Massive X - the thread

[alex2000261]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

[perpetual3]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

Yeah, I totally agree - but it still manages to have such a rich, deep, expansive stereo image.

Yes, you can detune individual osc.

[alex2000261]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

Yeah, I totally agree - but it still manages to have such a rich, deep, expansive stereo image.

Yes, you can detune individual osc.

Yeah, I definitely like whatever is going on with the detune in terms of algorithms and such, definitely sounds very nice. How do you manage to detune individual osc's?

[pdxindy]

but i find MX challenging, not discouraging to work with. and, again... the sound. i use a synth plugin to make music, and that's, for me, what matter most: the music.

for me, making music often includes the use of the expression pedal or breath controller. MX does not support these controllers at all. Well, that is disappointing, but I will work around it be using midi learn to assign the expression pedal to one of the Macro knobs... oh, wait, there is no midi learn.

It sure would have been nice for a brand new 'next generation' synth to support MPE... okay, it doesn't... but it doesn't even support Poly AT which NI has generally supported for many years.

MX also does not handle pitchbend well for playing mono lines with my Linnstrument.

MX is more limited for playing music (the way I do it) than pretty much any of my other synths.

[perpetual3]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

Yeah, I totally agree - but it still manages to have such a rich, deep, expansive stereo image.

Yes, you can detune individual osc.

Yeah, I definitely like whatever is going on with the detune in terms of algorithms and such, definitely sounds very nice. How do you manage to detune individual osc's?

There are semitones and cent controls in the upper corners of the main osc section. There isn’t per voice unison, but individual osc can be detuned.

[chk071]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

I'd like to have more voices too, but, i don't think you really can compare it to Sylenth1. Sylenth1 is extremely low CPU by today's standard. Anything a bit more sophisticated in terms of analog modelling will burn more CPU. I'd rather compare MX to something like Diversion. OK, Diversion also has unison on oscillator level, but, it can get quite expensive with that.

FWIW, Massive 1 didn't have unison on oscillator level either. But, maybe they can screw up the unison to 8 voices, if that AVX stuff doesn't disallow it (no idea about that).

[ghettosynth]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

I'd like to have more voices too, but, i don't think you really can compare it to Sylenth1. Sylenth1 is extremely low CPU by today's standard. Anything a bit more sophisticated in terms of analog modelling will burn more CPU. I'd rather compare MX to something like Diversion. OK, Diversion also has unison on oscillator level, but, it can get quite expensive with that.

FWIW, Massive 1 didn't have unison on oscillator level either. But, maybe they can screw up the unison to 8 voices, if that AVX stuff doesn't disallow it (no idea about that).

If you're comparing this synth to sylenth 1 then why are you interested in this synth?

[Functional]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

There just comes a practical limit to detune and it rarely anymore matters whenever there is 6 voices or 8 voices. However, one fun thing you could do in Massive was crank it up to 64. Under certain circumstances you would get a patch that, although it wouldn't be useful for anything at all, it would cause all the harmonics to be pretty much equal in value to the fundamental and you'd lose the whole feeling of going up or down a tone: the tone just changes. It's really hard to explain

[pdxindy]

Got this synth recently as part of Komplete. It completely boggles my mind that you can only have 6 unison voices. I mean come on! Sylenth, which is 10+ years old offers more than this!. Not just that but it's aggravating that unison seems to happen at the end of the signal chain. Would much prefer to be able to detune individual oscillators etc, maybe this is possible? I haven't put enough time into it yet.

Sylenth has Osc unison. MX unison is replicating the whole polyphonic signal path.

It makes sense to me for Massive X to not have Osc unison. Osc unison and audio rate modulations do not work well together as far as sound quality vs cpu use.

And in this case, I would rather have the MX audio rate modulations!

[Functional]

And in this case, I would rather have the MX audio rate modulations!

May I ask: why? Aside from FM and RM, what else really is audiorate modulation useful for? I don't mean to come off negative here, I just am genuinely curious whenever I'm missing something here in terms of practical usecases for audio rate modulation

[perpetual3]

I would just absolutely love we could bypass the global unison for at least one oscillator.

[perpetual3]

Anyway, if you really want pervoice unison, try detuning each osc using Gorilla with over to taste. It’s not the same thing, but it provides a per osc richness. For me works best with simple waveforms. It’s a trick I used with Repro - 1 to create a massive bass using one osc and the wavefolder with some bias Mod. Similar approach here.

[alex2000261]

Didn't really mean to directly to compare it to Sylenth, I was just referencing the first synth that came to mind to convey my confusion over only having 6 voices available, every other synth I've used has more than that, so I just don't understand it, but oh well!

[pdxindy]

And in this case, I would rather have the MX audio rate modulations!

May I ask: why? Aside from FM and RM, what else really is audiorate modulation useful for? I don't mean to come off negative here, I just am genuinely curious whenever I'm missing something here in terms of practical usecases for audio rate modulation

What is a filter useful for?

Audio rate modulations shape the sound. They are another tool. In MX you have the Aux module which can modulate the Osc(s) from any point in the signal chain. Add that together with the flexible feedback routing and MX is very capable in this area.

[McLilith]

Rubato?

Domo arigato, Mr. Rubato!