The Legend vs repro-1

[Cinebient]

Wasn´t Repro-1 also research for Zebra 3....it better has polyphony of 512 (not really of course ).

[Urs]

Then i have question for you Urs. You said that a pro-1 is the hardest synth to model. Was it your strategy, to invest a lot of time and money into this emulation to gain technical knowledge. Or was it to make money quickly ?

With all this new knowledge ( a quantum leap as you said once ) Can we expect more synth in the coming years or the average development time of a synth is still the same despite all this new knowledge ?

We needed both the money and the knowledge. I didn't know the Pro-One was the most difficult to model synth when we started. It only occurred to me later, once we measured the voltages, parameter ranges and everything.

Example: The CEM 3320 filter chip is the least documented, nearly fully black box filter chip out there. Much has been written about Moog Ladders, diode ladders, MS-20 filters, OTA cascades, State Variables... one can harvest different models, different approaches, the whole maths for any of these filters from the internet. But there's nothing - zilch - about the 3320, other than a patent with a lot of seemingly cryptic information, and no exact documentation of part values. None of the known filter topologies sounds like it. It took a while to crack.

While we were at it, we built a lot of reusable templates for different aspects of synth and fx design. That, and the experience (it was the first synth project some peeps at u-he were involved in) will hopefully make future releases more speedy.

As I said, "making money quickly" looks differently. If we needed money quickly, we would sell Diva at 30% off for a weekend and double our quarterly revenue with next to no effort

[Urs]

Wasn´t Repro-1 also research for Zebra 3....it better has polyphony of 512 (not really of course ).

We'll see

[beely]

I'll take a $50 Prodigy right now!

+1

[T-CM11]

Since we're making requests to Urs here... a virtual SQ80/ESQ1 please? Pretty please? Pretend that Creative Labs won't notice...

[fischkopf]

Since we're making requests to Urs here... a virtual SQ80/ESQ1 please? Pretty please? Pretend that Creative Labs won't notice...

I'll add mine: Matrix 12 (the Arturia one sucks)

[mrj1nx]

There have always been thoughts about turning Diva's sets of modules into plug-ins on their own, possibly with the original levels and parameter ranges. But that sounds a lot like slavish work to me, not like anything that gets me out of bed in the morning. I'd do that if cash was all I was doing this for.

Yeah time would probably be better spent adding a new module to Diva or Zebra for example (especially from the perspective of customers who owns a license to those), unless we're talking breaking out Diva modules and putting them in Z3 ofcourse One gotta wonder if you guys are thinking about making a full on modular thing at this point such as Softubes modular and so forth. For that purpose I think the breakout would also be very suitable Could be a concept where you get modules from the synths you own.

[DocAtlas]

One gotta wonder if you guys are thinking about making a full on modular thing at this point such as Softubes modular and so forth. For that purpose I think the breakout would also be very suitable Could be a concept where you get modules from the synths you own.

There was talk of a system called Berlin Modular, but none of the threads on it seem to have any posts more recent than 2014, so I don't know if it's still going to happen or not.

Regarding the thread's topic, it looks like both synths the OP asked about are good ones, but since I already have several Minimoog emus, I don't see the point in buying another. I might consider buying Repro-1 down the road, but since I just got informed two days ago than I'm now officially laid off, I don't think I'll be spending money on much more than food for a while. I do have a real Pro-One, but it would be nice to have it as a plugin, especially if I want to use multiple instances at the same time.

Polyphony isn't a problem. When I was attending Berklee, all the synths in the lab (except the Arp String Ensemble) were monophonic/duophonic. Using a monosynth with a modern DAW is still several orders of magnitude better than using it with a 2 or 4 track recorder, and constantly bouncing between tape machines.

[sl1200mk2]

After a 10+ year break, I've gotten back into music just to have some fun. Both these sound incredible in their own right and it's truly amazing how far things have come in my time off. Back then, the best you could get in the box was the Creamware offerings. I love analog hardware and began acquiring some again (though won't to the extent I used to), but both these synths sound amazing.

Both developers deserve support, so I bought both of them. I plan to pick up Diva and Xils Lab PolyKb III within a few months to fill things out, but it's just crazy to me how good this stuff sounds now.

[C-note]

[quote=" A spot on emulation of the Ensoniq VFX would create an immense amount of desire here......... [/quote]
Oh yeah, my first synth, the Ensoniq VFX-SD/SD-1. Still using the 16 bit (SD-1) version and now making a Kontact instrument of it in anticipation of a time when it goes on to Synth heaven. Some crazy cool patches can be made with that thing.

[Teksonik]

A spot on emulation of the Ensoniq VFX would create an immense amount of desire here.........

Oh yeah, my first synth, the Ensoniq VFX-SD/SD-1. Still using the 16 bit (SD-1) version and now making a Kontact instrument of it in anticipation of a time when it goes on to Synth heaven. Some crazy cool patches can be made with that thing.

I just recently sold my Ensoniq VFX. I'd much rather have an emulation for that than another Analog (unless it's an OB-8 ).

I don't know how hard it would be to get permission from Creative or whoever owns the rights now but hey one can wish........

Keep us updated on your Kontakt instrument.

[Urs]

One gotta wonder if you guys are thinking about making a full on modular thing at this point

We've been thinking about this for years. There's still too much compromise, even with great knowledge and experience in analogue modeling. The litmus test is to take an oscillator's pulse output, invert it and modulate the pulse width of itself. In any analogue modular synth this results in a mix of square and ramp-type waveform.

Not so in a digital modular. At cool settings this sounds either "sync-ish" (e.g. ACE) or pityful (e.g. some early Arp emulation) or plain wrong (e.g. the one you mentioned). I guess ACE sounds relatively good (still wrong) because it's a direct connection between the modules whereas the other synths I tried require routing through an inverter first. Each step probably adds a delay into the equation that isn't present in the analogue realm.

It took one developer two months to get this right in Repro-1 because in Repro-1 Osc B can PWM itself, and it does so with an inverted signal. This is zero delay feedback problem between an output and a mod input of a single module... now think of this on the scale of a modular system...

The effects of this problem get worse with the number of modules involved. The more modules, the more likely a feedback modulation will sound off.

There is a great concept to solve this, and I think some good people are working on it. It does however require unbelievable amounts of CPU power. Might work best once GPUs are truely and fully available for audio work (i.e. low latency).

[AnX]

Didnt xils patent a never seen before zero delay feedback pwm system? Maybe they can help.

[Urs]

Didnt xils patent a never seen before zero delay feedback pwm system? Maybe they can help.

The use of "feedback" is argueable in that case (yes, they got two oscillators PWM each other at the same time, but no, they don't use the pulse output to do this, hence it isn't the same thing)

[EnGee]

Say, analyse and discuss what you want!
For me, I'm two steps from buying RePro~1 and 4 steps from buying the Legend. In the meantime I might be able to have Dune 2 back, and then start saving for future u-he and Synapse audio synths