Upcoming Synapse OB-Xa: Obsession

[zerocrossing]

This place is just for people craving an OB-Xa emulation or looking for ways to waste money on yet another unnecesary VST synthesizer.

So I'll extend the same question to you as well, then: if this is how you feel, why the hell are you wasting your time reading and posting in a synth thread in a synth forum?

I'm not into vintage cars. Do I spend my afternoon posting insults in vintage car forums? Of course not. But that's exactly what your behavior is like here. Are you just that desperate to feel superior to others?

I think you are missing his sarcasm .
He is one of Obsession's beta testers.
rsp

My bad! I've gotten so used to this kind of post on KVR, I can't tell it apart from sarcasm any longer

I got chided by a fairy famous comedian on Twitter today for missing some sarcasm. My reply was, “I’ve learned to never assume people aren’t idiots.”

[AnX]

heres a quick little demo of some patches i made during testing

all sounds OBsession
all FX onboard
one instance per clip
no host automation/arp etc
(44/16 > 192mp3)

http://akadave.epizy.com/OBsession_1.mp3


right click/open in new window

Very nicely done, these patches / the synth sounds great.

I'll be using external fx of course, but many of your sounds certainly show off the synths ability to make wide, dare I say 'phat' sounds -- which I'm assuming is either unison or the 'spread' controls / voice panning, or some combo thereof. Cool!

thank you

[e-crooner]

Maybe because it uses a 2-pole filter by default, while most other analog synths use a 4-pole one.

OB-Xa uses 24dB LP filter, but has (separate) 12dB filter as well. Single voice is (electronically) quite similar to Prophet 5, uses same VCO and VCF chips in very similar configuration (if you stick to 24dB response), VCA is biggest difference.

The OB-X, which is said to have that classic, lush Oberheim sound (and better than the Xa's), only had a 12db filter.

[toonertik]

Myself... I actually love coffee enough to pay attention to what probably seem like minute differences to most people. I can tell when the same roast that I often buy changes. I don’t expect most people to care about it, but I do.

Yup... get that..
I like a brand with a good % of robusta. The beans and ready ground are not the same.

I lived in Fiji for a few years and used to get raw coffee beans (Aribica and Robusta).. my coffe mix was named
"KickstarteR".. no matter what.. you'd get to work in the morning.

[urosh]

I'm quite sure wagtunes was talking about OB-Xa

[excuse me please]

PS Anyway, I passed the test with verve; still no match for my ears.

[toonertik]

I got chided by a fairy famous comedian on Twitter today for missing some sarcasm. My reply was, “I’ve learned to never assume people aren’t idiots.”

I always have problems with those kinda double negatives

is that a QED?

[BONES]

At an exact price point, or even close to Arturia's might stop people from getting Arturia's and getting Synapse instead.

But Arturia don't have a single price point, it depends on what, if any, other products of theirs you own. So what does Synapse need to do? Offer a one-price fits-all, as they normally do, or try to compete by offering discounts to existing customers. It's not a simple matter and once you announce something, you re kind of stuck with it, so I don't see any point in trying to rush it.

And less than 100 votes in your poll is totally insignificant. The 19 people who have indicated they will only buy the Arturia product would barely pay Synapse's bills for a week. You should also have included an option "I will wait and see which one I like more" or "I won't be able to decide until I have tried both", because those options are, I think, what most rational people would choose.

I’m not sure what’s more fascinating to me. The fact that you spent years with controllers who’s primary purpose is MPE and couldn’t find a use for it, or that you bought one pretty expensive controller, found MPE useless, and then got another.

That's because you're underlying assumption is incorrect. The primary purpose of a Roli Seaboard is to offer their 5 Dimensions of Touch. That's the headline, MPE is just a minor consideration. I don't even have it switched on most of the time. The Seaboard Block is my favourite keyboard to play, ever. I just prefer it to a normal keyboard. Even if it didn't do the 5D thing, I'd probably still want one, although I wouldn't have been willing to pay as much without the 5D.

They all have Saw Waves, Pulse Waves PWM, and a noise oscillator. But, gee, I dunno, folks in the 70s and 80s didn't say "hey, anybody notice all these synths are exactly the same? Guess we only need one of them!", and likewise we don't say that now.

Actually, I think a lot of people said exactly that. I think we were mostly drawn to one thing or another because of the features on offer, not because of the sound. If you listen to that blind test video, those are all sounds you could probably do equally well on any synth with the features you need to make them. Back in the day I had a big preference for Korg synths. They did the job I wanted them to do and to me they had a better sound than the Roland stuff but that didn't stop me buying a Roland synth if it was cheaper and had the features I wanted. By the same token, I never liked the MiniMoog because of it's filter. I couldn't have told you why, I just didn't like it when I had played around with an old one in a shop. It was only 10 years or so that I worked out what it was about the filter I didn't like. Back in the day I didn't look at things so forensically, I just tried it and if I liked it, good, and if I didn't, bad.

You know what I find very strange. And obviously everybody hears things differently. In all my years of buying and listening to synths (and I did own not 1 but 2 Oberheim synths in my day) I have never heard any synth that has that classic Oberheim sound.

SimSynth 2. It used to be a companion instrument to early versions of Fruityloops and I often feel that OBSession is a great SS2 emulation because I am far more familiar with its sound than I am with any Oberheim synth.

Sorry, for some reason I missed the quote notification.
I was referring to simple polyphonic expression of MPE controllers.
Random example:

In that video you could achieve all the MPE effects he shows with a simple keyboard split between the left and right hand. It's the 5D touch that makes it awesome, not MPE. They are two different things and you can have one without the other. That said, the first little demo in the video is probably the most compelling use of MPE I have seen, in that you'd need a pedal or a breath controller or a third hand to do the pitch bend without MPE. Still it also shows that for 90% of the time, it's 5D that does the job, not MPE, in that he moves all his fingers up the keys together.

you get the ability to emphasize specific voices

You mean like polyphonic aftertouch, which we've had for more than 40 years.

Each note/voice pressed during chords gets its own life, they don't move as a whole.

Which you can achieve with velocity which, again, has been around forever. MPE brings only incremental improvement, whereas 5D is a revolution.

[Noumena]

Wtf, Bones. You just couldn’t be more upside down on the deal with MPE. Nearly Everything you say about it is obviously and simply incorrect and misinformed.

[BONES]

Yet you are unable to provide even a single counter-argument. Hardly an effective refutation.

[Niowiad]

Sorry, for some reason I missed the quote notification.
I was referring to simple polyphonic expression of MPE controllers.
Random example:

In that video you could achieve all the MPE effects he shows with a simple keyboard split between the left and right hand. It's the 5D touch that makes it awesome, not MPE. They are two different things and you can have one without the other. That said, the first little demo in the video is probably the most compelling use of MPE I have seen, in that you'd need a pedal or a breath controller or a third hand to do the pitch bend without MPE. Still it also shows that for 90% of the time, it's 5D that does the job, not MPE, in that he moves all his fingers up the keys together.

you get the ability to emphasize specific voices

You mean like polyphonic aftertouch, which we've had for more than 40 years.

Each note/voice pressed during chords gets its own life, they don't move as a whole.

Which you can achieve with velocity which, again, has been around forever. MPE brings only incremental improvement, whereas 5D is a revolution.

Keyboard splitting between right and left hand won't do anything like that.
Each finger/note/voice is controlling independent modulation amounts, not each hand (or keyboard split zone).

Either the synth supports polyphonic expression (Obsession), or doesn't (OB-Xa V), regardless of having been introduced as a concept 40 or 100 years ago.

[tony10000]

Yet you are unable to provide even a single counter-argument. Hardly an effective refutation.

I love BONES. He is the KVR resident steamroller!

[BONES]

Keyboard splitting between right and left hand won't do anything like that.
Each finger/note/voice is controlling independent modulation amounts, not each hand (or keyboard split zone).

Did you bother to watch the video? 90% of the time he moves all his fingers together, both gliding up the keys and wobbling them on the keys, so MPE isn't necessary. Where he does move things independently, he moves his left hand differently to his right. Therefore, a keyboard split, two instances of the same instrument playing the same patch, would achieve the same thing. So supporting MPE is not something anyone should care too much about because it won't actually allow you to do anything you can't do without it, unless you can show us something that I have not seen before that actually makes MPE worth worrying about.

[Noumena]

Teaching you about technology isn’t something I’d do for free, Bones.

[Noumena]

Keyboard splitting between right and left hand won't do anything like that.
Each finger/note/voice is controlling independent modulation amounts, not each hand (or keyboard split zone).

Did you bother to watch the video? 90% of the time he moves all his fingers together, both gliding up the keys and wobbling them on the keys, so MPE isn't necessary. Where he does move things independently, he moves his left hand differently to his right. Therefore, a keyboard split, two instances of the same instrument playing the same patch, would achieve the same thing. So supporting MPE is not something anyone should care too much about because it won't actually allow you to do anything you can't do without it, unless you can show us something that I have not seen before that actually makes MPE worth worrying about.

False! And so utterly and obviously so that I wonder if you’ve ever actually gotten polyphonic expression working. Anyone who has would know better.