DUNE 2 is out now!!

[recursive one]

It seems that I have wrong approach to Dune 2.

I used to program it following the same logic as synths like Virus TI or Spire - basically I set up the oscillators, shape the filter and its envelope, then add effects, then make some routing in the matrix to make the patch animated and more expressive. Everything within one layer. Then if I need to make the sound bigger/fatter I add global unison like I do in Virus and call it a day.

The above posts make me think that the main strength of Dune is in the interconnection of the layers, like individual per-layer matrix assignments and things like that, something that I never bothered to actually explore.

[AnX]

It seems that I have wrong approach to Dune 2.

I used to program it following the same logic as synths like Virus TI or Spire - basically I set up the oscillators, shape the filter and its envelope, then add effects, then make some routing in the matrix to make the patch animated and more expressive. Everything within one layer. Then if I need to make the sound bigger/fatter I add global unison like I do in Virus and call it a day.

The above posts make me think that the main strength of Dune is in the interconnection of the layers, like individual per-layer matrix assignments and things like that, something that I never bothered to actually explore.

Its not the law, you can use it anyway you like. Its great for simple stuff, and the layers are there if you want to go deeper. Always nice to have the options, without them getting in the way of 'normal' functions.

[recursive one]

Its not the law, you can use it anyway you like. Its great for simple stuff, and the layers are there if you want to go deeper. Always nice to have the options, without them getting in the way of 'normal' functions.

Yes, I understand that Dune may be programmed as a "regular" subtractive/wavetable single layer synth.

I'm just trying to understand why everybody is raving about Dune while it somehow leaves me cold (soundwise), I must be missing something obvious. Maybe it's the layer thing.

I always look at my own programming skills first (cause I know you'll say that it's not the synth but me who is to blame ) so I'm looking for the ways to improve my own approach to Dune. I'd love someone to make some in-depth tutorials relating to programming multilayered patches using the advanced techniques Richard, Arksun and Kokotte were talking about, I wouldn't mind paying for that.

[chk071]

Guess it is best to accept that not everything is for everyone.

[recursive one]

Guess it is best to accept that not everything is for everyone.

Sometimes it is worth looking at things from a different angle.

E.g. I disregarded Serum for years as "cold and harsh digital sounding synth useful only for intentionally ugly sounds like vomitstep" (if anything that's a real genre name). I'm glad that I finally bought it, ofc it's not my primary source of sweet pads and warm analogue leads but it is very useful for all kinds of wavetable trickery going far beyond the dubstep sounds (for these I actually prefer Massive). Some of the patches I'm hearing in Dune soundpack demos do sound good. I think it may be same thing with Dune, I'm not finidng it really good at supersaws/plucks and other trancey stuff but it's strongest point my be elsewhere.

[chk071]

TBH, i always left aside Serum for the same reasons, that i heard some harshness, and cold sound in most sound demos, but, recently, i heard something from Serum which was frankly pretty awesome. Of course, there's some kind of sweet spot on every synth, but, typically, the ones with the huge sweet spot will be much more rewarding to use than the ones with just a few sweet spots, especially when you're jamming and experimenting. At least that is how it's for me. There are those synths with the big, big sweet spots. Sometimes it's rather a needle in a haystack thing to find those though. A bit easier with hardware, i guess.

[wagtunes]

Guess it is best to accept that not everything is for everyone.

Sometimes it is worth looking at things from a different angle.

E.g. I disregarded Serum for years as "cold and harsh digital sounding synth useful only for intentionally ugly sounds like vomitstep" (if anything that's a real genre name). I'm glad that I finally bought it, ofc it's not my primary source of sweet pads and warm analogue leads but it is very useful for all kinds of wavetable trickery going far beyond the dubstep sounds (for these I actually prefer Massive). Some of the patches I'm hearing in Dune soundpack demos do sound good. I think it may be same thing with Dune, I'm not finidng it really good at supersaws/plucks and other trancey stuff but it's strongest point my be elsewhere.

There are only 2 things that determine what you can get out of a synth. Workflow is just a personal preference to speed, ease, whatever but has no influence on the end result of the sound.

Two things

1. The Sound Engine - You can't get a diamond out of a brick. If the sound engine is poor (and I'm including built in FX here as part of the engine) it's poor. You may be able to "spruce" up the sound with external FX but outside of that, you're stuck with the engine that you have to work with. In other words, you're not getting a 3 oscillator sound out of one oscillator with only a sine wave to work with.

2. The Modulation Options - Again, if all you get is 1 LFO and a mod wheel control over filter cutoff, there is only so much you're going to be able to do, again, short of external FX or whatever.

So where does Dune 2 fit in all this?

Well, while there are synths with more modulation options, Dune 2 is not stingy here. And the sound engine is certainly plentiful. Whether or not one likes the overall character of the sound engine is another matter altogether. Not everybody liked The Beatles.

I can make numerous sounds with Dune 2. For my needs, those sounds are great. For somebody else, maybe not so great. But it's the same for every synth out there as I seriously doubt a synth has been made that 100% of the musicians out there love. Never going to happen.

Now, trying to figure out WHY you don't like the sound of a synth, good luck with that. I mean you can say "It sounds thin" or "It sounds dull" but getting to the core of why (analyzing the engine) is pointless unless you're a tech geek and know how to analyze these things (provided you don't need the source code to do so and just using scopes and things will be sufficient)

In fact, I think it would be an absolutely fascinating experiment to take two synths, one that person A likes and one that person A doesn't like, and compare their sounds to see, visually in a scope, what makes them different. Naturally, you'd have to compare like sounds under the same conditions, which is probably not easy to do.

But as fascinating as the above experiment would be, it's equally as pointless. Why? Because sometimes we just don't like things for no good reason at all.

My point to all this, directed to you, is don't knock yourself out trying to understand why Dune 2 doesn't do it for you. There may be no real reason that's measurable.

Instead, be thankful that there are synths you DO love that inspire you to make the music that you do.

[Dasheesh]

TBH, totally honest, I've never even looked at the "voice" box in the mod section. It never occurred to me that it was anything worth noticing. Such an unassuming box. I didn't even know I could do that.

After playing with it though, You can do the same thing with any DAW using single layers: In Dune2 they are parts... as in parts of a multi, in a DAW they are tracks, but you can load a digital instruments as many times as you want to make "Parts" and then SUM them.

Just duplicate the track and solo voices. same thing.

Like I said I only use a few instruments and DUne2 is one of them. I just hope they keep the quality of the instrument high. What's to stop you from making it a 16, 000 part instrument? Why not a 250, 000 part instrument? When do you say when? For me, an instrument has strong points, some reason it stands out from a crowd. That is what makes it worth owning. Play to it's character and strength.

BTW I gave up ableton in 2006ish and went Reaper recently.

[Cinebient]

TBH, totally honest, I've never even looked at the "voice" box in the mod section. It never occurred to me that it was anything worth noticing. Such an unassuming box. I didn't even know I could do that.

After playing with it though, You can do the same thing with any DAW using single layers: In Dune2 they are parts... as in parts of a multi, in a DAW they are tracks, but you can load a digital instruments as many times as you want to make "Parts" and then SUM them.

Just duplicate the track and solo voices. same thing.

Like I said I only use a few instruments and DUne2 is one of them. I just hope they keep the quality of the instrument high. What's to stop you from making it a 16, 000 part instrument? Why not a 250, 000 part instrument? When do you say when? For me, an instrument has strong points, some reason it stands out from a crowd. That is what makes it worth owning. Play to it's character and strength.

BTW I gave up ableton in 2006ish and went Reaper recently.

Sorry but again that is nonsense. You still don't understand the interaction of voices/layers in Dune 2. You CAN'T do that in a DAW.
It's not just summing the layers.
However, i wish you all the best.

[Dasheesh]

TBH, totally honest, I've never even looked at the "voice" box in the mod section. It never occurred to me that it was anything worth noticing. Such an unassuming box. I didn't even know I could do that.

After playing with it though, You can do the same thing with any DAW using single layers: In Dune2 they are parts... as in parts of a multi, in a DAW they are tracks, but you can load a digital instruments as many times as you want to make "Parts" and then SUM them.

Just duplicate the track and solo voices. same thing.

Like I said I only use a few instruments and DUne2 is one of them. I just hope they keep the quality of the instrument high. What's to stop you from making it a 16, 000 part instrument? Why not a 250, 000 part instrument? When do you say when? For me, an instrument has strong points, some reason it stands out from a crowd. That is what makes it worth owning. Play to it's character and strength.

BTW I gave up ableton in 2006ish and went Reaper recently.

Sorry but again that is nonsense. You still don't understand the interaction of voices/layers in Dune 2. You CAN'T do that in a DAW.
It's not just summing the layers.
However, i wish you all the best.

Look, I’n A guy that has long history and doesn’t Make mistakes often. I will readily admit mistakes. You send me a patch that I can’t do summing layers and I will bow to your infinite wisdom.

[wagtunes]

TBH, totally honest, I've never even looked at the "voice" box in the mod section. It never occurred to me that it was anything worth noticing. Such an unassuming box. I didn't even know I could do that.

After playing with it though, You can do the same thing with any DAW using single layers: In Dune2 they are parts... as in parts of a multi, in a DAW they are tracks, but you can load a digital instruments as many times as you want to make "Parts" and then SUM them.

Just duplicate the track and solo voices. same thing.

Like I said I only use a few instruments and DUne2 is one of them. I just hope they keep the quality of the instrument high. What's to stop you from making it a 16, 000 part instrument? Why not a 250, 000 part instrument? When do you say when? For me, an instrument has strong points, some reason it stands out from a crowd. That is what makes it worth owning. Play to it's character and strength.

BTW I gave up ableton in 2006ish and went Reaper recently.

Sorry but again that is nonsense. You still don't understand the interaction of voices/layers in Dune 2. You CAN'T do that in a DAW.
It's not just summing the layers.
However, i wish you all the best.

Look, I’n A guy that has long history and doesn’t Make mistakes often. I will readily admit mistakes. You send me a patch that I can’t do summing layers and I will bow to your infinite wisdom.

Dasheesh, unless you have a truly modular DAW, you can't do the things you can do with one instance of Dune 2 using multiple layers with a synth using multiple instances.

Simple patch

Layer 1 - Sawtooth lead
Layer 2 - Square lead using oscillator to modulate layer 1 at audio rate.

Try and do that with 2 instances of Dune 2 just using one layer for each instance. Go on, set it up now and show us how you modulate layer 1 of instance 1 with layer 1 of instance 2.

I'll wait.

[Dasheesh]

OK wags, why can't you just use a square wave to oscillate the saw on oscillator one? I don't even need multi's for that right?

[wagtunes]

OK wags, why can't you just use a square wave to oscillate the saw on oscillator one? I don't even need multi's for that right?

With a simple patch of two oscillators, that'll work fine.

What happens now when you have this setup? And please don't tell me this is a crazy off the wall patch.

Layer 1 - All 3 OSC's sawtooth with 1 and 3 slightly detuned
Layer 2 - OSC 1 modulating the semi tuning of all 3 OSC's of layer 1

You can't do that with 2 instances of Dune 2.

Go on and try.

Oh and OSC 1 layer 2 is a WT.

[wagtunes]

And actually, the above example isn't even a great one.

Here's something that is done quite often

4 Layers

3 LFOs

Complex Pad

Each layer has multiple WTs for osc's 1 and 2. Forget osc 3. We won't even use it.

LFO 1 modulates layer 1 osc 1 fine tune
LFO 2 modulates layer 2 osc 1 and 2 fine tune
LFO 3 modulates layer 3 osc 2 fine tune
LFO 1 and LFO 2 modulates Layer 4 osc 2 fine tune

And in the matrix setup, you have these amounts for each modulation

Layer 1 - +23
Layer 2 - +47 osc 1, +35 osc 2
Layer 3 - +17
Layer 4 - LFO 1, +29, LFO 2, +56

Good luck trying to pull this complex modulation scheme with 4 instances of Dune 2 and get the patch to sound exactly the same as the one I just designed.

Do you finally understand? If not, there is nothing I or anyone else can do to make you understand.

[Dasheesh]

And actually, the above example isn't even a great one.

Here's something that is done quite often

4 Layers

3 LFOs

Complex Pad

Each layer has multiple WTs for osc's 1 and 2. Forget osc 3. We won't even use it.

LFO 1 modulates layer 1 osc 1 fine tune
LFO 2 modulates layer 2 osc 1 and 2 fine tune
LFO 3 modulates layer 3 osc 2 fine tune
LFO 1 and LFO 2 modulates Layer 4 osc 2 fine tune

And in the matrix setup, you have these amounts for each modulation

Layer 1 - +23
Layer 2 - +47 osc 1, +35 osc 2
Layer 3 - +17
Layer 4 - LFO 1, +29, LFO 2, +56

Good luck trying to pull this complex modulation scheme with 4 instances of Dune 2 and get the patch to sound exactly the same as the one I just designed.

Do you finally understand? If not, there is nothing I or anyone else can do to make you understand.

Im watching netflicks with my wife and texting my father about to get triple bypass but I’m not ignoring you. I’ll be back when I get a chance. For the record, my argument was you need no more then four parts.