One Synth Challenge #100: Lord of the Springs (Taron Wins!)

[] Peter:H []

@TrojakEW: Excuse me, I AM THE BOSS

Nice one. I'm glad to see another entry for this synth. Nice track - some sort of movie soundtrack/tension. Like it. But whole time I was waiting for crazy drums entry . Well you know I'm drum addict .

Next OSC, next Synth...I promise here by that I will do a strong percussion drums track
My main goal was to do some contradiction to the Wobble-Tracks, a simplistic but yet dense track which features some spatialization FX. I wanted to create even more space and atmosphere with this #Oculus plug-in but then the musical context would have been lost and it would have had to be even simpler...
It's definitely a track that want's to transport some tension and not get you on the dance floor.

[] Peter:H []

HA! AWESOME, you've joined after all! Thanks for the Oculus tip! Fantastic, I'll surely play around with that!
Yep, plenty of mean sounds in there... ...sort of like all this!
Very neat sonic experience, though! I'm kinda giddy about that spatialization plugin...just downloaded it.

Actually, I found the challenge to tame the beast too challenging so that i couldn't resist to take part I got some grey hair out of it...
And I found that Oculus Toy, that I wanted to give a ride and try it out on a track and see whether it is possible to use it in the context a song rather than in some movie like atmospheric sound collage...

[eraze the borders]

Hello everybody!

I didn't have much time this month but really needed to take part again, especially when I saw that it's about Taron's little synth.

So here goes my humble entry.

Hope you'll like it and wish you all good luck!

https://soundcloud.com/eraze-the-border ... es-osc-100

DAW: Reaper 5.40

13 x Lord of the Springs

ReaEQ
ReaComp
TAL Reverb III
TAL-DUB-II
Camel Crusher
TDR Kotelnikov

Mastering:
ReaEQ / TDR Kotelnikov / Limiter No 6

[Taron]

This oculus spatializer is fine, but also a bit of a challenge for the mix. I think, if one starts a mix with it, it's easier or even great to set up. Later is touch, but interesting for sure! Again, thanks for that!

[] Peter:H []

This oculus spatializer is fine, but also a bit of a challenge for the mix. I think, if one starts a mix with it, it's easier or even great to set up. Later is touch, but interesting for sure! Again, thanks for that!

Yeah sure, you better start with it and it should then take over control over panning and that stuff completely.
As I said it placed some challenges on the mixing because whenever one uses reverb the wrong way the spatial perception will be lost...My first action was for instance to un-stereo any track before it went into the spatializer...
Seems that it could be used for some collage like productions where you have a lot of spatial sound events in a not to dense sonic context...What I haven't figured out is whether it can do doppler effect...Still some way to go to learn how to use it.

[Taron]

Seems like it has a stereo input and some input choices, but I haven't tested it all the way through. I LOVE using the Auburn Panagement (free version), which is why I'm already used to not doing panning in the DAW's channels. However, the Y component of the oculus is what excites me the most.
What they've done great with the oculus, though, is that every unit shows every attached device, which you then can color code and place neatly around the head. Their reverb and reflections irritate me a bit, but they're not necessary anyway.

So, yeah, very cool thing to experiment with more.

[Medniex]

Just a thing that grabbed my attention. I tried to make a simple noise sweep and at first I tried to fiddle with frequencies in realtime till it sounded acceptable. Then I wanted to draw a clean automation curve, but ended up with something bitcrushy no matter how I tried to draw a curve (linear or exponential) or adjust max/min values. So in the end I just recorded my automation in realtime to get my desired noise sweep

[Taron]

OMG, that's so funny and embarrassing, because I JUST noticed that about 3 days ago. I couldn't efficiently do an interpolation for that inside the sample buffer process, or rather go that route, thus, if you did a "mathematical sweep", you'd here the update gap, based on your sample buffer size. You can really get around it, if you do real time recording, rather than use a curve. I've done this in my song, actually. Later on I will try a different approach, which could solve this. The whole noise section was a quick expansion of features, if I may try to excuse myself here.
ANYWAY, thanks for giving me a well deserved , haha!

I'll fix it, but for now, just go with a real time recording or irregular intervals. Or...if all else fails...just cheat and use an external "EQ" filter. I'd forgive you for sure. I haven't done that, just to assure you of that, but it's legit.

I'm currently having a blast with the oculus spatializer. I'm using offset sine waves to circle vertically around the listener with left and right channels on opposite sides and a Z offset. It sounds fascinating! Man, this is fun!

[Vospi]

4x Amplio 2

Wow, it is so cool, thank you!

[Medniex]

So here is my submission. Pardon my silly title but it's spring related at least

https://soundcloud.com/medniex/lets-mak ... pogo-stick

DAW: Ableton Live
12 x Lord of the Springs
Host FXs:
3x Glue compression
4x EQ Eight
3x Reverb
1x Auto Pan
2x Saturator
3x Simple Delay
4x Utility
2x Multiband Compression
1x Auto Filter
1x Arpegirator (MIDI)

All instruments except of noise sweep are made from included presets by modifying them. Few of them have quite wild automations.

[Armagibbon]

Not a great draft but it's better on time and nasty than late and f*cked.
Whatever I had a good time doing this one. You're the man Taron.

https://soundcloud.com/user-965186642/k ... -taron-mix

Stuff used...

• lord of the strings x24
• cubase reverence
• cubase studio eq
• cubase stereo delay
• cubase envelope shaper
• cubase dualfilter
• cubase revelation
• cubase autopan
• cubase compressor
• cubase multiband compressor
• cubase da tube
• cubase magneto 2
• cubase maximizer
• cubase chopper
• cubase roomworks
• cubase brickwall limiter
• cubase morphfilter
• cubase mixer delay

Some distortion just on the kick for beef. Only used the default init preset for everything. Didn't know it had any others haha

Grab the project file here...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dtsdrfcfvgyn3 ... x.cpr?dl=0
Requires cubase 9 pro. If there's any want for stems or midi and presets just give me a nudge and I'll throw them in here too.

[Taron]

"Blame Taron Mix"
Well, I am so happily taking that blame! ...once it's voting time, I will write all my comments, but I'm thoroughly impressed with what all of you are doing, really. Amazing!

[Armagibbon]

It's a good time playing man. Best part is the plug loads so fast even with like a million instances and I don't even think twice about duping it a couple times to build unison and opening the project doesn't feel like a chore. No freezing either. Shit's crazy fun. Love that balance knob too. But I duped a couple tracks with tiny pitchbends and delay offsets to fake chorus and phasers even though the rules forbid plugs that do it? Seems cheaty. And I kinda abused the hell out of your saturation knob sorry bout that. Think I'd do more of the acoustic pluck and organ stuff if you took that away. Please don't haha

Only thing that threw me for a loop was the phaser module on the synth. Like it only seems to work as a volume knob? Needs an init somewhere? I dunno. Maybe you fixed it and my old version's just the odd man out. That or I'm a clueless shithead whatever.

[Taron]

HAHA! Man, what a pure pleasure that is to read that!

Anyway, not sure which "phaser knob" you mean, but the phaser only works on the Body, which has a volume AND a "Solo" knob, which essentially is a "dry/wet" knob, allowing you to fade it all the way to pure body. Then the phaser section has three standard knobs (frequency, feedback and mix) as well as LFO "tremolo" knobs for amplitude, stereo and rate (including 2 sync modes). You see, it's difficult for me to know which one you are talking about, but I'd assume it's the "wet/dry" knob for the body?!

Other than that, every feature is there for you to "abuse", if you wish, hehehehe... of course, at your own risk! ...but, yeah, it's been tricky to add different tonality to a simple and fast process that ultimately just wants to sound like sine waves. Thus, saturation and crushing really are the main means to go beyond those. Even I make them lead my astray to create rather bizarre sounds that aren't meant to be in LotS' nature. ... way too much fun!

ANYHOW: THANK YOU!

[Armagibbon]

Yea it's either the wetdry or the mix on the phaser. One of those was working like a global volume knob if the body amount was set at 0. Man I didn't even know the phaser was just for the body module... shoulda rtfm haha

Another thing that made lord of the strings a real joy to just sketch whatever was that little pitch bend range control. Man you have no idea how much I miss that thing being so easy to find! Always gotta dig through backpanes and tabs to find that shit in popular bigass synths... love it being just right there in your face. Seriously props to you, lotta thought in this ui design it shows.