How come nobody ever talks about Absynth anymore?

[Elektronisch]

...except their more recently released plugins.

Actually thats not true, because the only one that has a modern size is massive x. Their new plugins like Crush pack, reaktor super 8 are tiny on 1440p screen.

You're aware that you can change the size, when you click on that "down" arrow in the upper left to open the menu?

Stupid me

Sorry, thank you!

But its not my fault! NI did not put a huge red warning sign to resize similar to the one bellow

[Elektronisch]

Yes, there are scaling options in Dirt/Mod Pack...

Wich such global option would be available to Reaktor itself, or its instruments, also Absynth and Massive

As the insider of NI, were there talks of doing that?

[EvilDragon]

You know I can't really say any future plans.

[vurt]

wink once for yes
twice for no.

[ghettosynth]

A few of their things are, just yesterday I was thinking about how Guitar Rig's also been left in the dust by all it's competition (sorry for getting a bit off the topic of Absynth).

I only have Guitar Rig, what is a better alternative for it these days? (something that doesn't use iLok)

It depends on what you mean by alternative. I think that there are quite a few better choices for guitar amp/distortion models.

What are some better choices?

I like the Waves PRS models. A lot of people like Amplitude. Some like Kaussa. There are several really good overdrive pedal emus, at least one is free, Andy Cytomic's variant is well received. I don't use GR for amp modeling, but, I don't use pure guitar tools for anything other than distortion, speaker modeling, and amp modeling. For everything else there are better plugins. So I don't really need a container oriented guitar processing plugin.

[sinemotor]

The GUI reminds me The Matrix and early 2000s digital abstract graphic design aesthetics which is something that I'm fond of. Abysnth has a place in my music, especially for pads and lush sound-sources as they fit well to the mix. The timbres aren't too rich or complex unlike Omnisphere 2 for instance (which has samples from an early Absynth version btw). It's very low on CPU so I can layer many instances. I love the aetherizer effect which is quiet unique. The GUI is not fun to use though.

[anomandaris1]

Absynth could do with a big upgrade, it's great for soundscapes, but there are lot of choices for that.

It's rare I use any NI synths in the past few years; I think the GUI's are often outdated, there's no microtuning, they often feel slow to load and they seem to go wrong for me more than the alternatives. I haven't updated Komplete in a while, because nothing they're offering appeals to me. I don't think they currently make many "best in class" products, I'm not sure they're even capable of that now.

You are not right that they offer no microtuning.
Absynth has microtuning.
FM8 can import sysex (you can create such files with Scala) or retune with its own editor (this one is limited to 12 notes per octave).
There is a microtuning module for Reaktor blocks in the user library. (Probably their other Reaktor stuff can be microtuned by people that actually know what they are doing in Reaktor...)
Kontakt has at least 2 microtuning scripts.

[digitalboytn]

It's pretty clear to me that over the last decade or so that NI has been resting on its laurels with respect to maintenance of their synth products.

While the've been focusing on "The Future of Sound" NI have been delivering a load of irrelevant rubbish

The few gems that have appeared are third party coding or sampling,with NI providing the "corporate oversight"...

But there's only so many farts,squeaks and pops that we need to pull out of our synths any away...

Most productions need good solid sounds and no matter what genre it is,the usual suspects are what we need at the core of any music...

I guess that Massive X is their attempt to come in from their time in the wilderness,but quite clearly,it is NI who have to play catch up these days...

There are so many great offerings from smaller developers who are not burdened by a large corporate structure and as such,have the ability and the agility to respond more dynamically to their end users...

But I guess that the smaller guys are not trying to create the future of sound ?

The're just making great synths and effects at a direct to end user price point

[jancivil]

ftfy

I think Absynth is currently rather insignificant because programming is too time-consuming for me.

[monomaker]

Absynth has microtuning.

I'd forgot about that - its got its own format but it's comparatively fiddly (convert in scala, find the appropriate folder and reload the synth). It's probably the best implementation in any NI synth, still, it's not very good.

FM8 can import sysex (you can create such files with Scala) or retune with its own editor (this one is limited to 12 notes per octave).

It forgets the tuning at seemingly random intervals, I wind up constantly reuploading the sysex. This would be easier if it accepted the sysex from MIDI (like a Yamaha FM synth), but it requires you to upload it from the menu every time. Anyone knows why this happens or a solution?

There is a microtuning module for Reaktor blocks in the user library. (Probably their other Reaktor stuff can be microtuned by people that actually know what they are doing in Reaktor...)

They don't work well at all and are difficult to integrate into existing ensembles. It needs a tuning table that you can upload .scl/.tun files into, rather than having to make one. AFAIR the real issue with making one is there's no way to import files (like tun or scl) to change the table.

Kontakt has at least 2 microtuning scripts.

I've used these but they too work erratically, plus it's a pain to set up every time you load a program. The Scala export script used to work with Kontakt 4, stopped working for Kontakt 5. I think Homegrown Sounds did one too, that wasn't bad but still, not much fun practically. I've got one somewhere I made myself I use occasionally, none are good solutions.

It's true, these are all some kind of microtuning implementation, but none of them work well and require too much work to get running. I don't see any of them as proper support, it's mostly a catalogue of botched implementations and user attempts at remedy. Going over them one by one has reminded me of just how many hours I've lost over the years trying to get NI software in tune. You would have thought tuning a digital instrument would be easy, it's just a table of 128 values.

Thanks for reminding me about Absynth, maybe I will get a bit more use out of it.

[anomandaris1]

Absynth has microtuning.

I'd forgot about that - its got its own format but it's comparatively fiddly (convert in scala, find the appropriate folder and reload the synth). It's probably the best implementation in any NI synth, still, it's not very good.

FM8 can import sysex (you can create such files with Scala) or retune with its own editor (this one is limited to 12 notes per octave).

It forgets the tuning at seemingly random intervals, I wind up constantly reuploading the sysex. This would be easier if it accepted the sysex from MIDI (like a Yamaha FM synth), but it requires you to upload it from the menu every time. Anyone knows why this happens or a solution?

There is a microtuning module for Reaktor blocks in the user library. (Probably their other Reaktor stuff can be microtuned by people that actually know what they are doing in Reaktor...)

They don't work well at all and are difficult to integrate into existing ensembles. It needs a tuning table that you can upload .scl/.tun files into, rather than having to make one. AFAIR the real issue with making one is there's no way to import files (like tun or scl) to change the table.

Kontakt has at least 2 microtuning scripts.

I've used these but they too work erratically, plus it's a pain to set up every time you load a program. The Scala export script used to work with Kontakt 4, stopped working for Kontakt 5. I think Homegrown Sounds did one too, that wasn't bad but still, not much fun practically. I've got one somewhere I made myself I use occasionally, none are good solutions.

It's true, these are all some kind of microtuning implementation, but none of them work well and require too much work to get running. I don't see any of them as proper support, it's mostly a catalogue of botched implementations and user attempts at remedy. Going over them one by one has reminded me of just how many hours I've lost over the years trying to get NI software in tune. You would have thought tuning a digital instrument would be easy, it's just a table of 128 values.

Idk, I recently used last Kontakt with 1/4 tones and worked perfectly fine (maybe it depends on what instruments you are using - Kontakt scripts in modern more advanced libraries may be doing something that doesn't allow microtuning by your scripts, idk, just a theory). Reaktor blocks works perfectly fine with the microtuning block (I have never build my ensembles, only blocks, but I doubt these tables being hard to do, if you are into this type of stuff - a quick search in the library revealed such a table, creating anything from 1 to 44 equal, which is enough for practical music making ).
FM8 will always forget tuning when you reload - that's how all synths without microtuning lock do.

Actually, many other synths by other companies have funky implementation of microtuning, it's not only NI. (I doubt developers have much interest in this stuff - the only pop musical culture with microtonal tuning is in Middle East and North Africa; even the blues is "quantised" these days in Western framework).

[Aloysius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaamvTv8ePk

It's so funny how we don't talk about Absynth anymore
But I ain't losing sleep and I ain't counting sheep

[martinjuenke]

https://youtu.be/FfY5iI2ou00

[Aloysius]

[monomaker]

Kontakt scripts in modern more advanced libraries may be doing something that doesn't allow microtuning by your scripts

Yes, it seems to depend entirely on the other scripting. Sadly this means that many libraries either won't work or take a lot of effort to get working. It's nowhere near the standard of implementation in competitors like Falcon, or even Halion (which has its own microtonal issues); smaller products like TAL sampler soundly thrash it for tuning.

Reaktor blocks works perfectly fine with the microtuning block

...if you're happy to use the built in tunings! None of them support importing tunings, meaning you have to manually copy across values in order to do anything else. If that's your idea of working perfectly fine this would seem to be the discrepancy in our discussion. I find it unusable, practically, for importing my own tunings and writing music, I wind up spending half the day getting it in tune...or not, as the case may be.

Reaktor does have facility for changing ET without the requirement for any code, it's just poor at everything else and may or may not work as expected.

FM8 will always forget tuning when you reload - that's how all synths without microtuning lock do.

Sure, but why does it revert to 12TET in the middle of a session when you haven't reloaded?

Actually, many other synths by other companies have funky implementation of microtuning, it's not only NI.

This is true, but give an example of a worse implementation than what we have discussed here. There really aren't many cases where a company has implemented some kind of support and it's this poor, I can only think of 1 or 2 examples (Halion is one, but retuning via LUA script works more reliably). Most tuning issues involve not being able to handle a tritave or locking the base frequency to A440, etc.

the only pop musical culture with microtonal tuning is in Middle East and North Africa; even the blues is "quantised" these days in Western framework).

In pop culture microtuning is completely normal and widespread. Listen to the soundtrack from the new series of Stranger Things, microtonal from the outset, or many other shows for that matter. It's hard to find a modern horror film without any microtonal music or shifts, plus I would argue more people hear music in film and video games now than listen to pop music. Whilst it's not my kind of thing, it's apparently creeping in to pop music too : https://flypaper.soundfly.com/produce/b ... -gone-pop/