KVR Audio

liqih · Post by **liqih** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:14 pm

silikonanswer wrote:There are some developers who take risks

Not some, all do, <wink>

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:17 pm

There are brave mountain climbers and there are old mountain climbers. There are no brave old mountain climbers.

liqih · Post by **liqih** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:25 pm

old mountain climbers were once brave young mountain climbers? Maybe, but too brave don't get old, <grin>,

mztk · Post by **mztk** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:52 pm

the VZ's main asset is a patch called 'toi-toi'.

other than that, it does nice thin fine bell type stuff,
and good digital bass.
it's also good with the atari editor (czartist?), for the
randomizer.

if you mess around with uniwave, you'll get 'toi-toi', plus
some.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 5:21 pm

silikonanswer wrote:Maybe someone is interested. An adding more features, but I really like how this synth sounds. Maybe Audio Damage could be interested?

Like I said, Zebra can do that exact Casio sound using the PD oscFX... Obviously it is not an emulation but if you like that sonic character, you could come very close to many of the presets in that VZ audio demo

I really doubt any developer is going to take the time to emulate the casio synths. It makes no financial sense. When Urs added the PD Osc capability to Zebra nobody even mentioned it. It immediately added that particular and somewhat unique Casio CZ sound and nobody cared or commented. I think I was the only one who posted any audio example. There is no market to speak of. There are brave developers and then there are dumb ones... hehehe... Seriously... in this case, I think brave users are needed.

wikter · Post by **wikter** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 7:35 am

I think that existed a Buzz machine that emulated the VZ...

Winstontaneous · Post by **Winstontaneous** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 9:20 pm

The Cosmo Osc A module in VAZ Modular is a Phase Distortion oscillator. I've never used a VZ-1 but VAZ has all sorts of multi-stage envelopes and yummy modulation options.

Reason's Thor has a PD oscillator, but of course it's not a separate VSTi.

Benedict Roff-Marsh's Cosmo 201 is a Casio emulation. Doesn't have 8-stage envelopes, but there are pitch, filter, and amp envelopes for both oscillators.

kx.001 · Post by **kx.001** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 9:27 pm

Summa wrote:Shouldn't google and answer old postings, without checking the date...

a six year old post from this thread. Theres obviously a tiny bit of interest cause this is a post that just wont die..

*edit* just saying, not being a thread nazi - just made me smile as I read back a bit

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:07 pm

pdxindy wrote:
silikonanswer wrote:Maybe someone is interested. An adding more features, but I really like how this synth sounds. Maybe Audio Damage could be interested?
Like I said, Zebra can do that exact Casio sound using the PD oscFX... Obviously it is not an emulation but if you like that sonic character, you could come very close to many of the presets in that VZ audio demo

I really doubt any developer is going to take the time to emulate the casio synths. It makes no financial sense. When Urs added the PD Osc capability to Zebra nobody even mentioned it. It immediately added that particular and somewhat unique Casio CZ sound and nobody cared or commented. I think I was the only one who posted any audio example. There is no market to speak of. There are brave developers and then there are dumb ones... hehehe... Seriously... in this case, I think brave users are needed.

CZ and VZ are completely different machines (I know because I have both, and have worked extensively on both). VZ are closer to FM (DX series) than to CZ, in terms of synthesis. Perhaps you could manage to come somehow closer to VZ in Zebra, but it would require some careful and exquisite patching. First of all, you have eight oscillators, and all have the eight stage Casio envelope. Besides that, you have several kinds of routing between them. You can sum the oscillators, have some do RM, others do PD, and you can externally phase modulate each pair by another pair. You can never do that in Zebra, because you are limited to four oscillators to start. You could perhaps try to overcome that limitation using the FM oscillators.
And (maybe I am just ignorant) I never saw how to phase modulate an oscillator with another oscillator in Zebra. Si, if that is not possible, no way you can emulate a VZ in Zebra.
VZs were great synth, although they had some design flaws. One of biggest is the fact that you had to initiate a MIDI dumnp manually on the device (no way to do that remotely). Second, each time you want to edit it by MIDI, you had to go to the panel and enable Sys-Ex (it come disabled each time the device is powered on. Finally, the oscillators only had sine and five saws (five saws ??? who could be so stupid as to include five saws, sine and nothing else). I specially missed the resonance waves I had in the CZ series. If the oscillators had the CZ waves instead of those, I bet the VZ would have been much more successful.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:24 pm

Winstontaneous wrote:The Cosmo Osc A module in VAZ Modular is a Phase Distortion oscillator. I've never used a VZ-1 but VAZ has all sorts of multi-stage envelopes and yummy modulation options.

Reason's Thor has a PD oscillator, but of course it's not a separate VSTi.

Benedict Roff-Marsh's Cosmo 201 is a Casio emulation. Doesn't have 8-stage envelopes, but there are pitch, filter, and amp envelopes for both oscillators.

The VZ is much more than "a PD oscillator". And the eight stage envelopes make a lot of difference, even in CZ.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:40 pm

BTW - there are two excellent emulations of the Casio CZ. One is Kassiopeia, by Sonic Assault. Almost perfect. The closest to a Casio CZ I ever got in software. And it is free.
The second (not free) is CZynthia, by Algomusic. Not so faithful as Kassiopeia, IMO, but sounds perhaps better, and has some extras (FX). Two excellent synths. But these cover the CZ. For the VZ, I still have non replacement. Funny enough, the VZ and the SY99/TG77 are the only hardware synths I have that still cannot be replaced by software.

Sonic Assault · Post by **Sonic Assault** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:01 am

fmr wrote:One is Kassiopeia, by Sonic Assault. Almost perfect. The closest to a Casio CZ I ever got in software. And it is free.

You might like to try version 2.1 - now has 16 voice polyphony.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8naefigpk939l2j

And it's still free...

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:09 am

fmr wrote:
pdxindy wrote:
silikonanswer wrote:Maybe someone is interested. An adding more features, but I really like how this synth sounds. Maybe Audio Damage could be interested?
Like I said, Zebra can do that exact Casio sound using the PD oscFX... Obviously it is not an emulation but if you like that sonic character, you could come very close to many of the presets in that VZ audio demo

I really doubt any developer is going to take the time to emulate the casio synths. It makes no financial sense. When Urs added the PD Osc capability to Zebra nobody even mentioned it. It immediately added that particular and somewhat unique Casio CZ sound and nobody cared or commented. I think I was the only one who posted any audio example. There is no market to speak of. There are brave developers and then there are dumb ones... hehehe... Seriously... in this case, I think brave users are needed.
CZ and VZ are completely different machines (I know because I have both, and have worked extensively on both). VZ are closer to FM (DX series) than to CZ, in terms of synthesis. Perhaps you could manage to come somehow closer to VZ in Zebra, but it would require some careful and exquisite patching. First of all, you have eight oscillators, and all have the eight stage Casio envelope. Besides that, you have several kinds of routing between them. You can sum the oscillators, have some do RM, others do PD, and you can externally phase modulate each pair by another pair. You can never do that in Zebra, because you are limited to four oscillators to start. You could perhaps try to overcome that limitation using the FM oscillators.
And (maybe I am just ignorant) I never saw how to phase modulate an oscillator with another oscillator in Zebra. Si, if that is not possible, no way you can emulate a VZ in Zebra.
VZs were great synth, although they had some design flaws. One of biggest is the fact that you had to initiate a MIDI dumnp manually on the device (no way to do that remotely). Second, each time you want to edit it by MIDI, you had to go to the panel and enable Sys-Ex (it come disabled each time the device is powered on. Finally, the oscillators only had sine and five saws (five saws ??? who could be so stupid as to include five saws, sine and nothing else). I specially missed the resonance waves I had in the CZ series. If the oscillators had the CZ waves instead of those, I bet the VZ would have been much more successful.

I listened to the audio examples posted of the VZ, and I guess you could come close enough to many of them with Zebra that plenty of people would be happy with the result... VZ or CZ, there is a common basic sound. And you can get that with Zebra... Like I said it is not at all an emulation, but some people do not necessarily care about an exact emulation, and mostly would like to get the particular sonic quality. I like that airy/fizzy sound and it has its own character.

cheers

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:22 am

Sonic Assault wrote:
fmr wrote:One is Kassiopeia, by Sonic Assault. Almost perfect. The closest to a Casio CZ I ever got in software. And it is free.
You might like to try version 2.1 - now has 16 voice polyphony.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8naefigpk939l2j

And it's still free...

You already sent it to me a while ago, because of the problems I had with version 2.0. Thanks for your great work, BTW

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:30 am

pdxindy wrote:
I listened to the audio examples posted of the VZ, and I guess you could come close enough to many of them with Zebra that plenty of people would be happy with the result... VZ or CZ, there is a common basic sound. And you can get that with Zebra... Like I said it is not at all an emulation, but some people do not necessarily care about an exact emulation, and mostly would like to get the particular sonic quality. I like that airy/fizzy sound and it has its own character.

cheers

I didn't listen to the examples, but if they come from the factory sounds, they are not good examples. The majority of the sounds are merely average, IMO, and you can get better if you dig deeper in the synthesis engine (which is only possible with a software editor, IMO). The same happened woith the CZ - the factory sounds are almost useless, and one would only start to like the synth after starting programming it.
And I insist - you can't compare CZ and VZ - they are NOT the same thing. The only thing they have in common, as a matter of fact, is the Z in the name, and fact that both use eight stage envelopes. If you come from a CZ and start working with a VZ, you will feel completely lost (been there, done that).
Zebra is a fantastic synth, and I like it a lot, but iit can't be the answer to everything.

Casio VZ-1 vsti