Dave Bryce Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 Over the years, I've been really lucky to work with some seriously talented gear designers. Two of them I've known for quite a while - Jennifer Hruska and Rick Cohen - have just put out a really interesting FM software instrument called Opzilla, featuring 64 4-operator algorithms and 16 waveforms per operator. Check it out: [video:youtube] You can download a demo version of it here. Fully functional except that you can't save your own presets or save in a DAW session until you authorize. Would love to know what y'all think. dB Quote ==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveMcM Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 Looks cool. I'd prefer 2 more operators for a total of 6. Although since you've got attack samples, 4 operators should suffice to create sustained portions. Also would be nice to have user arrangeable algorithms. But with 64 to choose from, odds are you'll find one that works. So basically, it looks cool! One thing I really like is the payment option of having 10% of your payment directed to a charity of your choice. Hopefully folks choose to pay towards the upper end and select a charity. Quote Wm. David McMahan I Play, Therefore I Am Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bryce Posted November 24, 2020 Author Share Posted November 24, 2020 One thing I really like is the payment option of having 10% of your payment directed to a charity of your choice. Hopefully folks choose to pay towards the upper end and select a charity. dB Quote ==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KuruPrionz Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 I'mma book mark it for later. Spent too much on everything this month. Better times is coming. I have too many synths I don't play but I like their business model. Plus I wrote their parody promotion song. Oh oh air ohs Okyo Oh Oh Opzilla!!!! We'll get Oue Oyster Oult to play it... Quote It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sundown Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 FM is great... It wasn"t great in the late 80s when everything Yamaha did was a rehash, but it"s basic capability and sonic palette is powerful. Quote Sundown Working on: The Jupiter Bluff; Driven Away Main axes: Kawai MP11 and Kurz PC361 DAW Platform: Cubase Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Motif Max Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 Opzilla...isn't that the 88-key opsix? Quote Yamaha: Motif XF8, MODX7, YS200, CVP-305, CLP-130, YPG-235, PSR-295, PSS-470 | Roland: Fantom 7, JV-1000 Kurzweil: PC3-76, PC4 (88) | Hammond: SK Pro 73 | Korg: Triton LE 76, N1R, X5DR | Emu: Proteus/1 | Casio: CT-370 | Novation: Launchkey 37 MK3 | Technics: WSA1R Former: Emu Proformance Plus & Mo'Phatt, Korg Krome 61, Roland Fantom XR & JV-1010, Yamaha MX61, Behringer CAT Assorted electric & acoustic guitars and electric basses | Roland TD-17 KVX | Alesis SamplePad Pro | Assorted organs, accordions, other instruments Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KuruPrionz Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 Taking a closer look, I love that they've used sliders but I am not thrilled that they've also used "knobs". I know, more compact. And pretty cool if you are tweaking stuff with a MIDI controller that has enough knobs to assign them to all the knobs on the GUI. This GUI has a LOT of knobs!!!! Before they split them into two controls, Tracktion/Waveform DAW had a small square with one horizontal and one vertical line bisecting the square into perfect quarters. If you put your mouse cursor in the center where the two lines intersected and clicked, a larger version of the same image popped up with your mouse cursor still in the center. You could slide the horizontal line up or down to adjust the volume and the vertical line from side to side to adjust the panning. VERY efficient use of space, extremely mouse friendly and a joy to use. Should be the standard for GUI, access to 2 sliders with one click, easy to see and shrinks back down small when you don't need it. No reason you couldn't assign controller knobs to each slider in the box if you needed them. I'd LOVE to see more plugins that sacrifice the small comfort of "looking like hardware" for the great joy of ease of use. Quote It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marzzz Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 I remember Jennifer Hruska from the Kurzweil K2000 VHS tape tutorial...! [video:youtube] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bryce Posted November 25, 2020 Author Share Posted November 25, 2020 I remember Jennifer Hruska from the Kurzweil K2000 VHS tape tutorial...! I met Jennifer when I worked at Kurzweil in the mid-80's. She's about as brightly lit as they come. dB Quote ==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marzzz Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 dB- is there anyone you haven"t worked for!!?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bryce Posted November 25, 2020 Author Share Posted November 25, 2020 dB- is there anyone you haven"t worked for!!?? No doubt that I've been fortunate to work with some really cool companies. If you wanna see the actual list of past and present manufacturers witgh whom I've worked, it's on the page that poses as my corporate web site. dB Quote ==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <== Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrSynth Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 Over the years, I've been really lucky to work with some seriously talented gear designers. Two of them I've known for quite a while - Jennifer Hruska and Rick Cohen - have just put out a really interesting FM software instrument called Opzilla, featuring 64 4-operator algorithms and 16 waveforms per operator. Check it out: [video:youtube] You can download a demo version of it here. Fully functional except that you can't save your own presets or save in a DAW session until you authorize. Would love to know what y'all think. dB After playing with it for about an hour a few first impressions. Sonically very classic 4 Op ala TX81Z / V50. Effects are solid, user interface combo of slider/knobs pretty usable. For the beginner, the Tone, Punch and FM Amount parameters allow for quick edits ala a filtercutoff knob. Easy way to dial in/out the 'harsh" without reprogramming everything. The second LFO is implemented well. Love loopable envelopes, but the ADSR format / 4 stages is somewhat limiting. The Sample attack snippets compensates somewhat for not having 6 Ops to generate the 'FM stuff' when you want it. Nice to have configurable feedback, though unfortunate not more than one feedback loop. A few quirky things -- the feedback implementation introduces pitch shift instabilities with index, especially noticeable with negative feedback, so begs the question is this PM, true FM (though I don't think so as IIRC the pitch would be much more drastic than what I'm hearing from Opzilla) Curiously, the keyboard control of Op level, decay and attack don't quite react how one would expect. There's an audible bug/glitch I noted when adding in Velocity sensitivity, it creates 'clicks' when you play at low velocities, and maybe a thing with the trial version? So, some nice stuff as an intro to FM for those who don't want to deep dive, similar to Opsix in that way. Waves FlowMotion is also 4 Op, has a completely different GUI layout in a "Cool" or "WTF" way depending on your perspective, has a lot of versaility that I don't initally see with Opzilla. I wouldn't have named this Opzilla, as my idea of a 'monster FM synth' is a lot different Great pricing model esp. with the donation component. Manny Quote People assume timbre is a strict progression of input to harmonics, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timbrally-wimbrally... stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iconoclast Posted November 28, 2020 Share Posted November 28, 2020 Looking from the outside; I use Arturia's DX-7 vst frequently so I'm familiar. DX7V is $149 although you can frequently find it cheaper or it comes as part of the $249 V collection, and personally I find it to be one of the most useful instruments in V collection. DX7V has 6 operators vs 4 for Opzilla. The rest of the Opzilla feature list is basically overtaken by DX7V except for the "Sample Attack", which I can guess the meaning of but don't really know. There's an argument to be made for less operators! I cut my teeth on a DX-9, which was the 7's little brother, and I think the smaller feature set actually made it more usable for a hack like myself. Consequently I think I've always been "relatively" comfortable with FM programming. It does seem that in a lot of programs you can mute an operator and not hear the difference! Of course the price is nice but there's a lot of competition in the cheap/free FM synth market https://blog.landr.com/the-7-best-free-synth-vst-plugins/ Quote You want me to start this song too slow or too fast? Forte7, Nord Stage 3, XK3c, OB-6, Arturia Collection, Mainstage, MotionSound KBR3D. A bunch of MusicMan Guitars, Line6 stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iconoclast Posted November 28, 2020 Share Posted November 28, 2020 Quote You want me to start this song too slow or too fast? Forte7, Nord Stage 3, XK3c, OB-6, Arturia Collection, Mainstage, MotionSound KBR3D. A bunch of MusicMan Guitars, Line6 stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radagast Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 Opzilla...isn't that the 88-key opsix? Only if you use an 88 key controller for this SOFTSYNTH. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.J. Lewis Posted November 30, 2020 Share Posted November 30, 2020 I remember Jennifer Hruska from the Kurzweil K2000 VHS tape tutorial...! [video:youtube] Brain: 'Wait! That sure looks like Geoff Gee...' Start the video at the beginning, CJ... Quote ivorycj Main stuff: Yamaha CP88 | Korg Kronos 2 73 | Kurzweil Forte 7 | 1898 Steinway I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Schmieder Posted December 1, 2020 Share Posted December 1, 2020 I used to work with Rick and played in a couple of bands with him. Jennifer was a roommate of a co-worker for many years. It's been a few years now since I've seen either of them, so it's good to see their talents being put to use on a new FM synth as both of them have deep backgrounds on this sort of thing. I actually was thinking about both of them recently due to how COVID has affected so many people's careers, so I'm heartened to see them come out with something new during times like these. I wish them both success. For those who don't know, Jennifer was the first person to record a truly deeply sampled orchestra library, sold at the time as Sonic Implants and recorded in a carefully chosen building with excellent acoustics that wasn't trivial to gain permission for the project. Initially the product was for GigaSampler, then later for Kontakt and now as standalone tech. Jennifer herself then went on to do a PhD in Composition as I recall; her background was as a mallet percussionist. She and Rick both worked at Kurzweil for a number of years, at the same time as a high school friend who then went on to work for MOTU. It's a small world in Boston. Quote Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1, Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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