ArcSyn Rooolz!

[AnX]

That is really not nothing...

double negative

[AnX]

BTW, thanks all for keeping the ArcSyn thread where people are more likely to see it. I actually started work on a new skin for it last night, something I've been threatening to do for nearly a year now.

if def needs one, the current one is terrible... tho knowing how you like to make things even smaller, i doubt it will be much use to me.

the text on the current one is unreadable in places, i wouldnt even dl the demo based on the web image

[Noumena]

Far and away the least honest post I've seen of yours. Your memory must not be what you think it is. Enjoy life under the bridge.

[MMaarrkk]

Some GUI improvements would definitely be welcome.

[Jorgeelalto]

IIRC they are working on their next synth? I don't remember where I read it (prob. this forum), so I guess they are taking a new approach with UIs. Me, I really liked the 3.0 skin, when they made it resizable and had to change the squarish font... I liked that font.

[BONES]

if def needs one, the current one is terrible...

There are actually three skins that ship with ArcSyn, one of which was made by SatyaTunes. Sadly, they all use the same layout, only the graphics are different. But I'm hopeful of creating more space by making the knobs smaller wherever I can so I can separate the different sections better.

[_leras]

Would anyone be kind enough to share what types of sounds they are using ArcSyn for - or what types of sounds they gravitate towards when using it?

So far - in terms of sound - this thread has only said 'sounds good' - but no one has really gone deep on what they have ended up using it for, or what things they really like about the sounds. So would be great if anyone wants to share.

.

[pdxindy]

The point is that my workaround will work for every single use case for MPE that I have ever seen described or demonstrated.

Slide a G chord up to an Am... no can do unless you have MPE.

I've posted a dozen other use cases (in various threads where you have made the same or similar point) where MPE is needed (for realtime use) and your workaround would be incapable of accomplishing it.

MPE is awesome and has become irreplaceable for me.

Exactly! You don't need everything you own to be MPE capable, it's just something that might be nice to have if it's available. Which is to say that you can get plenty out of a Linnstrument or a Roli Seaboard without having to worry about every single plugin you own supporting MPE, which is all I have ever wanted to point out, so as not to put people off who might be worried that if they bought one it might not be much good to them.

Agreed (with couple caveats)... In my own case, I already have enough non MPE plugins that I want any new synth I buy to be MPE capable. It is not an absolute requirement, but it weighs a lot in my decision. There are so many excellent softsynths these days that I can be picky about it. The convenience of having MPE support instead of having to use multiple instances becomes significant when one has so many great tools.

My host (Bitwig) makes it easy to setup multiple instances of a non-MPE synth and automatically route each incoming note to the next instance. Not all hosts make it easy or even possible to use a non MPE synth this way.

[Echoes in the Attic]

What your missing is months of conversation where I have explained repeatedly that you can do exactly what you describe with two instances of the synth and a keyboard split, on a single MIDI channel. It is far more elegant than using all 16 MIDI channels. Of course, you definitely need the fancy controller because it's extra "dimensions of touch" facilitate the behaviour. That said, it's much easier to let your host play the chords while you play the solo (and I'm all about the easy), especially when all you have is a Seaboard Block, which has exactly two octaves of keys and not one key more.

I think it might come down to the fact that you guys have so little experience when it comes to finding your own solutions to the limitations of your equipment that you need these things to be done for you. When all you have are two TB303s and a TR707 to help you play a song, you don't really have much choice other than to find your own ways of getting around the limitations of your set-up to get things done.

What you are missing/ignoring is that in every thread where you make these same ridiculous arguments, people who know better come in and destroy your arguments entirely, in order to reduce the spread of your misinformation and misunderstandings.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to grasp that other people find great use in things you don’t, and that doesn’t mean that something isn’t useful. It’s clear based in your workarounds and setup that you believe to be equivalent, that you have a very limited understanding of the capabilities of MPE and keep demonstrating that your particular use case is much more limited than others. We have been through the specifics countless times.

To sum up, stop being so damn insecure that you use these tools in a more restricted way than others. You don’t need to justify your particular use case by claiming that everyone else’s use and appreciation of more advanced functionality is misplaced or unnecessary. It’s just sad.

I will also agree though that not all synths need to be mpe. I might use it a quarter of the sounds in a given track.

[zerocrossing]

Who would even care about that shit? Life is not a popularity contest and being popular with the dunderheads around here is definitely not something any sane person would desire.

I can’t even begin to know where to start on how off you are on every single level.

Of course you can't because you'd have to either say things you know aren't true or just make stuff up.
But to do what you described, you'd need the patch on your right hand to respond to aftertouch and the patch on your left hand to ignore it. Some glide on the left hand will have your chords sliding from one to the next. Job done, no MPE in sight. I was doing exactly that kind of thing 30-odd years ago. Not with aftertouch but so that I could use the mod wheel on what I was playing with my right hand and not have it affect what I was playing with my left. And before you ask, long release on the chords gave me time to use the mod wheel. Trust me, it works, it's simple to set up and 5D touch makes it easier to actually do. Not to give anything away, but the OB-Xa was pretty much built to make it easy to do that kind of stuff. It let you play poly chords with your left hand and a unison lead version of the same sound with your right.

It doesn't matter how many times/months you repeatedly explain the same incorrect statement... it still isn't true. 2 instances and a keyboard split does not MPE make. You being satisfied with that option, in no way makes the two comparable.

It's not about me being satisfied. As I've said, I never play with both hands any more, I have to hold a microphone in my other hand and I have a computer to play everything if I need it to. And you're also correct that it isn't as versatile as MPE but that's not the point. The point is that my workaround will work for every single use case for MPE that I have ever seen described or demonstrated. So unless/until someone can show me something musical, something you might actually want to do, that you can only do by swallowing up 16 MIDI channels with MPE, then I remain right and you are wrong. That's as simple as it is.

Also, MPE does not need to use 16 midi channels. In a couple seconds I can configure my Linnstrument to use whatever number of midi channels I want for a specific case.

Then for the next case you have to change it again, and the one after that. Hardly a solution, unless you can save it with a patch? With Roli you'd have to do it manually every time through the Dashboard. Much easier to keep MPE turned off.

I can make any synth MPE capable in my host.

Exactly! You don't need everything you own to be MPE capable, it's just something that might be nice to have if it's available. Which is to say that you can get plenty out of a Linnstrument or a Roli Seaboard without having to worry about every single plugin you own supporting MPE, which is all I have ever wanted to point out, so as not to put people off who might be worried that if they bought one it might not be much good to them.

BTW, thanks all for keeping the ArcSyn thread where people are more likely to see it. I actually started work on a new skin for it last night, something I've been threatening to do for nearly a year now.

You sound like an idiot. Are you an idiot? If you’re not, you should shut up about things that you clearly do not understand. Basically, you’re saying that a bunch of super smart people, like Roger Linn, designed instruments for an MPE standard that has no point, and you’re the only person with the ability to see that. Do you also go on home improvement forums and tell people they shouldn’t own hammers because that work can be done with a ratchet wrench in most cases?

I don’t care that you don’t understand MPE. (You don’t... at all) I won’t be sad if ArcSyn never gets MPE... though it would be really nice. It’s an amazing synth that has a modulation sequencer that is unlike any other (to my knowledge. The mod sequencer on it’s own wouldn’t be enough to get me to buy it, but the whole instrument sounds good and has a lot of the types of features that I like.) I don’t know what it takes for a developer to include MPE. It may be a ton of work to please not a ton of users, so I get why many synths don’t have it, but I do see synths like Surge, that are open source and free, that got it. My guess is, when developers include it, it’s because they understand and use it themselves, or are also selling MPE compatible controllers (Roli, Madrona, Haken).

But really dude, you sound like a person who makes music with MPCs and x0x boxes complaining about people who like a synth with a keyboard. Sure, you can make music without a traditional keyboard, but just know that you are being critical about something that you don’t have much understanding of beyond a purely superficial level.

The correct response to this post is, “Yeah, I guess I don’t really understand MPE, so I’ll bow out of this conversation.”

[BONES]

Would anyone be kind enough to share what types of sounds they are using ArcSyn for - or what types of sounds they gravitate towards when using it?

I've mostly been using it to replace Wasp basslines and it does a creditable job. The filter is fat and squelchy and the oscillators have plenty of oomph. Wasp is something we used in every single song we ever made in Orion so when we moved to Cubase it left a huge hole in our sound. I tried everything I had - DUNE, Hive, Pigments, Thorn - and none of them did as good a job as ArcSyn.

It also does some decent string pad type sounds and the LFO/Mod Sequencer thing gives it the ability to do a lot of really weird stuff or for some really good motion sequence kind of stuff. Another thing I have noticed when going through the presets is how often a really interesting timbre is made very simply. e.g. The Feedback Lead patch has quite a different and interesting character but it's just one osc with a pulse wave.

If I had to describe it in terms of what else is out there that you might be familiar with, it's like they took all the best parts of the V/A section in DUNE and added a heap of the really cool stuff from Thorn, without losing any of the sound quality of those synths. In terms of capability, it is not a million miles away from Hive 2, except it swaps the wavetable stuff for a massive selection of interesting oscillator waveforms. But I think it definitely belongs in the same class as DUNE, Thorn and Hive. That it's around half the price of those synths makes it the bargain of the century.

[BONES]

I don’t care that you don’t understand MPE.

Of course I do, it's not like it's tricky or anything. It's quite straightforward. The problem I have is that too many people talk about MPE controllers as though without MPE support, any given piece of software is useless for your Roli or Linnstrument or whatever, which is far from the case. MPE is just the icing on the cake, there is plenty you can do without it and there are plenty of ways you can get MPE type functionality without actual MPE support.

I notice that at no time have you, or anyone else, been able to show that the workarounds I've offered won't work. That's because they do work and have worked for 40 years. MPE just offers a different approach. Yes, it definitely offers a lot more but the thing I have noticed is that most of what it does offer over other workarounds isn't terribly useful to actual musicians. And that's how this all kicked off - I mentioned that I've never seen a demo that couldn't be achieved with other workarounds and instead of somebody pointing me to a demo that showed something useful that only MPE could provide, people just got their backs up as though I'd kicked their f**king dog. And you know what? After a while that gets very tedious, like trying to explain every day to a 5 year-old why it needs to eat its vegetables.

The correct response to this post is, “Yeah, I guess I don’t really understand MPE, so I’ll bow out of this conversation.”

I'm sure that would work for you, because you wouldn't have to worry about your preconceptions being wrong but it would also be inaccurate. When I bought my first Roli I was as excited as anyone about the possibilities of MPE because I didn't really know enough about it. I learned from experience that the real magic was in the 5D touch experience and that MPE wasn't really adding a whole lot beyond that.

For me, personally, it adds absolutely nothing because the only time I play two handed it is with each hand on a different keyboard, playing a different instrument, and I only ever play mono lines on my Seaboard. But I don't walk through life filtering out everything that doesn't apply to me personally, I am able to see beyond my own self-interest. I can see perfectly well everything that MPE is capable of and what it has to offer and, honestly, it's not that much compared to what the 5D touch experience offers without MPE.

Why that concerns me is that, like you, I don't know how hard it is to implement MPE support in a softsynth but I can see how easy it is to support 5D touch and it shits me that the two things get lumped in together because MPE might require a whole rebuild of the automation/modulation system for all I know. OTOH, 5D support only needs one or two MIDI cc's to be added to the existing mod system in a synth and the Seaboard can take care of the rest itself. So by linking them we are probably holding up 5D support that could be added easily without needing to even justify the effort. e.g. Legend manages 5D support just by adding CC74 to it's little mod matrix (called "Timbre") and increasing the maximum pitch bend range to +/-48. With velocity and aftertouch it gives everyone the most important 4 of the 5 "D"s for almost zero effort on the dev side.

So I figure if we stop asking for something hard, and instead ask for something easy, we might see a lot more progress than we've had to date. Surely you can appreciate the benefit of that?

[Noumena]

"I only play mono lines." Well, folks. There you have it.

[zerocrossing]

I don’t care that you don’t understand MPE.

Of course I do, it's not like it's tricky or anything. It's quite straightforward. The problem I have is that too many people talk about MPE controllers as though without MPE support, any given piece of software is useless for your Roli or Linnstrument or whatever, which is far from the case. MPE is just the icing on the cake, there is plenty you can do without it and there are plenty of ways you can get MPE type functionality without actual MPE support.

I notice that at no time have you, or anyone else, been able to show that the workarounds I've offered won't work. That's because they do work and have worked for 40 years. MPE just offers a different approach. Yes, it definitely offers a lot more but the thing I have noticed is that most of what it does offer over other workarounds isn't terribly useful to actual musicians. And that's how this all kicked off - I mentioned that I've never seen a demo that couldn't be achieved with other workarounds and instead of somebody pointing me to a demo that showed something useful that only MPE could provide, people just got their backs up as though I'd kicked their f**king dog. And you know what? After a while that gets very tedious, like trying to explain every day to a 5 year-old why it needs to eat its vegetables.

The correct response to this post is, “Yeah, I guess I don’t really understand MPE, so I’ll bow out of this conversation.”

I'm sure that would work for you, because you wouldn't have to worry about your preconceptions being wrong but it would also be inaccurate. When I bought my first Roli I was as excited as anyone about the possibilities of MPE because I didn't really know enough about it. I learned from experience that the real magic was in the 5D touch experience and that MPE wasn't really adding a whole lot beyond that.

For me, personally, it adds absolutely nothing because the only time I play two handed it is with each hand on a different keyboard, playing a different instrument, and I only ever play mono lines on my Seaboard. But I don't walk through life filtering out everything that doesn't apply to me personally, I am able to see beyond my own self-interest. I can see perfectly well everything that MPE is capable of and what it has to offer and, honestly, it's not that much compared to what the 5D touch experience offers without MPE.

Why that concerns me is that, like you, I don't know how hard it is to implement MPE support in a softsynth but I can see how easy it is to support 5D touch and it shits me that the two things get lumped in together because MPE might require a whole rebuild of the automation/modulation system for all I know. OTOH, 5D support only needs one or two MIDI cc's to be added to the existing mod system in a synth and the Seaboard can take care of the rest itself. So by linking them we are probably holding up 5D support that could be added easily without needing to even justify the effort. e.g. Legend manages 5D support just by adding CC74 to it's little mod matrix (called "Timbre") and increasing the maximum pitch bend range to +/-48. With velocity and aftertouch it gives everyone the most important 4 of the 5 "D"s for almost zero effort on the dev side.

So I figure if we stop asking for something hard, and instead ask for something easy, we might see a lot more progress than we've had to date. Surely you can appreciate the benefit of that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning ... ger_effect

[Noumena]

So I figure if we stop asking for something hard, and instead ask for something easy, we might see a lot more progress than we've had to date. Surely you can appreciate the benefit of that?

I would love a show of hands for people that see any benefit whatsoever from your quite extensive commentary on the full breadth and depth of your unique understanding the technology of MPE and how it could apply to... anything.