Is the Virtual Instrument era over?

[dellboy]

I would consider any synth with DCOs a digital hybrid synth. And the Alpha Juno was a derivative design.

Well I am shocked and disapointed, as I own an Alpha Juno 2 and have just found out that it is digital and not analogue. I want my money back!

Next you will be telling me that my Juno 6 is also digital.

[Sinisterbr]

And people keep bashing, just for the sake of bashing. (Not talking about you, Vurt)

[Double Tap]

Having read through the whole thread now, here are the facts

There's no actual evidence that virtual instruments are declining in popularity, nor that hardware is becoming more popular.
There are a shitload of synths around and there's no lack of choice, but people keep buying new synths like F'em.
VIs also include Kontakt instruments and sampled instruments by the likes of Spitfire and Orchestral Tools and did you see how many people entered the Spitfire Bridgerton competition by the way? I could buy the entire u-he collection and plenty more synths for the price of some of those libraries - and there's a new one out every week.
Urs and Markus elevate any conversation on this forum they take part in.
Vurt is special.
BONES is right.

[revvy]

BONES is right.

Whoa there, big guy, steady on!

[kevvvvv]

@Double Tap
Nothing's over til people have no more money left to spend

Since none of us has hard data to support our ideas either way, I personally look at the level of discounting, and other hard price changes to test for market saturation. We all have our method.

I don't think Tony P is that far out with his guesses. He certainly presents himself intelligently. But none of us really know.

And Tony's (controversial?) ideas are interestingly provocative, which generates good KVR contributions from all comers (vurt too )

.......................................................

I'd still like to know what people make of an AI future?

A future where the synth "learns me" and predicts accordingly.

eg, a synth that analyses all my songs and figures out starter presets for me, or some alternative solution to browsers with their endless and almost bewildering-to-the-point-of-meaningless list of tag-fitting presets. AI will anticipate my needs..

eg, a synth that has a simpler gui that tends to populate with "knobs" depending on the way I'm using it.

eg something intelligent that links different parts of synth architecture in different ways so if, say, I wiggle a knob a couple of times it'll offer me some proper musical lfo or other ideas I'd not normally have thought of, and not just offer unmusical trash ideas (so often the case)

eg a synth arp that followed the key I'm playing in (not AI this, but worthy of a mention in a world of arp machines that mostly don't modulate to fit the key)

In short, a synth (or any plug or daw) that learned the way I operate, that configured, customised and organised itself in every way to what I actually do.

Anticipate me please, oh smart synth.

Bones could do with one of these

[HAL76]

German saying: "Lies have short legs".

Rollback to solid ground I'd say.

[Double Tap]

BONES is right.

Whoa there, big guy, steady on!

To be fair, maybe he's not, but this time I agree with him.

@Double Tap
Nothing's over til people have no more money left to spend

Since none of us has hard data to support our ideas either way, I personally look at the level of discounting, and other hard price changes to test for market saturation. We all have our method.

I don't think Tony P is that far out with his guesses. He certainly presents himself intelligently. But none of us really know.

And Tony's (controversial?) ideas are interestingly provocative, which generates good KVR contributions from all comers (vurt too )

.......................................................

I'd still like to know what people make of an AI future?

A future where the synth "learns me" and predicts accordingly.

eg, a synth that analyses all my songs and figures out starter presets for me, or some alternative solution to browsers with their endless and almost bewildering-to-the-point-of-meaningless list of tag-fitting presets. AI will anticipate my needs..

eg, a synth that has a simpler gui that tends to populate with "knobs" depending on the way I'm using it.

eg something intelligent that links different parts of synth architecture in different ways so if, say, I wiggle a knob a couple of times it'll offer me some proper musical lfo or other ideas I'd not normally have thought of, and not just offer unmusical trash ideas (so often the case)

eg a synth arp that followed the key I'm playing in (not AI this, but worthy of a mention in a world of arp machines that mostly don't modulate to fit the key)

In short, a synth (or any plug or daw) that learned the way I operate, that configured, customised and organised itself in every way to what I actually do.

Anticipate me please, oh smart synth.

Bones could do with one of these

I started off asking a whole load of questions because maybe his OP was based on some insider knowledge but reading the thread it seemed that it... wasn't. But he's not trolling, it's a fair debate - I just think those sweeping statements didn't really help illuminate much? They provoked contributions and opposition but I don't think we're much closer to understanding what's going on.

There's a good thread on VI Control that was looking at the impact of AI https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... it.130918/ some good resources and thoughts on there. I'm no good at predicting the future - I don't even know what I'm going to cook for dinner!

[syntonica]

- VST2 has been killed off and VST3 only adoption is glacial

Is it? What's your basis for saying so? Slow compared to what? Has the adoption of Apple Silicon been faster or slower? Does this matter much?

- CLAP looks promising but universal support is up in the air

CLAP is clearly very new and it's too early to tell if it will be adopted more widely. We can gauge some of its appeal by the number of products supporting CLAP versions.

Re: VST3, it was introduced in 2008 and a very large number of plugins are still VST2 only and probably not going to be ported due to how bad VST3 is in some respects. Only a few plugins are not yet Apple Silicon and these are older plugins that probably will never be updated, or are solo programmers who can't afford a new machine for testing, although that's not strictly necessary.

With Bitwig, u-he, TAL and others offering CLAP versions of their softwares at this point, after only a few months since release, I think we'll see CLAP making huge strides in the next year. The AAX/VST/AU hegemonies will hopefully be broken as multiple formats to test and support is one of the hugest barriers to plugin development for anybody. Frankly, it's a boring, tedious and frustrating time sink.

[foosnark]

I'd still like to know what people make of an AI future?

I definitely don't want AI to:
- make creative decisions for me
- make decisions about customizing an interface for me -- this never seems to go well and makes less commonly used, but still necessary, functions harder to get to
- encourage me to get stuck in particular habits

Where am I interested in AI is:
- better repair and editing tools such as noise reduction, click removal, clipping repair, taming harshness, repitching/timestretching, etc.
- perhaps smarter adaptive pitch detection for things like guitar-to-MIDI
- "macro" timbre modifications to sounds (e.g. "make this brighter" or "more breathy" etc.)
- things like Google "Tone Transfer"

[Double Tap]

- VST2 has been killed off and VST3 only adoption is glacial

Is it? What's your basis for saying so? Slow compared to what? Has the adoption of Apple Silicon been faster or slower? Does this matter much?

- CLAP looks promising but universal support is up in the air

CLAP is clearly very new and it's too early to tell if it will be adopted more widely. We can gauge some of its appeal by the number of products supporting CLAP versions.

Re: VST3, it was introduced in 2008 and a very large number of plugins are still VST2 only and probably not going to be ported due to how bad VST3 is in some respects. Only a few plugins are not yet Apple Silicon and these are older plugins that probably will never be updated, or are solo programmers who can't afford a new machine for testing, although that's not strictly necessary.

With Bitwig, u-he, TAL and others offering CLAP versions of their softwares at this point, after only a few months since release, I think we'll see CLAP making huge strides in the next year. The AAX/VST/AU hegemonies will hopefully be broken as multiple formats to test and support is one of the hugest barriers to plugin development for anybody. Frankly, it's a boring, tedious and frustrating time sink.

I don't know the technical details but I can see how excited developers in particular are about CLAP, so I hope it turns into a success - I can see that an open source standard is going to be much better for the industry than something propietary.

On VST3, it does seem to me that part of the reason why it's been glacially slow is that VST2 has been available. Now that it's not for new products, adoption of VST3 is starting to pick up. Either way, I don't see that whatever happens next with formats is likely to contribute to the end of the VI era, if it's going to make things easier for developers.

[Markus Krause]

I would consider any synth with DCOs a digital hybrid synth. And the Alpha Juno was a derivative design.

Well I am shocked and disapointed, as I own an Alpha Juno 2 and have just found out that it is digital and not analogue. I want my money back!

Next you will be telling me that my Juno 6 is also digital.

It's both. It has a digital osciallator (DCO) and an anlogue filter.

[_leras]

That is digitally controlled, not actually digitally generated I think. It wasn't the world's first hybrid was it?

[tony10000]

BONES is right.

Whoa there, big guy, steady on!

To be fair, maybe he's not, but this time I agree with him.

@Double Tap
Nothing's over til people have no more money left to spend

Since none of us has hard data to support our ideas either way, I personally look at the level of discounting, and other hard price changes to test for market saturation. We all have our method.

I don't think Tony P is that far out with his guesses. He certainly presents himself intelligently. But none of us really know.

And Tony's (controversial?) ideas are interestingly provocative, which generates good KVR contributions from all comers (vurt too )

.......................................................

I'd still like to know what people make of an AI future?

A future where the synth "learns me" and predicts accordingly.

eg, a synth that analyses all my songs and figures out starter presets for me, or some alternative solution to browsers with their endless and almost bewildering-to-the-point-of-meaningless list of tag-fitting presets. AI will anticipate my needs..

eg, a synth that has a simpler gui that tends to populate with "knobs" depending on the way I'm using it.

eg something intelligent that links different parts of synth architecture in different ways so if, say, I wiggle a knob a couple of times it'll offer me some proper musical lfo or other ideas I'd not normally have thought of, and not just offer unmusical trash ideas (so often the case)

eg a synth arp that followed the key I'm playing in (not AI this, but worthy of a mention in a world of arp machines that mostly don't modulate to fit the key)

In short, a synth (or any plug or daw) that learned the way I operate, that configured, customised and organised itself in every way to what I actually do.

Anticipate me please, oh smart synth.

Bones could do with one of these

I started off asking a whole load of questions because maybe his OP was based on some insider knowledge but reading the thread it seemed that it... wasn't. But he's not trolling, it's a fair debate - I just think those sweeping statements didn't really help illuminate much? They provoked contributions and opposition but I don't think we're much closer to understanding what's going on.

I didn't just fall off the turnip truck...

My articles have appeared in numerous publications including Mix, Electronic Musician, Recording, Recording Engineer/Producer, AV/Video, Roland Users Group, Millimeter. I have also worked on projects for major MI companies including Roland, Kawai, and New England Digital.

[Rastkovic]

I would consider any synth with DCOs a digital hybrid synth. And the Alpha Juno was a derivative design.

Well I am shocked and disapointed, as I own an Alpha Juno 2 and have just found out that it is digital and not analogue. I want my money back!

Next you will be telling me that my Juno 6 is also digital.

It's both. It has a digital osciallator (DCO) and an anlogue filter.

Digital controlled oscillator.

-> https://belltonesynthworks.com/2017/01/ ... oscillator

[foosnark]

I probably shouldn't go off on a pedantic tangent, especially about (sigh) analog vs. digital.

But...

A DCO has an analog capacitor which builds up charge, and the phase is reset by a separate digital clock. The signal it produces is 100% analog, having never been represented numerically as bits. There is no phase accumulator, there is no DAC, there is no possibility of aliasing, etc.

I wouldn't call a DCO "digital." If I had to, I would call it analog. But I'd probably just call it a DCO.