Can anyone help explain multi-timbrality concepts to me?

[quincy]

Hi kids,

I'm edging closer to buying my first hardware synth, the front-runners being the Novation Xiosynth and Alesis Micron.

What confuses me (with Micron for example) is the relationshiop between polyphony and multi-timbrality. For example, the Micron is allegedly 32 part multi-timbral but only 8 voice polyphonic. So they make a big deal about the phrase-recording and drum sequencing capabilites, and these sound great, but with only 8 voices it doesn't seem like you could do much at any one time?!

I want to get a compact synth so i can have a unit that i can pick up, take to my friends place, and have flexibility to knock up some ideas and sounds, but if i can't have many different bits playing at once it seems like i might be wasting my money.

Example - drum pattern playing, with max 4 hits together at any one time. If this only leaves 4 more notes (even if they can be of many different patches/timbres) then i don't have much flexibility really.

Apologies for my ignorance if i'm way off the mark here, but if i'm gonna spend £2-300 i need to be pretty confident about what i'm getting!

Cheers

[Scot Solida]

I am not familiar with the Micron, but you seem to have the ideas down right. Polyphony is how many voices can be sounded at one time. Multi-timbral defines how many different sounds you can have at any time. It is quite conceivable that you could assign 32 different sounds to 32 different MIDI channels but never go beyond the need for eight voices of polyphony if no more than eight of those sounds were playing at one time. For instance, maybe the cymbal only plays on choruses...during the verses that voice would be opened up and could be used by another sound. This is assuming that the instrument in question has dynamic voice allocation...and most modern synths would have, I imagine.

Like I say, i am only speculating. I have no idea at all about the Micron's polyphony. It doesn't have many voices... but it has a lot more than my Minimoog! There are lots of Micron owners around here...maybe they can clear up the specifics of that particular machine. But you do indeed understand the concepts.

[quincy]

Thanks Scot!!

I didn't expect to get an answer from a fully fledged synthesis guru like yourself!! Seems like i am understanding right then. A nice person here at KVR said that you could "do an electronica gig" with a micron, but it'd be pretty sparse electronica with only 8 notes at any one time!

I guess the limitations of hardware synths are becoming apparent to me. Still, for a drum machine, synth, vocoder and phrase looper all in a compact package, its still a lot of grunt for under £300.

Cheers

[kmonkey]

Thanks Scot!!

I didn't expect to get an answer from a fully fledged synthesis guru like yourself!! Seems like i am understanding right then. A nice person here at KVR said that you could "do an electronica gig" with a micron, but it'd be pretty sparse electronica with only 8 notes at any one time!

I guess the limitations of hardware synths are becoming apparent to me. Still, for a drum machine, synth, vocoder and phrase looper all in a compact package, its still a lot of grunt for under £300.

Cheers

Well try to listen those funny 8 voice mobile ring tones . Amazing what you can get with "only" 8 voices eh....