One Synth Challenge #98: Any One Synth (Photonic Wins!)

[wagtunes]

Rather poor error in judgement to allow the one synth challenge to be so messed about with to now mean any one commercial synth and effects, even if it is only for one time, but I guess self advancement by some people is the driver of 'progress'. Surely it totally defeats the concept of the competition. Equal gear levels the field and may the best writer win, no?

Ridiculous situation to have synth 1 tracks compared and judged against $300 flagship products and a shed loads of fx. What on earth were you people thinking letting your egos get the best of yourselves

Hard to argue with this except for one thing.

I'll bet that Jasinski or Z_Prime (who have both retired from doing these) could beat me using Synth1 while I used Omnisphere.

Talent will ultimately win this thing. Of course it does make things for difficult for the guy who only has Synth1 and free FX.

I don't know. I'm torn between doing this (because I can use any synth I want) and not doing it (because I'll have to judge 100 + tracks). Don't really care how well I do in the contest. It'll just be nice to use things that I'm familiar with and aren't restrictive.

Eventually, I'll make a decision.

I just don't know what it's going to be as of right now.

[EnGee]

So, maybe there should be two parallel competitions? One is FOSC (Free One Synth Challenge) for the purists and COSC (Commercial One Synth Challenge) for the others?

[wagtunes]

So, maybe there should be two parallel competitions? One is FOSC (Free One Synth Challenge) for the purists and COSC (Commercial One Synth Challenge) for the others?

I like it.

[psmacmur]

What about Reaktor? (assuming no samples)

Should be fine. Which instrument in particular?

I doubt I'll actually have time to participate this month, but my idea was to create a big ensemble based largely on the West Coast Blocks, probably with some VA blocks for percussion and some non-blocks modules for mixing etc. And then stream a live recording, for some live virtual modular techno.

[ontrackp]

Rather poor error in judgement to allow the one synth challenge to be so messed about with to now mean any one commercial synth and effects, even if it is only for one time, but I guess self advancement by some people is the driver of 'progress'. Surely it totally defeats the concept of the competition. Equal gear levels the field and may the best writer win, no?

Ridiculous situation to have synth 1 tracks compared and judged against $300 flagship products and a shed loads of fx. What on earth were you people thinking letting your egos get the best of yourselves

I don't think this is messed up. It's still the One Synth Challenge and if someone does a great composition regardless of the synth and plugins they use, they will do well.

"Self advancement by some people is the driver of "progress". Huh?!?! Also don't understand where ego comes into this.

I think that the majority of people who participate in OSC have favorite go-to synths that they own and plug ins that they enjoy using, so this month is kind of a fun bonus. Also, I think this appropriately balances off the many, many months where we've used synths that are buggy or have limited feature sets.

I appreciate the opportunity this month and I think it will be an epic competition with more entries than usual and the quality will be fantastic. I'm looking forward to hearing entries from many of the regulars, knowing that they are using the software they like best and have the opportunity for highest quality production is an exciting prospect.

This is a FUN competition and I think that people enter because they welcome the chance to be creative, and to engage with a community of like minded people interested in synths, programming, composing and production.

[574X]

TLDR: wall of text

And about samplig vs wavetable...there's sort of a grey zone. Tone2 Icarus has for instance some drum kits laid out as wavetables where segements are fired according to incoming midi note. This would be sampling I bet, or is this still wavetable synthesis...what it technicaly is.

From my limited understanding a "wavetable" is a single cycle of a waveform, repeating as you would see in an oscilloscope set to display a single cycle, like MOscilloscope (try it ).

A longer waveform is what differentiates an identifiable sound sample and uses a soundfount/sampler to either one-shot or loop it at various points.

A lot of the other questions have already been answered in the first two pages of the thread . I doubt resampling within Harmor is appropriate, though chorus within synths, which is considered resampling is allowed.

Equal gear levels the field and may the best writer win, no?

In my humble opinion, actually it's more of a synthesis sound design and composition focus, done for fun rather than about everyone competing with the same weapon. Albeit, friendly competition is a great motivator.

Ridiculous situation to have synth 1 tracks compared and judged against $300 flagship products and a shed loads of fx.

-allow me to try to level the playing field, though many have already demonstrated it with their inspiring OSC tracks.

Modern professional sound design for sample packs and synthesizers often just relies on fast, -32 dB gain-reduction, parallel, multiband compression, some sort of distortion (often with synthesis like fm), and an eq that scoops mids and boosts highs.

Key stereo effects (some of which are only allowed within synths at OSC, but can be easily replicated by duplicating the patch instance and modulating pitch bend and channel time delay) are chorus, phasers, reverb, delay, and short versions of that like "dimension expander" are also used. Then the sound is fed into a limiter, likely <5 dB to hit ~12-16 momentary LU in my experience.

Yes lots of commercial synth presets do that already but anyone can do it with any synth, as long as the synth has a clean signal.

A dedicated sub sine layer that hits around 50 Hz is another key element of a lot of commercial synth patches, but the modern successful producers I've studied use multiple layers with various stereo width and amplitude envelopes, removing most sub sine from all of them and making a separate synth instance for it. They also remove most compression and effects from each instance and apply it to a bus containing all leads, and again for all basses.

Sure there are lots of drum synthesis tutorials with commercial synths, but even there people comment that it can be done in any synth. -My best result has always been a sine wave with a pitch envelope or quickly gliding between 2 midi notes for a low layer (in the ballpark of 60 Hz for bass drums and 200 Hz for snares (these frequencies are often a little higher, for example in some DnB)) with comp/saturation/harmonic excitement, then a noise layer. Then you apply a limiter/maximer/clipper optimized for loudness. I've mentioned several. If you want more you can add a stereo synthesized clap to the snare and a click for the top kick drum beater (or just use an exciter).

Easier said than done, I've learned the hard way that it takes experience, but if you have it then the playing field is level. Just listen to the top tracks from the past OSCs.

[therektafire]

So I have an (imo) interesting question about the rules, specifically the one about

"Any effect that transforms the sound to make them unrecognizable as being from the synth."

Does this apply to automation as well? The reason I was asking is because all this talk about not being able to use samples and not "transforming the sound to make it unrecognizable", combined with my attraction to retro music these days, made me think about classic chiptunes and about how programmers would basically do the equivalent of fancy automation tricks to push the soundchips farther than they could normally go, like how C64 programmers use the volume register to play samples, generate speech etc, by changing it really fast, ZX Spectrum does it by rapid PWM, that kind of thing. If one were so inclined (and if DAWs are even up to the task when it comes to this kind of thing) could you get away with doing say pseudo sample playback, complex sound modulation, etc this way since it isn't using any actual effects and it is using built in features of the synth?

Not that I would actually do it of course, that would be faaar too much work for me LOL

[574X]

not "transforming the sound to make it unrecognizable"

My opinion is that if you're modulating a synth parameter, then it's the sound of the synth. - Even modulating the mixer or something part of the mixing process.
Ofc, not using any automation or external effects is a bigger challenge that can be more fun , which is why I've done several tracks like that for OSC.

[aluode]

My Entry "Kansas to Chigago"

https://soundcloud.com/antti-luode/aluo ... to-chigago

I chose synth 1

I used grossbeat on one channel to pump the volume..

Maximus on the snare..

Other than that, few effectors as reverbs and other than couple limiters that is about it..

The flp is at (74 Kansas to Chigago.zip):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1t5a ... kVvUnFPMkk

Antti

[surreal]

So then to my understanding Korg m1 and Wavestation and Avenger is not gonna make the cut. The former two is technically romplers and Avenger uses drum samples?

[rghvdberg]

Talent will ultimately win this thing.

The Wags has spoken ..

[HiEnergy]

[...]
- mastering is not allowed, but I can place any free/paid effects on the master bus
[...]

May I use one or more instances of iZotope Neutron or Ozone?
Are shaping and colouring effects like iZotope Trash, Soundtoys Sie-Q or Noveltech Character allowed?
I think the aforementioned effects do neither pitch-shift nor modulate so should be fine.

[solidtrax]

So then to my understanding Korg m1 and Wavestation and Avenger is not gonna make the cut. The former two is technically romplers and Avenger uses drum samples?

With regards to Avenger, it should be no problem to use it, as long as you don't use the drum samples or for example recorded piano or guitar samples. Avenger has a powerful virtual analog synth section and I see no issue using it.

Just want to make sure I got it right please confirm:
- I can use any effects from the synth I use
- I can use any free or paid eq/compressor/reverb/limiter
- mastering is not allowed, but I can place any free/paid effects on the master bus

Thanks!

As far as I can tell, it's a yes, yes and yes!

Just want to make sure I got it right please confirm:
- I can use any effects from the synth I use
- I can use any free or paid eq/compressor/reverb/limiter
- mastering is not allowed, but I can place any free/paid effects on the master bus

Thanks!

Same questions here. Take for instance Synths like MPowersynth, Massive, VPS Avenger or many others where Patch-FX are part of sound design...Where's the limit of FX usage according to the rule which says "Must be recognizeable as coming from the synth"? I'm not quite sure...

[..]

Effects that are included in the synth are always allowed, as long it's not sample based (can't think of an example?). But for example the chorus and distortion fx in Spire are allowed, even if you make the distortion scream like crazy. It's part of the synth, so it's no problem to use it.

[bjporter]

We've done a few of these any synth challenges before, and all of them worked out great

Here's a good list of synths that have been done before (Use this as a guide): https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/


As for FX, it's the same rule as always, but commercial FX can be used too.

[] Peter:H []

From my limited understanding a "wavetable" is a single cycle of a waveform, repeating as you would see in an oscilloscope set to display a single cycle, like MOscilloscope (try it ).

I have a different understanding from synths like the previously mentioned Tone2 Icarus (Serum, Massive, and many others work the same way. Try find AudioTerm Progi to build Wavetables yourself): A Wavetable is a table of many single cycle waveforms organized in "slots", thus it is not called "single cycle wav" but the name "wavetable" was chosen. The waveform cycle "slot" which is actually played at some time can be controlled by a LFO, ENV or what ever you like and there are even different blend modes when changing from slot to slot. One way to organize this is to append all slots into a single big wav file where each slot is made of a single cycle of 2048 samples.
On the other way round you can interpret any wav file as a wavetable dividing it into slots of 2048 samples each. When you now use "linear" mode, i.e. the pointer which choses the current slot to play goes thru the table from start to end automatically, you actually have sample playback though it is technically speaking wavetable synthesis...