KVR Audio

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 2:16 am

pdxindy wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 8:09 pmI don't care what those people say... I can hear the difference between low quality (so called) audio rate modulation and the good stuff!!

Really? Because based on what you've written here, I don't think you even understand what audio rate modulation is and how/why it is used.

wagtunes wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 8:14 pmAs I am getting more and more into making music and less and less into turning knobs and moving sliders, I find that I simply don't want to spend a lot of time finding sounds anymore. Life's too short. Recording, mixing and mastering is a long enough process as it is. I don't need to compound it by futzing around with programming synths. I didn't really like doing it in the 70s and I am finding less and less enjoyment out of doing it today. At least not for the purpose of making music.

This. So many people lose sight of the fact that synths exist for the purpose of making music. They are tools to be used to achieve something greater but way too many people get completely obsessed with them for no reason other than they might present a challenge. Those of us who actually want to make music are, sadly, in the minority so most softsynths are made for the twiddlers these days. Finding something that has the right balance between great sound quality and ease of use can be a real challenge.

Realistically, Thorn comes closest but that's because it's easy to ignore big chunks of it (spectral synth stuff) and just use the bits you want. DUNE is OK if you want to start from scratch all the time but tweaking presets can be a real punish. Strangely, NI's Xmas freebie, TRK-01 Play, might be closer still - the bass synth sounds great, has plenty of useful features but isn't bloated with stuff you don't need. It's amazing workflow and innovative UI make it even better.

djnro666 · Post by **djnro666** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 4:05 am

I like tweaking synthesisers more than making music. I am probably weird but I'm ok with it. Who are you to judge what brings joy to other people? Dune 3 is my tweaker's paradise right now. Thanks to Synapse Audio!

Breach The Sky · Post by **Breach The Sky** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:23 am

Is there any not so obvious tricks and modulations you can do with this thing that you "experts" know of? I see that it can do audio rate modulation between osc's so that's interesting!

Love the sound quality off Dune 3 btw. And the filters man, soo nice... But I don't really need it. or do I? GAS, GAS never changes.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:35 am

Breach The Sky wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:23 am Is there any not so obvious tricks and modulations you can do with this thing that you "experts" know of? I see that it can do audio rate modulation between osc's so that's interesting!

I'm by no means an expert but an important feature of Dune is the possibility to use the oscillators as modulation source. You need to make sure it has at least 1 voice (more than one is rarely needed by may be fun) but you don't always need an actual audio output from it, so you may keep the mixer level at zeroю

Target another oscillator pitch and you will get basic osc-to-osc FM (psytrance leads

), target a filter and you will get filter FM. Set another osc to FM mode and target some FM parameters and you'll get totally crazy FM stuff

Then you can control the amount of this modulation from another modulator (velocity, modwheel, LFO, whatever). Also you can modulate the pitch of your modulator osc and get some wild animated sounds.

For smoother modulation without artifacts it's better to switch to Audio Rate, though you have to be aware that it may eat quite some CPU.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:44 am

Is it possible to set audio rate now in Dune 3 without it changing back again every time you change presets?

cytospur · Post by **cytospur** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:52 am

aMUSEd wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:44 am Is it possible to set audio rate now in Dune 3 without it changing back again every time you change presets?

It isn't. The quality setting is saved with the patch. You mostly don't need it set to highest unless you are using oscillators as modulation sources and possibly very rapidly changing MSEGs.

cytospur · Post by **cytospur** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:10 am

Breach The Sky wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:23 am Is there any not so obvious tricks and modulations you can do with this thing that you "experts" know of? I see that it can do audio rate modulation between osc's so that's interesting!

Love the sound quality off Dune 3 btw. And the filters man, soo nice... But I don't really need it. or do I? GAS, GAS never changes.

You can do Korg O1W style waveshaping by inserting appropriate formulae in to the wavetable editor. These formulae are based on the y variable rather than x and give a series of DC offsets that can be swept through using another oscillator (or two).

Here is such a formula that does Chebyshev polynomial waveshaping:

0.0148*(37*cos(2*acos(2*y-1))-5*cos(3*acos(2*y-1))-4*cos(5*acos(2*y-1))+8*cos(6*acos(2*y-1))+10*cos(8*acos(2*y-1))+6*cos(10*acos(2*y-1))+6*cos(13*acos(2*y-1))+2*cos(16*acos(2*y-1)))

Copy this in to a text editor to ensure there are no line breaks/spaces in the formula before pasting in to D3. Obviously, this is quite complicated looking, but it breaks down in to a single simple building block:

amp*cos(harm*acos(2*y-1))

Where a = amplitude of the harmonic you want and h = harmonic. There is also a scaling variable (0.0148), which can be a bit tricky to work out. This can be done in Wolfram Alpha, which is a good playground for testing WT functions anyway. Outputs need to be scaled between -1 to +1.

You can download a patch that does this waveshaping from here:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqyauWxlz_jVgZiNPcYBz7h_PxqSA7E

In the starting state only Osc3 is being waveshaped by Osc1. Osc2 uses the legacy wavetable where the first slot has no output. Change that to any other slot to hear the effect of the waveshaper with Osc2 + Osc3.

Note that I am also using velocity to modulate how much the two envelopes affect the amount of waveshaping. Also note that Osc1 frequency is set to the lowest possible using both the coarse knob on the GUI and an entry in the mod matrix.

cytospur · Post by **cytospur** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:53 am

A more simple waveshaper is to add functions to the phase increment.

The phase increment would be (2*y-1) - y as a variable runs from 0 to 1, but we need to convert this to a range of -1 to 1. We can add sine waves of different frequencies to this with appropriate scaling:

0.9*(2*y-1)+0.2*sin(2*pi*(2*y-1))

or

0.9*(2*y-1)+0.2*sin(7*pi*(2*y-1))

We can also phase modulate (Yamaha FM) the sin term to give more interesting waveshapers:

0.9*(2*y-1)+0.2*sin(2*pi*(2*y-1)+sin(5*pi*(2*y-1)))

Again, this will require a bit of fiddling about with scaling factors in Wolfram Alpha or even Excel to get the transfer function sitting between a range of -1 and 1.

EDIT: I forgot to say that you can change the phase increment term used within the sine terms to create asymmetric transfer functions and also to get harsher sounds.

e.g. (5*y) rather than (2*y-1)

Breach The Sky · Post by **Breach The Sky** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:07 am

recursive one wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:35 am FM

How du you keytrack the FM between VA osc's? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. FM between two osc's set to FM sounds good tough.

Breach The Sky · Post by **Breach The Sky** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:11 am

Thank you! I think i understand the patch except this:

cytospur wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:10 am Also note that Osc1 frequency is set to the lowest possible using both the coarse knob on the GUI and an entry in the mod matrix.

If you remove that line nothing plays in the higher registers. Just curious!

cytospur · Post by **cytospur** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:12 am

Breach The Sky wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:11 am Thank you! I think i understand the patch except this:

cytospur wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:10 am Also note that Osc1 frequency is set to the lowest possible using both the coarse knob on the GUI and an entry in the mod matrix.
If you remove that line nothing plays in the higher registers. Just curious!

That's why it's there! It wasn't the case in D2. It took me a while to work out that that was needed.

Breach The Sky · Post by **Breach The Sky** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:15 am

Also (sorry for a lot of posts), Dune tends to hard crash to desktop when I try to open the wavetable editor. Also happend when i just closed the vst window. I use the latest version of Reason.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:17 am

Breach The Sky wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:07 am
recursive one wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:35 am FM
How du you keytrack the FM between VA osc's? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. FM between two osc's set to FM sounds good tough.

There is key track as a mod source. You can also have osc key track as a mod target.

I'm not sure what exactly you want to keytrack though, both oscs are keytraked by default so the pitch relations between them stay the same regardless of the note.

The first D3 release had buggy WT editor, Synapse said they fixed it but I'm not sure if they updated the demo.

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:39 am

Sod it, upgraded....held out for about 3 days!

djnro666 · Post by **djnro666** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 12:02 pm

I don't like composing music anymore because it's become too easy. I don't have a challenge anymore while composing, mixing and mastering. I lost the spark. Luckily for me, composing patches, playing them and doing sound design didn't lost it's appeal. I still compose music but it's more like a chore.

No hard feelings! I have respect even for a guy like you who judge people without having taken a walk in their shoes. You are right : not everyone has the skills to compose tracks but personally I don't care. If everybody was the same, we would live in a boring world. Have a nice day!

DUNE 3 is now available!!