DUNE 2 is out now!!

[AnX]

How is it a "novel circuit-simulated envelope model" then, if just the slope was adjusted?

Because nodody else had done it at that point

[AnX]

Anyway, as i added to my post above, it's not all about the slope. Listen to different synths, and the difference in the envelopes becomes apparent. Or not.

I did that experiment, i can match env times/shapes with just about anything in the "top ten" using the original envs. Sounds wont ever be identical, but you cant argue with maths.

[chk071]

Sounds wont ever be identical

Then i'll rest my case, as that was all that i was trying to say. Not QUITE sure about the "can match env times" always though. At least, there's more to that too. For example, some soft synths feature that phase "click" with e.g. a sine, and others do not. As far as i know, this could as well be by design too though. But, it could also be a sign of "too slow" envelopes.

[AnX]

Sounds wont ever be identical

Then i'll rest my case, as that was all that i was trying to say. Not QUITE sure about the "can match env times" always though. At least, there's more to that too. For example, some soft synths feature that phase "click" with e.g. a sine, and others do not. As far as i know, this could as well be by design too though. But, it could also be a sign of "too slow" envelopes.

no offence, but i dont think you really have enough knowledge of synthesis to understand whats going on.

[wagtunes]

I do have a question. I'm not sure if anybody here can answer this because this is more of a science of how sounds are made question than an architectural question.

I love the way Dune 2's plucked sounds sound. They have that nice fat snap at the front end.

Programming other synths with similar architectures, using the same envelope settings, I don't always get that nice snap at the front end. In fact, some synths, no matter what you do, sound mushy at the front end and nothing you do can make it sound that snappy.

Why is that? Is it that the fast attack on some envelopes is actually faster than others? Is it something else?

This is one of the things that absolutely puzzles me as far as the differences between synths.

[Dasheesh]

Holy crap, I had no intentions of it getting this far with this. All I know is someone asked if 8 layers was too much and I said yes, because the 8 layers were mainly for the benefit of preset programmers. By the way, for ya"ll youngsters out there, preset designers mostly hit the random button or goof off until they come across something useful for the most part. You don't really need to hold them in such high regard.

[wagtunes]

Holy crap, I had no intentions of it getting this far with this. All I know is someone asked if 8 layers was too much and I said yes, because the 8 layers were mainly for the benefit of preset programmers. By the way, for ya"ll youngsters out there, preset designers mostly hit the random button or goof off until they come across something useful for the most part. You don't really need to hold them in such high regard.

Wow. Just wow.

[AnX]

@wagtunes

A typical pluck sound will have zero (%) attack and sustain, with the body sculpted using the decay. I think this part is where ppl are getting confused.

Using diff env shapes for the amp and filter section, and also FX will give a great variety of sounds (obviously...)

From what ive seen here, you seem to be in a minority regarding your like of Dunes plucks

[AnX]

By the way, for ya"ll youngsters out there, preset designers mostly hit the random button or goof off until they come across something useful for the most part. You don't really need to hold them in such high regard.

Random button? I thought they just copied and renamed factory presets....



(Yes, i am joking... and feeding the troll)

[wagtunes]

@wagtunes

A typical pluck sound will have zero (%) attack and sustain, with the body sculpted using the decay. I think this part is where ppl are getting confused.

Using diff env shapes for the amp and filter section, and also FX will give a great variety of sounds (obviously...)

From what ive seen here, you seem to be in a minority regarding your like of Dunes plucks

Yes, I understand all that and I didn't want to go into explicit detail on how a pluck sound is made since I assume we all know how a pluck sound is made. My question is, given the exact same envelope and filter settings between two different synths, what makes one pluck sound have more snap than another.

[Ghost Dog]

I didn't especially like the core sound of DUNE for some time, TBH. I didn't know what it was but, after a while, I was able to dissect the problem and figure out what's what.

After quite a bit of testing both blind and with visual aids, I came to the conclusion that, to my ears, synths that produce clean, "flat" saw and pulse signals sound good. KORG Monopoly and Sylenth1 fit in this category (fortunately I have both ).

The basic VA saw or pulse is not really that "clean" and somehow I was reacting to it. The filters are perfectly fine (at least to my ears).

What was the solution? Wavetables. PulseSub, which is actually a saw sounds really good. And that's pretty much all I care about when it comes to basic stuff in DUNE. For pulse, it's a toss up between Monopoly and Sylenth1 (thank God that Lennard guy came to his senses regarding that stupid licensing model he previously had; I was really happy to buy Sylenth).

In my humble opinion, DUNE doesn't really excel in the "sweet spot" department (and those couple of things I mentioned 112 pages ago) and that's probably somewhat of aproblem for many people. It's kinda difficult to find a sweet spot. Otherwise, if you're willing to fiddle with it, it can do quite a bit.

[AnX]

@wagtunes

A typical pluck sound will have zero (%) attack and sustain, with the body sculpted using the decay. I think this part is where ppl are getting confused.

Using diff env shapes for the amp and filter section, and also FX will give a great variety of sounds (obviously...)

From what ive seen here, you seem to be in a minority regarding your like of Dunes plucks

Yes, I understand all that and I didn't want to go into explicit detail on how a pluck sound is made since I assume we all know how a pluck sound is made. My question is, given the exact same envelope and filter settings between two different synths, what makes one pluck sound have more snap than another.

Well, i guess its down to the code. Not all envelopes and filters are the same. You can match the knob positions, but it wont behave the same.

[AstroCastro]

Well, i guess its down to the code. Not all envelopes and filters are the same. You can match the knob positions, but it wont behave the same.

I don't think that everything is related to just filter and envelope, but it's also related to oscillators and algorithms and how oscillator reacts to filter and envelope.
Lennar Addink was thinking out of the box while creating Sylenth, the guy basically reinvented the wheel when it comes to programming a synth and the result is that even after 10-11 years many synths can't match Sylenth's meaty, punchy, fat plucks.

This is from his interview back in 2006 when Sylenth was released (I used Google Translate):

AMAZONA: So you really chose a new approach in the development of your algorithms instead of rewriting already known algorithms 'only' in SSE assembler without using the C ++ compiler?

Lennar: Yes, I started to look at the familiar algorithms more closely and then improve them fundamentally. The oscillators were perhaps the largest part. Most of the digital oscillators I know are beginning to get very low and very high in quality. Some companies use very large wavetables or long interpolation filters, but this requires a lot of CPU cycles and / or slow memory access. I have developed a new technique to work around these problems. My oscillators sound clear and high quality over the entire frequency range. And from 0 Hz to half the sampling rate, but only a fraction of the CPU. This makes it possible for me to generate many oscillators at once without overloading the CPU. Some synthesizers use a trick to simulate unison. Usually this is a simple chorus, but this does not sound really good. In the Synlenth, every voice is actually a real independently generated oscillator, which of course sounds much better!

AMAZONA: Very interesting! So if you do not use wavetables, do you then add something like an impulse at each steep edge to avoid aliasing? I've talked to other developers who also offer aliasing-free oscillators. They are not as efficient as yours! It's almost funny that a "one man show" like you can show the big companies how the bunny is running !

Lennar: The technique you refer to is called minBLEP and is very popular with many developers. This is especially helpful for aliasing-free Hardsync (oscillator sync) and PWM (pulse wave modulation). But I do not use it. My method is based largely on Wavetables, but uses only very small ones. I have constructed a kind of intelligent morphing, which sounds super-sounding over the entire spectrum. But more I will not tell now

There is thus an optimization of the algorithm on the one hand, as well as the full use of the SSE instructions on the other hand. Thus the filters were written completely in SSE code. There are two stereo filters for each voice. With SSE I can calculate all four filters just as quickly as one without SSE. In addition I have all parts in which I am working with oversampling (eg distortion) also written in SSE.
--------------------------------

The original interview:
https://www.amazona.de/interview-lennar-digital/

[fluffy_little_something]

But I think others have copied his approach meanwhile.

[chk071]

It is Lennard BTW. Always makes me want to go up the wall, whenever i read "Lennar". The company is called LennarDigital, because it's a wordplay. LennarD Digital.