Cherry Audio releases massive new Eight Voice synthesizer!

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Arashi wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:17 amEight Voice and Obsession are emulations of completely different synths. Neither one is a substitute for the other.
That will depend entirely on your needs. I think the overlap is huge and, therefore, most of what you might want to do with one can also be done by the other. I could play you 100 different sounds and unless I was using a specific feature of one or the other, e.g. Obsession's step sequencer or the BP filter in Eight Voice, you wouldn't be able to tell which instrument it had come from. Such is the nature of synthesisers.
Lint_Huffer7 wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:21 pmIf an OB-X emulation is easier for you to work with than a SEM8 emulation, I doubt a different SEM8 emulation will change much.
I think most people would disagree when it comes to this particular emulation. Try it for yourself - take a lush preset like "Belief" (in the Basses category) and try to change it into something more like a bassline - fast attack, shorter decay, lower cutoff, more modulation and a little more resonance. You either have to adjust each voice individually, which is a punish, or group them together and lose the fatness that's been patched into the original preset. OTOH, with Obsession you can dial that fatness in with a single knob if you don't want to go in and do it voice by voice. Same with bx_oberhausen - just switch on TMT and adjust the "Spread" in the oscillators and you've got your fatness way more easily than with Eight Voice.

I am finding it quite frustrating. It feels like you either have to use the presets as they are or spend countless hours trying to carefully edit them without losing the essential mojo that made you choose that preset in the first place. It sounds really good but trying to use it in a song is a punish so I'm afraid it is going to be the last thing I think to use most of the time. Add that one feature, though, and it will probably be the first thing I reach for.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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I thought i bought the 8 voice but ended up with the modules. It only cost 17 quid to add the 8 voice. £39 total. I find the poly module the most interesting bit. As you can stack 16 voice modules together till your computer says no.

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This is punishing to use to develop presets with subtle variations between the voices. Either I should be able to set offsets (a la Obsession) per voice or there should be some way to add variable amounts of random variation. Or both. I'm just never going to use this the way that it is set up.

I can see a way to do both of the things above using Bitwig's Grid to manage the control of all the parameters via modulators (maybe a few hours of one-time work) but... we're all using computers, right? Let's see some automation. When I spend the time to build a preset with the variation per voice the results are very nice indeed, but I can't turn 8 knobs (very small knobs, too) every time I want to move the detune or cutoff. I agree that Obsession is a different beast, but the benefits in workflow there are substational enough to make the difference between a synth that I will use and one that I will not. I mean... I'm a f*cking gifted DX7 patcher from way back, but I simply do not have the ability to sustain enthusiasm through that workflow in 2021 when there are so many better ways to program a synth. Feels like the right thing to honor the very good sound that the 8vox produces with some workflow enhancements. I'm experimenting with a grid patch right now, but the sheer number of parameters to control will result in a monster of a thing.. a couple hundred modulators... and it would only work for Bitwig people in the end.

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BONES wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 2:25 am I think most people would disagree when it comes to this particular emulation. Try it for yourself - take a lush preset like "Belief" (in the Basses category) and try to change it into something more like a bassline - fast attack, shorter decay, lower cutoff, more modulation and a little more resonance. You either have to adjust each voice individually, which is a punish, or group them together and lose the fatness that's been patched into the original preset. OTOH, with Obsession you can dial that fatness in with a single knob if you don't want to go in and do it voice by voice. Same with bx_oberhausen - just switch on TMT and adjust the "Spread" in the oscillators and you've got your fatness way more easily than with Eight Voice.

I am finding it quite frustrating. It feels like you either have to use the presets as they are or spend countless hours trying to carefully edit them without losing the essential mojo that made you choose that preset in the first place. It sounds really good but trying to use it in a song is a punish so I'm afraid it is going to be the last thing I think to use most of the time. Add that one feature, though, and it will probably be the first thing I reach for.
Yeah, this is exactly why some of us suggested it would be nice to have a linking mode that lets you control all 8 SEMs in a relative way without losing their individual offsets. Pretty obvious and relatively low effort way to make a good synth even better.
Stormchild

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Sounds like this needs some type of parameter lock, and change in all layer settings. Eight individual voices just a nightmare otherwise...

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About to pick up the VM version, which might solve a few of the issues that seem to be plaguing the stand alone version. Linking some drift modules up to each oscillator (in a variety of ways) should add some nice, random fattening to the whole thing. Plus, I can't really see myself ever needing to trigger more than four SEMs at once.

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Now that I have the SEM module for VM, I'm thinking about getting the Vintage Voice modules as well. I already have the standalone/plugin CA2600, but I think it would be really cool the have the 2600 voice module in VM.
Windows 10 and too many plugins

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boombaxx wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 2:34 am I thought i bought the 8 voice but ended up with the modules. It only cost 17 quid to add the 8 voice. £39 total. I find the poly module the most interesting bit. As you can stack 16 voice modules together till your computer says no.
haha yes. its time to nuddup or shuddup ^^

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There is a drift pack you can buy for VM which is great, but I wish there was a poly version of the individual drift modules because you have to split the poly signal, add the drift to each via mono then recombine to poly after. VCV Rack’s poly approach is so much less hassle with devs able to create one module that handles both mono and poly.

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Arashi wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 1:20 pmYeah, this is exactly why some of us suggested it would be nice to have a linking mode that lets you control all 8 SEMs in a relative way without losing their individual offsets. Pretty obvious and relatively low effort way to make a good synth even better.
The problem I see with that is that it only works when tweaking presets, it won't help you when you are creating patches from scratch. OTOH, putting in something like Obsession's "Analog" knob would allow you make those random offsets any time you want. To me it seems like a better, more versatile way to solve the problem.
Noumena wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 3:41 am This is punishing to use to develop presets with subtle variations between the voices...
... but the benefits in workflow there (with Obsession) are substantial enough to make the difference between a synth that I will use and one that I will not.
This pretty much says it - there is a lot of potential here but trying to tap into it is more effort than it should be, more effort than it is ultimately worth.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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Bones wrote:
The problem I see with that is that it only works when tweaking presets, it won't help you when you are creating patches from scratch. OTOH, putting in something like Obsession's "Analog" knob would allow you make those random offsets any time you want. To me it seems like a better, more versatile way to solve the problem.
If they implemented something like what TAL did for their J-8, it'd probably do the trick. The Intensity knob acts like Obsession's Analog knob.
TAL J8 SC.png
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On a number of Macs

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Fired up the synth for the first time just long enough to check the presets. Sounds very good.

There's a preset called syncing lead and any aliasing with sync just doesn't bother me. I think it sounds good. Maybe there's like a shifting phase cancellation pattern with the aliasing, I dunno, it just doesn't bug me for whatever reason.

I like the synth. This is the way.

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WatchTheGuitar wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:04 pm There is a drift pack you can buy for VM which is great, but I wish there was a poly version of the individual drift modules because you have to split the poly signal, add the drift to each via mono then recombine to poly after. VCV Rack’s poly approach is so much less hassle with devs able to create one module that handles both mono and poly.
Yeh, I love a lot of things about VM, but have different modules for Poly and Mono is not very elegant, VCV has this right.

The drift pack is excellent, but like you say, needs a poly module to reduce patching- currently on sale as a bundle for $15....https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/the-drift-pack
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wasn't missing a feature it doesn't have. I have been enjoying the experience as it is: tweak basics linked, then customize the details of MY instruments sound. I'll probably just save a template with the basic pans and different sound tweaks and go from there.
I suspect the hardware price would be around $20,000 if anyone ever resold them. for that price, I can live with two minutes of individual tweaking, but that's just me. :)

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The thing is, though, there are alternatives that don't require so much work/effort. As I said before, bx_oberhausen is regularly on sale for $29 and I still haven't been able to get Eight Voice to sound nearly as good as it sounds without any effort. I was hoping Eight Voice would allow me to replace some instances of bx_oberhausen, to save a bit of CPU for other things, but so far I've not been able to do that, no matter how much time I spend tweaking Eight Voice. I quite like CA2600 and even DCO-106 but this one feels like a bit of a dud in comparison, I'm afraid.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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