Vertigo vs Harmor vs Alchemy

[olepro]

Another compare between Alchemy and Harmor

The sample is one i did myself from an instrument called an Autoharp.
One strummed chord.
In the audio example you hear:

First:
Original recording--->
Alchemy (Additive import)--->
Alchemy (Spectral import)--->
Harmor (high precision resynthesis)
And last with pitched sample one oct lower and up to one oct higher played on the keys.

Alchemy (Additive import)--->
Alchemy (Spectral import)--->
Harmor (high precision resynthesis)

Then tell me what do you think
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24081154/Alchemy%20Harmor.mp3

[Krakatau]

Harmor (high precision resynthesis)

...hands down the best considering the quality of the rendering on key transpositions
(if only still needed to be said after listening)

[bmanic]

Harmor is obviously far superior in this example.

Cheers!
bManic

[Neon Breath]

Thanks for the tests, very interesting.

[buttrock]

seems that harmor resynthesis engine is very good, sadly harmor misses the morphing functions that I find interesting about additive Synthesis in the first place.

[olepro]

seems that harmor resynthesis engine is very bad, sadly harmor misses the morphing functions that I find interesting about additive Synthesis in the first place.

Don't you then think it's Harmor's morphing functions that is bad and not the resynthesis engine !

[buttrock]

seems that harmor resynthesis engine is very good, sadly harmor misses the morphing functions that I find interesting about additive Synthesis in the first place.

Don't you then think it's Harmor's morphing functions that is bad and not the resynthesis engine !

fixed it, stupid me

[tony tony chopper]

But what do you all wanna morph exactly?

I mean, you don't wanna morph 2 spectrograms, because the result would be the same as a simple mix in the time domain (perhaps minus phasing effects, but it's not gonna make a huge difference).
So better define morphing, because it's a pretty abstract word, it just means transforming, but doesn't tell how.

You would first try to retrieve specific characteristics of a sound, then mix those to get a new sound. But.. what are those characteristics, & is there any standard method out there?

[adenozin]

If I understood correctly "additive morphing" in Alchemy is only an interpolation between the parameters of the differents sources. so it's not "real" morphing.

Spectral morphing on the other hand seems to be some sort of mix in the frequency domain as Gol called it, so the resulting sound contains spectral informations of all the spectral sources. So for exemple you keep the attack of one sound and the release of the other.

At least that's what I understand from the manual and from my experience.

[tony tony chopper]

If I understood correctly "additive morphing" in Alchemy is only an interpolation between the parameters of the differents sources.

So in Harmor that would be mapping stuff to the XYZ controller.

Spectral morphing on the other hand seems to be some sort of mix in the frequency domain as Gol called it

but the result is pretty much the same as mixing in the time domain, even though it can vary slightly depending on how you do it.

Some resynths try to compute things like
-an overall envelope
-noise
-body or whatever
..& play with that. But it's very specific, there can't be a generic "morphing". One that would be designed for vocals would analyze key properties of human voice, and morph that.

[Hunter]

Another compare between Alchemy and Harmor

The sample is one i did myself from an instrument called an Autoharp.
One strummed chord.
In the audio example you hear:

First:
Original recording--->
Alchemy (Additive import)--->
Alchemy (Spectral import)--->
Harmor (high precision resynthesis)
And last with pitched sample one oct lower and up to one oct higher played on the keys.

Alchemy (Additive import)--->
Alchemy (Spectral import)--->
Harmor (high precision resynthesis)

Then tell me what do you think
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24081154/Alchemy%20Harmor.mp3

Again there is no mention of the import settings used in Alchemy, you need to read the manual (http://www.camelaudio.com/alchemymanual ... /#Additive) and use the right settings.

So far these test are a bit like comparing a car with an automatic transmission to one with a manual transmission, and concluding the automatic is best because it goes faster, but only because you haven't learnt to use the manual gearbox and the manual car is still stuck in 1st gear

[Hunter]

If I understood correctly "additive morphing" in Alchemy is only an interpolation between the parameters of the differents sources. so it's not "real" morphing.

Spectral morphing on the other hand seems to be some sort of mix in the frequency domain as Gol called it, so the resulting sound contains spectral informations of all the spectral sources. So for exemple you keep the attack of one sound and the release of the other.

At least that's what I understand from the manual and from my experience.

There is more going on than that in additive morphing in Alchemy - the manual describes how the source parameters are interpolated when morphing between sources (http://www.camelaudio.com/alchemymanual ... rph_params) as you point out, but unfortunately doesn't explain how the additive or spectral data is morphed as far as I can see - this should be in the manual really.

Alchemy does do 'proper' morphing as you call it - the same way in Kyma you can do the classic morphing a baby into a cat for example. The additive data is morphed between sources as the morph progresses - I really need Ben or John or Paul or someone to explain the 'science' behind it better than I can though, I think ben is on holiday though.

[himalaya]

olepro,
Excellent demo. Harmor sounds fantastic on those transposed strums! The attack is also preserved. *Thumbs up*.

The sample is one i did myself from an instrument called an Autoharp.

Got one of those too. Some time ago I tried to tune it to an Indian scale (since I wanted to imitate a Surmandal) and snapped two strings and ever since can't get around to getting new strings.

[olepro]

Another compare between Alchemy and Harmor

The sample is one i did myself from an instrument called an Autoharp.
One strummed chord.
In the audio example you hear:

First:
Original recording--->
Alchemy (Additive import)--->
Alchemy (Spectral import)--->
Harmor (high precision resynthesis)
And last with pitched sample one oct lower and up to one oct higher played on the keys.

Alchemy (Additive import)--->
Alchemy (Spectral import)--->
Harmor (high precision resynthesis)

Then tell me what do you think
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24081154/Alchemy%20Harmor.mp3

Again there is no mention of the import settings used in Alchemy, you need to read the manual (http://www.camelaudio.com/alchemymanual ... /#Additive) and use the right settings.

So far these test are a bit like comparing a car with an automatic transmission to one with a manual transmission, and concluding the automatic is best because it goes faster, but only because you haven't learnt to use the manual gearbox and the manual car is still stuck in 1st gear

You don't give up do you ?
Why do you think i don't know anything about how to import at sound into Alchemy ?
It's not for fun i made around 40 patches for Camel Audio and Alchemy, i think it's because i actually know a thing or two about synth programming.

But hey... think what you want

[chroma]

i would not expect alchemy's additive import to do well in that example... because of the strumming, there isn't a single root note for it to use for import. spectral should be a lot better at the resynthesis (and it is), but perhaps not as good at the pitch shifting side.

harmor does sound really good here!