Thanks for the info, just purchased. I know my way around HALion but once I started combing through Alchemy's advanced tab, I realized that reverse engineering some of these patches, noteably Luftrums Ambient expansion among others, was going to be difficult given the nature of Alchemy's 4 different samplers and how they are used to morph in and out of each other along with the fact that I'm sure re-synthesis was used for a lot of them too.Michael L wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:30 am FYI, you can buy the Alchemy 1 tutorial videos for $12 from Groove3.
BIG project: Sampling the old Windows Alchemy VST. Questions and Suggestions
-
- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 10 posts since 4 Aug, 2019
-
- Banned
- 1966 posts since 2 Mar, 2004
imo a complete waist of time and disk space. A) Alchemy works fine even in the lastest windows version (and there is no reason to believe that this will change any time soon). B) Alchemy was not about static patches but about was a synth with complex capabilities.
-
- KVRist
- 247 posts since 5 May, 2020
I see you get the point, but I'll make another: do the math! You said "every velocity." I have no idea how many patches, but for each patch sampling every note in 6 octaves (72 notes) at every velocity (127) yields 9144 samples PER PATCH. Assuming an average of 6 seconds per note (rough guess; I have no idea what Alchemy sounds like and whether you can successfully loop early), using 44.1kHz/16bit WAV format, that's 4GB per patch.
It'd be more rational to sample 8 or 16 velocity layers, which reduces that to 300-600 MB, but we're still talking about 600-1100 samples per patch. Even with most of it automated, that's a lot of details to manage.
So, how many patches would we be talking about anyway?
I have a Yamaha CP4 stage piano that I use in recordings. So that I don't have to always have the CP4 connected when I'm making MIDI edits (and so that I can make MIDI edits and re-render in seconds), I sample whatever CP4 patches I'm using (7 layers, every 3rd note). That is a bit of effort, but manageable, and my list of sample sets is growing (4 patches so far: 2 pianos, Rhodes, and acoustic bass. Wurlitzer is probably next.) You might consider trying that approach. I use my own tools to automatically assemble an SFZ from a set of layer recordings; you'd probably be best off getting a copy of Sample Robot. That's ignoring the morphing capabilities, of course. But my point is, if you have an instrument that for any reason is clumsy in your DAW or performance setup, you can sample the patches you actually need with a reasonable amount of effort. Note that there's a learning curve so your first efforts will take longer and produce less ideal results.
It'd be more rational to sample 8 or 16 velocity layers, which reduces that to 300-600 MB, but we're still talking about 600-1100 samples per patch. Even with most of it automated, that's a lot of details to manage.
So, how many patches would we be talking about anyway?
I have a Yamaha CP4 stage piano that I use in recordings. So that I don't have to always have the CP4 connected when I'm making MIDI edits (and so that I can make MIDI edits and re-render in seconds), I sample whatever CP4 patches I'm using (7 layers, every 3rd note). That is a bit of effort, but manageable, and my list of sample sets is growing (4 patches so far: 2 pianos, Rhodes, and acoustic bass. Wurlitzer is probably next.) You might consider trying that approach. I use my own tools to automatically assemble an SFZ from a set of layer recordings; you'd probably be best off getting a copy of Sample Robot. That's ignoring the morphing capabilities, of course. But my point is, if you have an instrument that for any reason is clumsy in your DAW or performance setup, you can sample the patches you actually need with a reasonable amount of effort. Note that there's a learning curve so your first efforts will take longer and produce less ideal results.
-
- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 10 posts since 4 Aug, 2019
I wasn't thinking at all about the size of the individual patches but, aside from that, there's quite a bit that has changed since I made the post. Although I think if I were still going to try to sample the synth, I would use the method that you suggested, however, Alchemy has been extremely stable, miraculously since I started thinking about trying to tackle the fool's errand of sampling it. I haven't had to worry at all about it crashing during loading the vst in and in fact, I've loaded multiple instances with no issues so, all is well regarding the performance of the software. Aside from this, I actually started re-synthesizing a few patches in HALion 6, routing my sample layers to mimic the flow chain of alchemy. the only problem I've ran into is that Alchemy utilizes .sfz files, which HALion can't use. I don't understand how something as powerful as HALion doesn't have .sfz capability but, I got around this by just using a single sample and mapping it across the octave range. All said and done, with Alchemy actually functioning properly, there's little motivation to continue reverse engineering Alchemy's presets as I started with a couple of simple ones but, I could imagine some of the more complex granular patches could take some time. Thanks for the suggestion though and I was surprised at the amount of initial engagement the post got! I guess the title was unintentionally provocative but I was quickly pointed in the right direction.
-
- KVRist
- 44 posts since 1 Jun, 2018 from Ukraine
There is Alchemy Player available through the Computer Music magazine or Google it. It loads all published libraries.