Upcoming Synapse OB-Xa: Obsession

[AnX]

Here's the audio http://www.novakill.com/stuff/EMULATORIES.ogg

Ok, had a quick listen, cant tell you what is what right now, but i can tell you #4 sounds the worst of the bunch...

Anyway, they are:

Odyssey
OBSession
Legend
RePro-1
V-Station
Korg Mono/Poly

so I didn't like Repro....

just had no low end... and I didn't even notice you had Odyssey there.... I didn't have a chance to listen again to try and guess what was what

I would rather hear them do filter sweeps. That is much more revealing than static sounds.

I've heard them all do filter sweeps... and more besides, but thats nothing to do with the question or example he put up

[EnGee]

@Bones: Yes I listened to your example more than once, but I couldn't come to a conclusion as I need more playing with, for example a bassline with varied notes length ... etc. Anyway, I have most of the synths in your example, so i gave them a good test

@Yorrrrrr: This means in fact that's impossible to emulate analogue synth from the old days because even if you capture a current state, it keeps changing! Also it's slightly different from machine to another machine, although all of them share the same character.

Well, this made me more tolerant with emulation! Maybe Arturia did a great job in emulating the synth they have after all. Especially, when I test some other synths, they do have snappy and screamy resonance, so why they wouldn't do the same with OBXa! Even the cutoff frequency doesn't close the filter 100% (still leaking, and a lot!).

Thanks for the additional info about Obsession. I'm going to enjoy my synths more now (in addition to Obsession when released )

p.s. I've never owned hardware analogue synth and never played with one, so my conclusions are based on logic not experience.

[AnX]

[BONES]

I've been working up a few covers this week and last night it was the turn of Underpass. I reached for one of my DUNE strings presets for the main riff but this arvo I thought of seeing how well OBSession could manage it. And I got damned close, especially when you consider the DUNE patch I'm using has 8 stacked saws per oscillator. So here it is (OBSession), with backing. The only effects are FireCobra and a brickwall limiter on the master channel. The effects you hear are OBSession's on-board ones.

http://novakill.com/stuff/UnderpassSTRINGZ.ogg

[EnGee]

I've been working up a few covers this week and last night it was the turn of Underpass. I reached for one of my DUNE strings presets for the main riff but this arvo I thought of seeing how well OBSession could manage it. And I got damned close, especially when you consider the DUNE patch I'm using has 8 stacked saws per oscillator. So here it is (OBSession), with backing. The only effects are FireCobra and a brickwall limiter on the master channel. The effects you hear are OBSession's on-board ones.

http://novakill.com/stuff/UnderpassSTRINGZ.ogg

Excellent

[AnX]

I've been working up a few covers this week and last night it was the turn of Underpass. I reached for one of my DUNE strings presets for the main riff but this arvo I thought of seeing how well OBSession could manage it. And I got damned close, especially when you consider the DUNE patch I'm using has 8 stacked saws per oscillator. So here it is (OBSession), with backing. The only effects are FireCobra and a brickwall limiter on the master channel. The effects you hear are OBSession's on-board ones.

http://novakill.com/stuff/UnderpassSTRINGZ.ogg

sounds nice and vintage on my phone, what's doing the bass?

[EnGee]

The bass is fantastic as well! I suspect Dune?!

[SiliconDeath]

What exactly does analog sound like? And how can a soft synth sound analog when it's made up of zeros and ones?

That's like asking how a digital picture can look realistic when it's made of pixels.

It may look realistic (and digital has improved over time) but it still doesn't look like my photos taken with a Kodak camera with film. They're almost too perfect. It's hard to explain but if you've taken photos for a long time (I started in 1974) you can tell the difference.

If you're into digital photography, and like the filmlook that film has, maybe give DxO FilmPack a try. I'm not saying it's the perfect tool, but it's probably the best.

Also if we're talking digital photography in general, the more exposure the image gets the better it will look overall. You can get good photos in very well lit scene with even a smartphone, but it tends to be hard. If you want to strive for perfection, you end up going with higher formats (full frame, or even medium format).

[Ingonator]

Here is an improvisatation using my latest OBsession Pad sound (single patch demo):
OBSession - Pads Demo 01
This is a single instance and no external FXs were used.

This is an audio demo of one of my OBsession Strings patches with the ArtsAcoustic BigRock Phaser added (no other external FXs):
OBSession - Strings + Big Rock Phaser_1
This Strings patch is using the 12dB Bandpass filter.


PS:
So far i created more than 200 patches with OBsession and it would take a very long time to create audio demos for all of them...
Anyway i will publish those patches not included in the factory content as a free download at KVR when the plugin was released.

[EnGee]

Nice demos Ingonator
Can anyone do the Sleepwalk patch (the heavy fat chords)? I know it is done with OB X but this is much more interesting pad (at least for me) than Jump!

[PAK]

This means in fact that's impossible to emulate analogue synth from the old days because even if you capture a current state, it keeps changing! Also it's slightly different from machine to another machine, although all of them share the same character.

Calibration "trim pots", hidden inside the instrument, were the solution to this - designed to reduce any differences between each instruments components. Today's manufacturing is more precise, so newer analogue instruments (just like VST's) have to deliberately incorporate features in order to emulate the sound of older instruments.

Someone posted a picture, of the OB-XA voice board, on this thread or the Arturia one. Each voice board actually has 15 calibration points. So, over 8 voices, that's 120 adjustments! This doesn't include adjustments for other things like the pitch/mod controls, power supply, and trimmers to enable / disable voices, and not forgetting the 8 voice panning controls! So that's a LOT of (mostly hidden) controls

Provided a machine was calibrated, it meant that each instrument (whilst not completely identical) should sound similar. Interestingly, Oberheim recommended only the first voice be precisely tuned by a strobe tuner. So even they recognised, at the time, that tuning voices too perfectly created a less desired sound.

When it comes to emulating things, the main difficulty is actually in the mathematics involved, rather than any differences between different instruments. The more complex the interactions, the harder it is to model something. This is why things like filter resonance, audiorate/FM modulation, and areas where distortion might be introduced, tend to be the areas where more differences may be apparent.

So the whole "my instrument doesn't do it" thing is interesting if, by an amazing coincidence, those things happen to align with many of the things which are harder to model mathematically. But a VST, which implements calibration controls, could be used to reduce differences otherwise - just like the hardware did.

[BONES]

The bass is fantastic as well! I suspect Dune?!

The bass is frickin' awesome, isn't it? It's FBM's free Mono/Fury, which has very quickly risen to near the top of my go-to list, just behind Union (which is a completely different style of synth, obviously).

To provide a bit more detail on the OBSession patch, it uses both oscillators with saw waves and I've taken advantage of the Dual mode to use a second copy of the patch one octave higher than the original patch, so you get two voices per note. Like the OB-Xa, OBSession only allows you to change the Osc and Filter controls, so you can't just load one patch into one side and another patch into the other. That may sound like a limitation but I have found it to be really inspirational, in that you have to put some effort into creating things that work together. It's like the OB-Xa's secret weapon. Trust me, you're gonna love this thing.

[AnX]

Like the OB-Xa, OBSession only allows you to change the Osc and Filter controls, so you can't just load one patch into one side and another patch into the other.

you can in split mode tho

[Ingonator]

Envelope settings can be different too for both parts.

[PAK]

you can in split mode tho

Which is another thing Arturia's instrument misses out on having Roland didn't bother to include it in their (Cloud) Jupiter 8 either - and NO, multiple DAW instances isn't the "same thing". Nice that Obsession has this