U-he repro vs phase plant

[Urs]

I'm torn on this because I only want one keyboard these days. I can get the Hydrasynth now and it's less expensive than the Osmose, but I really want the Osmose and I feel that I will use the actual synth that comes with it more than I'll use a hardware VA.

I feel done waiting for the Osmose. That is not to say I am not enthused for whenever it arrives, but I have avoided getting something like the Hydrasynth with PolyAT for over a year. Not gonna wait anymore.

Also, I have the Continuum, and EaganMatrix is not user friendly for sound design. Haven't tried any sound design in it for over a year. Whenever the Osmose arrives, I'll give the EaganMatrix another go. Who knows, maybe it will just click this time!

I have had the chance to play a prototype of Osmose. We have two on pre-order and we hope to be able to support it to its full potential in our software. It was the most exciting hands-on experience of an instrument I can recall. Instant smile. It better be as good when it arrives and it better be fully accessible to developers like us without violating any trivial patents. If due to trivial patents its full potential can only be accessed by the EaganMatrix, explaining our response here and now would break forum rules.

[SLiC]

I have had the chance to play a prototype of Osmose. We have two on pre-order and we hope to be able to support it to its full potential in our software. It was the most exciting hands-on experience of an instrument I can recall. Instant smile.

Wow- that's very exciting new and great to hear

They have been very quiet on the 'controller mode' support for VSTs (including their own 'Noisy') and I pre-ordered it in the hope that it will be the ultimate MPE 'controller' keyboard as much as the for the EM engine (which is obviously optimised for MPE type expression).

[pdxindy]

I'm torn on this because I only want one keyboard these days. I can get the Hydrasynth now and it's less expensive than the Osmose, but I really want the Osmose and I feel that I will use the actual synth that comes with it more than I'll use a hardware VA.

I feel done waiting for the Osmose. That is not to say I am not enthused for whenever it arrives, but I have avoided getting something like the Hydrasynth with PolyAT for over a year. Not gonna wait anymore.

Also, I have the Continuum, and EaganMatrix is not user friendly for sound design. Haven't tried any sound design in it for over a year. Whenever the Osmose arrives, I'll give the EaganMatrix another go. Who knows, maybe it will just click this time!

I have had the chance to play a prototype of Osmose. We have two on pre-order and we hope to be able to support it to its full potential in our software. It was the most exciting hands-on experience of an instrument I can recall. Instant smile. It better be as good when it arrives and it better be fully accessible to developers like us without violating any trivial patents. If due to trivial patents its full potential can only be accessed by the EaganMatrix, explaining our response here and now would break forum rules.

That is great news! Besides the EaganMatrix being hard to work with, I don't totally love the sound quality of it. If I had, I would have been more enthused to dig in and learn it. Not in all patches, but it tends to have some digital harshness/brittle edge to it that I find unappealing. Not talking about expressive capability, but basic sound quality, I much prefer various VST synths.

My main interest is in using it to control other synths. If u-he synths could fully work with Osmose, including the pressure weighted portamento, that would be amazing!

It seems unimaginable that they wouldn't want that. It only makes the Osmose more desirable, especially since patch design is not at all user friendly on the EaganMatrix.

[SLiC]

It seems unimaginable that they wouldn't want that. It only makes the Osmose more desirable, especially since patch design is not at all user friendly on the EaganMatrix.

Actually Diva and Hive get a name check in this video as working (2.09), so I am sure this is something they will actively promote and support (not least for their own VSTs!). Its only the new pitch slide feature that not shown, but this video was made before that was announced.

https://youtu.be/hJtBCyY0Isc

[Urs]

If u-he synths could fully work with Osmose, including the pressure weighted portamento, that would be amazing!

We're all in for a sore wake up call on trivial patents. It's held by the guys who make the software, not by the Osmose guys.

Good news though, as far as I can see, the patent is from 2006, hence runs out in 2024 I guess. So by the time we have an Osmose around and time enough to implement it, we're free to do as we please.

[pdxindy]

If u-he synths could fully work with Osmose, including the pressure weighted portamento, that would be amazing!

We're all in for a sore wake up call on trivial patents. It's held by the guys who make the software, not by the Osmose guys.

Good news though, as far as I can see, the patent is from 2006, hence runs out in 2024 I guess. So by the time we have an Osmose around and time enough to implement it, we're free to do as we please.

Geez... the guys who make the software don't even sell it. Let me know if you need me to fly to wherever they live and have a talk with them...

[Urs]

Geez... the guys who make the software don't even sell it. Let me know if you need me to fly to wherever they live and have a talk with them...

Won't be necessary. We think we have discovered a way that lets you do "it" without us touching the patent. Like, had we in 1983 released an oscillator module with a phase modulation option, we would not have violated the Yamaha patent for FM, but it wouldn't hold anyone back from buying a few and connecting them any way they want, including modulating the phase of one with the other. That's the tragedy behind trivial software patents IMHO, one can easily come up with a superset of options that put the patent's claim in *data* rather than *algorithm*. I guess that's why one normally can't patent algorithms and mathematical concepts, and those who do, well, I wouldn't.

[pdxindy]

Well, this is not a partucularly diplomatic language, but I am afraid the author is pretty friggin right. If you prefer hardware to software and want to explain it, you better stick to the personal preferences because the worn out generalizations and universals have become way too fallacious...whether they already were or not a decade ago.

Show me the software synth/drum machine plus a midi controller as sonically unique, flexible and hands-on interactive as the Pulsar 23...

Of course you can't, so case closed...

[SLiC]

My teenage kids, friends and musicians who come to record in my little project studio can turn on my hardware synths and play...I don't let them on my computer however!! Real Instruments can be shared, loaned, gigged and generally abused far more than a 'computer' with a USB controller (which may be the perfect solution if its just you making music on your own)

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Show me the software synth/drum machine plus a midi controller as sonically unique, flexible and hands-on interactive as the Pulsar 23...

....and therefore all hardware is better hands on feeling than software to everyone in every possible world?

Maybe you should check that syllogism again, mate


And I do not use drummachines btw. Have my MC909 if I want to go hands on with that, and I am so grown into it that no modern controller nor hardware can compete. But that is a side effect of actually using your gear. Subjectivity, the devil in the classroom. For the time being, I just use my Samplepad as controller for recording percussion in Reason. Lovely hands on feeling already

If your approach to gear is that it is a kind of card game where you can compare objective stats and tell everone what is best for them, it would seem to me that you can't have that much experience with gear, musicans and the diversity of needs that make people buy different gear.

Finally, I do not really like the look of Pulsar 23 and would never buy it, so any comparison with that is worthless to me and cannot compete with my Panorama P4 and Samplepad anyway

[ghettosynth]

Show me the software synth/drum machine plus a midi controller as sonically unique, flexible and hands-on interactive as the Pulsar 23...

....and therefore all hardware is better hands on feeling than software to everyone in every possible world?

I don't think that anyone is saying that. I have tried for years to make the controller+software solution work as well as hardware in terms of interaction and it simply doesn't do the job fully.

Keep in mind here that I'm selling or have sold most of the hardware that I own. I didn't think that plugins where worthy of replacing some of my hardware, except for samplers, until about a decade ago. I'm pretty much all ITB now, but, the experience is different.

For me, I don't find that rotary encoders and feedback LEDs replace pots, they are a compromise. For sound design when I'm working at the front panel, they are fine. However, there is still nothing, for me, that is like playing my SH101 in a live situation. I don't even have to be looking at the thing and my hands know where to go. I know when I'm at the top of the travel of any of the sliders, of which I can play several at the same time, just by feel. The muscle memory learned, per instrument, is substantial and it connects to the learned memories of the sound as well of the visual aspects of the instrument.

I don't do much hardware anymore because of the negative aspects. It takes too much space, it needs too many cables, it requires too much motion in the studio to go from piece to piece, it needs constant maintenance, every instrument is different so if there's a U/I to learn then each has different quirks and on and on.

However, there is a spectrum and you cannot dismiss all of the things that are physically different about hardware vs a flat monitor or a uniform controller as not having value when humans are doing the interaction.

One of the things that has really helped my ITB production is setting up a dedicated controller for (performance) mixing. It is still not the same as using an actual hardware mixer, it has lag, it must be setup for the environment that I'm using, but it's pretty close. It has actual pots, not continuous encoders and I find that necessary. I don't have to look at it to know if one of them is at full travel. Note, though, that this is in between using one controller vs using many controllers or pure hardware. All of that is a part of the spectrum and where you lie on that, where you are most productive, is absolutely going to relate to personal preferences.

I can live with the dedicated performance mix controller instead of using a mixer, or limiting myself to a more general controller like the Maschine or my Push. I can live with sound design being on a screen, but I still think that it's hard to replace some hardware. That's why I'm keeping a small eurorack setup and also why I have some performance hardware that isn't going away.

Yes, the hardware is always better than software argument is dead, but so is the software can replace all hardware argument. Neither are true, absolutely.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

but so is the software can replace all hardware argument. Neither are true, absolutely.

As @Bones suggested, you can equally find software that cannot be replaced with hardware, so unless someone is foolish enough to let this be a question of amount of irreplaceable gear, no side has reason to suffer more than the other, especially since you just can buy both if you feel you need to. Who has ever told you to choose one above the other? It has been a screamingly false premis of decades of Hardware versus Software flamewars. Ever since software saw its first morning, all musicans in my environment have used both. A the end of the day, one man's sushi is another man's sht. It cannot be solved in these pseudo-universals, only with a "to each, his own". However, it is an interesting exercise in objectification of something usually bound to context and personal preference. Like a ongoing failed thought experiment.

[pdxindy]

Show me the software synth/drum machine plus a midi controller as sonically unique, flexible and hands-on interactive as the Pulsar 23...

....and therefore all hardware is better hands on feeling than software to everyone in every possible world?

Those are your words... I never said that.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

No, but you generally act like you are defending universals and myths about hardware instead of just inform people of your own preferences, so they can compare them to their own and others themselves. As if the topic is about some average usability of hardware that can be measured against an average usability of software to see what is best for people nothwithstanding their preferences, needs and culture. It is a hopeless pseudo-objective exercise, and the sides will usually attack their own strawmans about the other side than come to an easy agreement if they held themselves back for some reflection on what is claimed.

[SLiC]

Yes, the hardware is always better than software argument is dead, but so is the software can replace all hardware argument. Neither are true, absolutely.

I'm not sure that argument was made by anyone, but in a project/recording studio where lots of musicians come and go hardware certainly has a lot of advantages on a purely practical basis...I don't want people on my computer!