One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread

[574X]

It's been a while since I watched those, but as I recall, he concluded the sound in the room had no noticeable effect on the signal coming from the guitar. That's a very different claim from being able to sculpt and replicate the sound of a room with EQ. And he tested some cabs vs. convolutions; I don't recall him claiming that could in general be replicated with EQs, either. He did conclude that amps could be well replicated by a series of EQs and distortion. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I think you may be conflating some of his findings?

Room reflections are usually irrelevant in guitar tone.
Guitarists use delays and reverbs for spatial effects.
See the videos if you don't have experience with this.

As a professional audio engineer that records musicians daily, and makes countless AV productions in several styles, applications, and studios, I can tell you we shape the EQ to replicate what artists perceive in the room, then balance that tone as needed given the full mix.
That should be sufficiently clear now.

This thread isn't intended for this specific discussion.

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

@574X

Thank you so much for those videos! A real treasure!

As an unconventional guitarist (MIDI and 13-Pin) I've never fully understood the people who want 100% of ”that sound” or tone that someone else is using.

It's way more fun to experiment and go off the beaten track instead of following in the footsteps of others. I guess it only makes sense if you play in a cover band or are stuck doing a certain genre that has a specific sound to it.

Almost all emulations of vintage effects and synths being marketed today is about sounding like someone or something that has already been done.

gearnews.com has even started with a series called ”How to sound like*__” (*insert the name of any producer, artist, musician.)

Then again I'd do anything to have a glitch-free realistic and expressive electric violin patch for fretless guitar so I could pull of stuff like Jean-Luc Ponty or Noel Pointer, So I do get those, who want the sounds/tones of the musicians they admire…,to some degree

Here is a very synthy Boss SY-1000 patch made ”realistic” thanks to IRs:
https://soundcloud.com/yadrichik-chaya/ ... ka-samgita

I thought piano IRs (which are near impossible to find) could do the same magic to a crap piano sound and started a thread about it here, but ”the experts” had other things to say

[] Peter:H []

the OSC is the losing it's spirit ...

Cabinet simulation includes the frequency curve of the microphone, the relative location of the microphone, the speaker, the cabinet resonance, and the room, which can all be sculpted and replicated with a single precise equalizer.

You can "sculpt and replicate" room with an EQ? Okay, interesting ... I cannot do ER and Late with an EQ. BUt then when it's easy to do wih an EQ, please go for it.

Peter, you clearly have lots of time on your hands, so definitely check out the videos I posted to educate yourself about guitar tone and the relevance of the room frequencies versus reflections.

The thing is I'm a IT nerd. As a IT nerd you clearly know your tools and know what they are usefull for. You build categories along units ... and as a IT nerd talking to business people your have to be very precise about each and every things and explain stuff in simple but yet very exact words and try to walk in your audiences shoes ... An EQ is to most simple minded people a thing to manipulate a given frequency spectrum, i.e. it emphasizes or lowers frequencies that are present in the input spectrum. An EQ does not invent "new frequency content", i.e frequencies that have not been in the original will not be there after an EQ ... if you use it in a common sense way. If you increase a frequency that is at level zero ... even if you try to double its loudness ... it's 0.0 * 2.0.
An AMP might come with that EQ function as well, but on top of it it adds harmonics, so it adds now components to the spectrum ... that's why EQ and AMP are not the same. And your are talking about EQ and AMP is equivalent ... no it's not.
And yeah, I have lot's of time ... but how does this contribute to your argument or might falsify mine? Are you trying to do some framing here? Or why's that each and any comment comes with a "personal" note? Are you kind of angry on a personal level?

[574X]

@574X
... I'd do anything to have a glitch-free realistic and expressive electric violin patch for fretless guitar...

...I thought piano IRs (which are near impossible to find) could do the same magic to a crap piano sound and started a thread about it here...

First of all, I'm no expert on IRs, just an advocate of authentic reverb reproduction, which is how this all started.
Even the analog recording engineer Steve Albini, who I greatly respect and who has said he avoids reverbs, recommends IR reverbs as the most realistic option.
Fun fact: at the legendary Abbey Road, they occasionally play audio through a speaker in a converted bathroom to record the result and mix that track into the song.

Regarding piano simulation, it's obvious when it's not "the tone," or even when it's not as expressive as a piano because much of the tone of a piano is derived from dynamics, as it doesn't have vibrato, and the immense number of strings / voices. Both of these are lost if you simply take a piano note sample and map it across a keyboard. However, thorough multisampling can certainly achieve an excellent piano tone and it can even be done with a relatively cheap pair of condenser microphones and a cheap piano, as long as it's tuned to your liking. There are free samplers you can make multi-sampled, velocity-sensitive instruments in, such as Short Circuit and the legacy version of TX16Wx 2, if I'm not mistaken.
Once that's your foundation of a tone, you can certainly shape it by blending the IR of another piano resonance or room resonance.
I'm curious what the others had to say.

This is a fairly significant digression, but regarding "glitch-free realistic and expressive electric violin patch for fretless guitar," I'd first look towards technique and signal chain.
Using left hand technique to hammer on the notes and a compressor to minimize the resulting discrepancies from this style of softer playing with more room for error, coupled with setting the volume knob to 0 and increasing it after hammering or plucking the note, using classical vibrato technique, into a slightly saturated guitar tone, with post eq to shape it like a classical instrument, will give you an extremely effective, and expressive, glitch-free bowed string tone.
You may find it easier to use a volume pedal after the compressor, rather than the volume knob, for hands free operation, and the ability to pick notes more naturally.
I recommend that approach.

You're probably using guitar midi converters, many of which you have to accept the glitchiness as part of the process, and many installation inconveniences except in the case of sonuus G2M V3, for example. Given how convincing string patches can be with just subtractive synthesis, I'm sure there are wavetables which could more accurately assist this quest, coupled with the soft attack and release to simulate the bow stroke.

As a professional performing classical musician and someone who gets asked constantly for authentic strings in many records I make for people, I can share that it takes years of practice to get the nuances of classical string instrument performance to an even passable level. Therefore, it's a tall order to replicate that, again, without the use of a multi-sample library or AI, and to mask that it's not a real performance without using many layers of voices. I happily acknowledge that it's extremely convenient to sit with a laptop and a sound library to compose, instead of setting up mics, tuning instruments, and learning to perform parts. However, there is a powerful intangible relationship to the instrument, including amplifiers and cabinets, which results in feelings that completely change the result of songwriting and performance. This is something Jim Lill rarely touches upon in those videos. Furthermore I’d add to Jim’s brilliant, yet record-centric videos that it's actually the commodification of records that has divorced people from the local community interaction of passing on culture and important values through experiencing new songs in the present. This makes it easier to erode values and replace them to retain power and maximize exploitation.
It's certainly getting easier to achieve virtuosic performances without virtuosity. I'm not as up to speed as I once was on all the cutting edge soundware. Fortunately, I'm in a unique position to just be able to authentically record myself playing exactly what I need, when it's needed. I find that to be extremely valuable in a world that is a progressively more nested simulation.

It's always healthy to zoom out and remember that there are plenty of widely appreciated songs which have sub par recording quality, but are successful because of the emotion and message that they convey. The more that we mask our actual performance, the farther we get from directly communicating our feelings. Although, in many cases if the real performance is truly a deterrence from the song, we do have to do damage control, resorting to post processing, time and pitch correction, layering, and *gasp* replacement. Pro production certainly gets dirty...

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

@574X
... I'd do anything to have a glitch-free realistic and expressive electric violin patch for fretless guitar...

...I thought piano IRs (which are near impossible to find) could do the same magic to a crap piano sound and started a thread about it here...

First of all, I'm no expert on IRs, just an advocate of authentic reverb reproduction, which is how this all started.
Even the analog recording engineer Steve Albini, who I greatly respect and who has said he avoids reverbs, recommends IR reverbs as the most realistic option.
Fun fact: at the legendary Abbey Road, they occasionally play audio through a speaker in a converted bathroom to record the result and mix that track into the song.

Regarding piano simulation, it's obvious when it's not "the tone," or even when it's not as expressive as a piano because much of the tone of a piano is derived from dynamics, as it doesn't have vibrato, and the immense number of strings / voices. Both of these are lost if you simply take a piano note sample and map it across a keyboard. However, thorough multisampling can certainly achieve an excellent piano tone and it can even be done with a relatively cheap pair of condenser microphones and a cheap piano, as long as it's tuned to your liking. There are free samplers you can make multi-sampled, velocity-sensitive instruments in, such as Short Circuit and the legacy version of TX16Wx 2, if I'm not mistaken.
Once that's your foundation of a tone, you can certainly shape it by blending the IR of another piano resonance or room resonance.
I'm curious what the others had to say.

This is a fairly significant digression, but regarding "glitch-free realistic and expressive electric violin patch for fretless guitar," I'd first look towards technique and signal chain.
Using left hand technique to hammer on the notes and a compressor to minimize the resulting discrepancies from this style of softer playing with more room for error, coupled with setting the volume knob to 0 and increasing it after hammering or plucking the note, using classical vibrato technique, into a slightly saturated guitar tone, with post eq to shape it like a classical instrument, will give you an extremely effective, and expressive, glitch-free bowed string tone.
You may find it easier to use a volume pedal after the compressor, rather than the volume knob, for hands free operation, and the ability to pick notes more naturally.
I recommend that approach.

You're probably using guitar midi converters, many of which you have to accept the glitchiness as part of the process, and many installation inconveniences except in the case of sonuus G2M V3, for example. Given how convincing string patches can be with just subtractive synthesis, I'm sure there are wavetables which could more accurately assist this quest, coupled with the soft attack and release to simulate the bow stroke.

As a professional performing classical musician and someone who gets asked constantly for authentic strings in many records I make for people, I can share that it takes years of practice to get the nuances of classical string instrument performance to an even passable level. Therefore, it's a tall order to replicate that, again, without the use of a multi-sample library or AI, and to mask that it's not a real performance without using many layers of voices. I happily acknowledge that it's extremely convenient to sit with a laptop and a sound library to compose, instead of setting up mics, tuning instruments, and learning to perform parts. However, there is a powerful intangible relationship to the instrument, including amplifiers and cabinets, which results in feelings that completely change the result of songwriting and performance. This is something Jim Lill rarely touches upon in those videos. Furthermore I’d add to Jim’s brilliant, yet record-centric videos that it's actually the commodification of records that has divorced people from the local community interaction of passing on culture and important values through experiencing new songs in the present. This makes it easier to erode values and replace them to retain power and maximize exploitation.
It's certainly getting easier to achieve virtuosic performances without virtuosity. I'm not as up to speed as I once was on all the cutting edge soundware. Fortunately, I'm in a unique position to just be able to authentically record myself playing exactly what I need, when it's needed. I find that to be extremely valuable in a world that is a progressively more nested simulation.

It's always healthy to zoom out and remember that there are plenty of widely appreciated songs which have sub par recording quality, but are successful because of the emotion and message that they convey. The more that we mask our actual performance, the farther we get from directly communicating our feelings. Although, in many cases if the real performance is truly a deterrence from the song, we do have to do damage control, resorting to post processing, time and pitch correction, layering, and *gasp* replacement. Pro production certainly gets dirty...

Thank you so much for your lengthy reply filled with such great info!
(And sorry for taking ages to reply!)
As far as the whole Piano IR thing this is the thread I made:

viewtopic.php?t=587456

I think the last reply in that thread is most likely accurate and you as pro also agree with what was written and I'm wrong. But I'm still holding on to that if you have something similar sounding (like a cello/violin synth patch) and run that through an IR intended to make an electric violin sound like acoustic violin you get very good results - the same should be true with a 90s house piano going through a grand piano impulse

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

Since plenty Ohmforce plugins are now legacy and free, having this one for OSC would be perfect:
https://www.ohmforce.com/symptohm

[MilksterX]

Since plenty Ohmforce plugins are now legacy and free, having this one for OSC would be perfect:
https://www.ohmforce.com/symptohm

When I try and load this plugin on Mac I get this error

Screenshot 2023-08-20 at 10.27.03.png

in the downloaded files though I don't see any wav files

edit: never mind - redownloaded and can see them in the presets folder...

[MilksterX]

This could make a great synth for an OSC round, it works on Mac (just), the interface is confusing as hell and it is very very light on CPU as its using samples for the oscillators.

This would also make a great round for using any paid or freeware effects turned up to 11 in True Ohm Force style

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

This could make a great synth for an OSC round, it works on Mac (just), the interface is confusing as hell and it is very very light on CPU as its using samples for the oscillators.

This would also make a great round for using any paid or freeware effects turned up to 11 in True Ohm Force style

Personally I will be too busy to enter OSC for some time to come: I need to relearn spanish, work/set up a new business, look for apartments/houses on one of the Canary Islands etc. Also, the bridge on my Jamstik Studio MIDI guitar needs to be replaced. I even quit my Soundcloud subscription of Next Pro!

I have a really strong hunch that this now FREE Reconstructive Phrase Modeling synth: https://www.synful.com will be next month's (September) OSC synth.
Or very soon in the months to come. I will not have the time to enter, but at least I get to hear what all you come up with! I haven't tried Synful yet myself but the features and quality speak for itself (realistic orchestral instruments).

[Eauson]

https://attilammagyar.github.io/js80p/

Don't know if used b4

[jemaudio]

Best of luck with your new business and move Yadrichik. I look forward to your next track.

This could make a great synth for an OSC round, it works on Mac (just), the interface is confusing as hell and it is very very light on CPU as its using samples for the oscillators.

This would also make a great round for using any paid or freeware effects turned up to 11 in True Ohm Force style

Personally I will be too busy to enter OSC for some time to come: I need to relearn spanish, work/set up a new business, look for apartments/houses on one of the Canary Islands etc. Also, the bridge on my Jamstik Studio MIDI guitar needs to be replaced. I even quit my Soundcloud subscription of Next Pro!

I have a really strong hunch that this now FREE Reconstructive Phrase Modeling synth: https://www.synful.com will be next month's (September) OSC synth.
Or very soon in the months to come. I will not have the time to enter, but at least I get to hear what all you come up with! I haven't tried Synful yet myself but the features and quality speak for itself (realistic orchestral instruments).

[MilksterX]

This could make a great synth for an OSC round, it works on Mac (just), the interface is confusing as hell and it is very very light on CPU as its using samples for the oscillators.

This would also make a great round for using any paid or freeware effects turned up to 11 in True Ohm Force style

Personally I will be too busy to enter OSC for some time to come: I need to relearn spanish, work/set up a new business, look for apartments/houses on one of the Canary Islands etc. Also, the bridge on my Jamstik Studio MIDI guitar needs to be replaced. I even quit my Soundcloud subscription of Next Pro!

I have a really strong hunch that this now FREE Reconstructive Phrase Modeling synth: https://www.synful.com will be next month's (September) OSC synth.
Or very soon in the months to come. I will not have the time to enter, but at least I get to hear what all you come up with! I haven't tried Synful yet myself but the features and quality speak for itself (realistic orchestral instruments).

Good luck finding a new place, only ever been to Fuertaventura and enjoyed the laid-back Corralejo I could imagine living there and doing a lot of surfing!

[FigBug]

I'd like to propose my Wavetable synth for a future competition. It's free & open-source. Runs on Windows, macOS & Linux. All the usual formats, VST3, AU, LV2.

https://socalabs.com/synths/wavetable/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWN_nLPWXZ4

[ElVincente]

It looks really good! And mpe capable too . Gonna test that one for sure !

[Tj Shredder]

Yes, looks nice.
Thump One by Toybox would as well be a candidate: https://www.toyboxaudio.com/pages/thump-one
I don't care which comes first...