Psychoacoustic Virtual Synths?

[Ingonator]

Since "inpulse modeling synthesis" is itself a buzzword, it's not really clear to me what they're doing. I think that some of the sounds were interesting. If anyone has some insight as to what's actually going on, I'm all ears, heh!

From the Rayblaster manual:

No, I meant actual insight, I read what's on their web page. It's not informative.

For someone like me who is not an official employee of Tone2 but still closely related as a bet tester and sound designer posting about Tone2 products here at KVR could be a hard time.
Every time i try to explain how e.g. Rayblaster is working in practical use (which i did again in this thread, beyond using marketing "buzzwords") there are attacks like those from pdxindy and this is not the first from him.

I am really pissed by stuff like "yeah, it's nice what you explain but the marketing tells this and that".




FWIW i found this in a Rayblaster review at Waveformless:
"WHAT IS IT?
IMS is a bit difficult to explain, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I understand it fully, but basically, IMS replaces the typical static waveform with tiny “bursts” of sound interspersed with silence. The order of the bursts and various other aspects can be altered in a way not unlike granular synthesis. Apparently, however, the small bursts of silence help replicate the way our hearing works, allowing Rayblaster to have more apparent loudness and cut through a mix.

In most ways, IMS sounds are programmed similar to subtractive, with one important difference – there are no filters. That’s because the oscillators can utilize not only waveforms, but also impulse responses of real-world or imaginary filters (it can import drum loops too!).

In most other ways, however, Rayblaster programs like the softsynths you’re used to."



Ingo

[pdxindy]

Every time i try to explain how e.g. Rayblaster is working in practical use (which i did again in this thread, beyond using marketing "buzzwords") there are attacks like those from pdxindy and this is not the first from him.
Ingo

What you call attacks are viewpoints that differ from yours about some software. If you are upset by it, that is because you take it personally.

The marketing blah blah about Rayblaster is at best deceptive. Rayblaster cannot model existing filters. You can approximate a relatively narrow range of a filters behavior. These days the word 'model' means more like an accurate emulation. And these approximations do not behave as filters do since they do not just subtract. They are sonically interesting for sure, but Rayblaster could still use a real filter for when you just want to remove some frequencies.

Rayblaster is an innovative and creative synth. I like it.

[ghettosynth]

Since "inpulse modeling synthesis" is itself a buzzword, it's not really clear to me what they're doing. I think that some of the sounds were interesting. If anyone has some insight as to what's actually going on, I'm all ears, heh!

From the Rayblaster manual:

No, I meant actual insight, I read what's on their web page. It's not informative.

For someone like me who is not an official employee of Tone2 but still closely related as a bet tester and sound designer posting about Tone2 products here at KVR could be a hard time.
Every time i try to explain how e.g. Rayblaster is working in practical use (which i did again in this thread, beyond using marketing "buzzwords") there are attacks like those from pdxindy and this is not the first from him.

Sure, that wasn't what I was looking for. This discussion is going in the right direction.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electron ... -hype.html

I was just looking for some hooks into the research space. I'm not the least bit interested in any drama about tone2. Honestly, this is the first that I've ever heard of them. I will say that I prefer vendors that actually talk about the technology behind what they're doing.

In most ways, IMS sounds are programmed similar to subtractive, with one important difference – there are no filters. That’s because the oscillators can utilize not only waveforms, but also impulse responses of real-world or imaginary filters (it can import drum loops too!).

Sure, but to some extent, I agree with pxindy in that it could use a traditional subtractive section. Yamaha didn't think that you needed filters on FM synths initially, but their later products included a subtractive section.

Anyway, thanks, I think that I've found enough to ground myself in what they're doing.

[BBFG#]

I like Tone2 synths. I'm trying to like Omnisphere as well. What concerns me about Omni though is not the synth or finding anything to justify its bloated price but the ubiquitous drone of its owners repeating spectra-scripture without thought.

But again, there are so many of these threads with the term psycho-acoustic in it that turn into what this has turned into yet again.
And I simply asked, "Which VIs use it or list it in their specs?"

So, no, this discussion is not going in the right direction. It's just flowing to where it usually goes without addressing the question. If you don't know what other companies do it, then you offer nothing to the Original Post.

[Sendy]

Rayblaster is one of my favourite synths and I can tell you categorically there's nothing new in it and no "modelling", everything is done in the time domain with repitching, looping, windowing (AM) and clever timing/mixing (to get, EG, the different PWM types). I've been banging on about "windowed sync" for years now since it's one of my favourite synth tricks, and RB is like that kind of thing only it lets you load samples.

For me, the fact that everything happens geometrically makes it even more clever. No fancy buzzwords required!

Tone2's synths are top quality, but their blurb men are literally compulsive liars. If it helps them sell more stuff, good luck to them, but don't expect me to swallow it.

[Sendy]

google 'psychoacoustic VST' and you'll get a more complete list, faster than anyone here can reply.

It's almost like we live in some kind of technological future or something.

[BBFG#]

google 'psychoacoustic VST' and you'll get a more complete list, faster than anyone here can reply.

It's almost like we live in some kind of technological future or something.

As someone pointed out earlier, it gives more of a list of effects than synths.

[Frantz]

Tone2's synths are top quality, but their blurb men are literally compulsive liars.

Tone2 is a tiny company. I suspect their synth man and their blurb man is one and the same man - Markus.

[Ingonator]

Rayblaster is one of my favourite synths and I can tell you categorically there's nothing new in it and no "modelling", everything is done in the time domain with repitching, looping, windowing (AM) and clever timing/mixing (to get, EG, the different PWM types). I've been banging on about "windowed sync" for years now since it's one of my favourite synth tricks, and RB is like that kind of thing only it lets you load samples.

For me, the fact that everything happens geometrically makes it even more clever. No fancy buzzwords required!

Tone2's synths are top quality, but their blurb men are literally compulsive liars. If it helps them sell more stuff, good luck to them, but don't expect me to swallow it.

They do NOT lie when they claim that you could reproduce the sound of certain filters. As already mentioned they did not mention the limits which maybe i would also not do in a text for marketing. BTW this was not even the intention when they built the synth. It was found during beta testing that it could work quite nicely in several cases.
One of the first synths i used for this was my Moog Slim Phatty on which also some of the factory waveforms and several factory presets are based.

The full set of Phatty waveforms/filter responses for use in Ryblaster (+ several more) are avvailable here:
http://www.tone2.org/forum/index.php?topic=1336.0

I had also mad e a huge amount of new waveforms from scratch using e.g. DNR WaveDesigner. A part of those is included with the factory content, the Futuron soundset and many of my own patches for Rayblaster (in my 200+ patches i made with it yet i almost exclusively used waveforms i had created myself, mostly from scratch.

The most important thing to get close to a proper reproduction of a filter response is to create the waveform in proper way. This includes recording the original synth at a Cutoff much below the maximum (like done with "usual" samples). Like mentioned multiple times the optimal value is around 30-40% of the Cutoff kbob (when 50% is the moddle possition) or at around 1000 Hz in a spectrum analyzer.

In best case you get a range of 10000 Hz or more where the filter response behaves close to the original synth.

It s not possible to have a resonance knob so you must have a resonant waveform or mukltiple resonant waveforms at different resonance amounts. As you could mix two waveorms it is also possible to mix a non-resonant and a resonant waveform (or two waveforms with filter responses from different synths...).

In the marketing text they also speak about "modeling of the sound", not about proper DSP modeling of a filter.

While the results are maybe not perfect the result you could get from it could be quite amazing. I had certain cases where the result in Rabylaster souded better to me than the original synth.


Of course this does not fully replace proper emulations of certain synths but it could very useful for certain sounds, especially when mixed and/or layered with other sounds that are not emulations of certain synths. With mixing and layering you use use up to 4 of those waveforms for a single patch
With some of the advanced shaping options you could get those waveforms sound ing beyond what is possible in the original synth.
As mentioned multiple times this gets really funny with more complex waveforms that could produce really intersting results while changing the "Cutoff" (or here: Formant) knob (also with addintional modulation).


Speaking anout "psychoacoustic synths" it seems to be difficult to find examples beyond FXs. Rayblaster seems to be one f the few synths built on principles of psychoacoustics while most other Tone2 synth involve "pschoacoustic processing" which is not really identical (and could be switched off).


PS:
you could call me a Tone2 "fanboy" but i don't really care, because it is TRUE...


Ingo

[Ingonator]

Just found this article when i searched for "psychoacoustic synthesis":

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf

Seems to be about real-time additive synthesis.


There also seem to be approaches more related to engineering like analysis and synthesis of the noise of aircraft engines:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/availa ... T_2012.pdf

Another one related to noise:
http://www.head-acoustics.de/downloads/ ... _Ge_Sg.pdf


Ingo

[Ingonator]

Found this about Omnisphere (from their website):

The huge core library of Omnisphere is filled with years of creative sampling experiments and thousands of inspiring patches. Spectrasonics has pioneered several brand-new types of sampling for the core library of this instrument, including unique “Psychoacoustic” sounds and soundsources created with a new Composite Morphing Technique (CMT) - which morphs the harmonic characteristics of one instrument to another. As a bonus, a section of the core library is also devoted to representing the best of Spectrasonics award-winning sample libraries. When all of these organic core library soundsources are combined with the synthesis power of the STEAM engine, the sounds become “alive” in a truly dynamic and expressive way.

First it is quite difficult to understand what their psachoacoustic approach actually was/is (mabye even more difficult than with Rayblaster...) and second it seemed to be involved with creating the sample library of Omnisphere but not as a part of the syntheis engine itself.


Ingo

[Sendy]

Rayblaster is one of my favourite synths and I can tell you categorically there's nothing new in it and no "modelling", everything is done in the time domain with repitching, looping, windowing (AM) and clever timing/mixing (to get, EG, the different PWM types). I've been banging on about "windowed sync" for years now since it's one of my favourite synth tricks, and RB is like that kind of thing only it lets you load samples.

For me, the fact that everything happens geometrically makes it even more clever. No fancy buzzwords required!

Tone2's synths are top quality, but their blurb men are literally compulsive liars. If it helps them sell more stuff, good luck to them, but don't expect me to swallow it.

They do NOT lie when they claim that you could reproduce the sound of certain filters.

That's not what I said they were lying about. I said they were lying about IMS being a new type of synthesis. What you do when you're emulating a filter in RB is taking a single cycle waveform and pitching it up and down inside an amplitude window, and/or repeating the wave a la hardsync, which does formant shifting in a very naiive but effective way. The "formant" mode in Massive does a similar thing.

Could this kind of thing be called "modelling"? At a push, I suppose. I'd just much rather be told what was going in in the synth like a grownup and not have a functional description of the synth be replaced by a few buzzwords.

And as I continuously recommend T2's synths anyway, I don't see what the fuss is about. This is just me being a synth nerd complaining about synth nerd things

[Ingonator]

That's not what I said they were lying about. I said they were lying about IMS being a new type of synthesis. What you do when you're emulating a filter in RB is taking a single cycle waveform and pitching it up and down inside an amplitude window, and/or repeating the wave a la hardsync, which does formant shifting in a very naiive but effective way. The "formant" mode in Massive does a similar thing.

Could this kind of thing be called "modelling"? At a push, I suppose. I'd just much rather be told what was going in in the synth like a grownup and not have a functional description of the synth be replaced by a few buzzwords.

So is this an official description or is this how you think it should work?

Personally i am more intersted in th Rayblaster from a sound designers point of view and tried to share some of my experiences in my post above (and some others).

To be honest during beta testing besides fixing bugs there was enough work understanding how the synth is programmed and finding out what is possible with it (at the beginning there was not even a manual). This also involved much more like creating new waveforms from scratch etc.
There was not much time for speculations about IMS works in detail and it would also not have been helpful for programming sounds on the synth

When the marketing text was done it looked OK and more or less seemed to describe what the synth is capable of. I did not really expect that people would start such heated discussions about it. From the very first discussions on i tried to describe how everything works in practical use but sometimes people were more interested in discussing "buzzwords" than what the synth is actually capable of.


Ingo

[BBFG#]

The Omni blurb seems to be trying to take credit as the first for things they took from others that really were before them.
That harmonic morphing claim seems more like a re-wording to get around Tone2's patent?

Anyway, all this has made me more interested in Tone 2's effects.

I see nothing on the Nuklear or Alchemy site concerning the term.
And I can gather so far that only Tone 2 and Omni make the claim in specs and/or advertising.

Unless anyone knows of any others?

[Sendy]

That's not what I said they were lying about. I said they were lying about IMS being a new type of synthesis. What you do when you're emulating a filter in RB is taking a single cycle waveform and pitching it up and down inside an amplitude window, and/or repeating the wave a la hardsync, which does formant shifting in a very naiive but effective way. The "formant" mode in Massive does a similar thing.

Could this kind of thing be called "modelling"? At a push, I suppose. I'd just much rather be told what was going in in the synth like a grownup and not have a functional description of the synth be replaced by a few buzzwords.

So is this an official description or is this how you think it should work?

It's what I've ascertained by examining the inputs and outputs of the synth to the best of my ability. I'm not denying it's clever, musically useful, that there's probably good antialiasing stuff going on that I can't understand. But as an enduser, I believe my description of the process going on inside to be accurate. The real giveaway that this is time-domain stuff and not spectral is that you get delays and pitch/timing issues at extreme settings of "formant" - which can actually be exploited to get some cool BoC-ish effects.

Just because I can describe something, doesn't mean I understand how to create it from scratch, or that it's worthless. Far from it. And just because an idea isn't 90% original, doesn't mean the synth that spawned from it isn't useful. Rayblaster is in many ways the synth I've been looking for, because I'm not clever at programming enough to make something similar in Reaktor.

I have almost everything T2 make, and I'll defend them against "phone home" comments because I've never had a problem with that, but their marketing angle lost my respect at what I call the "derptooth.jpg" incident, where they showed a "sawtooth from a popular competetor VA synth" and it was this sorry looking excuse for a waveform.