Steinberg Backbone - Drum Re-synthesizer

[nanostream]

I’ve just stumbled across this, and the GAN and re-synthesis parts do look interesting. And it’s on sale!

However, it still needs Rosetta 2 to run on M1 Macs. Does anyone have long term experience with it on such a machine, especially in Ableton Live? I suppose I’d load several instances into a Drum Rack. How’s the performance and stability when running Live natively and using the AU bridge for x86 plugins?

[sQeetz]

However, it still needs Rosetta 2 to run on M1 Macs.

It's actually native now.

Screen Shot 2022-06-22 at 20.40.31.png

[pixel85]

For a tool that 'takes your drums into a whole new era of sound design — the era of drum re-synthesis!', it has demos showing the most common drum sounds used everywhere for a few decades. Even with new tech from Sony it still produces the same old drum sounds.

It feels like we are beyond the peak time of drum sound design.
Did anyone make something else (but usable) besides 808s and Boom bap drums with this thing?

[sQeetz]

Did anyone make something else (but usable) besides 808s and Boom bap drums with this thing?

No, because although I got it to run for a couple of days, it just refused to start again all of a sudden. And no matter what I did, nothing could resuscitate it.
Today I saw the news about version 1.5 and was kinda happy that I would finally be able to use it, but no dice.
It's AS native, but still does not register for some reason. I'll try some more troubleshooting later, but I'm pretty fed up with this thing.

[SLiC]

Wow, it wants to install 5 programs including elicener just to demo it…I’ll pass.

[nanostream]

However, it still needs Rosetta 2 to run on M1 Macs.

It's actually native now.

Thanks! They haven’t updated their website.

[nanostream]

For a tool that 'takes your drums into a whole new era of sound design — the era of drum re-synthesis!', it has demos showing the most common drum sounds used everywhere for a few decades. Even with new tech from Sony it still produces the same old drum sounds.

It feels like we are beyond the peak time of drum sound design.
Did anyone make something else (but usable) besides 808s and Boom bap drums with this thing?

I’ve watched a few of their videos and I was thinking the same thing. Not only the most common drum sounds, but also the most boring ones! I was expecting a bit more, tbh, and I second your question. Has anyone made cool new sounds with this thing?

OTOH, I’m not sure I want it anymore, apparently it isn’t particularly stable. Hmm.

[SeeingInMidi]

For a tool that 'takes your drums into a whole new era of sound design — the era of drum re-synthesis!', it has demos showing the most common drum sounds used everywhere for a few decades. Even with new tech from Sony it still produces the same old drum sounds.

It feels like we are beyond the peak time of drum sound design.
Did anyone make something else (but usable) besides 808s and Boom bap drums with this thing?

I’ve watched a few of their videos and I was thinking the same thing. Not only the most common drum sounds, but also the most boring ones! I was expecting a bit more, tbh, and I second your question. Has anyone made cool new sounds with this thing?

OTOH, I’m not sure I want it anymore, apparently it isn’t particularly stable. Hmm.

Haven't tried it yet but the analyze feature can potentially get you more interesting and modern sounds.

[nanostream]

Haven't tried it yet but the analyze feature can potentially get you more interesting and modern sounds.

You’re right, as far as I understand you can throw any kind of samples at the re-synthesize part and get potentially weird sounds or manipulation options (there’s a sitar example buried somewhere in this very thread). But the GAN part produced increadibly boring sounds, at least in the few videos I’ve seen.

[dionenoid]

Based on some demoing so far, i'd say don't go by the demo sounds. This is a beast and goes way beyond what other drum samplers/synths can do. You can go as crazy as you want to go.

The GAN part is rather nice, but the fun starts when you start re-synthesizing your own samples.

The build-in fx didn't impress me so far, altho you can make pretty intricate serial or parallel chains. But the stretch and pitch stuff is really something else, not seen it in any other tool. And layering sounds is a breeze.

[pixel85]

The build-in fx didn't impress me so far.

It's not surprising as those are repacked ancient Cubase native fx. Another reason why I'm not that eager to get it. I have those FX in Cubase, then in FXmodular - one of the new features of Cubase 12 and in Wavelab where they repacked them in their "mastering plugin" which also was a new feature of Wavelab update. Then they're also in HALion, Padshop, Retrologue and any other Steinberg's plugin.
Steinberg beat every other developer in a matter of repackaging the same stuff over and over again.
Who knows if Cubase 13 will not have some of Backbone features of Backbone SE on board to fill "new features" section.

[SeeingInMidi]

Haven't tried it yet but the analyze feature can potentially get you more interesting and modern sounds.

You’re right, as far as I understand you can throw any kind of samples at the re-synthesize part and get potentially weird sounds or manipulation options (there’s a sitar example buried somewhere in this very thread). But the GAN part produced increadibly boring sounds, at least in the few videos I’ve seen.

I think you're confusing the Gan analyze with the decompose and the e resynthesis modules. If i'm understanding it correctly, the Gan analyze will analyze a user loaded sample and will generate a new sample based on the chosen sample.

[SeeingInMidi]

Really impressed with this so far. Hope they refine it further and introduce more percussion type instruments. The only problem i have is that the generated snares frequently sound grainy. Hope they fix that eventually.

[Greenstorm33]

Haven't tried it yet but the analyze feature can potentially get you more interesting and modern sounds.

You’re right, as far as I understand you can throw any kind of samples at the re-synthesize part and get potentially weird sounds or manipulation options (there’s a sitar example buried somewhere in this very thread). But the GAN part produced increadibly boring sounds, at least in the few videos I’ve seen.

I think you're confusing the Gan analyze with the decompose and the e resynthesis modules. If i'm understanding it correctly, the Gan analyze will analyze a user loaded sample and will generate a new sample based on the chosen sample.

Does the GAN analyze do anything other than set the three GAN sliders according to the provided sample? It would be interesting to provide a sample as a base sample and generate off of that, but if all it does is do something you could do manually it's not a very exciting feature.

[Igro]

For a tool that 'takes your drums into a whole new era of sound design — the era of drum re-synthesis!', it has demos showing the most common drum sounds used everywhere for a few decades. Even with new tech from Sony it still produces the same old drum sounds.

It feels like we are beyond the peak time of drum sound design.
Did anyone make something else (but usable) besides 808s and Boom bap drums with this thing?

Kick is kick. It is too short to make it futuristic and novel. To make something different, you have to use post processing (fx). Having said that, if you want to explore interesting tones, use FM.