Yamaha-SY99 Plugin?

[gearwatcher]

Interesting. Here's what Gospelmusicians said about the library (from the Gospelmusician.com's site):
"Since the SY99 contained one of the most sophisticated and advanced FM engines (AFM and RCM) of any of the Yamaha keyboards, we could not replicate this. In fact no one really can. So in order to compensate, we have included a re-creation of the the original 128 factory presets from the actual hardware by using sampling, synthesis, and sophisticated UVI scripting techniques"

A big oof. Bold claim that reeks of "I don't know what I am talking about but it sounds great while bigging my product up".

Let's see what Yamaha has to say about it:

At that time, Yamaha had actually developed a digital filter capable of reproducing the behavior of an analog one, a feature that made its long awaited debut in our SY77 digital synthesizer in 1989. The SY77 was equipped with both an AWM tone generator and an FM tone generator, both of which could be used together with the digital filter to sculpt sound for remarkable levels of expression. These two new approaches to tone generation were christened Advanced Wave Memory 2 (AWM2) synthesis and Advanced Frequency Modulation (AFM) synthesis, respectively. The SY77 made it possible to create exciting sounds using a hybrid-like combination of sampling and FM, and also featured many other groundbreaking functions—for example, the PCM waves of the AWM2 engine could even be used as operator waves in the AFM tone generator.

The digital filter's cutoff frequency and resonance parameters could also be controlled using the keyboard's velocity and aftertouch, and the combination of all of these features together was referred to as the Realtime Convolution & Modulation (RCM) system. With its smooth digital filter and combination of both PCM and FM—the two giants of digital tone-generation of the time—the SY77 seemed almost too good to be true upon its release, and went on to epitomize the advanced state of synthesizer technology of the 1990s.

We already knew that AWM2 was sample+synthesis i.e. the big upgrade to AWM (v1) was digital IIR filter in the signal path -- kind of like every sampler/rompler in the 90s and every software one ever.

AFM was basically the ability to apply FM to samples or use samples as FM sources, and then route the results through a filter.

Finally, RCM, in the end, is the name for synthesis engine in which it's possible to control the filter cutoff and resonance with velocity and aftertouch, on top of AFM, and have PCM and/or AFM as parallel layers (i.e. "partials" in Roland/Korg/Yamaha parlance).

So kind of like these modern Wavetable synths like Serum, but with normal PCM instead of wavetable craziness (which is actually lacking in the market, as are multi-layer sample+synthesis ones that aren't preset jockey romplers).

[fmr]

AFM was basically the ability to apply FM to samples or use samples as FM sources, and then route the results through a filter.

Actually, AFM is not that. It's just the same six operatot FM, but with more algorithms, more waveforms, and the posibility tio create your own algorithm

Finally, RCM, in the end, is the name for synthesis engine in which it's possible to control the filter cutoff and resonance with velocity and aftertouch, on top of AFM, and have PCM and/or AFM as parallel layers (i.e. "partials" in Roland/Korg/Yamaha parlance).

Again, that's not RCM. RCM is the possibility to route the output of an AWM element into one (or more) AFM operators of an AFM element, and have the sample modulating the carrier(s) connected to it. It wouldn't make sense to call a synth engine capable of "control the filter cutoff and resonance with velocity and aftertouch" (which, BTW, is something Yamaha already featured much earlier in the CS80, for example) as RCM. That would be silly. RCM stands for "Realtime Convolution and Modulation".

The layers are just that... LAYERS. You already had two in the DX1 and the DX7II. You had the same two in the SY77/SY99, complemented with two PCM (but just on the last sixteen presets of each bank - the first 48 are limited to just two elements). In these last 16 slots of each bank, besides the possibility to have 2 AFM + 2 AWM, you could also have 4 AFM or 4 AWM element presets.

[gearwatcher]

I mean I literally quoted Yamaha on that, and there is a link also.

[fmr]

I mean I literally quoted Yamaha on that, and there is a link also.

Look at the image posted in the article you linked. RCM is clearly explained in the picture:

RCM.png

[felis]

....Indeed, strange for, I think the only legendary synthesizer company that owns a DAW software company (Steinberg).
rspo

Yamaha bought Steinberg, and I think Yamaha is letting Steinberg do most of their software stuff.
Steinberg makes a lot of good soft synths, sample libraries, and so on:
https://www.steinberg.net/vst-instruments/

[zvenx]

I know.. I have been using Cubendo since 2001/2002.
But still, whilst for instance I think halion sonic does have some of the motif samples library, it is not a motif vsti, by any stretch.

rsp

[4damind]

I don't know if there is really that much interest in a SY emulation? I don't find the SY so exciting that I need an emulation (I own a SY99 myself).

[fmr]

I don't know if there is really that much interest in a SY emulation? I don't find the SY so exciting that I need an emulation (I own a SY99 myself).

Well... You are the first SY99 owner I see that are not interested in having a software emulation.

I am also an owner of a SY99 (and an expanded TG77) and would be very happy to have a software version (at least to be able to recreate all my older projects without having to go back to the hardware).

[ghettosynth]

The M in RCM is for modulation which describes modulating FM sounds with Samples. The following article from 1990 is interesting because it paints something of a picture of how quaint acronyms being used to describe synthesis techniques were so prevalent in synth marketing in the early days of digital synthesizers.

https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sy77 ... ttons/5757

So, sure, the CS80 had filter modulation, but the SY77/99 were some of the first FM synths to incorporate resonant filters with per-voice modulation into the voice engine. Compare, for example, the the Korg M1 from that era which had really simple filters. This was the wild west of DSP filtering algorithms in commercial synthesizers. (emphasis mine)

Unfortunately for synthesizer designers, two things are difficult to achieve in real time: smooth and fast sweeping resonant low-pass digital filters, and meaningful alterations to sampled sounds. This is why you normally find simple filtering and enveloping on most S+S instruments, but little in the way of more complex processing.

Yamaha have considerable experience in the design of digital filters (the DEQ equaliser and TX16W sampler, for example) and recent advances in the mathematics and implementation of filters have allowed the SY77's filter to generate the same resonant filtering effects as the old analogue VCFs. Further, the addition of samples to FM allows the samples to be used as modulators within the FM algorithms themselves, and this allows very complex changes to be made to the sounds, far beyond simple enveloping. These two techniques are known as 'Convolution' and 'Modulation'.

I think that this nicely captures the state of mind at the end of the 80s. We take it for granted today that we can easily have real time modulation of filter sweeps, but at the end of the 80s in an all digital synthesizer this was a bit more challenging. So while it seems a bit silly to just give real-time resonant filters with modulation a fancy name, it wasn't any sillier than inventing a name like Linear Arithmetic Synthesis to describe the simple mixing/amplitude modulation of samples and synth tones in the D50.

[fmr]

That article is interesting, and you (and the article's author) may be right in what concerns the filter, but audio convolution is NOT filtering (not "that kind" of filtering): https://cmtext.indiana.edu/synthesis/ch ... lution.php

The way it was explained back then (even in the SY manual, which is basically the same way quoted in the picture) I always interpreted it as "a kind of" convolution, as it is commonly referred to in audio: "Convolution is a method of cross-synthesis, combining two audio sources in such a manner that, in the frequency domain, those frequencies they have in common will be emphasized proportionately, and those they do not share will be minimized. In the time domain, the way in which those frequencies hang around, get smeared, die away is another part of the convolution process".

This makes more sense, IMO, than saying it refers to the realtime modulation of the filter.

[beely]

Yes, the chips of the time in the lates 80s and early nineties couldn't do proper analog-style filters - that took a little time before that started happening... It's why the M1/Wavestation didn't have them, or why there were sort of attempts at something similar in the D50/CZ series and so on...

[ghettosynth]

That article is interesting, and you (and the article's author) may be right in what concerns the filter, but audio convolution is NOT filtering (not "that kind" of filtering): https://cmtext.indiana.edu/synthesis/ch ... lution.php

Yes, I get that. That article is targeting the masses, that doesn't mean that there isn't a healthy dose of marketing in the choice to incorporate convolution in the acronym.

The way it was explained back then (even in the SY manual, which is basically the same way quoted in the picture)

Page 10 of the manual describes RCM as a broad term that allows the SY99 to emulate many different technologies of the past. Again, you may be right in that they intend for a specific technical interpretation, but I'm not really getting that from the manual.

It's hard to say what's going on under the hood and there very well may be something specific there. I'm just saying that one should take any technical interpretation of synthesis acronyms with a grain of salt and a heavy dose of contextual history.

[ghettosynth]

I don't know if there is really that much interest in a SY emulation? I don't find the SY so exciting that I need an emulation (I own a SY99 myself).

Well... You are the first SY99 owner I see that are not interested in having a software emulation.

I am also an owner of a SY99 (and an expanded TG77) and would be very happy to have a software version (at least to be able to recreate all my older projects without having to go back to the hardware).

Well, I don't own an SY99, but I do have an SY77 and I'm not really interested in a pure emulation, per se. I've kind of droned on a bit about this before but I think that there's something in 90s era technology that's worth both capturing and updating. I don't really know what the right answer is, but for me, it's not a pure emulation.

[trusampler]

It'd be great to see Yamaha enter the Vst instruments arena. If anyone's gonna do the Sy77/99 justice I think Yamaha would.

[Tj Shredder]

The only part of RCM I am not sure about, is the term convolution, which is a common method in DSP which requires a FFT to implement it. You could create a static filter by taking an impulse response of a filter. If you would take an arbitrary sample and use it as impulse response, this would be a convolution…
But I doubt that the convolution term in Yamahas marketing speech is that. At that time it wasn’t possible within the restrictions of embedded processors…
Anyway I would simply look at F’em as SY XX replacement. Almost all ingredients are in there. Those who have the original hardware could try to replicate some presets…