Steinberg Backbone - Drum Re-synthesizer

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Most Welcome.. Alas I dont' have other DAWs to check.
rsp
sound sculptist

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Is the ram usage low enough that many instances in a drum container would work for medium powered systems?

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Echoes in the Attic wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 2:40 pm Is the ram usage low enough that many instances in a drum container would work for medium powered systems?
I’d be interested to know this too.

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ozinga wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 10:31 am I guess drag/drop audio files from arrangement page to Backbone works only in Cubendo?
Works fine in Reaper.

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renasent wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 5:23 pm
Echoes in the Attic wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 2:40 pm Is the ram usage low enough that many instances in a drum container would work for medium powered systems?
I’d be interested to know this too.
Yes, really cpu efficient.

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renasent wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 5:23 pm
Echoes in the Attic wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 2:40 pm Is the ram usage low enough that many instances in a drum container would work for medium powered systems?
I’d be interested to know this too.
I just tested it on Cubase 10.5.20 in OX 10.14.6

Using Apple's Activity Monitor.

Empty Cubase 413 MB
One instance of an Empty Backbone 580MB
Four instances of Empty Backbone 731MB

One Instance of Backbone with Transition 02 preset 633 MB
Four instances of Backbone with Transition 02 preset 822MB

rsp

(Transition 02 preset (uses two layers of samples over 10seconds long) with one Noise Layer Each)
sound sculptist

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^Thanks. Not too bad, though not super light on ram.

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Echoes in the Attic wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 6:12 pm ^Thanks. Not too bad, though not super light on ram.
You can always drag the drums you create into a more efficient sampler if that's a problem for you.
It's so easy to build completely unique drums and drag them anywhere.

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I know this would be really under-utilizing it, but I'm curious how good it would be at emulating classic synth drum sounds like the 909 snare or toms, where perhaps there is a mix element between the tone and noise (e.g. snare), or where resynthesized hits from a good sample might have more realistic pitch shifting than you'd get with a sample, more like how the original behaved (e.g. 909 kick or toms).

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Sampleconstruct wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 11:57 am
ericj23 wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 8:41 am
Sampleconstruct wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 8:39 am
ericj23 wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 7:52 am I can't see any real reason this could not be used for tuning/mangling drum loops - anyone got any experience of this? The fact that they don't do this in the videos makes me wonder if there is some flaw in it
Sure, you can tempo sync loops fine with the spectral oscillator in sync mode, unfortunately envelope curves can't be looped.
Can you draw complex envelopes or are they ASDR?

PS thanks for answering my questions - it just isn't the Steinberg way to produce a demo!
Yes, the envelopes are multi point MSEGs actually, you can draw any shape and as many steps as you want, tempo synced or not.
Can certain points be assigned to either be a loop or a release stage?
I

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TIMT wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 6:35 pm
Sampleconstruct wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 11:57 am
ericj23 wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 8:41 am
Sampleconstruct wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 8:39 am
ericj23 wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 7:52 am I can't see any real reason this could not be used for tuning/mangling drum loops - anyone got any experience of this? The fact that they don't do this in the videos makes me wonder if there is some flaw in it
Sure, you can tempo sync loops fine with the spectral oscillator in sync mode, unfortunately envelope curves can't be looped.
Can you draw complex envelopes or are they ASDR?

PS thanks for answering my questions - it just isn't the Steinberg way to produce a demo!
Yes, the envelopes are multi point MSEGs actually, you can draw any shape and as many steps as you want, tempo synced or not.
Can certain points be assigned to either be a loop or a release stage?
There is no looping at all within the envelopes.

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Really going to have to buy this. I’m mainly interested for the sound design possibilities with straightforward workflow.

Second reason - and this is something I have been looking for since sampling began - is that with Backbone, finally static drum/perc samples can be animated to inject some analog style life into them.

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I decided to get it. Drag and drop works well in both directions on Ableton Live 10 (OS X but I can't see why it wouldn't on Windows as well). Logic Pro? Drag out works but you can't drag back into the instrument - or at least I haven't found a setting that will let it work. (But dragging into Sampler in Logic works, so it looks as though the Steinberg API doesn't talk Logic DnD).

The resynthesis module is a lot of fun. However, there are some UI choices that aren't great for a layering instrument. The biggest issue is that you have to click on each sample's waveform box to drill down into a layer where you can set note-on delays. This means a lot of clicky-clicky when trying to line up FX on a timeline and you have to keep drilling down, back up and scrolling down the list to get them all in order. For this: DAW Timeline 1 Backbone 0. It's a bit daft when you consider you can access basic controls for all the other functions are on the top level but a really important one for layering is buried.

I may simply have missed it as I haven't had long with the plugin but a time-stretch mode would be handy as, if you're fine-tuning a whoosh and want to hear how it sounds pitched up or down, all your note delays are suddenly out of whack with regular sample playback. Doing the same in Kontakt is fiddly but at least it's there.

OTOH, with all the modifiers, you can multisample some crazy hits out of this thing with a bit of planning.

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telecode wrote: Thu May 28, 2020 9:28 pm
danfi wrote: Thu May 28, 2020 8:40 pm
chk071 wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 4:36 pm
danfi wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 3:53 pm I already see how Steinberg is going to add Backbone LE to Cubase 11. Then, charge Cubase users 50 euros for the full version and the ability to import own samples into the plugin.
Would that be so bad? The full version costs 149 €.
Bundling a 600 euro DAW with bunch of useless demo versions of their plugins is kinda lame. Same thing they did with Padshop. Who want's a grannular synth which you can't use your own samples with?
you can load your own files in PadShop2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSPRQc7674g
yes, In Padshop 2, they only added (realized their mistake) it in the latest version of Cubase. The first version didn't have sample import.

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Smapti wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 7:38 am Correct, you can't set velocity ranges for different layers. Amplitude (& some other useful parameters, such as sample start position) does have velocity sensitivity, and you can invert the sensitivity; so as you mention, you can control layer volumes that way.
I had requested inverted (I called it negative) velocity sensitivity for amplitude (and filter) on Steinberg's Backbone forum earlier today. Is inverted sensitivity already possible for volume then?

https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewto ... 2&t=190592
Windows 10. Asus X99-Pro i7 6950X 10 Core 3GHz (Overclocked to 3.5GHz). Corsair DDR4 64GB Vengeance LPX 2400MHz. RME RayDAT. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. UAD2 Quad+Octo. Reaper. A couple of plugins.

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