Upcoming Synapse OB-Xa: Obsession

[BONES]

Not here to argue about accuracy, or anything really, but yes, sometimes instruments are soloed, as in by themselves. Sometimes a song will have one instrument and a singer on top, that's the mix, with plenty of time to listen to that one instrument by itself. Sometimes it's just an instrument all by itself and that's the song or instrumental if you like. It's not unheard of at all.

But that's not going to be a lead sound, it's likely going to be something fairly quiet and generic, something that could be any freeware synth. Either that or something subtly complex, which is far more likely to be a softsynth.

If people want to have OB-X in plugin form, or at least a product which claim to be that - then they expect it every bit 100% accurate. 1:1 clone, indistinguishable etc.

Do they? I'd love someone to make an 01/W emulation but all I'd care about is that it allows me to use it in the same way I used to use my hardware one. I'd never go to the, frankly, absurd lengths of comparing one to the other, all I'd care about was that I got something that was similarly useful. Something I could jump right into and start making sounds instantly. And if it addressed some of teh shortcomings of the original, I'd be even happier.

It isn't coincidence that OB-X is keeping a mark in synth history.

Is it? I only remember it because several of my favourite bands from the 1980s had one. I don't recall it being spectacularly good or anything, although this emulation is pretty damned good.

if you buy a bottle of red wine, and it turns out, when you open it, it's water, you have been misled. Trading Standards would be all over it.....

That's the equivalent of marketing a piece of software as a plugin synth and discovering you had actually bought a file manager. A closer analogy would be buying an expensive bottle of wine and finding out it tasted like a cheap wine. That would be a simple case of buyer beware.

Of course, you or anyone may not care if its accurate, you may just like the sound, buy it and use it. But that's not relevant, you cannot expect ppl to trust you if you release something labelled as an emulation, and it turns out to be "fairly close". Bad for business.

Is that what this is to be labelled as? Shouldn't we wait to see what the marketing spiel says?

[Ingonator]

Does it really matter if it sounds exactly like an OB-X ?

If you want to get the sound of an OB-X,you should buy one...

Like I said earlier,we've travelled down the road a bit further than the stone age,so why should we always keep trying to dig up the past ?

If people want to have OB-X in plugin form, or at least a product which claim to be that - then they expect it every bit 100% accurate. 1:1 clone, indistinguishable etc.

Moreover if this product will deliver OB-X sound (and we have every reason to believe it will because it's Synapse) then "point of using these plugins was to make good sounds" will be delivered by this product. It isn't coincidence that OB-X is keeping a mark in synth history.

The upcoming plugin is based on an OB-Xa, not OB-X which technically is a quite big difference.

OB-X is based on a discrete SEM design while the OB-Xa is based on CEM chips including the CEM 3320 filter chips (2 of those per voice in the OB-Xa and just a single one per voice in OB-8).

Here is a list of CEM chips and the amounts of those chips used in a 8-voice OB-Xa:
- 16x CEM3340 VCO
- 16x CEM3320 VCF
- 2x CEM3360 Dual VCA
- 16x CEM3310 EG

Except the VCA the same chips are used in the SCI Prophet-5 Rev 3 and the SCI Pro One but embedded in a different circuitry resulting in a diffeernt sound and/or features.

[chk071]

Does it really matter if it sounds exactly like an OB-Xa ?

Of course... what's a emulation worth, if it's far from the sound of the emulated device?

Imagine you want to buy a Porsche replica, and the car dealer shows you something which looks like a Ferrari.

[Cinebient]

Does it really matter if it sounds exactly like an OB-Xa ?

Of course... what's a emulation worth, if it's far from the sound of the emulated device?

Imagine you want to buy a Porsche replica, and the car dealer shows you something which looks like a Ferrari.

I would call that a free upgrade

[mrj1nx]

Does it have a state variable filter? Or is it just 2pole and 4 pole lowpass? I hope they implement some solid stereo spread and osc slop parameters. Some under the hood tweaks ala Repro5 would be awesome, also, would love a decent mod matrix, thats something I find is sorely lacking on Repro5. This is def one of few plugin synths on my radar but I'm saving up for a new hardware synth atm.

[Battle Cat]

Does it really matter if it sounds exactly like an OB-Xa ?

Of course... what's a emulation worth, if it's far from the sound of the emulated device?

Imagine you want to buy a Porsche replica, and the car dealer shows you something which looks like a Ferrari.

I would call that a free upgrade

or a bait and switch

[AnX]

Is that what this is to be labelled as? Shouldn't we wait to see what the marketing spiel says?

no need to, Rich has made it quite clear at the beta forum, try looking at the very first post/sub forum title

[RSL369]

Perhaps a solution could be that two different versions of the same product are then released, e.g. an authentic emulation with all the original limitations, for the purists and an extended, more expensive version with additional features (more voices, mod matrix, effects etc.) for those who require more flexibility.
A win win for everyone.

[chk071]

Considering that that would be double the work, it seems like a very bad idea.

I'm sure the synth will feature a lot more than the synth it emulates.

What I'm rather wondering is if Synapse Audio already had a OB-Xa, or if they bought one just for this emulation, which would total to about 10.000 € these days, if I see that correctly... insane oldtimer prices.

[AnX]

Perhaps a solution could be that two different versions of the same product are then released, e.g. an authentic emulation with all the original limitations, for the purists and an extended, more expensive version with additional features (more voices, mod matrix, effects etc.) for those who require more flexibility.
A win win for everyone.

except the dev....

[RSL369]

Not necessarily double the work if it's based on the same engine, same everything.

[fmr]

Perhaps a solution could be that two different versions of the same product are then released, e.g. an authentic emulation with all the original limitations, for the purists and an extended, more expensive version with additional features (more voices, mod matrix, effects etc.) for those who require more flexibility.
A win win for everyone.

What's the point of releasing a crippled version? What does more does less. You can always leave untouched the extras, and restrain yourself to the original features

[AnX]

What I'm rather wondering is if Synapse Audio already had a OB-Xa, or if they bought one just for this emulation, which would total to about 10.000 € these days, if I see that correctly... insane oldtimer prices.

i think they borrowed it, same as the minimoog, not 100% sure

[RSL369]

@fmr
Agreed, but many here obviously want just that.

[AnX]

Not necessarily double the work if it's based on the same engine, same everything.

well, it's not going to happen

there is nothing stopping you using only the original features