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"Team Test"...or something like that...


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So, check this out... :idea::puff:

 

I was wondering what it might look like if I asked a manufacturer to give me a few copies of one of their software synths - ideally an original design with some unique feature/approach to sonic mayhem - so that I could pick a handful of KCers to poke around under the hood and discuss it in a thread. Of course, anyone who wants to play along at home could download the demo.

 

I'm thinking it'd be even more interesting if I could get (at least) one of the guys from the manufacturer to keep an eye on the thread and join us in discussion if, where and when they felt it was appropriate to do so.

 

To be clear: I'm not looking for a puff piece. Quite the opposite, in fact - we answer to no corporate masters, so I want the folks playing with the synth to feel totally free to not only talk about the aspects of the instrument they like, but those that don't work so well for them either. I do understand that there are people who might be concerned as to how the manufacturer in question would react to negative comments, to which my response would be that's precisely why their presence in the thread would not only be permitted, but encouraged - why not give them a chance to clarify for us us why something we may not dig (or understand fully) is the way it is?

 

The best part is that this is easy to try! I reached out to my brother Ralph at Arturia USA, and managed to get a few copies of their Pigments 2 synth. I've already chosen a few of the extra-geeky brethren and given them codes for the synth, so we'll see how it goes. If it turns out to be as much fun as I think, maybe we can do more of them. :cool:

 

You guys like the concept in general? :idk:

 

dB

:snax:

 

:keys:==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <==:rawk:

 

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Gonna play Devil"s Advocate here. Don"t do it.

 

Dave and the amazing KC team already have cultivated the best IMHO vehicle for product reviews. We have a number of members who are beta testers who inform us about new releases. And then KC goes to town. And this keeps KC at complete arms length from any possible financial relationship with product manufacturers.

 

When I go to Amazon to read reviews the first ones I ignore are where the product was provide for free in exchange for a review. These are , for me, useless.

 

Next, and perhaps more controversial amongst our members, is my revulsion of the record-length post about the Space Station speaker. In this case the manufacturer (May he Rest In Peace) spewed marketing-oriented gibberish on a daily basis for months and months. Remember the ALL CAPS and sentences that all ended in exclamation points. And worse is that he convinced some of our KC tribe that the product was 'magical", never to be understood by mortal keyboard players. So, having product manufacturers on the forum is not always a plus.

 

Anyway, my 2 cents.

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Gonna play Devil"s Advocate here. Don"t do it.

 

Dave and the amazing KC team already have cultivated the best IMHO vehicle for product reviews. We have a number of members who are beta testers who inform us about new releases. And then KC goes to town. And this keeps KC at complete arms length from any possible financial relationship with product manufacturers.

I think we have that covered. I'm not planning on opening this up to just any manufacturer. I'd like to keep it to those who understand that we have no corporate ties and that our people are not only free to say what they think, that it's encouraged.

 

 

When I go to Amazon to read reviews the first ones I ignore are where the product was provide for free in exchange for a review. These are , for me, useless.

Understood. I'm hoping to get around that by picking folks for whom I don't think that will be a factor. Marino was among my first choices. So was Linwood, The Real MC, davedoerfler...you get the idea.

 

 

Next, and perhaps more controversial amongst our members, is my revulsion of the record-length post about the Space Station speaker. In this case the manufacturer (May he Rest In Peace) spewed marketing-oriented gibberish on a daily basis for months and months. Remember the ALL CAPS and sentences that all ended in exclamation points. And worse is that he convinced some of our KC tribe that the product was 'magical", never to be understood by mortal keyboard players. So, having product manufacturers on the forum is not always a plus.

Sigh...

 

This one was particularly painful for me, because I considered Aspen a good friend...and I think he took advantage of that relationship. Not intentionally, mind you - it's just who he was. You have no idea how many PMs I sent to him and how many phone calls I made telling me what an uncomfortable position he was outting me in and literally begging him to alter his behavior, or how many posts of his I had to edit...but, as many of us know only too well, it just didn't work. :(

 

The point being is that I thinik it was the individuals involved as well as the situation. I'm hoping to avoid that be making clear to any manufacturer we invite that we value civility very highly here. You may be right that it won;t work the way I'm hoping, but I think it's worth a try.

 

Another solution to this - and at least one of your other (valid) concerns - might be to take these "Team Tests" and put them up in the GearLab forum (formerly VIP Reviews - they're not reviews, dammit!), so we keep this off KC altogether. I can see some pretty significant advantages to doing it that way.

 

 

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Greatly appreciated, brother! Responsible opposing viewpoints are certainly welcome. In no way do I claim to be able to see all points of view, and am grateful to have folks around me who are willing to share their peerspectives.

 

dB

 

:snax:

 

:keys:==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <==:rawk:

 

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I think its a fine idea depending on who does the reviews. Whether we move it to GearLab doesn't bother me. Your always going to have people trying to use public forums to post marketing stuff it happens all the time. Harmony Central is continuously battling that.

Boards: Kurzweil SP-6, Roland FA-08, VR-09, DeepMind 12

Modules: Korg Radias, Roland D-05, Bk7-m & Sonic Cell

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The more I think about it, the more the idea of putting these up in the GearLab forum appeals to me. That forum was specifically created for hands on gear exploration, and we believe that curated manufacturer participation has potential value there.

 

I love the idea of being able to check out a product this way - one of the unique benefits of the forum format - but we definitely want to keep KC as free of the marketing stuff as possible. We've been pretty successful at that for a long time, and having something like this here might give folks who want to use KC for marketing the wrong idea.

 

dB

:snax:

 

:keys:==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <==:rawk:

 

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I like it, I am not worried about impartiality or freedom to express.

 

I read Tape Op regularly and one big reason is the reviews.

 

Having feedback from experienced, knowledgeable reviewers who may uncover and expose problems in front of an audience is actually a very good thing for the vendor.

They have an opportunity to make real world improvements and may very well recieve ideas that they may not have thought of prior to the review.

 

The new name is good too, way better than the stupid ones I posted! :- D

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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The new name is good too, way better than the stupid ones I posted! :- D

Your suggestions weren't stupid. Matter of fact, your suggestion of Gear Chat is the one I have already been using for the rig tours I've been doing. Great minds, etc. :thu:

 

I killed the thread asking for name suggestions because Anderton came up with one I loved - GearLab. That made us have to change the name of Metlay's forum though. Soooo complicated. ::D:rolleyes:

 

dB

 

:snax:

 

:keys:==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <==:rawk:

 

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Mistah Bryce, that's great news for me. I'm still exploring Pigments 2 and can't point to any serious operational negatives. I'm increasingly satisfied that I made a good addition to my stack. There are several playable poly sounds in the "SFX" presets that I wasn't expecting to find there, period! I'd enjoy putting in 2 cents in a few spots. Bet I learn more about it from the pending dialog alone.

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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Share the love!

 

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

clicky!:  more about me ~ my radio station (and my fam) ~ my local tribe ~ my day job ~ my bookmy music

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I don't think I was in the list, but I've already owned a copy for a few months and can give my feedback:

 

- First off, MPE integration is surprisingly flawless. It's as accessible as Roli's own Equator, and less buggy than Serum (which has struggled with some MPE aspects for a while). That said, I never tried to do anything particularly complex with the MPE modulators, just plugged it in to my Seaboard and played around with presets. But it looks like all the tools are there. I don't know whether it can do relative Slide yet, Equator is the only one I know of that does that, and it's not particularly important, sometimes I'm not even sure it works correctly in Equator.

 

- Sound is juicy and full, no complaints there. Presets are aimed a bit more at EDM and dance pop than live keyboard performance, IMO. But that's really been the case with Serum and most of the modern Wavetable synths I've played with. LOTS of wavetables to play with.

 

- Modulator section is FANTASTIC, probably the largest assortment of usable mods on the scene. No BS "dual LFOs" or blocks that cut corners. I find FXpansion Cypher and Strobe to be almost unusable due to all its weird integration of modulators, nothing sounds like I want it to. User defined functions and THREE random Modulators, which is really really useful for my sound design work. Zebra2 is the only one with more random mods (FOUR), but I don't own it, so I can't comment. Serum has been a big letdown in this department, as they opted for all hand-drawn modulators, which is probably great for most people, but don't allow for randomization. NI Massive never had any, don't know about Massive2. Equator has two, and they're very good, but Pigments' are more flexible.

 

- Interface... I think I could learn to love this. I've always held Massive as the gold standard with the way it presented its concentric collars. Pigments follows very much in Massive's footsteps, with its own flavor that offers both advantages and disadvantages. Unlike massive, no parameter is limited to two modulators. This isn't a huge thing for me as I've rarely found the need to add more. That was a product of Massive's adherence to making sure everything was immediately visible on the screen (which I applaud), and there's only so many collars you can fit around a nob. Pigments adds the ability to add an unlimited number of mods to a control, with the concession that only the first one is visible at all times. However, if you click a control it immediately highlights the currently assigned mods, and clicking on them will bring up their collars. Where Pigments surpasses Massive and takes a page from Serum and many other new synths, is that in additional to collars, it has a little spark that shows the exact position of the controller output in real time. It's kind of cute, and helpful for troubleshooting.

 

- Finally, this synth ridiculously deep. The Two Engine system is enormous. Each Engine has 3 modes: Analog can provide up to 3 simple layered waveforms (for a total of 6!). The Wavetable mode is just infinitely controllable. There are a plethora of high-quality wavetables, and you can import your own which are in the same format as Serum. Visual representation is solid. The Sample engine is quite bizarre, however, being both over and under engineered, and this is where there's some seriously missed opportunities (that may be expanded in later versions). It attempts to be a multi-sample producer, but it only has 6 sample slots. Furthermore, the sample mapping is locked per octave or to a velocity range depending on the mode you choose. Frankly, I don't see the usefulness of this. I'm no stranger to assigning SFX to notes or pads or keys, but this doesn't allow you to define specific ranges, only octaves. It has modes for round robin and random cycling too, but again, without a discreet range control, I can't imagine much potential for this. I think they could have scrapped the "mode" idea altogether, and just allowed input boxes for note and velocity ranges per sample, which would have made this far more flexible and simpler. Otherwise, it's a fine mono-sample engine, and you can import your own, unlike some of the tacked-on sample playback engines that VIs include in their synths (*caugh* Equator). The sample engine also is the only mode that doesn't allow for multi-voice unions. Not surprising since that's not typically the realm of Samplers. But there was an opportunity there that could have been cool.

 

In closing, Pigments is a ridiculously deep and well constructed. Very strong FX unit that I failed to review. The interface is one of the most tight and solid I've seen in recent years, which is surprising coming from Arturia whose I consider to be typically subpar. I only spent a short time flipping through presets, and they seemed decent enough. The engine system, mod block, and filters are fantastic and well laid out. The sample engine is rudimentary with some odd rumblings of something greater that never happened... but no worse than any other VI. I guess my biggest concern is that this synth is EVERYTHING. Never in a million years are you going to hear a record and say, "oh, that's a Pigments Patch!" And that's sorta the thing with Wavetablers, isn't it? I mean, I guess I can see a tune was made in 2008 and figure it uses Massive, but it's not like Diva which has it's own simple but juicy flavor. But it's great to have an "everything but the kitchen sink" synth around that just gets the job done, no matter how complex. I'll admit to never warming up to Serum the way many do. It's fine, and Steve Duda is a super nice guy. Like Pigments it's a big ol toolbox, very deep and flexible. I guess I just never felt in sync with the workflow, and I came in right when MPE was new and buggy. Pigments is a little more to my liking, it's a bit more varied in presets, has a Sample engine, as well as an eye on the past, while Serum feels absolutely rooted in 2015.

 

Arturia just needs to get out there and make some waves, some targeted patch packs, and clean up their Sample engine, and they'd have near perfect synth. At this point I give it a solid 9/10.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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I'm digging the group review concept! :boing:

 

dB

 

Definitely! Equipment and rare/exotic features don't mean much to me unless we can discuss in painful detail how it's being used.

 

On the other hand I still love the eye candy being the shallow mf that I am. :rocker:

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