U-he repro vs phase plant

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Again, again, again. My Panorama P4 instantly maps 95% of a known RE or VSTi, and when I turn the knobs, it feels like any hardware synth. Why is this so hard to cope with for some hardware entusiasts? They prefer denialism in contrast to asking people with experience. They got to have one straw or another, so they claim some marginal difference no one notice in practise to be essential. Seems like reinforcing silly prejudices is more important than exploring reality, yes? I have Panorama P4, Deepmind 6, Bodyssey, Nord Lead 2 and a bunch of other HWs. Only thing Panorama P4 cannot live up to is my Polivoks because its knobs are pretty oversized.

[jancivil]

"Seems like reinforcing silly prejudices is more important than exploring reality, yes?"
Forget about it, it's KVRtown, Jake

[BONES]

What's different is that it might take a person a moment to remap his/her brain to understand that Knob A does Effect B after a new patch is loaded. My guess is that this second part is what pdxindy was referring to.

Except he's referring to it in the context of Hydrasynth, which doesn't have knob per function and, therefore, doesn't have the same function mapped to the same knob all the time. So he changes the goalposts whenever it suits his argument to do so.

I'd also suggest that if it mattered to you, you'd make sure you always mapped the important parameters to the same knob on your controller. e.g. Knob 1 would always be cutoff, Knob 2 Resonance, etc. Or you'd always map the parameters you want to tweak in the same place. e.g. Knob 1 would always be the first parameter you want to tweak, Knob 2 the second, etc. Much the way you assign things to the Mod Wheel. Then you can let muscle memory take over and it won't matter what synth it is you are actually playing, you can reach blind for the right knob.

Then, of course, there are things like Analog Lab, which is pre-mapped to the knobs on MiniLab (and I imagine their other controllers) and it always works because Arturia only give you a limited number of parameters to access. And when it comes to connectedness, I have never felt as connected to any hardware synth as I do to Equator when I play it with my Seaboard. That is on a completely different level to hardware.

[AnalogGuy1]

@BONES: Right, this is exactly what I do: three sliders dedicated to various parts volume, certain softkeys to start/stop backing tracks or trigger midi loops, and a single "main variable" that is controlled by the mod wheel. It's rare to need more than this performing since I set up the overall EQ in soundcheck....in fact, of my band's 300+ possible songs, I don't think I use any others, although the mod wheel might be mapped to do several different things in different zones.

This is so important when working in venues with a lot of distractions...drunken wedding guest crashes to the floor in front of you, but even in the dark, you still know where to reach to activate the LFO at the end of Just What I Needed.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Nobody wants to read that you cannot do X with your fav gear when that is exactly what you do all the friggin time. “No, you can’t” say the three monkeys and go “nananananana” until you feel like getting it into their head with a hammer. Provocative, it is.

[pdxindy]

I respect the heck out of pdxindy, and I have no idea why BONES launched an ad hominem attack. However, I agree with BONES on the rational portion of his statement: whether a knob is forced to be permanently dedicated to a particular function, or has been temporarily mapped to a function, it's just as immediate to use (within the tolerances of human perception). What's different is that it might take a person a moment to remap his/her brain to understand that Knob A does Effect B after a new patch is loaded. My guess is that this second part is what pdxindy was referring to. That might be a bigger problem for people who are creatively playing with synth sounds (perhaps pdxindy's use-case) than for people who are going through a setlist and have hardwired in their brain that if playing the Cars "Moving in Stereo" that the big knob now controls the morph of the sawtooth to strings (which is more my use-case, and perhaps that of BONES).

I never said a word comparing a single dedicated knob vs a single controller knob manually mapped to a parameter. Someone made that up. I said something about midi controllers not matching the hands-on immediacy of dedicated hardware controls. The reason I said that is because midi controllers are generic and don't have a set of controls that can map 1:1 to different synths.

Take my Moog Matriarch. Show me a midi controller that can match the dedicated UI of this synth. Do you know a midi controller that has approx 40 knobs that are organized into osc, mixer, filter, env, etc. sections? I don't know of one. And of course then there are the 90 patch points which no midi controller would handle.

Some years back, someone made a beautiful controller for Diva, but there's nothing remotely like that I can buy for my favored synths. Various controllers have a set of 8 endless encoders which can auto-map or be manually mapped to different VST synths... but then one can end up with dozens of pages of 8 parameters and tabbing/navigating through that is really tedious. I find the mouse and screen like 10x faster and more fluid than sound design on a controller like that.

So in theory, a midi controller could be as good as a dedicated hardware interface, but in practice, it doesn't come close... just like a generic midi controller doesn't come close to that custom Diva controller. Maybe someday we will be able to make custom midi controllers from some well implemented and supported modular midi hardware.

There is a lot of creative energy expressing itself in eurorack hardware. For example, Acid Rain Maestro is the best hardware interface I've seen to date for making complex MSEG type envelopes. There are various euro-modules that could be guides for developing midi controllers that can handle some of the complex capabilities of todays software synths.

The other direction that could be interesting is a midi controller that docks an iPad Pro or other tablet and where the synth GUI is displayed and the tablet is surrounded by some knobs. There are some things like that being experimented with.

[ghettosynth]

...

[BONES]

Good for you, I just bought a better mouse than the one that came with my computer. It's so good that I don't even use the front panel controls on any of my hardware synths, I patch them all with my keyboard and mouse.

Take my Moog Matriarch.

No, thanks. It doesn't have patch memory, it's a doorstop.

Show me a midi controller that can match the dedicated UI of this synth.

Don't be ridiculous. It's got patch cables, it's the worst possible way to work, which is why they stopped making them that way 40 years ago.

And of course then there are the 90 patch points which no midi controller would handle.

That's because no-one would be dumb enough to buy a MIDI controller that needed patch cables. That said, Korg made one about 20 years ago for the Legacy Collection - a miniaturised MS-20. It was shit.

I find the mouse and screen like 10x faster and more fluid than sound design on a controller like that.

I find the same compared to a hardware synth, especially one with patch cables.

So in theory, a midi controller could be as good as a dedicated hardware interface, but in practice, it doesn't come close...

Actually, most of the time, it's much better because no matter which synth it is, the knobs are in the same place so muscle memory works much better once you get used to it. And then there are Linnstruments and Continuums and Seaboards that absolutely shit on the experience of playing any hardware synth. So if your particular experience has been bad, that's down to you designing it poorly. You need to do better.

just like a generic midi controller doesn't come close to that custom Diva controller.

But what if it does? What if it has much nicer knobs that are easier to get precise values with? What if the spacing of the knobs is more ergonomic? What if its key action is superior? You're only looking at one thing and, for most of us, it's one of the least important aspects of the overall experience. I doubt I spend one-tenth as long patching any given synth as I spend playing it so why prioritise patching over playing? It makes no sense and you only need to look at any pro studio to see the truth of this - front and centre in EVERY modern studio are the computer monitors and a MIDI controller. All the hardware is spread around the periphery because being able to get at the controls is NOT important most of the time. Here's a good example, Junie XL's studio -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aViHFOD2nac

The other direction that could be interesting is a midi controller that docks an iPad Pro or other tablet and where the synth GUI is displayed and the tablet is surrounded by some knobs. There are some things like that being experimented with.

Well, I know there would be at least one knob involved, front and centre, no doubt.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

That said, Korg made one about 20 years ago for the Legacy Collection - a miniaturised MS-20. It was shit.

[Edit: The Korg Legacy Manual says the patching reflects the patches of the MS-20 softsynth, but it never happened in my DAWs at that time: Sonar, Reason and Orion. Only knobs were automapped ]

Another note: Even generic controllers come with a lot of fixed synth maps out of the box, don't they? If I look back a decade, generic controllers always seemed to be released with maps for the most used softsynths. Only thing was that you may have to load them, depending on the amount of ready-to-go memories of the controllers. Well, depending on which controller, you may miss the labels of the functions, but the templates were usually consistent cross softsynths with basics such as cut off, res and envs. My Nektar P4 has a display where functions are labelled relative to softsynth, so no problem for me.

[pdxindy]

The other direction that could be interesting is a midi controller that docks an iPad Pro or other tablet and where the synth GUI is displayed and the tablet is surrounded by some knobs. There are some things like that being experimented with.

I agree with you though, that transmissive screens are not reflective front panels and there is something both gained and lost there. I also think that while that would be a decent compromise, it's still a compromise.

I searched for this kind of holy grail of controllers for years. I contemplated building something several times. The Yamaha RS7000 is laid out like a synth and controls about many of the features of the eLicense era Artuira synths. I used this live for a while and it was definitely better than nothing. The devil is in the details though and so anything less specific than a fixed controller for X ends up feeling like a compromise.

Yeah... that is why I like hardware synths. Each one comes with its own dedicated controller... some more effective in design which is always a consideration of cost vs capability.

I assume there is not much of a market for high end controllers. A modular midi controller system would be expensive and need a lot of smart development. I'd happily pay for it, but there is the question of support and whether such a system would be popular enough to succeed. There have been a few such efforts that didn't go very far.

I'd love a dedicated controller for Bazille.

[E_Anderson]

But: Zebra, or Phase Plant?

[pdxindy]

But: Zebra, or Phase Plant?

Zebra

[vurt]

Nobody wants to read that you cannot do X with your fav gear when that is exactly what you do all the friggin time. “No, you can’t” say the three monkeys and go “nananananana” until you feel like getting it into their head with a hammer. Provocative, it is.

4.
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Screenshot_2021-04-02-14-38-10-351~2.jpg

.
the last one being "do no evil".
ie don't play with your knob.
which on a synth forum seems a bit much.

[chk071]

Again, again, again. My Panorama P4 instantly maps 95% of a known RE or VSTi, and when I turn the knobs, it feels like any hardware synth. Why is this so hard to cope with for some hardware entusiasts?

Probably because the hardware still feels, looks, and operates the same, no matter if you play Synth1 with it, or RePro.

Of course it's a psychological thing. with a hardware synth, the sound comes out of the box, the operation happens on the box, and the box looks different than box XY from another manufacturer, which sounds different.

I don't even want to get into the right or wrong thing. Doubt there is any right or wrong here. Rather what inspires you. Sometimes, I am utterly uninspired of all the software that's sitting somewhere on my harddrive, and think about that it would be nice to have a little box which does all the sound. But then I consider all the things it comes attached with, and the whole inspiration is like a cloud which just got popped.

Probably a good thing though, considering how much money I already spent on software, MIDI controllers, audio interfaces, and studio monitors...

[pdxindy]

repro all the way