Bazille 1.0

[EvilDragon]

Now I don't understand why you would make so many presets that are, well, dislikeable, for want of a better term. What sort of music genre are they aimed at?

You found a very bad term, because it's completely wrong. Just because you don't know how to use a certain preset in a musical context doesn't make the preset bad - it makes YOU bad as a composer

IMHO Bazille is not aimed at any particular genre - it's what you do with it that counts. It can be any genre really. I think it can sound great as a progressive rock/metal lead thing, it can sound great for Tangerine Dreamesque sequenced stuff, it can definitely do some amazing evolving atmospheres and pads (as showcased by some presets), it can sound great for just about anything except your run-of-the-mill supersaw masturbations. That's what The Hive is going to be great at.

[BBFG#]

... run-of-the-mill supersaw masturbations.

This is a phrase I plan on using.

[jacqueslacouth]

Gone

[ghettosynth]

If you love synthesis and exploring the world of modular sound, then Bazille is exciting. If you are looking for a bunch of standard trance leads, then look elsewhere.

Yeah, in fact, I would say something even a bit stronger than that. Bazille is about digital oscillators, FM, PD, and being modular, but it doesn't even excel at some of the things that those technologies are known for. It's very difficult, for example, to get a great electric piano sound out of Bazille.

I am sure Bazille can do a great electric piano sound...

It wasn't that I specifically need it to do that, rather, I was just trying to wrap my head around some of the synth details. I tried several different approaches but they just didn't have the character of the original DX-7 e-piano sound. That sound uses all six operators, and IIRC, some of the aspects of the more advanced DX7 envelope generators.

Like I said, I don't like Howard's e-pianos, or really, any of the pianos in the factory sounds, I don't think that's Bazille's strength. I could wish for two more oscillators, or, like with the Nord Modular, a set of simple companion sin only oscillators, but really, there are many other features that I'd rather see, such as breaking out gate/trigger for the EGs/LFOs/Sequencer. I like Bazille for what it is even though I think that a six oscillator variant would have been killer

I don't recall the detail now, but, somewhere I have some notes where I was trying to replicate each part using modular features to make up for the missing pieces. It became too much work for the reward. If you look at the patches in FM8, most of the e-piano patches use some variation of the same algorithm with three modulator/carrier pairs. I learned a lot from the exercise, but, I'm not really convinced that Bazille is the right tool for when I want an epiano sound.

Here's another thread talking about the same thing.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=365995

I'm sure that I'll revisit it at some point in the future. I expect that there's much more potential there than what I was able to find in the time that I was working on my bank of epianos, other pastures are greener at the moment.

[zvenx]

.......
I've got 3 U-He synths for sale in the market place and only had one nibble wanting to buy Zebra for half the retail price. Yet another myth in the cult of U-He…."They NEVER have sales so they keep their value"….BS

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7#p5889677

Zebra US$150
DIVA US$140
ACE US$65

Not that much off.
Also since it is your first sale there may be buyer apprehension.

Rsp

[chk071]

I'm in the same situation actually, just got Serum, but Bazille looks like a bargain as wel... Hmmmm, choices, choices

Buy Bazille, try it out for 6 months, if it is not your thing, you can sell it and most def get your money back

I've got 3 U-He synths for sale in the market place and only had one nibble wanting to buy Zebra for half the retail price. Yet another myth in the cult of U-He…."They NEVER have sales so they keep their value"….BS

From what i can say, they usually go for a pretty high price compared to other plugins. Always makes me wonder how many more customers u-he could have if they lowered the prices. On the other hand, i think Urs Heckmann wrote here once, that they're not into many customers, but rather a soild clientbase to keep support costs down. Fair enough.

Oh, and you should mind the bump times too. Regarding US time zone, and european time zone.

[BBFG#]

.......
I've got 3 U-He synths for sale in the market place and only had one nibble wanting to buy Zebra for half the retail price. Yet another myth in the cult of U-He…."They NEVER have sales so they keep their value"….BS

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7#p5889677

Zebra US$150
DIVA US$140
ACE US$65

Not that much off.
Also since it is your first sale there may be buyer apprehension.

Rsp

If your seller bought Zebra ala Dino Deal, you paid full price for it second hand.

[ghettosynth]

Going through the factory patches displays much talent on behalf of the sound designers. I wouldn't even know where to start with some of these patches; it's insane. Some of them have so many wires connected, I don't know what the hell is happening, even though I can see which modules are connected.

This always gets me too, same thing with large ace patches. Load one up and see all the wires and just wonder how in the hell they even came up with that. Like was it just messing around and they stumbled on it? Was all of that actually deliberate?

I can't speak for everyone, but, for me, it's 99% deliberate. Every once in a while you discover, on accident, an odd routing that produces an interesting effect that you might not have thought of. Feedback routings, for example, can be a source of unexpected joy.

[Sendy]

Going through the factory patches displays much talent on behalf of the sound designers. I wouldn't even know where to start with some of these patches; it's insane. Some of them have so many wires connected, I don't know what the hell is happening, even though I can see which modules are connected.

This always gets me too, same thing with large ace patches. Load one up and see all the wires and just wonder how in the hell they even came up with that. Like was it just messing around and they stumbled on it? Was all of that actually deliberate?

I feel like that about some of my own patches

Usually, it's a combination of educated guesses, core knowledge, plus a smidgen of "suck it and see" random patching. "What would happen if I patched this back into it's self through the lag generator", etc.

That's why I like modular synths, you have so many options to try and they really invite experimentation once you get a certain base familiarity established with them.

On the other hand, several patches were patched entirely with intent, each connection was meant to have a certain effect, it's just that like making a wordsearch puzzle, it's much easier to set than it is to decode/solve.

[JC_]

I just released my first Bazille soundset:) Here is the thread: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7&t=421599

Very inspiring synth. My goal while making my set was to just create stuff that would add that special Bazille flavor to whatever genre it was used in. My personal influence was stuff like Tron Legacy and Oblivion but there are lots of sounds that can easily be worth using in rock/pop/edm/urban etc.

Here's a short demo.
https://soundcloud.com/jc-underscore/beyond-earth

[ghettosynth]

I feel like that about some of my own patches ... it's much easier to set than it is to decode/solve.

Yep, unless you make notes, it's often challenging to try to figure out routings after the fact with hardware or pseudo hardware fixed module soft-synths. It's a lot easier to visualize routings with environments that give you tools to organize like Reaktor/Max. Even being able to arrange the modules helps, e.g., the Nord Modular and lookalikes.

[Sendy]

I feel like that about some of my own patches ... it's much easier to set than it is to decode/solve.

Yep, unless you make notes, it's often challenging to try to figure out routings after the fact with hardware or pseudo hardware fixed module soft-synths. It's a lot easier to visualize routings with environments that give you tools to organize like Reaktor/Max. Even being able to arrange the modules helps, e.g., the Nord Modular and lookalikes.

The note and MIDI usage fields in u-he saving procedure are greatly appreciated for that end. Being able to write a couple of sentences of what's going on and save it with the patch is something I really miss when I use other complex synths that don't have this feature. A notepad should be standard on complex synths! (Along with doubleclick to set knobs to neutral position!)

I also have a habit of naming my patches technically ("phaselocked triple octave burble pad") as opposed to subjectively like most patch names ("bubblebath dreams"), which gives me a good clue when I need to start reverse-engineering my own creations.

[TheKid]

I like the sound of Bazille but I really suck at building my own patches with modular synths. I find synths in general pretty hard to predict soundwise and I'm not ashamed at all saying that I'm a preset guy to build/modify my own sounds. Do sound designers have a special sound in mind when making a preset with modular systems or is a lot "ok let's put this there and see how it sounds like"? That would make make these guys a lot more human.

I like the concept of Rob Papens Predator PL: a huge amount of presets and a stripped down interface. But I guess that's not going to happen at u-he.

Anyway congratulations to Urs and his team for a great piece of art.

[EvilDragon]

I like the concept of Rob Papens Predator PL: a huge amount of presets and a stripped down interface. But I guess that's not going to happen at u-he.

The Hive might do just that.

[pdxindy]

As for the presets, I have not tried many of the 1700 myself... I'm too busy making my own. But I do know that with my own presets, they shine when I am playing them. They are alive and need to be explored. With the non-linear responses in the modulation, all sorts of cool stuff happens.

Care to share a few soundbits of your own presets?

Here are some of the many sounds I have posted up previously...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/B38.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/B41.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/B42.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/B8.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/B12.mp3

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille32.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille34.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille66.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille71.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille75.mp3