Synths with the snappiest envelopes

[tristan-]

Last but not least, in the end it should be about the music and a snappy envelope will not automatically turn someone into a good musician.

yep. just means they gotta compress more

But then snappy becomes snoopy surely?

Snappy becomes Snoopy surely. Except at night, then he becomes... THE LOBSTERMAN

[cytospur]

Ouch!

[_al_]

Snappy becomes Snoopy surely. Except at night, then he becomes... THE LOBSTERMAN

im happy with my zebra, but that does look snappy! could use a better designer though

[stikygum]

if you are after psytrance bassline, most synth are good enought it's more how you tweak it and processing ,if you want more click just retriger the phase at a point it click. the oscillator matter a lot too..what i have noticed on some analog osc working good, tend to loook like a sine on one part of the saw, it s rounded it give that phat bottem end and not much harmonic/crap in the mids . serum is great for this as you can do your saw the way you want it and don't need much equing in the end.

What point do you mean to retrigger the phase? Are you saying to retrigger the Osc wave phase at zero once the keyboard note is pressed?

[tristan-]

if you are after psytrance bassline, most synth are good enought it's more how you tweak it and processing ,if you want more click just retriger the phase at a point it click. the oscillator matter a lot too..what i have noticed on some analog osc working good, tend to loook like a sine on one part of the saw, it s rounded it give that phat bottem end and not much harmonic/crap in the mids . serum is great for this as you can do your saw the way you want it and don't need much equing in the end.

What point do you mean to retrigger the phase? Are you saying to retrigger the Osc wave phase at zero once the keyboard note is pressed?

No, he basically means each note will be triggered on the same phase point. You can hear it clearly in the example I posted a few days ago

[Synthetic Wav]

if you are after psytrance bassline, most synth are good enought it's more how you tweak it and processing ,if you want more click just retriger the phase at a point it click. the oscillator matter a lot too..what i have noticed on some analog osc working good, tend to loook like a sine on one part of the saw, it s rounded it give that phat bottem end and not much harmonic/crap in the mids . serum is great for this as you can do your saw the way you want it and don't need much equing in the end.

What point do you mean to retrigger the phase? Are you saying to retrigger the Osc wave phase at zero once the keyboard note is pressed?

No, he basically means each note will be triggered on the same phase point. You can hear it clearly in the example I posted a few days ago

yes i mean that to have the same attack behavior

[Ichad.c]

This thread seems to be too focused on phase, so by definition no analog synth (free-running) synths can be snappy?

Here is some cool pics:

http://analog.no/cms/index.php/envelopes

[Synthetic Wav]

This thread seems to be too focused on phase, so by definition no analog synth (free-running) synths can be snappy?

Here is some cool pics:

http://analog.no/cms/index.php/envelopes

it's for the type of patch he is after , it need phase retrigering, witth analog you would have to sample it or use a analog synth that can syncro the osc to the gate

[TIMT]

I guess you using Sylenth as an example of snappy envelopes just goes to show how subjective that term really is.i can't stand sylenths envelopes.1.they are completely linear 2.the stages themselves sound pretty slow to me.i went through the trouble of allocating another envelope modulating the volume again so i can get something that approximates an exponential envelope,then i came to my senses and just ditched Sylenth (that was the final straw on top of it's horribly phasey unison and thin bottom end,rant rant rant).Dune 2's envelopes are insanely quick,sylenth is not even in the same league,Spires are decent aswell,but still not in the same league as Dune 2's and for MSEG's you really can't top Absynth's or FM8's.

In reality though,you can make most envelopes sound snappy (to a degree) if you play round with the ratio of attack and decay,release length,mod depth,bonus points for a delay stage and ofcourse the absolutely defining factor in 'snap' is note lengths and sequencing in general

[fluffy_little_something]

I don't think Sylenth's envelopes are linear. Just did a test on the amp envelope: With release at max the sound lasts about 25s, at 50% it lasts about 1s.

Nor do I agree on the missing bottom, you need to use the equalizer, just like with Waves' Element, which also sounds a bit pale without the EQ.

[deastman]

I don't have time to go though the whole thread right now, so maybe this was mentioned. Talk of snappy envelopes dates way back to the Sequential Pro-1, which had some of the fastest envelopes in a hardware synth. These days, software doesn't have the same lag issues, so any synth should be fast enough. But snappy really comes from the shape of the envelope. What works best is one with variable decay curves, or fully modifiable spline curves that can be precisely tailored to the sound.

[chk071]

I don't think Sylenth's envelopes are linear. Just did a test on the amp envelope: With release at max the sound lasts about 25s, at 50% it lasts about 1s.

Yeah, they're most definitely not linear, but (maybe slightly) exponential.

[fluffy_little_something]

They are most definitely exponential.
Nor do I understand the complaint about a phasey unison, just tried it starting from the init patch. There is no phase movement at all, which is one of the things I love about Sylenth.

I am starting to wonder if the poster was talking about another synth

[BlitBit]

I don't think Sylenth's envelopes are linear. Just did a test on the amp envelope: With release at max the sound lasts about 25s, at 50% it lasts about 1s.

I think you've got some things mixed up here. When TIMT said that the envelopes on Sylenth1 are linear he meant that the envelopes go from the start point to the end point in a linear fashion regardless of the value you have dialed in (haven't checked if that's really true). For a more concrete example of what that means let's examine the curves in the following image:

The release phase of all three envelopes starts around 2000 and ends at 3000. The first envelope is almost linear while the second and the third look more like an exponential decay. So for all three envelopes a value of 1000 was dialed in for the release. However the exponential envelopes go much quicker towards 0 then the linear one. What TIMT said is that Sylenth1 only provides linear envelopes, i.e. envelopes that look similar to the topmost envelope.

What you have described on the other hand is the mapping of the slider values to time values. When implemented like in Sylenth1 this can help you to fine tune the very short (aka snappy) envelopes. Perhaps it becomes clear when you look at it in the following way: 50% of the available slider values can be used to set time values between 1 and 25 seconds. So 50% of the possible options are used for an interval of 24 seconds. However, this leaves us with the other 50% which can be used to fine tune between the 0 and 1 second range. So the other half of the possible options is used for an interval of 1 seconds. Put differently: You have more options for rather short times and less for the longer times.

[chk071]

What TIMT said is that Sylenth1 only provides linear envelopes, i.e. envelopes that look similar to the topmost envelope.

Yeah, but where does he have that info from? Did Lennard stated that somewhere? IMO, the envelopes at least have to be slightly exponential from the sound of it. I could be wrong though.