Prophet VS sounds with Zebra?

[Spitfire31]

… I'd love for Zebra's wavescanning and vector-ish capabilities to be expanded and deepened, so that it could do everything the VS, Wavestation, and PPG/Microwave could do, but taken even further.

Hear, hear! Triple hear for VD (Virtual Digital)!

I miss my VS keyboard, but honestly, it was a mechanical nightmare. For example, the keyboard case flexed, so that you had to endlessly fiddle with its position on the stand in order not to have 'automatic' aftertouch - permanently.

/Joachim

[snigelx]

I accidentally uncovered the article from an ex-engineer at DSI on the Birth of the Prophet VS. I see it is referred to earlier in this thread (extremely intriguing/entertaining read). I thought immediately of the potential of Zebra. I never really considered emulating VS patches for some reason. I too would love it if some behind-the-scenes tweaking could be accomplished in Zebra at some later date to where more of the VS flavour could be coaxed out of it (although, as we read in the article, they kind of winged some of the design as it relates to how the waves were transposed)

Keep in mind that none of us had any background in DSP or psychoacoustics; we had to
make it all up from scratch. As it turns out, some of our ignorance paid off in taking paths
that textbooks would told us to avoid.

, it's definitely got -nearly- all of the ingredients to make it happen. We already have the nice Loopable EGs and right modulation points. Hollo, I do not have the patch sets you have made but I will be checking them out here shortly. There is a brittle quantised behavior (not exactly PPG but similar in character) and yet a body that is present in the VS when called upon. More from the article about the character of the wave output,

We felt vindicated to learn that the PPG did it exactly the first way we theorized,...We liked the pure balls of the PPG better (plus the scheme that used shorter waveforms meant we could stuff more waves into the instrument), so we chose the transposition method...<snip>...This choice is the one place our ignorance paid off the most. Transposing a waveform way down in pitch causes strange upper harmonics - images of the original harmonic pattern - to appear if not properly filtered. These images are what gives the PPG (and VS) its brightness and vicious bass. I was raving for months (much to the bafflement of Josh and Tony) in particular about the sound a PPG makes where only the low and highest harmonics seem to be present. One day, I walked into the lab while Josh was testing the VS hardware, and happily exclaimed "That's it! That's it!! That's the sound I mean! What's the waveform?" It turned out it was only a sine wave, but it was tuned so low that the image of its one harmonic was audible as a very high, airy harmonic.

Perhaps there is something that can be done to get a close quantisation sound to VS-like waves, when used for OSCs? Anyone have any luck getting the warmth and brittleness present in some of the original VS patches? I'll check Hollo's bank now.

[hollo]

I'm not in the studio to check it, but if i remember well
In Sweeping GlassStrings set the ModWheel around
60-70% and wait for the animation - there is some magic happening

These are not emulations just presets how i remember about VS sounds.

[Ingonator]

Would be interesting if Zebra 2 could come closer to the VS than Arturia Prophet V which is a dedicated emulation.
That would need a filter in Zebra that is close to the VS filter.

Personally i got Arturia Prophet V, a Wavesatation EX (+ the plugin too) with VS patches and a free VS wavetable with all waveforms in my Waldorf Blofeld (actually those are two wavetables for the VS ROM waveforms 32-127).
All those could produce some quite nice sounds.
Arturia Prophet V could also import Sysex files and i had purchases a few commercial Sysex soundbanks.

With the VS wavetable in the Blofeld opposing to the real thing could could actually scan trough the wavetable with e.g. an envelope. In combination with the PPG filter mode this could sound quite nice.


Ingo

[longbongsilver]

I dunno... sticking full blown wave-scanning/vector into existing Urs stuff sounds like it'd bloat already greatly versatile designs to me. I'd rather if this were pursued it be a separate synth: get in touch with the guy that did Vector Sector & use that as a jumpoff point for a hybrid vector/wave-scanner w/ a few extra tricks (plus some analog modelled filters, since Urs is so good with those).

It'd need a name though. Something evocative of the sound. Well, this is just a snap thought, but how about Ice Queen? Think of it like the kind of chilly, disturbed, damaged counterpart to the sashaying belt-it-out character of Diva.

[snigelx]

...In Sweeping GlassStrings set the ModWheel around 60-70% and wait for the animation...

Yeah! I definitely hear some harmonic-rich animations and glassy character happening, among other things. But I stripped both of the onboard FX and it's coming through slightly more than before, like you say, with the MW just about 60% from base. I really like these example patches. I'll have to pick these up at the end of the m,onth my friend! Good work on these. Really like the use of modulation!

[snigelx]

I dunno... sticking full blown wave-scanning/vector into existing Urs stuff sounds like it'd bloat already greatly versatile designs to me....

Hi, yes potentially depending on what was involved, but it could just be a matter of affecting the quantisation of existing wave-scanning behavior to get the right brittle grittiness and perhaps a new filter mode. Zebra HZ may be more up to the task. This is not something I would wan't in DIVA, that much I know. But just listening to what is nearly possible with Zebra patches like Hollo's here I would imagine we're not that far off in this synth to achieve such timbres in a VS fashion. The vector pads are already there as well of course, for mixing OSCs, etc.

[snigelx]

...and a free VS wavetable with all waveforms in my Waldorf Blofeld (actually those are two wavetables for the VS ROM waveforms 32-127...With the VS wavetable in the Blofeld opposing to the real thing could could actually scan trough the wavetable with e.g. an envelope. In combination with the PPG filter mode this could sound quite nice.

Yes, it was nice to have the VS ROM waves available for the Blofeld (I own this one too). If I was more seasoned in programming it might be possible to coax some convincing patches out of that. Have you done some convincing patches with those ROM waves, Ingo?

Arturia Prophet VS is a bit dated but it was nice to be able to import SysEx from the VS. How similar did the imports sound, Ingo? I never owned this board but have played it a number of times in another studio some years ago. There were only a handful of patches in Arturia's version that reminded me somewhat of my experience with the VS.

[Ingonator]

...and a free VS wavetable with all waveforms in my Waldorf Blofeld (actually those are two wavetables for the VS ROM waveforms 32-127...With the VS wavetable in the Blofeld opposing to the real thing could could actually scan trough the wavetable with e.g. an envelope. In combination with the PPG filter mode this could sound quite nice.

Yes, it was nice to have the VS ROM waves available for the Blofeld (I own this one too). If I was more seasoned in programming it might be possible to coax some convincing patches out of that. Have you done some convincing patches with those ROM waves, Ingo?

Arturia Prophet VS is a bit dated but it was nice to be able to import SysEx from the VS. How similar did the imports sound, Ingo? I never owned this board but have played it a number of times in another studio some years ago. There were only a handful of patches in Arturia's version that reminded me somewhat of my experience with the VS.

The import into Prophet V sounded quite nice.

Have not used the VS wavetables for many Blofeld patches yet but i am just playing with them again. Want to do another Blofeld bank anyway and i guess the VS waves will find their way into that. As the wavetables are free everyone could have access to them.

As the VS ROm waveforms are spread over two wavetables (32-95, 64-127) and the Blofeld waveform selector has 128 steps you also got some interpolations of the VS waves which were not available in the real thing.

UPDATE:
Actually the interpolated VS waveforms would correspond to using two waveforms in the VS with the vector poition at the center. This means that with 2 oscillators in the Blofeld you could emulate 4 VS waveforms.
Another option woul be to use a multi program with up to 4 layered patches (with identical filter + filter envelope settings).


Ingo

[djanthonyw]

I remember Urs saying that there could potentially be a Prophet model going into Diva eventually. It might have been a request vs Urs actually acknowledging it though.

[Spitfire31]

I dunno... sticking full blown wave-scanning/vector into existing Urs stuff sounds like it'd bloat already greatly versatile designs to me. I'd rather if this were pursued it be a separate synth: get in touch with the guy that did Vector Sector & use that as a jumpoff point for a hybrid vector/wave-scanner w/ a few extra tricks (plus some analog modelled filters, since Urs is so good with those.

"The guy" would be Josh Jeffe, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joshua-jeffe/4/390/b29

He was one of the engineers on the Sequential VS that Chris Meyer dreamt up (http://www.vintagesynth.com/sci/birth.txt - a good read!).

I'm keeping a Mac G5 running just to be able to play the Vector Sector that never made it to Intel.

/Joachim

[abique]

Maybe Zebra3 will let you rewire Diva as a sound source

[jupiter8]

I remember Urs saying that there could potentially be a Prophet model going into Diva eventually.

That would be the Prophet 5 rev 2 though. Quite a different machine.

[snigelx]

Have any of you other sound designers (by trade or hobby) been able to get any of those trademark morphable VS patches out of Zebra?

Here's a guy who has posted a video of Prophet VS factory patches played on the Arturia synth. They sound like they transferred quite decently,no?

[News From The Sky]

I dunno... sticking full blown wave-scanning/vector into existing Urs stuff sounds like it'd bloat already greatly versatile designs to me. I'd rather if this were pursued it be a separate synth: get in touch with the guy that did Vector Sector & use that as a jumpoff point for a hybrid vector/wave-scanner w/ a few extra tricks (plus some analog modelled filters, since Urs is so good with those).

It'd need a name though. Something evocative of the sound. Well, this is just a snap thought, but how about Ice Queen? Think of it like the kind of chilly, disturbed, damaged counterpart to the sashaying belt-it-out character of Diva.

Zebra already has most of the necessary pieces: XY pads (which just need some controller interaction math to behave like vector joysticks), 16-step wavescanning (would be nice if Z3 could go up to 128 steps), up to four oscillators plus the ability to load single-cycle waves, and extensive modulation including looping envelopes. Dark Zebra has some modeled filters derived from Diva; if Urs modeled the Prophet 5 rev3 at some point we could just borrow the CEM filter (though wavescanning through the SSM would be cool too). As for the imaging artifacts, Zebra has the OSC FX that already do lots of similar things, so it could just be one more OSC FX option (and would be useful for more than VS emulation).

None of this would significantly change the character or feel of Zebra - in fact, if anything it's an organic and logical progression of what Zebra already does, IMO. If Urs wanted to make a dedicated super-wave synth that took all the best bits of PPG, VS, Wavestation, ESQ, DW, etc, I'd be thrilled of course but I don't see that happening.

(And I prefer names that don't predispose listeners to hearing a particular sound, personally. Wavestation is still IMO one of the best named synths ever.)