Physical Modeling the way to go? (today's topic: guitars)

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Physical Modeling the way to go? (today's topic: guitars) 2012-08-05T15:13:14+00:00 Physical modeling can be a great thing. You barely need any samples, if none at all. You can have ton of control over the sound shaping. And if done right, it can sound darn real. The negative side effect - barely any developer takes the time to fine tune physical modeling. One of the rare examples are 4Front (True Pianos), MODARTT (PianoTeq) and Genuine Soundware (Mr Ray). Actually, Camel Audio (Cameleon 5000) tried to get into the game as well, so did Image Line with one of their synths, but it's still lacking realism. Synful Orchestra is one of these examples: the strings engine is great, the rest... not so. In terms of guitars, it's even more obvious. reFX's attempt with "Slayer" was a great idea, though sounded too unrealistic. This VSTi spawned Mokafix's never released "Dark Lady" bass VSTi idea. And now we have Xhun Audio's "IronAxe" - which brings together the ideas of Slayer, Dark Lady and Line6's Variax pickup system. I took a dive into the audio demos of IronAxe, and I'm positively surprised. You can use different pickups, shape your sound with different tuning and setting of the used strings, etc. But the thing that is the shot in the neck is the playability. Here, MusicLab's RealGuitar is (and will IMO always be) the forerunner in terms of guitar brains (much like Rayzoon Jamstix is for drums). Due to that, the audio demos sound fake, which is contra productive for sales. A real pity IMO. The question is, with all these samples out there, which grow and grow and grow by each release (thanks to RR, variations, more wanted realism, etc)... ...is physical modeling the way to go? Or are we just spoiled with samples and forgot how to "tune" a specific tool to our needs? I mean... people say that RealGuitar sounds "not realistic" - yet with the right EQ and VSTi settings, it's hard to spot that it wasn't played by a real guitarist. And it's only like 50MB of RAM usage (the samples themselves are like 600-900MB, depending on the used sampling rate). Please discuss. Compyfox https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=9761

tapper mike tapper mike https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=171358: KVRAF; 7827 posts since 20 Jan, 2008

Post by tapper mike » Thu Aug 09, 2012 9:19 pm

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I'm right with you on that one. I play my ztar everday and I play it with the intent of playing like a keyboard player. Now ztars do have "string polyphony" Which enables me to get exact voicings for things that would be impossible on a guitar. Technique and phrasing is a different matter. I could study under the masters for a hundred years and still not match the character of Bill Evans.

Dell Vostro i9 64GB Ram Windows 11 Pro, Cubase, Bitwig, Mixcraft Guitar Pod Go, Linntrument Nektar P1, Novation Launchpad

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