Overestimated synths?

[nineofkings]

What have I done

[Sound Mechanics]

Is this one overrated or underrated...

It's usually a song that makes a synth so popular.

Space Oddity and the Rolf Harris Stylophone... it sounds perfect here, nothing else would do

[Sound Mechanics]

Is this one oververrated or underrated... ?

Space Oddity and the Rolf Harris Stylophone... it sounds perfect here, nothing else would do

It's usually a song that makes a synth so popular.

[ghettosynth]

Is this one oververrated or underrated...

It's usually a song that makes a synth so popular.

Space Oddity and the Rolf Harris Stylophone... it sounds perfect here, nothing else would do

Is it really possible for something like the Stylophone to be overestimated? I mean, what exactly was expected of it? Certainly it has exceeded any reasonable set of expectations for such a simple "toy" instrument? The thing was available for about seven years on the original run and relaunched in 2007.

Lest anyone think that I'm insulting the Stylophone, I'm not. I have one, I think that it's a cool little toy, which is largely how it was sold.

I also don't think that it can really be underestimated, it's not much of a synth really. It's a fairly simple UJT oscillator. Of course someone's going to use it on an album, because, why not?

Also used, among others, on this:

[Sound Mechanics]

I don't know if any synth can be underrated or overrated, they can be overpriced though I guess, but as long as it makes nice sounds and doesn't break down it's doing it's job.
It's all a bit subjective.

[ghettosynth]

I don't know if any synth can be underrated or overrated, they can be overpriced though I guess, but as long as it makes nice sounds and doesn't break down it's doing it's job.
It's all a bit subjective.

I was taking the word overestimated more literally than "overrated." To me it meant that, on release, more was expected of it than it delivered on in some way or another.

My last example the Yamaha VL1, for example, was really expected to be much more successful in terms of changing the game away from sample based instruments, that didn't happen really. Similarly, as successful as the DX7 was as a product, it was overestimated in terms of the long term impact of FM, especially as envisioned by Chowning. Sample based instruments really stole its lunch and the market quickly turned back to subtractive models for synthesis and expression. As great as the FS1R is as a synthesizer, it largely failed as a product and was only on the market for a short while. AFAIK, all successful FM instruments since the early to mid nineties or so have been hybrid instruments that incorporate a subtractive model along with FM.

Another overestimated instrument was the Arp Avatar, in fact, it coupled with some other failures to execute, sunk the company.

[Sound Mechanics]

All it takes is some musical icon to pick up something and used it successfully in a song and there's a rush to get hold of it.

I'm not saying it's wrong, it's fashion.

[ghettosynth]

All it takes is some musical icon to pick up something and used it successfully in a song and there's a rush to get hold of it.

I'm not saying it's wrong, it's fashion.

Yeah, that doesn't always happen, but it does sometimes. There is a recent example of this by Aphex Twin with their use of some awkward to use obscure synth (Cheetah MS800, I decided this was better with real data) and the prices have apparently gone through the roof, if you can find one.

http://cdm.link/2016/06/aphex-twin-uses ... ll-new-ep/

[jancivil]

Let's talk brass tacks, which DX7 sounds will have been better purely through applying a filter to it.
Maybe we could pretend that all filters are equal for this exercise.

My Civil Circus patch. Amazingly I was able to download that album as mp3s, and I heard several tracks already, but it isn't like the memory of that sound was that far gone from me. That one, what will subtraction from it do? It isn't an oscillator with waveform presets. You build it with modulator/carrier, typically with some feedback. It is what it's supposed to be. Not once during that time did I think 'I really need a filter, this isn't right.' Or think of filters at all.

Zappa used DX7 in the 1984 band. I did not hear that at that time. Probably first heard that around the turn of the century. Ok, percussionist Ed Mann was not there so Allan Zavod covered the mallet percussion, which is very prevalent for FZ. On the DX7. The xylophone in particular is unfortunate. I rather hate it. I can remember it on the ROM cartridge. I remember making better patches, because of the normal instrument sounds, that's my thing. I don't think anybody with Zappa was programming it.
Does a filter help? Decidedly not. You apply the feedback loop thingy etc in search of a less plastic sound. Again, there is no oscillator with a super-rich harmonics package to sculpt. It_is_not_subtractive_synthesis.

I was there doing it. I don't think ghettosynth was. So it strikes me as reading some things about it and applying "I like filters" with armchair hindsight.

[jancivil]

I've looked at FM8 numerous times. There are no such 32 DX7 algorithms as presets, sez I.

They are in the dropdown above the matrix in expert view (64 actually)

No. I posted 2 screenshots from the FM Matrix window, first time I showed #1 in there vs. DX7 Algorithm #1.
I can see it doing the same basic thing, but the actual algorithms show stacks of operators (except for #32 which is all carrier). I've described my problem as well as I can. I don't want to look at that anymore.

One can believe this to be an improvement, since you can roll your own, but I don't. It's like anybody who says 'I don't like the workflow'.

[aumordia]

let it go

[jancivil]

The DX7 suffered from being 14-bit and limited velocity, 1-100. I was enthusiastic about this thing for yrs, and demo it occasionally to see if I can get out of myself and get with it. not so much yet

Seriously? You go on for pages about filters and then cite 14-bit and velocity limitations? You do realize that the velocity limitation was just a midi scaling issue and was easily dealt with in a sequencer, right?

What does that actually mean in terms of sound? What does 14-bit do to make the DX7 so much less than the DX7-2, which, BTW, does not suffer from that limitation so it was hardly necessary to wait for years for FM8.

I went on for pages about filters? I indicated that I had no interest in them for this.

Are you really that dense, You want on for pages about my opinion on filters. Filters add far more to FM than the 2 bits in a DAC.

Are you really that out-of-control? I responded to you and the whole filters thing as it came up. The most I did was to point out that some filters are kind of weak, so 'filters per se make a better instrument' is not such a great premise. I typed a few sentences? So you seem extremely desperate to make me look an idiot. Ok, I'm a f**king idiot. Stay with something of substance if you can. So 14-bit is not less than 15 or 16? Ok, then. Just like 1-100 is not less than 1-127. I'm an idiot. Because of your wonderful little ideology, nothing else has any meaning.

Filters add? On the way to this FM was Additive. Let's call that carrier operator on top of carrier op; modulator op on top of carrier op [FM] produces a more complex result. You can open up a filter on a harmonics-rich oscillator waveform preset, but filters are subtractive.

[aumordia]

lol this is nuts

[Rappo Clappo]

It's weird. The DX7s and D-50s went for €100 for years in the 21st century, but recently prices go up to €350.

Not overestimated but it shows what character these synths have. I think that's the whole point of a synth.

[jancivil]

Yamaha VL-1. Never heard of it. Mid-1990s?

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/bla ... vl1-634920

Press and pundits alike predicted that Yamaha's groundbreaking physical modelling instrument would signal the end for sample-based synths, but it didn't…

I guess not.