to stick with whom I perceive as the primary innovator. This weekend, I shall endeavor to audition the Cube 2 demo and shall decide on my strategy then.

Thanks for all who replied to my initial query.

Keith

[Alex@ProgressAudio]

For the record, a few of the things which Cameleon does which you can't get in the other additive synths are:
...
- more detailed control over the harmonics of sounds you resynthesise, in the sense that you are able to manipulate envelopes that define the amplitude and frequency of the harmonics at up to 128 points in time

I don't agree that this is unique to Cameleon, in fact the Soup synth gives you much better control over the harmonics of a sound
- As well as envelopes for the amplitude and frequency of the harmonics, you also have one for panning. So you can pan each harmonic separately, and even have harmonics all moving around the stereo field independently throughout a note. Great for spacey pads!
- Unlimited number of breakpoints for the envelopes
- In Cameleon, amplitude and tuning share the same breakpoints. If you move a breakpoint in time, or add one, or delete one, it affects both the amplitude and frequency. Most of the time this isn't what you want. In Soup, amplitude, frequency and pan envelopes are totally independent, so editing one doesn't affect the others in any way.

If you are looking to create your own patches from scratch, then Soup is an excellent choice. In designing it, I placed an emphasis on having powerful and easy to use features for sound design from scratch, without relying on resynthesis.

I think Soup should be on everyone's list of synths to try when looking for an additive, there are certain things it does better then the others and may happen to be the best choice for what you need. It would be a mistake to dismiss it simply because its not as well known . Try it, listen to it, and make up your own minds!

Thanks,
Alex
SOUP additive synth

[SteveJ]

..This weekend, I shall endeavor to audition the Cube 2 demo and shall decide on my strategy then.

trying demo's is always the smartest move! you can't beat having a demo running in your setup and trying to make some music with it

[DevonB]

well...just to be fair..Cameleon also has random patch generation, as well as a random Effect generator..actually a lot of its parameter pages has it's own randomizing function.

Yes, C5000 does, but I haven't found it to be all that useful. Most 'random' features have been pretty useless... except for Virsyn. Somehow they nailed it well. I'm very impressed with it.

My Question is: how do software additives sound like compared to the hardware additives like Kawai's K5000 series? Some say that sounds thin...but beef is not what it's about..its about transparent sounds that add to the mix in a special way

I used to own a K5000r for years, but sold it awhile back. It did have some beefy, but nasally sound. It was different from everything else I had, and liked it for that. I couldn't say I could compare it to C5000 or Cube though, it was of its own, same synthesis technique or not.

Devon

[pd]

Cube is one of my favorite synths. It is one of those synths that can do things no other synth can. The user interface and graphic animations are very cool. The fact that it has 512 partials and a way to easily manipulate the partials is great.
The latest version does a great job of reading in wav files and resynthesizing them. I think Cube comes with plenty of presets and you can easily get new sounds by reading your own wav files into the existing presets. This is advanced technology and you better have a powerful computer to handle it.

I have Cameleon and I wouldn't get rid of it just because I have Cube. C5000 still has its own sound. With 64 partials, it does limit the sounds you can make but you can make some really cool sounds that would not be easy to reproduce on Cube. It has a huge collection of presets but I don't really find most of them useful and a lot of them sound very similar.

I am a big fan of randomizers so I like the randomizer on both synths. The cube one is nice but it is more limited than the C5000 which allows you to randomize subsections.

If I can only keep one, then the choice would be simple (i.e. Cube). However, I am glad I don't have to.

Phil.

[rockin1]

This thread has had me curious to give Cameleon another try. I still feel that it needs more harmonics and breakpoints to enable better clarity and definition if it wants to compete with Cube for lots of types of sounds. The good news is though that I did find some kinds of sounds that Cameleon is very well suited for. This is really great because I will start getting more use out of it now! I can also add to the group saying that Cube is the first pick , but Cameleon can be a ncie complement to it with some colors for the palette that Cube doesn't provide...