Soft Synth/Sampler for porting hardware workstation patches?

[Mark Schmieder]

Has anyone tried to find a good match of an existing soft synth or sampler for porting patch programs of common modern workstations such as the MOTIF series (earlier versions like Classic being easier, of course), Triton, etc.?

 

Of course there's Steinberg's HALionOne (with some MOTIF waveforms but not the patch programming, as I understand it) if you buy Cubase. I've mostly heard negatives on that.

 

I have stayed with the MOTIF hardware series simply because there are some very sophisticated patches (not my own -- most of my own patches are easily converted to other synths), which I'm not sure could be recreated on current soft synths/samplers.

 

It doesn't help that you don't get to see the waveforms; just the patch programming (in the editors). That makes it very time-consuming trying to match the waveform building blocks by ear.

 

But surely this is something that professional patch programmers who sell commercial libraries for umpteen different hardware and software synthesizers do all the time.

 

So there must be some tricks of the trade, for quickly lining up the raw waveforms that contribute to the patch?

 

The patch programming itself could take some time (especially evolving pads and sounds textures, sound effects, etc.), but is mostly a matter of matching up system specs.

 

Of course I can do that myself, but it's VERY time-consuming, so I was just curious if anyone else had tried to find which soft synth and/or soft sampler seems to have the closest feature set for routing and mod matrices in comparison to Korg's and Yamaha's workstation offerings (which are different but have more similarities between them than either has vs. Roland or Kurzweil programming).

 

I really only have a handful of unique patches that I make use of, that are not currently covered by soft synths/samplers, in terms of "special category" sounds (I couldn't care less about emulating "traditional" and/or "analog" patches from ROMplers).

[mikeNZ1]

For Korg you could try their legacy plugins - wavestation, M1, Polysix. You might be surprised at how little many of the Triton patches have evolved beyond these synths as Korg has a habit of recycling sounds.

 

Michael

[burningbusch]

You might look at the programs the allow you to automatically sample your hardware and turn the results into patches for various soft samplers.

 

I've used Sampleit in the past.

http://www.soundlib.com/samplit/

 

Also, Redmatica's AutoSampler

http://redmatica.com/Redmatica/Welcome_to_Redmatica.html

 

I tried AutoSampler and found it to be somewhat confusing/complex. You might also need additional software to get the results into something other than EXS format.

 

I've used Windows based programs such as Extreme Sample Convertor with good results.

 

I think all the programs have demos that should give you a good idea of what you can expect. The results vary depending on the patch, but it can work very well.

 

Busch.

 

[Mark Schmieder]

Michael,

 

I got interrupted before finishing the posting, so forgot to mention the KLC, which I own, and my discovery that Trinity and Triton hadn't moved that far beyond the M1 architecturally (mostly better samples), so that idea had occurred to me.

 

I'm only personally interested in the Yamaha stuff (for that reason -- I'm already covered with Korg), but wanted to make the posting more useful to people besides myself, so included Korg. It should be pointed out that the M1 soft synth now includes all of the presets and extra banks from the one or two generations of workstations that followed the M1, right up to the Trinity.

 

Sampling MOTIF patches isn't possible, except for simple stuff -- these are evolving pads that make heavy use of the mod matrix. So what anyone would do to recreate the sounds would involve a lot of patch programming, which I'm comfortable doing -- I mostly want to avoid lengthy sessions identifying and matching the raw waveform elements, as modern software samplers are playback engines not "real" samplers like hardware units.

 

So the Redmatica reference might come in handy here. I could probably use it to sample raw waveform elements from programmed patches, convert to Kontakt, and then use Kontakt's Multi's to recreate the 4-element (or 2-element in some cases) patches with the Mod Matrix assignments and other patch routing.

[burningbusch]

You don't need to use Multis to recreate the Yamaha structure. Within the Yamaha structure, elements are really just placeholders for the multi-sample. The only specific modulation available is an LFO. You have the control set at the voice/patch level which just gives you six assignments of controllers to destinations. You also have a common LFO. Really very basic stuff.

 

Within Kontakt, the GROUP is the rough equivalent to the Element, but it's much more powerful. Groups can contain any number of Zones/Samples and you can have 4096 Groups per instrument vs. only eight elements in the Motif XS. Up to eight insert FXs can be assigned to each group (only two insert FXs per entire voice on the Yamaha). You can also assign an number of LFOs and envelopes. The structure is modular and exceedingly powerful. And that's before even touching the scripting language which is unrivaled.

 

About the only place I can think where the Motif XS structure might have potentially more capability is the assignable FX parameters. On the Motif, they are all available for the two insert FXs but within Kontakt only certain parameters are assignable to modulation (though this might be addressed via scripts, don't know).

 

Busch.

[Mark Schmieder]

Busch,

 

Thanks -- I was always under the impression that Kontakt wasn't a true sampler in that you could only manipulate libraries written by people who have special developer licenses and access to internal code.

 

I'll start looking into how Kontakt could be used to create my own libraries. Since a multi-sample can apparently be imported, this shouldn't be as painful as my failed attempts at creating usable voice libraries in the MOTIF ES 8 from unformatted sample "libraries" (i.e. directories of single-note WAV files).

 

You know what they say about being burned by an early experience... I didn't have the patience for what it would have taken to turn that Voices of Istanbul raw sample disc into a usable voice library for the MOTIF. I feared that doing something like that for Kontakt would be even MORE work, if even possible, but it sounds like it would be less work.

 

And on that note, maybe MOTU Mach Five would be a better tool than Kontakt -- I passed by an opportunity to buy it used for $150 last year, figuring it would only be useful for existing libraries, of which there are few in that format (though it converts other formats better than Kontakt does).

[Mark Schmieder]

Oh, but perhaps I would need HALionOne for the MOTIF multi-samples. I'm pretty sure I'd have to sample each note for each element of a given voice (i.e. patch) otherwise, which is more time than I'm willing to spend just for the sake of phasing out my last remaining piece of rack gear. :-)

[Mark Schmieder]

Oops, I now realise that by multi-samples you mean multiple velocity layers per note, not a single file that contains samples for the entire range. This latter approach is quite rare, but not necessary, as I think Kontakt can pull in a full range of individual WAV files and map them in one fell swoop to the key range.

 

So this may not be such effort, except that I probably have to personally sample each note as there is probably no available export format from a MOTIF (especially the rack).