KVR Audio

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:09 pm

I use Dune BECAUSE of its modulation rates. It's why I no longer use SPIRE. Spires modulation rates suck because of "optimization".

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:16 pm

What makes Dune stand out and special is it pushes the limits of quality. It gives it a flat plastic character but it does it so well it becomes addictive to your ears. There are LOTS of options for "do everything at low audio rates". Dune has an identity, and it sounds modern because of its plastic sound that is done to such a high degree. I liken it to wrapping your fingers on a tennis racket. It fills a hole that is missing in today's software environment. An everyday bread and butter type instrument that is not overly aggressive. It's sound is unique!

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:22 pm

When you get it right, when you nail it... don't F with it! You can improve upon it, but don't change it. Dune is the only thing on the market that does Dune. That's all I got to say, I'm out.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:24 pm

Dasheesh wrote:I use Dune BECAUSE of its modulation rates. It's why I no longer use SPIRE. Spires modulation rates suck because of "optimization".

Sorry, but, you're really wrong there. What you might mean is the behavior of the filters at high resonance levels, when you modulate those. That's definitely something which is improvable in Spire. The modulation rates are ok (ok, maybe not audio rate, but, surely fast, or "fine" enough for me). Try a Tone2 synth, then you know what happens when you spend too much effort on making the synth low on system ressources... the modulation rates, or rather the resolution of those, in their synths is really bad. Even in Saurus, which is supposed to be a closels analog modelled synth, and even though it uses a fair amount of CPU. I don't know what they were thinking really. Probably that noone ever uses fast modulation rates. It just sounds noisy and unpleasant, when you apply audio rate modulation, to filters or oscillators. The (dedicated) FM sounds horrible too BTW.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:36 pm

chk071 wrote:
Dasheesh wrote:I use Dune BECAUSE of its modulation rates. It's why I no longer use SPIRE. Spires modulation rates suck because of "optimization".
Sorry, but, you're really wrong there. What you might mean is the behavior of the filters at high resonance levels, when you modulate those. That's definitely something which is improvable in Spire. The modulation rates are ok (ok, maybe not audio rate, but, surely fast, or "fine" enough for me). Try a Tone2 synth, then you know what happens when you spend too much effort on making the synth low on system ressources... the modulation rates, or rather the resolution of those, in their synths is really bad. Even in Saurus, which is supposed to be a closels analog modelled synth, and even though it uses a fair amount of CPU. I don't know what they were thinking really. Probably that noone ever uses fast modulation rates. It just sounds noisy and unpleasant, when you apply audio rate modulation, to filters or oscillators. The (dedicated) FM sounds horrible too BTW.

I think he means the patches where an oscillator is used as a modulation source, e.g. for the pitch of another oscillator or the filter cutoff.

This may sound noisy in Spire though I'm not sure if it is because the target parfameter is updated is too slow or the contary, because it updates very accurately without any smoothing (then it should sound noisy by defalut when saw of complex waveforms are used afaik). Anyway, when using sine of triangle waves for modulation osc and carefully setting modulation amount it is possible to get good sounding results in Spire.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:41 pm

I'll try that, even though i'm pretty sure that there should be no difference, whether you modulate parameters with the LFO's, or the OSC's. After all, it's both a value/audio signal, which has to be "translated" in a way, and the synth's engine should handle that the same, if i'm not totally mistaken. But, of course, the higher the modulation rate, the more apparent it should be, if it is not running on audio rate.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:42 pm

The oscillator is a sort of a keytracked LFO in this scenario

Aslo when making such patches I think it is better to disable both xcomp and boost, maybe warm too. You need the cleanest possible signal.

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:43 pm

Dasheesh wrote:I use Dune BECAUSE of its modulation rates. It's why I no longer use SPIRE. Spires modulation rates suck because of "optimization".

Well, I have just tested it in Reaper. Even with 5 layers pads with audio rate modulation on my i5 CPU, it's not above 25% (real time CPU) or 7% (Reaper's measure) with chords of 3-4 notes. So, I really don't know how adding a second filter (it is a global not per layer!) can kill your cpu (i7)!!

Anyway, all that is just wishes and talk. Richard knows what is better for his synth. Of course I agree with you that Dune 2 already sounds great especially with the audio rate modulation option.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:52 pm

Btw, it seems that many people don't understand that "audio rate modulation" in Dune is not a global sound quality enchancer. It only matters when you are using modulation signals faster than 100 HZ, eg oscillators of fast LFOs. Otherwise setiing the modulation speed to audio rate won't do any difference to the sound.

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 1:17 pm

This is an example of audio rate modulation in software. Single oscillator and a filter half closed. Let me know when you get spire to do this because in four years I never could no matter how much I wanted it to.

*missed it

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 1:19 pm

...and solid state drives speed up your computer allowing more voices. When I shoved a proper ssd in my old 2012 mac it gave me a handful of more voices to play with.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 1:42 pm

Dasheesh wrote:This is an example of audio rate modulation in software. Single oscillator and a filter half closed. Let me know when you get spire to do this because in four years I never could no matter how much I wanted it to. https://soundcloud.com/jeremy-me/audio-rate-example

Can you elaborate a bit? What exactaly did you modulate? What waveform did you choose for the oscillator. Is there PWM involved? Sounds like it.

Dasheesh · Post by **Dasheesh** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 2:02 pm

That's actually bazille, which is the best I know of at this sort of thing. Just feed oscillator one into the filter, then use oscillator 2 as a modulator for the filter. Dune can get close. It's a lot better then most "optimized" software. This was common in hardware but very rare in software, it uses CPU.

AnX · Post by **AnX** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 4:00 pm

Dasheesh wrote:...and solid state drives speed up your computer allowing more voices. When I shoved a proper ssd in my old 2012 mac it gave me a handful of more voices to play with.

Really? A hard drive gave you more cpu power?

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jun 08, 2017 4:17 pm

I have my doubts about that.

At least not in the area of "a handful of voices".

DUNE 2 is out now!!