KVR Audio

Sound Mechanics · Post by **Sound Mechanics** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:45 am

I haven't tried the demo of this for a long time and noticed it's on sale until the end of this month (maybe they're about to update it?).

I found it was more than I needed in the past actually building synths, as I had several vsti's that did the job anyway but.....
Just tried the demo again and was surprised at the excellent analog quality of the sounds and the great patches that come with it.

It doesn't seem to have been updated for a couple of years, so I was wondering if it is very popular and stable with Cubase 5 & Windows 7

General opinions welcomed please.....

Klemperer · Post by **Klemperer** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:53 am

Well, there was a 4.16 update just a few days ago, and the customer service (I am new to Tassman, just bought it about 3 weeks ago) seems excellent.
I cannot tell you about Windows 7, but from what I heard it runs great in all known hosts (and for sure in my 4^^). I am absolutely impressed and think - I own quite a few synths too - that Tassman adds something to any setup. And with such unbelievably great sounds it seems this would be the first time that I'd actually love to delve into this modular vsti and see what I can come up with to get sounds for my personal taste. Highly recommended!

koalaboy · Post by **koalaboy** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:10 am

Runs fine in Windows 7 x64. I'm a very happy user.

mcnoone · Post by **mcnoone** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:30 am

I just got it a few weeks ago, and it's working great on my system, although I'm on mac os10.6.4. The standalone has crashed a few times on me, but nothing else seems to be wrong with it, and no crashes in Live yet.
A new update will be available for mac osx soon they said.

Have to be careful tweaking some of those pluck type modules, as the levels can get really high, very fast if not careful. Watch those gain settings. I learned the hard way.

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:41 am

runs fine also here on my intelmac mini...great sounding instrument !

Sound Mechanics · Post by **Sound Mechanics** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:48 am

How do you find the sound compared to other top list soft synths?

wakax · Post by **wakax** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:50 am

tassman still sounds amazing after all these years.
best sounding physicall modelling and a lot more
but the problem is the editor.
is buttugly and very hard / unintuitive to use.
if they would update it ...
it wasnt properly updated in years. just bugfixes / small tweaks ...
so sad ! it has imense potencial.

himalaya · Post by **himalaya** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 1:10 pm

mcnoone wrote:
Have to be careful tweaking some of those pluck type modules, as the levels can get really high, very fast if not careful. Watch those gain settings. I learned the hard way.

This is worth stressing again to anyone who has not experienced this yet: be careful when experimenting with the acoustic models as unexpected sonic explosions can happen. That's the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Perhaps, having a (light on CPU) limiter on the output bus would help to keep the level safe ( when experimenting, since just playing presets will not cause any probelms).

Another issue is with the sound and octave/registry placement. What do I mean? It's best to use an example. There is a fab synth in the user lib created by Christophe Duguesne, KaDuke, which can make some totally phat bass sounds. However the actual energy/body of some bass sounds in this synth will be found in higher octaves than expected.

So, if you have a two/three octave keyboard, you will load such a preset and find a 'farting' sound rather than a solid and round bass. In this case, you will need to transpose the keyboard up an octave or two to find the optimum range for this particular sound. You may now ask, but why not just transpose the sound in the synth itself ? Well, strangely, it does not solve the problem. In my experience, transposing this type of sound will alter its harmonic content, which is to say it will take it into that 'farting' octave range (where, the bass energy is totally gone, leaving an undefined, noisy, mess of a sound). I tried to do it in some of my presets but it just did not work. And no one wants farting sounds, do they, not unless we make space prog music ?

(I do like space prog music!).

Winstontaneous · Post by **Winstontaneous** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 10:48 pm

I just installed Tassman 4 the other day. Had the demo for years and the $99 in July deal pulled me in. A dear friend of mine has been raving about Tassman for ages and I can see why.

There's a liveliness to the sound that's very inviting. It feels and sounds more responsive to aftertouch, velocity, modwheels etc. than other synths I've used. I like the fact that many patches let you get full, warm tones without needing lowpass filters. I downloaded a very cool setup from the AAS site (by Harm Visser) that uses modwheel input as a "bow"--brilliant.

The builder view is clunky at best and not very informative--doesn't tell you at a glance which modules correspond to which panels in Player view. I'd also love to be able to change the "hidden" module parameters (plate size / resonant freq, etc.) that are only adjustable in the Builder view...if not directly by knobs, envelopes, envelopes, or CCs, then by patch morphing like in the Nord Modular.

mcnoone wrote: Have to be careful tweaking some of those pluck type modules, as the levels can get really high, very fast if not careful. Watch those gain settings. I learned the hard way.

Yeah, messing with the stiffness/strength/decay parameters can really jack up the volume. I wish they'd put some kind of brickwall limiter in the master section.

Francisco Cepero · Post by **Francisco Cepero** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 4:53 am

Tassman is great. I don't use it very much, though.

Especially the instrument patches and presets by Himalaya are excellent. I haven't checked all of them out but the few that I included in my own songs are fabulous.

Yes, I'm more of a preset junkie, and only recently I've built my very first instrument patch, with heavy help from the manual. I built something not much better than the "FM Drum" instrument patch, LOL. But modular synths aren't supposed to be friendly... that's supposed to be an attraction of building something and somewhat calling it yours, right?

Sound Mechanics · Post by **Sound Mechanics** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 8:56 am

Do you think the sale price is due to an imminent Tassman 5 to get people on board?

I think I may jump in head first

.....

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 9:05 am

Posts on the Tassman / AAS forum seem to indicate that v4 will be current for a while. When asked the question you just posted, the answer is a flat "no" from the developers.

Tassman is an amazing piece of software ... just picked it up in the sale myself, I'm blown away by the sound and possibilities.

Peace,
Andy.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:35 pm

Hemmick Reef wrote:Do you think the sale price is due to an imminent Tassman 5 to get people on board?

one f***ing hopes so, but Im nnot holding my breath. AAS have rested on their laurels recycling bits of Tassman for about half a decade. Its been over 6 years since T4 was released, and after their strange start-from-scratch rewrite, it started to look very like they'd reached the limits of their technology and their imagination. There are lots of significant headaches in the Tassman design (preset handling, bulder environment, module/instrument UI, fixed module parameters etc) that need rethought, but they've done very little in real terms except keep up to date with platform/OS changes.

Every time I spend time with it, I get frustrated with how little it has advanced, although I ultimately wind up making something interesting anyway.

Once upon a time its modal synthesis stuff was pretty unique, but now that Reaktor 5.5 has modal synthesis modules, though, AAS hopefully might feel under some pressure to move Tassman onward, in case NI eats their lunch. Unfortunately Im not going to be convinced until it actually happens. I dont think it has no future, since they are making sure it runs on modern DAWs, but it might not go further than that. I think we're far more likely to see 'Strum Bass' and 'String Studio 2' or 'Virtual Analog 2' instead.

In fact, I think we're more likely to see Ableton commission a Tassman4Live in Live9 than a Tassman5 in future.

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:51 pm

I'm a very late owner of Tassman and thanks to fact that i bought a few month ago UA during it "no brainer deal" at audiomidi, i just bought the entire modelling collection for a very attrive price

So don't had to face the so to say, dark side of AAS

In my opinion, i wouldn't be so suprise to see a modelled instrument focused on atonal drums/percussions
(as LL is on electric pianos ans SS on plucked string instruments) , based on what i could here on Tassman's presets

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:58 pm

It sounds wonderful and I still think the Harm Visser physically modelled instruments are some of the best I have heard. What I find most frustrating about is is pretty much the same as the Rabbyt - it's been allowed to languish for years while they parcel off bits of what it can do in standalone products. But I do find it particularly frustrating that I can't automate patches in Kore - physically modelled instruments really need to be tweaked using Hardware but I can't do anything using Kore's automation (only midi learn which is inferior).

Any happy Tassman 4 users?