Unfiltered Audio Lion

[inforlk]

Definitely a matter of taste, and Lion is certainly to my personal taste - like a hi-res, advanced Intellijel Shapeshifter with loads of modulation. Was just curious how others viewed “the other side of the coin”

Amén

[Belinski]

Worst sounding synth i heard in a long time.

I find it funny when people talk about synths sounding bad without any specifics.
Its like saying "my car sucks because it always drives to the worst neighborhoods."

Forgive me, it was getting late. Let me explain :
- The envelopes have no punch or snappyness.
- The filters are cold and lifeless.
- There is this weird stuff going on in the high frequencies most of the time.
- Most of the fx are mediocre (i'm not a fan of the other UA stuff either).

I guess that if you want to make chip-tune-like sounds and weird soundscapes you can have fun with this synth, but there are plenty of alternatives that can do more, sound better and are even cheaper.

Overall the sound is as flat as a pancake. You can build all the possibilities you want into a synth, but if the fundamentals are wrong, it will never sound good.

That's what my conclusions were after demoing the thing.

Was thinking exactly the same, it's not musical at all, very disappointing

[dionenoid]

You should test phaseplant. It is (to me at least) miles ahead from lion. The grouping, the modsources, the fx, the lay-out, the sound (!!!), the flexibilty, the routing, etc...

Yeah, i'm afraid that's going to cost me money

(I already own all other Kilohearts stuff, i've been a big fan for years)

[db3]

I have mixed thoughts on Lion so far. Much like other UA products, many of the presets I've skipped through are unusable — and quite a few are semitones out of tune. It took me a while to see through that.

I'll probably pick it up due to the potential it offers for more unusual sounds — but only due to the very deep discount I can get.

[sureno]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

[Caine123]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

this is bad :/

[graspee]

It's not really bad, you can fix them.

[exmatproton]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

this is bad :/

I don't get that. Out of tune? Of what? The standard "C"? Maybe the preset was made for A, or F(+20c). I don't care, as long as it is usable, or changeable when needed

[recursive one]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

this is bad :/

I don't get that. Out of tune? Of what? The standard "C"? Maybe the preset was made for A, or F(+20c). I don't care, as long as it is usable, or changeable when needed

That's a bit weird, don't you think? When I press or program the note A I expect the synth to play note A or some chord/sequence/whatever having A as a keynote.

What's the general verdict on the synth? Good for soundscapes and weird/glitchy stuff, nothing special for more "normal" sounds? (this is what I gather from the posts here, didn't test it myself yet)

[kelvyn]

For companies with the kind of pedigree that PA and UA have -considering their products are based on sound refinement - one might have expected something a little more... refined.
It seems just a little slapdash and early days right now, more like something in the early beta phase than finished product.
I do feel - judging by some of the presets and a little bit of tweaking - that if they can get rid of those extremely fizzy digital higher frequencies and get some other things sorted out, that this will be a really cool synth. I can’t imagine - that those of us who purchased with their HH and monthly vouchers - that we would feel disappointed as it’s a steal for the discount price but until they sort a couple of things out, the regular price is just a little too steep.
That said... for atmospheric wobbly strange things where the fizziness doesn’t bother its fine. But the competition is extremely fierce at that price range... Aparillo anyone:)

[Examigan]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

Which presets? I will be checking Lion out later today and would like to see/hear what this is about.

[db3]

Difficult to miss there are so many.

Just skip through bass/lead/keys and you'll discover them. You find all the Plugin Guru ones are good, and the majority of bad ones are from AR or UA. I think most of the presets were likely developed by beta testers working in the special effects industry.

[muki]

no richard devine? no simon stockhausen?
at least i couldn't see it in the pluginguru video

synth anatomy has a nice preset walkthrough video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-qaJWuiKFs

[Smapti]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

I don't have out-of-tune behavior when starting from scratch. Is it possible that you're loading a preset that uses one of the alternate tunings? There are lots of alternate tunings in Lion, so that could make things sound "off" if you don't realize it's turned on.

As for presets - I don't think you get a good idea of Lion's capabilities by going through the presets, especially since many of them are CPU-hungry. It's better to just start with the init patch and play with the mixer modes & oscillator modes. Keep in mind that many of the modes are excellent for non-tonal sounds. If you want tonal EDM stuff then there are other instruments that do that sort of thing more easily. But if you want interesting experimental sounds that you can't get anywhere else, Lion is absolutely for you.

Some of the reactions I'm seeing from KVRians are odd to me. I understand if people prefer wavetable/analog-modeled synths. That's absolutely fine! What's odd, though, is that people who prefer that kind of synth are saying that Lion sounds awful, without recognizing that different people want different things in their instruments. I personally can't stand analog-modeled synths -- I find them incredibly boring -- but I'm not going to wander into a discussion of, say, Diva, and complain that it doesn't have the bitwise mixing capabilities that Lion does. Other people like analog modeling and that's fine! Unfortunately, though, there's a tendency here to assume that the thing you like is the ONLY thing that ANYONE should ever like.

[Caine123]

quite a few are semitones out of tune.

THIS!!!! i thought it was my hearing!!! But a lot of the presets didn’t sit right when I was auditioning them in context

I don't have out-of-tune behavior when starting from scratch. Is it possible that you're loading a preset that uses one of the alternate tunings? There are lots of alternate tunings in Lion, so that could make things sound "off" if you don't realize it's turned on.

As for presets - I don't think you get a good idea of Lion's capabilities by going through the presets, especially since many of them are CPU-hungry. It's better to just start with the init patch and play with the mixer modes & oscillator modes. Keep in mind that many of the modes are excellent for non-tonal sounds. If you want tonal EDM stuff then there are other instruments that do that sort of thing more easily. But if you want interesting experimental sounds that you can't get anywhere else, Lion is absolutely for you.

Some of the reactions I'm seeing from KVRians are odd to me. I understand if people prefer wavetable/analog-modeled synths. That's absolutely fine! What's odd, though, is that people who prefer that kind of synth are saying that Lion sounds awful, without recognizing that different people want different things in their instruments. I personally can't stand analog-modeled synths -- I find them incredibly boring -- but I'm not going to wander into a discussion of, say, Diva, and complain that it doesn't have the bitwise mixing capabilities that Lion does. Other people like analog modeling and that's fine! Unfortunately, though, there's a tendency here to assume that the thing you like is the ONLY thing that ANYONE should ever like.

nope, presets of a product should show its strengths .