One Synth Challenge #156: Synister by QUL at the University of Berlin / Open Source (Voting Started!)

[The Sound Of Merlin]

WAHAHAHAHA!!!
Nope, it's terrible advice MUCH like I had anticipated! If I let MuLab render this at 96khz, Synister is so basic, it does not understand sampling rate and will essentially be pitched up!

So, that also explains why I had to tune every oscillator down by -1.47 cnt in order to be at A440, since I'm always working with 48khz.

Advice was good but terribly understood. I was talking about rendering at a certain sample rate not working at it. I also had to work at 44.1 due to tuning issues but still one can do an audio export (rendering) at a much higher rate. Well Cubase and Reason do, I assume most DAWs do.

It's an oversampling trick to overcome lots aliasing artefacts. I now realize I would have had cleaner results if I had exported at 88.2 Khz. I used this trick many times while rendering tracks in Reason as the Subtractor is such a pain in the ass. That was over 15 years ago. But 2 years ago I also ran lots of tests doing this in Cubase with wonderful and surprising results.

[Taron]

Well, in MuLab I have to change the audio rate and can't tell it to export at a higher rate. I can tell a different bit depth, but not sampling rate. Thus, when switching the audio sampling rate, Synister does not read the audio's sampling rate and- well- screws up as expected.
Along the way I also had to realize that Valhalla supermassive instances may not update their delay automatically, leading to having to either tap the delay manually or reload the project. Then Valhalla adjusts just fine.

Anyway, any halfway decent vst uses the DAWs sampling rate to do its processing. Even the vsti template I used countless years ago had that as a given. But you'd need to have some understanding in order to recognize the imperative it is to take advantage of that info!

So, I did actually go through the few instances I've used and adjusted them and it sounded dramatically rounder and smoother, but somehow... kind of a weird thing, probably because I didn't work with it that way and responded with my choices to the way it did sound at 48khz, but I ended up not quite enjoying it as much. So now I'm back at 48khz, happy and about to wrap up my second session with it. Yay!

[The Sound Of Merlin]

So, I did actually go through the few instances I've used and adjusted them and it sounded dramatically rounder and smoother, but somehow... kind of a weird thing, probably because I didn't work with it that way and responded with my choices to the way it did sound at 48khz, but I ended up not quite enjoying it as much.

Oh yes... That's what I have also experienced many times. It may sound technically or theoretically better but it may change the details of the things you have programmed dramatically. Especially with bad synths. I once did a whole album project with only the Subtractor and found myself exporting every single track at different sample rates and then re-assembling it in Cubase. In the end I only did this trick with less than 10% of the tracks as I didn't recognize my sounds anymore. But it paid off.

Never released the damn album though. I released one of its tracks 2 years ago. Still only Subtractors and I added a live trumpeter. Yummie!

[Taron]

Ah, them old days... ...I really used to love Subtractor and virtually all of the old Reason until I got in touch with the real world again (aka discovering VST).

But, yeah, When I surrender into a synth and try to design sounds, it's all about finding the right nuance, the details that have the character that inspires me. And it inspires a certain music that is often surprisingly tightly linked to that character. I mean, quite often I've added elements based on subtle artifacts from another sound. Once those vanish, the whole coherence goes away, too.

Are we like totally obsessive in what we're doing?! ...guess that's just our level of passion.

[Taron]

Alright, here's what Synister sounds like at 96Khz:
https://soundcloud.com/taronium/taron-s ... al_sharing

It's only making the illusion worse that this was a good one! ...pretty neat sounding. NOT MY SUBMISSION, though, just a little test at 96Khz.

[ElVincente]

Anyway, I HAVE MY NEW MACHINE and it's phyiscally only about 2.5xthe size of the tiny miniPC, I think. It's totally quiet and a massive performance beast, kind of beating my big tower, but at literally less than a 10th of the prize ($500). I love it!

Sorry to highjack the thread... But what laptop is that ? (I'm on the market for something like that...)

[Taron]

Anyway, I HAVE MY NEW MACHINE and it's phyiscally only about 2.5xthe size of the tiny miniPC, I think. It's totally quiet and a massive performance beast, kind of beating my big tower, but at literally less than a 10th of the prize ($500). I love it!

Sorry to highjack the thread... But what laptop is that ? (I'm on the market for something like that...)

Not a laptop, but a miniPC: Beelink Mini PC (on Amazon)

Blows my mind and I happily recommend it. Hope it will stay that way a few months from now, but currently I'm just amazed. Tiny, quiet, powerful performance, low power consumption, crazy.

[schiing]

I've played with Synister some more, and it's actually pretty great for ambient textures.

This is my favourite so far. One patch, no keys or automation, all automatic – every motion is created by sequencer, lfo's and envelopes.

Still *out of competition*. I don't know – tracks like these feel a bit too niche for OSC, I guess; it's kinda hard to evaluate the work that goes into them... (NOT that I undervalue your abilities as critics in any way – I just felt that way myself when listening to some ambient tracks in earlier competitions. Besides, 11 minutes is a bit too greedy for a competitive piece, methinks. Still, I hope you don't mind me sharing - I'm probably too occupied with these generative ambient pieces to finish anything for the actual challenge this month. )

https://soundcloud.com/terjefjelde/tmou ... al_sharing

[doctorbob]

... Nice Terje ... looks like you have a lot of Soundcloud BOT fans! dB

[schiing]

Oh, yeah, it's funny how some genre tags attract them more than others.

[empphryio]

Does anyone else feel like this synth makes noises that sound like people talking more than usual? I understand many of you have got your synths to talk. I haven't been aiming for that but this one is doing it a lot more than usual. One time it was "twinkle toes", now "down everybody".

[ontrackp]

Synister is a synth that holds a lot of promise but falls down on the actual execution. I found the osciallators to range from horrible to ok, the modulation should have been good but wasn't, the envelopes were .... bad (except for the curve controls which helped), the best feature I think was the step sequencer but was not really useful as there did not seem to be a way to trigger it through midi.

I made one step sequence part which I had to print as audio.

All that being said, after missing last month I was determined to have an entry this month. As always, I tried to let the strengths of the synth lead the way, and as I learned it's limitations the composition adjusted. So this is a demonstration in 4 parts of where the sounds of this synth pushed me. It was frustrating, not very inspiring, but made enough ok sounds that here is my track.

38 instances in Logic Pro X. Logic EQ, Comp and Reverb. Valhalla Supermassive, Nova (free), OTT on drums only, Frontier Limiter (new for me this month).

EDIT: Made a few last minute tweaks 2/28

https://soundcloud.com/ontrackp/osc-156 ... ight-final

[empphryio]

Still, I hope you don't mind me sharing - I'm probably too occupied with these generative ambient pieces to finish anything for the actual challenge this month. )

That was pretty nice. Evoked an image in my head related to outer space. Thanks for sharing.

[schiing]

Still, I hope you don't mind me sharing - I'm probably too occupied with these generative ambient pieces to finish anything for the actual challenge this month. )

That was pretty nice. Evoked an image in my head related to outer space. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you – yes, "space music" is definitely the genre.

[Frank Geppert]

Hi, this is my first post and my first entry in a OSC.
This title uses 16 instances of Synister in Reaper and only 2 or 3 inbuilt FXs.
I hope, that I uploaded everything correctly.
Regards!

https://soundcloud.com/frank-geppert-19 ... s-synister