Vintage presets - do they need to be velocity responsive?

VST, AU, AAX, CLAP, etc. Plugin Virtual Instruments Discussion

Do you care for 'velocity' response in vintage presets?

Yes. I like the extra expression
24
71%
No. I prefer the authentic 'vintage' key response, without velocity.
6
18%
Shark is very velocity responsive, but small fish is even more so.
4
12%
 
Total votes: 34

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himalaya wrote: However, when I play a real analogue vintage synth, there is no velocity and so the actual feel of playing such a synth is different. I dare to say, I like it a lot. There is a certain simplicity and a 'nostalgic' aura when playing such sounds. Perhaps this lack of velocity control is compensated by the direct access to each parameter via knobs and sliders - but that's another topic and not what I'm getting at.
i know it's another topic, but i would say that the very low latency of a good quality analog keyboard compared against a midi keyboard gives you the ability to more accurately time your key press and release, even if the audio latency of your daw were some how zero the midi latency still exists.

(which is sometimes an issue of the keyboard scanning circuit, not just the midi transport!)

i find you can often create envelopes with the attack/release adjusted just right, or use a very short delay on the lfo at a slow rate. by changing the length of gating you can manually control the position of the envelope which is very similar to velocity!

this has an even bigger effect due to the fact you're always applying the new envelope triggers to the same voice in a monophonic synthesizer. if you left the release at the half-way position, the attack of the next note will start from that same half-way position rather than zero.

you can even combine the two. the piano playing style a lot of players might use is a whole different ballgame compared to the monophonic playing style.

having presets without velocity control isn't really a "feature", it's leaving a feature out. it doesn't provide anything. it's absolutely pointless.

if you could offer a way to adjust the velocity to the player's preference however that's something that is useful.

i think it would be great if you could provide "sub presets" where you could load a single sound and then flip through variations in modulation or control routing.

(xhip 2 :hihi:)

there are a few other synthesizers that already provide for that though.
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My opinion is that for many vintage analog sounds, especially lead sounds, the use of aftertouch for adding e.g. vibrato is more important than adding velocity control. This is the reason why i first don't like keyboard controllers without aftertouch and second don't really like to program sounds for synths without any aftertouch control (especially for adding vibrato).


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Ingo Weidner
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I prefer playing vintage synth emulations without any velocity. It feels much more real than having modern functions on them. I try to get most out of the emulations by deactivating all external effects etc. to get the pure analog sound out of them (as I do in my VVD project). Sure it isn't 100% of the hardware sound but at least it's without any effects.
My newest project: Synthiox

Yamaha MM6, Novation Ultranova, Behringer FCB1010

Post

Perhaps it should depend on what synth you are programming the sound in and how good the velocity related controls are, and how flexible they are, access to response curves etc etc.

Different midi keyboards also have different velocity feels, so you probably need good control over velocity response curve in the synth to make velocity control suitably responsive. This probably means the end user has to be aware how to switch this on/off, as how can your patch tell how someone midi keyboard it set up?

I'd say perhaps program the patch without - but - with an option of velocity doing something when it is switched in (and noted in mane). or two patches! i.e. vintage lead1 and vnitage lead1 +V!!

In most patches (non vintage) velocity can be good for certain things as you already mentioned, increasing attack, other things like opening filter - but mostly velocity mapped to volume doesn't work too well anyway with crappy plastic midi keyboards.

I can only get 'really good' velocity responsive patches when I am programming while playing through digital piano which allows better controls, but those patches would be a mile off on the intention on most midi keyboards...

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