KVR Audio

VELLTONE MUSIC · Post by **VELLTONE MUSIC** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:42 am

I know most developers are overhelm with questions and requirement so
I hope the developers at least to read this -
is it possible as new feature to be added MIX SECTION where to load 2,3 or 4 presets and fast access to fx of each one so to be mixed inside the synth as a complex patch?
Just asking - will be great if have something like it.Thanks.

Examigan · Post by **Examigan** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:06 am

VELLTONE MUSIC wrote:I know most developers are overhelm with questions and requirement so
I hope the developers at least to read this -
is it possible as new feature to be added MIX SECTION where to load 2,3 or 4 presets and fast access to fx of each one so to be mixed inside the synth as a complex patch?
Just asking - will be great if have something like it.Thanks.

You could do something similar to that using a synth that has multiple layers, such as Rapid or Biotek 2. UVI's Workstation can load in many layers of sounds and there's Minimonsta with its morphing between up 12 patches.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:41 am

This is yet another thing that sub-hosts are good for.

bidule, metaplugin, patchwork, yadda yadda

To do it at the synth level requires it to be a fundamental consideration of the underlying architecture; it has to be multitimbral from the ground up.
The reason its not prevalent in softsynths the way it is on hadware is that for software synths In a DAW, that architecture almost becomes redundant; everything a multitimbral synth can do, the DAW can effectively do instead.

starflakeprj · Post by **starflakeprj** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:46 am

Many DAW's can save instrument and effect chains as well. At least the three primary I use, Studio One, Reason and Bitwig.

discoDSP · Post by **discoDSP** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:08 am

Discovery Pro has zone presets so delay, modulation envelopes, etc. can load/save settings independently.

VELLTONE MUSIC · Post by **VELLTONE MUSIC** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:29 pm

Thanks for answering but still almost every producer layer presets to make better instrument - it will be a lot more fast and easy if you can do it inside the synth loading few presets and touch fx to finalize it,may have some limitation don't know - i am not discovering the wheel,just ask why this isn't developed - it's layers OK but when i make presets i have no idea which to combine and what kind of new sound could be produced unintentionally,some fit well,some not to other so it's lottery and that's interesting to discover new combinations just playing presets - i can do it intentionally starting from scratch making layers,but it's definitely more exiting just to load few presets and to hear great sound unintentionally

Believe or not most of my demos are total improvisation and i have no idea what sound will hear when start to mix presets,like this video,it's not advertising just example :
https://youtu.be/L-3K-zPXLP4

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:01 pm

VELLTONE MUSIC wrote:Thanks for answering but still almost every producer layer presets to make better instrument - it will be a lot more fast and easy if you can do it inside the synth loading few presets and touch fx to finalize it,may have some limitation don't know

I prefer to do this in my DAW... that way I am not confined to a single VST and a single set of FX

In Bitwig I can make any setup I want and save it as a Bitwig preset. I can use 4 different synths each with a set of FX and then use a Vector-4 modulator to crossfade between all of them. Or I could use the new Parameter Sequencer modulator and each step can play a different preset sound or combination of them. Or I could take a single synth preset and set up a bunch of parallel FX chains and swap between them with a pedal or knob, or sequence them and so on. Plus it is just as easy, or easier in the DAW than in an individual synth. And all of those setups can be saved as a single preset.

There is no limit to what can be done, and every synth (Bitwig or VST) then has all that functionality.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:06 pm

I wonder why no other synth beside Alchemy offer this advanced great morphing trough snapshots.
It‘s still the most alive sounding synth for me.
I wish someone would take it to the next level.

Examigan · Post by **Examigan** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:50 pm

Cinebient wrote:I wonder why no other synth beside Alchemy offer this advanced great morphing trough snapshots.
It‘s still the most alive sounding synth for me.
I wish someone would take it to the next level.

+1

Sunriser has something similar to that, but only between 2 different states.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 9:02 pm

Examigan wrote:
Cinebient wrote:I wonder why no other synth beside Alchemy offer this advanced great morphing trough snapshots.
It‘s still the most alive sounding synth for me.
I wish someone would take it to the next level.
+1

Sunriser has something similar to that, but only between 2 different states.

Yes, Sunrizer is great and i love the morph feature beside that this synth has character.
Much better than Hive or similar synths.
But yeah, Alchemy still is the king of morphing.
Is it so hard to include in a synth? All these macros and X/Y pads are not as good as the morph pads.
Of course you could achieve the same maybe but with a lot more work and terrible for performance as well. Sadly all synths these days mainly do the same.

pottering · Post by **pottering** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 9:52 pm

Monique has a really nice preset morphing system.

yellowmix · Post by **yellowmix** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:18 pm

Cinebient wrote:I wonder why no other synth beside Alchemy offer this advanced great morphing trough snapshots.
It‘s still the most alive sounding synth for me.
I wish someone would take it to the next level.

Strobe 2 has 8 slots for presets you can morph between, with adjustable trigger and time.

As for why this isn't common, I think one of the main stumbling blocks is how "morphing" is defined. Are you simply crossfading two patches? You've effectively running two instances of the synth. Are you morphing individual wavecycles? What does this mean if there is unison or oscillator drift where they won't line up? Are you morphing each individual parameter to the new value? That won't necessarily sound good depending on the routing/architecture and patch design. Are you morphing them spectrally? That is very CPU intensive.

Strobe 2 does parameter morphing and if you choose the presets carefully it can be amazing. The stumbling block here is what to do with the mod matrix. What ends up happening is the mod matrix changes to the new one at the end of the morph time, so it can be abrupt. I don't see a way around this. There's no way to programmatically determine the "neutral" state of a modulation with regards to the neutral state of the patch.

engineer · Post by **engineer** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:44 pm

Patch morphing is an issue! There are too many parameters influencing the sound and the individual phase / amplitude constellation. Little changes of parameters might already cause strong deviations and jumps. This can only be done the "analog" way by a more or less continous behavior of the sound response against the parameters. In the digital domain this requires high sample frequencies since the action on one parameter causes a frequency wich convolutes with the synthesized frequency according to the synthesis technique and equaitons. As soon as there are triangles and squares involved this rapidly sums up to enormous multiples of the typical 20kHz, classical synths focus at with their equations and sample frequencies. We observed this trying to modulate beam formed waves in super sonic applications. To operate precisely at 500kHz an internal processing bandwith of 150MHz double resolution in 64 Bit had to be applied to represent wobbling and phase dithering techniques (which you might call a kind of "vibrato") of only 1kHz, correctly, not to cause false harmonics!

Transporting this information back to "our" audio case, a quick change of a potentiometer, which I typically estimate with a 100Hz edge frequency (for a quick finger movement) will require at least a processing bandwidth 1/20 * 1/5 = 1,5MHz at double resolution to work appropriately for 25kHz audio. This hardly can be reached by my Pyratone wave generation when operating at highest synthesis speed.

Practically it should be possible to shun issues - even in normal 48kHz systems - by just changing the patches very slowly, let's say by 0,1Hz - BUT ...

... a second big aspect is the resolution! Classical parameters in synths are definded at 7bits only, so changing such a value will automatically cause a very coarse change in the sound. Only synths which are specially designed for this will be able to behave like analog gear in his case by (for instance) treating parameters with a higher resolution internally. My synth works with a 4095 step parameter model, as external parameter while internally 16 bits are used. The above mentioned beam forming module ( a kind of grand father of my synth) operated with 24 bits parameters internally.

To play around with patchs this way, i would alwasy recommend blending techniqes.

Unaspected · Post by **Unaspected** » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:53 pm

It sounds like you want a multitimbral synth, such as LuSH-101. Otherwise, as has already been suggested, many DAWs have containers for parallel processing. Then you can use vector synthesis to mix the output with an X/Y pad.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Tue Jul 24, 2018 12:33 am

Cinebient wrote:I wonder why no other synth beside Alchemy offer this advanced great morphing trough snapshots.
It‘s still the most alive sounding synth for me.
I wish someone would take it to the next level.

FM8 can do morphing with 4 presets... And agreed, I'd like more exploration of morphing stuff...

That said, Alchemy is not my favorite for morphing sounds. Too often there ends up in-between states that I don't like. In my experience, the snapshot function is better suited to finding a specific sound in-between the states rather than morphing between them.

For morphing of sounds, my favorite are the PPG synths. Phonem, Wavegenerator 2 and Infinite Pro. Each has some limitation, but between them, there are amazing results to be found that I find sound more organic and aesthetic than Alchemy.

New synths features?