i miss the days when vstis were fun to program and all one page

[bailees7irish]

Never mind. Where is my coat.

don't mind him, dude... some people just have no sense of humor

[Kriminal]

They compose their colors during the creation process. They do not have 150 colors, they mix continuously 5 or 6.

actually you only need four, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. although usually a white is included as well. the fifth or sixth would usually be a specific mineral like a cobalt and a cadmium.

from those you can reproduce 100% of all colors visible to the human eye.

so that's more like an additive synthesizer of some type. although it's subtractive.

black isnt a colour

[1-2-Many]

black isnt a colour

[Gamma-UT]

black isnt a colour

Try to find black on a colour gamut chart.

Also...

actually you only need four, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. although usually a white is included as well. the fifth or sixth would usually be a specific mineral like a cobalt and a cadmium.

from those you can reproduce 100% of all colors visible to the human eye.

Not true. CMYK fills a comparatively small part of the standard gamut recognised by the human eye. But that's OK: I can't think of many artists who use four-colour printing as a model for their colour mixing - maybe some pop artists and the odd hyperrealist. And very, very few will buy a tube of carbon black.

[aciddose]

what about the extra colors?

black isn't a color, it's there for the same reason the extra minerals are. to expand the gamut a little further. using any sort of mixture to produce a black is fairly impractical.

very few will use black? i'm not sure what you're referring to here but i've never seen anyone mix to produce a black, ever.

yes your gamut may be limited in some directions. that's why you'd pick and choose additional primary colors to mix from depending upon what you're aiming for. for a basic gamut though which covers pretty much everything reasonably, even if not 'photo realistic', i think it works fine.

no in fact there are colors visible to the human eye that can't be seen without saturating certain receptors first. any argument here is quite ridiculous.

the purpose of the statement was to point out the fact that synthesis of colors in this manner is more akin to additive synthesis of audio rather than subtractive.

[Teksonik]

i don't understand how you could think that. the number of buttons you need press in either case is the same. the only difference is that in the gui you've got a large screen of widgets, and on the panel you have a grid of buttons and a small text display.

I don't see how you could think anything other than that....

what about these advantages:
- no looking up at a screen
- no need to sit in front of a keyboard/mouse/screen
- your hands stay in one place, on the keyboard
- everything is at the same level

What about these advantages:

- Looking at the screen and seeing all the information needed at one glance.
- No need to sit hunched over the DX squinting at a tiny screen
- Your hands stay one on the mouse and one on the controller keyboard. No need to move either
- If your room is setup properly everything in on the same level. You can edit and program any number of synths from the same position with the proper software

I've programmed a DX from both the front panel and with the aid of editing software. I can't see any reason not to use an editor. My productivity shot up exponentially when I started using DX Android and it has nothing to do with dexterity....

[Teksonik]

don't mind him, dude... some people just have no sense of humor

That's hilarious. I can see you've got a great sense of humor.

You went all the way back to page 2 for this? Now that is funny......

[aciddose]

My productivity shot up exponentially when I started using DX Android

now you're including a whole lot of extra context.

so for your method to work you need:

- remote control of the dx as a module
- a desk where you have access to keyboard, mouse and controller all comfortably at once
- a specific piece of software for an obsolete machine, or something similar assuming you could find it

you also have to ignore the particular performance characteristics and features of the instrument itself.

i know you're awfully insulted that i may have insinuated that you are either an amature, no good at something or never wanted to invest effort into that thing. focusing on the particular case i gave as an example which is to be honest completely off topic just because you're in a fuss doesn't really make sense though.

so are you arguing against a modern gui having menus and pages? what are you arguing exactly?

i assume you're arguing that using a particular piece of control software for a particular purpose in a very specific set-up made the most sense to you, and so you never wanted to invest the effort required to acclimatize yourself to a performance situation in a variety of set-ups using the panel of the synthesizer itself.

that's fine. i don't see the point though? you're basically just arguing that you've no leg to stand on because you have no experience from which to base your comparison between the menu driven system vs. a collection of knob or "all on one screen" gui layouts.

in fact:

DX-Android

This was Hybrid Arts contribution programmed by Tom Bajoras. The program was originally named DX-Droid, but had to change its name to appease the force! (George Lucas and friends) So the final version was called DX-Android. There were even adverts in the electronic music magazines at the time with a picture of a droid (very akin to Star Wars) playing a DX7 and ST computer along with a TX816 rack! Those with DX7 synths today can still use this excellent program. DX-Android was one of the first programs to incorporate random patch generation, thus making it a landmark application in its time. In many ways it almost seems like a "DOS" program as it did not use the GEM menu system, but using a combination of function keys, mouse and arrow keys, allows navigation through all the elements of the program. This program also presents many screens to view different aspects of FM synthesis, thus offering a different way to program than the one-screen view. Highly recommended!

so your argument is actually in favor of menus and pages as the program you're referring to used them!

you could've just said that in the first place.

[Gamma-UT]

what about the extra colors?

black isn't a color, it's there for the same reason the extra minerals are. to expand the gamut a little further. using any sort of mixture to produce a black is fairly impractical.

very few will use black? i'm not sure what you're referring to here but i've never seen anyone mix to produce a black, ever.

Are we tallking about real people who paint using physical brushes and pigments or hypothetical people you made up?

Bone/carbon black tends to turn grey when drying. This is not so much a issue with watercolors or gouache buy it it usually is wi oil or acrylic. Ultramarine and burnt umber will give you rich shadows and you often don't need to premix with oil or acrylic, just layer them for greater depth. Vermeer did use bone black but that was in greys - and Payne's grey is probably more common in use today.

yes your gamut may be limited in some directions. that's why you'd pick and choose additional primary colors to mix from depending upon what you're aiming for. for a basic gamut though which covers pretty much everything reasonably, even if not 'photo realistic', i think it works fine.

no in fact there are colors visible to the human eye that can't be seen without saturating certain receptors first. any argument here is quite ridiculous.

You said 100%, not me. If you want to start on 'ridiculous' start there.

the purpose of the statement was to point out the fact that synthesis of colors in this manner is more akin to additive synthesis of audio rather than subtractive.

Why did you use an example of subtractive colour mixing then? In any case, I thought that was H Noury's point. You just seemed to be nitpicking on the number of colours.

[carrieres]

it's ok to show your love about tabbed synth but not to pollute this nice thread
why about using an instant messaging service instead of kvr

[aciddose]

Why did you use an example of subtractive colour mixing then? In any case, I thought that was H Noury's point. You just seemed to be nitpicking on the number of colours.

it's the way in which you can synthesize such a wide range of colors using a simple palette of only a few primaries. this is because we only have three receptors in our eyes and they interact/overlap as well.

for audio it's a bit more difficult. i pointed out you'd need something more like additive to get the same effect.

people have all these wild ideas like synplant or H.Noury's. the fact is you can not produce even a sub-set of the sounds you can produce with the standard interfaces. rather than controlling systems with specific behaviors using the most fundamental controls available, these methods are just warping everything and re-mapping things through some kind of transformation in an attempt to simplify the controls.

it just isn't possible. it's like attempting to paint using only two primaries. how would you do that? it's impossible because you don't have enough points to begin to approximate the whole gamut of visible colors.

you can also generalize things to the point of your basic additive synthesizer where you "paint" the amplitude of individual harmonics directly. this isn't a simplification though. something like a trumpet is a simplification. you hold it and blow, a sound comes out. a piano, you press a key and a sound comes out.

the ease of use comes from the fact that these systems are extremely limited.

simplicity and versatility are mutually exclusive properties.

we don't call it a "hiss, buzz, wah-wah box", it's called a synthesizer. what kind of machine would be called a synthesizer? it gives the impression that you have so much power you could reproduce virtually any sound.

in reality the simple fixed-architecture implementations we're used to don't really qualify for this term. modular synthesizers however, do.



we know what happens when you put this all on one "page".

[1-2-Many]

FFS - Black isn't a color just like zero isn't a number.

Overthink anything lately?

[Howard]

FFS - Black isn't a color just like zero isn't a number.
Overthink anything lately?

The better analogy is "silence isn't a sound". True.

[1-2-Many]

....and you can't make donuts without the holes

OneToMany - My Zero

[aciddose]

FFS - Black isn't a color just like zero isn't a number.
Overthink anything lately?

The better analogy is "silence isn't a sound". True.

perhaps, but silence is only a theoretical thing. just like absolute zero. doesn't exist.

so in fact not only is silence not a sound, but it isn't silent either. therefore silence is a sound.