cherry audio gx-80 Team Test: Cherry Audio GX-80

[Anderton]

On 12/3/2022 at 3:08 AM, Adi James said:

I’ve been a lurker here, but would like to ask whether an NKS patch library exists for the GX-80 or if Cherry are considering adding NKS support? 
 

Such a beast demands a more tactile experience than mouse on screen, so it would be wonderful if NKS was available.

 

I assume this is because you want compatibility with the Komplete Kontrol keyboards? In MIDI mode, it will act as a control surface. But frankly, I think the GX-80 might have too many parameters to shoehorn them into the UI on a Komplete Kontrol. It's probably better just to assign controls to parameters on the fly. 

[MRBarton]

On 12/3/2022 at 5:21 PM, mate stubb said:

 

I'm sure it can. It's LFO modulation of the filter, with LFO rate being controlled by (I believe) key pressure. You can set that up in the Touch Response section of the performance section.

 

It's funny you mention this effect from the intro to ELP's Pirates.  I too had an ELP cover band in the late 70s.  Will Alexander, Keith's keyboard man and general caretaker for many years used to show up at every rehearsal.  Years later, through him, I became friends with Keith and he used to come over to the house, we'd go out to dinner, drink too much, play duets and all sorts of stuff like that.  I was also backstage every time he was in town, and when he wasn't touring, he only lived about 6 miles away.  That whole time was a fantasy dream come true for me.  I think he liked me because I really "got" his music and wasn't just a regular fan.  They say never meet your idols because you will be horribly disappointed.  That definitely didn't happen with Keith.  He was great company, generous, and very funny.  We always had a good time and I miss him terribly.

 

Anyway, when he quit touring with the GX-1, he still wanted to play Pirates, but had no way of doing that fast filter LFO effect.  None of his touring synths would do it, so I built him a rack effect that would duplicate the function.  It was labeled "The Warfulator" and had a pedal for LFO speed and a bypass footswitch.  I still have the schematic if anyone wants to build another.  I have no idea where the original wound up, though it's possible that EMEAPP has it with the rest of Keith's stuff.

 

--mb

[jerrythek]

4 hours ago, MRBarton said:

 

It's funny you mention this effect from the intro to ELP's Pirates.  I too had an ELP cover band in the late 70s.  Will Alexander, Keith's keyboard man and general caretaker for many years used to show up at every rehearsal.  Years later, through him, I became friends with Keith and he used to come over to the house, we'd go out to dinner, drink too much, play duets and all sorts of stuff like that.  I was also backstage every time he was in town, and when he wasn't touring, he only lived about 6 miles away.  That whole time was a fantasy dream come true for me.  I think he liked me because I really "got" his music and wasn't just a regular fan.  They say never meet your idols because you will be horribly disappointed.  That definitely didn't happen with Keith.  He was great company, generous, and very funny.  We always had a good time and I miss him terribly.

 

Anyway, when he quit touring with the GX-1, he still wanted to play Pirates, but had no way of doing that fast filter LFO effect.  None of his touring synths would do it, so I built him a rack effect that would duplicate the function.  It was labeled "The Warfulator" and had a pedal for LFO speed and a bypass footswitch.  I still have the schematic if anyone wants to build another.  I have no idea where the original wound up, though it's possible that EMEAPP has it with the rest of Keith's stuff.

 

--mb

I have a very similar story/path with Keith, so your words ring very true for me as well.

[jerrythek]

I used my Keylab 61 mkII, and with 3 banks of 27 controllers (81) I still couldn't map a controller to every parameter on the front panel. So you really need to make your own decisions of what is important for you to be able to manipulate from your keyboard, and what is better left to remaining onscreen.

 

13 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

I assume this is because you want compatibility with the Komplete Kontrol keyboards? In MIDI mode, it will act as a control surface. But frankly, I think the GX-80 might have too many parameters to shoehorn them into the UI on a Komplete Kontrol. It's probably better just to assign controls to parameters on the fly. 

 

[Dr Mike Metlay]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:36 AM, MRBarton said:

 

 

I'm going to jump the gun before you write more to agree and courteously disagree with you at the same time.  Yes, Yamaha did design that filter envelope that particular way for a very good reason, but I will stand by my claim that the 5 controls convey the same information as a "normal" ADSR+amount system.  Both designs control the AD&R timing identically, so we can ignore those.  The IL (initial level) and AL (attack level) control the envelope height which is usually done with the single amount control.  Therefore, both systems do convey the same information and accomplish the same task.

 

The genius part of the Yamaha design is that the sustain level never moves and is always at zero (therefore no need for a sustain control).  This is the envelope phase I refer to as the singing tone, the portion of the envelope where sustained notes spend the most time.  With a conventional ADSR+amount system, when you raise or lower the amount, you alter your singing tone because the sustain level moves with the overall height of the envelope.  You then need to restore it by moving the cutoff control in the opposite direction.  With the Yamaha envelope, this does not occur.  You set your singing tone with the cutoff control and then you are free to bring in and adjust your envelope however you like without the singing tone ever being altered.  It's really very clever, and once you wrap your head around the way it works, using it becomes second nature.  Yamaha could have just as easily put conventional ADSR+amount controls on there and the sounds would be the same, but they thought they had a better idea.  I think they did.

 

--mb

Which was precisely what I was about to talk about in my next educational snippet in this thread. You hit everything I was going to hit, with the same conclusions and with considerably more poetry. (I like the "singing tone" terminology especially.)

 

Welp, that's me done for today. It's time for a cider. See you all tomorrow, folks...

 

...well, OK, not entirely done. For those of you who are more visual learners, or who wish to tie these concepts to something a bit more concrete in your minds (such as a diagram from an owner's manual or textbook), feast your eyes on this:

 

 

This is a little drawing I made from the diagrams on the GX-1 Tone Board (the programmer box I mentioned earlier). The only decently large readable photo of one was made by Gordon Reid and is the property of Sound on Sound Magazine, so it was easier to just redraw it.

 

Hopefully this won't need any more explanation, but I am happy to answer questions. Onward to something Barton hasn't beaten me to already!

 

mike

 

 

[Anderton]

The Effects Section

 

Technically speaking, the GX-80 has four effects:

• Chorus/Rotary
• Flanger/Phase
• Plate/Galactic reverb
• Digital/Tape delay

 

However, the Effects Mode switch in the upper left turns this into potentially more than four effects. In Global mode, these four effects process all voice ranks (both Layers). But in Dual Layer mode, there are two sets of the same four effects—one set of effects for the Upper layer, and one set for the Lower layer. These can have independent settings, so since each of the four effects has two options, you could have (for example) Chorus, Flanger, Plate Reverb, and Digital Delay on one Layer, and Rotary, Phase, Galactic Reverb, and Tape Delay on the other Layer.

 

So while it’s true you’re dealing with four effects, you can set up your layers to have eight different effects processors. The more the merrier, and all that 😊 

 

Four rocker switches to the left of the keyboard turn the effects on or off (I'll cover the stuff to the left of the keyboard in my next post). I assigned the rocker switches to the buttons on my NI Komplete Kontrol keyboard for easy access.  As to the effects themselves, I believe they’re in a series routing.

 

Cherry Audio has taken some liberties with the effects, because (correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not a CS-80/GX-1 expert) the CS-80 had only chorus/tremolo, and the GX-1 had only spring reverb. Cherry Audio substituted a rotary speaker emulator for the tremolo, retained reverb but made it far more versatile than a spring reverb, and added a flanger/phaser as well as a delay processor.  Let’s look at each effect.

 

Chorus/Rotary

 

This has what you’d expect—an Effect Selector switch to choose one or the other effect, Fast/Slow switch, Speed (rate), and Depth. But there are a few twists.

 

With Rotary selected, the Speed and Depth controls are disabled, so the remaining control is the standard Fast/Slow speed option. Like a physical rotating speaker, the effect accelerates when going from slow to fast, and decelerates when going from fast to slow. IMHO a rotary speaker is a more useful addition for a keyboard instrument than a tremolo, so it was a smart move for Cherry Audio to add the Rotary effect. My only wish list item is that the Depth control could add overdrive in rotary mode, to give that nasty overloaded-tube-preamp rotating speaker sound.

 

The Chorus uses all four controls. Speed goes from 0.2 to 16 Hz, but here’s one of the twists: the Fast/Slow switch overlays a modest modulation change when you enable Fast. So even though Fast/Slow was presumably included mostly for the benefit of the Rotary effect, it benefits the Chorus as well.

 

When you sum the instrument’s output to mono, the Chorus’s stellar stereo effect mostly cancels. However, the dry signal remains so it’s only the chorusing that you lose. None of the other effects have cancellation issues when summing the output to mono.

 

Flange/Phase

 

This captures the character of those unmistakable 60s and 70s effects, and even has a vintage kind of veneer. The flanging sounds like it has negative feedback, while the phasing sounds like positive feedback. Neither generates a stereo field from a single layer input, but they both preserve the stereo placement of multi-layer setups, and the effects are…well, highly effective. The Speed range is 0.1 to 10 Hz, and I definitely appreciate being able to go that slow with flanging and phasing.

 

I also appreciate that even with Depth all the way down, there’s still a tiny bit of modulation. I think this makes sense because if you want the effect out, you bypass it—yet when you switch the effect in, you’re guaranteed a variation, no matter how slight, from the bypassed sound. Also, although some might complain that you can’t turn the Feedback up high enough to oscillate, damage your hearing, and possibly destroy your high-frequency drivers, I’m a fan of useful control settings. Setting Feedback to 100% is as high as I’d want to take it anyway.

 

Delay

 

This is an overachieving delay, which I’m not quite sure I was expecting to find as a keyboard’s on-board effect. Part of that is because, like the Depth and Feedback settings for the Flange/Phase, IMHO someone made the right decisions about what the controls should do when used with a keyboard. Without needing to copy the GX-1 or CS-80 because they didn’t have a delay, the GX-80 followed its own path that’s totally cool, yet respects the instruments’ heritages. The Delay range is from 1 ms to 2 seconds.

 

The Tape option faithfully recreates the weirdness that tape does when you vary the delay speed in the middle of an echo feeding back. If you’re sitting around feeling puckish someday, turn up the Regen to 70 or 80%, and use a foot controller to vary the delay. You can almost get bell tree effects, as well as the slowing down/speeding up echo effects that Jimi Hendrix used to such good effect on Electric Ladyland. Of course, there’s also a damping parameter, and dry/wet mix.

 

Another great effect is turning up the resonance, and varying the Tape delay between 1 and 10 ms or so. It’s a very evocative flanging effect. Maybe now would be a good time to remind everyone that you can hold down the Ctrl key for fine-tuning, which is tremendously beneficial when messing with the Time parameter over such a small range. However, it also appears that there’s subtle built-in modulation to emulate tape’s aleatory speed changes. That adds even more character.

 

Oh right…there’s Digital echo too. This is more conventional, because it doesn’t have the tape-motor-inertia vibe. So, the results are more predictable, but that doesn’t cut down on the potential. Again, the apparent slight amount of modulation, teamed with short delays and high feedback, give gloriously resonant sounds. When switching to longer delays, you get the kind of modern delay sound that’s used for evocative solos.

 

If you’ve played with Cherry Audio’s Stardust 201 Tape Echo, you know the company has its echo act together. Well, they’ve distilled the most important and musically appropriate attitudes down into a modest-looking module. But looks can be deceiving…this delay is powerful.

 

Reverb

 

Here we go again—like the delay, this is a wonderful addition because it matches the instrument’s gestalt. There aren’t any surprises from a control standpoint—Plate or Galactic (Hall/Cathedral) Reverb algorithm, Decay time, Damp parameter, and Wet/Dry mix. The short decay is the “hi, I’m playing in a large closet” decay, and the long decay didn’t hit -60 dB until around 35 seconds.

 

The Plate sound exaggerates a plate’s periodicity, which gives a sort of tremulant, animated sound. It serves the same kind of sonic purpose as a low-diffusion setting on a standard reverb, so the Plate works well with organ, strings, and other sustained sounds.

 

The Galactic algorithm is gorgeous—smooth, and highly diffused. Like the Plate, it creates a convincing stereo spread. The Dark damped setting seemed unusually effective to me; its effect is more about distance than dullness. Similarly to the Delay effect, if you’ve played with the Galactic Reverb, you know that Cherry Audio can put their own spin on reverb. That spin is most welcome in the GX-80.

 

The Bottom Line

 

I’m old enough to remember when companies first started adding onboard effects to keyboards, and the debate was always about whether they were “good enough” compared to studio hardware. And with virtual instruments, let’s face it: a world-class processor is only one insert slot away from your virtual instrument’s output.

 

So whether by accident or design (I’d bet the latter), the GX-80 includes effects that aren’t quite like the studio effects you normally put in a track. At least to me, it sure seems like they were designed specifically to be as much a part of a GX-80 preset as an oscillator or filter. The limited control set doesn’t mean limited sounds, and the variety of sounds you can obtain are well-suited to enhancing the GX-80. Being able to MIDI Learn the effects parameters makes everything just that much more wonderful.

 

With a lot of virtual instruments, you wouldn’t lose much if you removed the onboard effects, because you could just use standard plug-ins instead. That’s not the case here. The effects are part of the GX-80, not just added on to it.

 

What’s Next

 

Okay, I admit it. At one point tonight, I lost track of time by feeding white noise through all four effects, and found settings that may be illegal in some states. Just letting that gloriously processed white noise wash over me was kind of like a mini-vacation, so I didn’t have time to get to the remaining controls toward the left of the keyboard. But that’s why tomorrow was invented, right?

[Al Coda]

o.k.,- lots of FX ...

 

IMO,- at the end of the day it matters how a soundsource (patch) sounds without FX and whether the pure tone is robust enough to make it in a mix even at low level and in background, or not.

Unfortunately many plugins have the disadvantage to offer too many features and the FX being too much important for the overall sound.

Defeat FX and suddenly you´ll recognize you could achieve almost the same (or a better) result w/ just another plugin you already own.

 

In fact it´s the same decision I had to make when thinking about expensive hardware in the past.

Which instruments do I really need to cover most average producers´ demands ?

That was the main question.

 

And in the end, I could do everything w/ about 5-10 pieces of gear for every recording session in the 80s/90s,- and even less gear in the mid to late 70s.

What was available in the studio included,- typically grand piano, organ and at least 1 electric piano,- sometimes all (Rhodes, Wurli, Clav) ... makes already 3-5 out of 10 I didn´t had to bring.

 

Today it´s great we can get almost ALL "famous" synths and keyboards as emulations, sampled or modelled and for "cheap".

But really, who needs every synth out there for serious music ?

 

That said,- while testing the GX-80 demo, I learned liking it.

It´s a great piece of software, like the other Cherry Audio devices I already own.

 

But in case of the GX-80, I ask myself if I really need it,- just like it was in the past w/ the original hardware,- and I already passed "Dreamsynth", "Sines" and "Elka X" because of the same reason.

 

 

A.C.

[Anderton]

The "how many instruments do a I really need?" question is a valid topic in its own right, and very much worthy of its own discussion. In fact, I've started a separate thread, so we don't have to depart too much from the main theme here. One generalization I'd make is that people who know how to program sounds don't need as many synthesizers as people who use mostly presets.

 

Now, some comments about your observations. For my purposes, effects are not about needing to make an instrument sound good, but about helping them fit into an arrangement. When Dave Bryce encouraged people to post presets, I mentioned that my presets by themselves are pretty unimpressive - they're designed for specific arrangements, and often, a simple sound is all that's needed.

 

4 hours ago, Al Coda said:

o.k.,- lots of FX ...

 

IMO,- at the end of the day it matters how a soundsource (patch) sounds without FX and whether the pure tone is robust enough to make it in a mix even at low level and in background, or not.

Unfortunately many plugins have the disadvantage to offer too many features and the FX being too much important for the overall sound.

Defeat FX and suddenly you´ll recognize you could achieve almost the same (or a better) result w/ just another plugin you already own.

 

I guess I wasn't clear, because my point was that the GX-80 doesn't have a lot of FX. No tremolo, auto-panner, slicer, tapped delay, positive and negative flanger/phaser, envelope filter, vocoder, distortion, image processor, etc. Instead, it has a limited set of effects that are designed specifically for the GX-80. You don't really need them to make big sounds, which I think is the main way people will use the GX-80. But, they will help the GX-80 fill out an arrangement in a way that seems tailored for the GX-80 as opposed to, for example, a wavetable synth.

 

Of course, no one needs a GX-80. You can obtain huge sounds - to me, its main distinguishing characteristic - by layering multiple synths, which in today's virtual world is easy to do. However...the reason why I want the GX-80 is because it pulls me out of my usual synth comfort zone. It has a different method of sound creation, and a different philosophy of what an electronic instrument can be, that ends up causing me to make sounds I don't make with other synthesizers. Could I make them with other synths? Probably, or at least I could come close enough to fulfill the desired goal in an arrangement. But would I make them with other synths? Probably not, because their "operating systems" take me down a different path. 

 

Like I said at the beginning, to me, the GX-80 is more like a highly evolved type of organ than a "synthesizer." (Others might disagree, and probably do ) As a result, its architecture makes me think in different ways. I don't want a GX-80 so I can sound like Vangelis, I want it so I can make more sounds that sound like me. 

[Reverend Rhythm]

8 hours ago, Anderton said:

When Dave Bryce encouraged people to post presets, I mentioned that my presets by themselves are pretty unimpressive - they're designed for specific arrangements, and often, a simple sound is all that's needed.

I would like to see other's presets, so I can learn better how to program the GX-80.  Simple sounds might be a great way to learn.  Presets need to be functional.

[EricP1954]

1 hour ago, Reverend Rhythm said:

I would like to see other's presets, so I can learn better how to program the GX-80.  Simple sounds might be a great way to learn.  Presets need to be functional.

Hoping to soon see a preset that mimics the GX-1 effect on the Emerson, Lake & Palmer tune "Pirates." This will indeed be impressive.

[Tusker]

19 hours ago, Anderton said:

Of course, no one needs a GX-80. You can obtain huge sounds - to me, its main distinguishing characteristic - by layering multiple synths, which in today's virtual world is easy to do. However...the reason why I want the GX-80 is because it pulls me out of my usual synth comfort zone. It has a different method of sound creation, and a different philosophy of what an electronic instrument can be, that ends up causing me to make sounds I don't make with other synthesizers. Could I make them with other synths? Probably, or at least I could come close enough to fulfill the desired goal in an arrangement. But would I make them with other synths? Probably not, because their "operating systems" take me down a different path. 

 

QFT

[jerrythek]

Global Section

 

 

The section just above the keys is the Global controls, and these settings affect the whole instrument (all four Ranks). The left side deals with how the sound engine will deal with the incoming notes.

 

 

The Voice Assign parameters set whether the GX-80 is monophonic, or polyphonic. There are two forms of monophonic behavior: 

 

Mono is just a single voice from each Rank, and the Number Of Voices settings to the right make no difference to the sound. 

 

Poly provides multiple voices, and the amount is set by the Number Of Voices button you select.

 

Uni(son) plays monophonically, but stacks voices to provide a thickened and progressively detuned sound. 

 

The Uni Detune knob further detunes the voices you have chosen for Unison mode.

 

The Number Of Voices section is self-explanatory. The only thing I will mention is the GX-80 will not dynamically re-assign voices, or rob voices to be able to play new notes. With a given number of voices that is simply all you can play: additional note will not sound.

 

 Set the GX-80 to its full 16 voices, and detune the Unison and you can go deep into, and beyond SuperSaw territory!

 

Interestingly, using only one Rank, when you go from Mono to Unison with no Detune, and only 2 voices, you already have some slight/slow beating going on between the voices. And I couldn’t remove it. This audio example has me playing a single note in Mono Mode, and then switching it to Unison, with only 2 voices to demonstrate the beating.

 

Mono to Unison Demonstration

 

So this detuning seems to be a choice that Cherry Audio built into the default state. I don’t see that as a problem, because if I’m going to use Unison versus Mono it’s because I want a thicker sound.

 

Chasing this a little further, I also found that when you enable a 2nd Rank, in either Mono or Poly Mode (not Unison) the two Ranks are slightly detuned by default. To reduce/remove it I had to go to the Detune paddles in the section above, and set one to around 12%. To be clear, the default state of the Detune paddles already produces some pitch beating. Like an analog synth that isn’t tuned as perfectly to unison as one can. Curious, but not a big deal… no doubt Mark B or Dan G will weigh in on why that is.

 

Edit: and they did, and it makes sense in capturing the gestalt of an analog behemoth like the CS-80.

14 hours ago, MRBarton said:

No doubt.  The CS-80 is anything but dead tuned.  Every voice card is different.  Every voice card is different every hour of every day.  In fact, every time to bring up an instance of the GX-80, you get a different one.

 

 

The Ribbon

 

 

The ribbon controller on the CS-80 is one of the elements that is often celebrated, for its expressive possibilities. It can bend upward a full octave, and can bend downward so far that the pitch is reduced to slight clicking, and then inaudible. The power of analog circuitry!!

 

Ribbon Bends

 

This is perfectly reproduced in the GX-80. To get this full range when using the onscreen interface, you must start your gesture at the far left to bend up the full octave, or the far right to experience the bend into submissionTM. But the beauty of the ribbon design is you can place your finger anywhere on the range and that becomes your zero start point, and you can then slide up or down through the remaining range available. The interface shows you both your start point (in green) and then your movement (in red). Simple and elegant.

 

 

Since we’re all most likely to be bending up anywhere from a whole step to a minor third (or fourth at most), this means you can start most anywhere and still get the range you need. Via MIDI from your controller the behavior is different: you can always go the octave higher and infinity below.

 

To the right of the ribbon are switches to set the behavior to LIN(ear), which was I’ve just described, or to SEMI(tone), which limits the range to a selected number of half-steps, or intervals. 

 

 

No doubt most of us will be using the Semi settings, but you would be doing yourself a disservice: those downward sweeps are just awesome. I do wish that in this traditional mode Cherry Audio allowed for different bend ranges for up and down via MIDI. It’s pretty common in synth designs these days. No doubt they wanted to keep the interface clean, and so didn’t offer it, but hopefully they’ll consider it for a version-up if enough users ask for it. My hand is raised!

 

There’s one more aspect to the ribbon behavior, and it isn’t on this strip of controls. In the Left Hand Controllers section, which we haven’t covered yet, there is a rocker switch to change the portamento between a smooth sweep (PORT) or a stepped one (GLISS). Gliss travels in half-steps, like running a chromatic scale up and down. Note that this setting also affects the bends you do via the ribbon or from a Mod Wheel/Joystick on your controller keyboard.

 

New Territory

To the right of the panel are settings that are unique to the GX-80, and control the features using the additional group of Ranks.

 

 

Single (SNGL): This is “what you see/what you get”. 2 Ranks, and identical to the original CS-80. The Panel buttons to the right have no effect, so you can’t change them.

 

Dual (DUAL): Now we’ve moved into GX-80 exclusive territory, inspired by the dual manuals of the GX-1. Two sets of 2 Ranks each, grouped as I/II, or Upper, and III/IV or Lower, layered to make likely massive sounds. But they don’t have to be: just think of them as four elements that you can use to craft your sounds. You can view each group using the LWR/UPPR Panel buttons as you’d expect. 

 

Split (SPLT): Same as above, but now you can set the groups of Ranks side-by-side on the keyboard, with a selectable split point. The upper half of the split uses Ranks I/II, and the lower uses III/IV. Because the interface can’t show you everything that’s being used all at once, there are a couple of cool tools to help you. One that’s easy to miss is that when you’re in Dual or Split mode, the bounding boxes around each section change color to show you what you’re currently viewing. Upper is outlined in white:

 

 

And Lower in orange:

 

 

If the Effects are set to be Global (you did read Craig’s entry above about the effects, right?), they stay outlined in white.

 

 

Of course you can just look at the buttons to see whether Upper or Lower is selected, but this type of visual feedback is most welcome.

 

The other tool is the last button on the right, labeled LYR SOLO. This does exactly what you’d think, soloing the currently selected group of Ranks. This becomes really helpful in Dual setups, so you can focus on the sound, or part of the sound that you’re currently viewing. Combined with the individual Rank On/Off buttons these controls help you work with such a large amount of parameters.

 

I’m Needy

This is a great design, and takes the GX-80 from being an already accurate emulation of the classic CS-80, into cool new territory. But I am greedy and needy, and always have wishes for more features, or an even better implementation. Top of my list for this section of controls is filters for pitch bend and the sustain pedal when in Split Mode. It’s pretty common in synths/keyboards that offer a split to have these types of features. When you’ve set up a left hand bass part you rarely (if ever) want the pedal to sustain your bass notes while you are using it to help play your chords. Or you put a pad on the lower half, which you want to hold with the pedal, but you certainly don’t want it to affect your melodic playing/soloing in the right.

 

Edit: Well, consider one of my wishes granted. I did not realize that you can control sustain separately per Layer. Using the Sustain slider in the Left Hand Controllers section, just set the Sustain value to its shortest value. Voilà! It doesn't seem to matter whether the rocker switch is set to on or off.

 

So we're left with controlling pitch bend per Layer. While you’re soloing with your right you want to be able to perform bends, but why should they be affecting your sustained pad? You can approximate this by using some Portamento on the right hand part, or use the Initial Pitch Bend control in the Touch Response section, but that's somewhat different. Version up?

[mate stubb]

1 hour ago, jerrythek said:

 

There’s one more aspect to the ribbon behavior, and it isn’t on this strip of controls. In the Left Hand Controllers section, which we haven’t covered yet, there is a rocker switch to change the portamento between a smooth sweep (PORT) or a stepped one (GLISS). Gliss travels in half-steps, like running a chromatic scale up and down. Note that this setting also affects the bends you do via the ribbon or from a Mod Wheel/Joystick on your controller keyboard.

 

 

Here's a famous example of the gliss effect (done on a CS-50)

 

 

Midi related question: if one were to be mad enough to set up a 2 manual + pedal midi console, does it respond on different midi channels?

[jerrythek]

23 minutes ago, mate stubb said:

 

Here's a famous example of the gliss effect (done on a CS-50)

 

 

Midi related question: if one were to be mad enough to set up a 2 manual + pedal midi console, does it respond on different midi channels?

 

Great clip - thanks for that!

 

To answer your question, no. I had discussed that with the team at Cherry Audio in preparing my upcoming look at the MIDI aspects of the instrument/plug-in, and they had considered it, but it brought a number of interface/presentation issues up, so they decided against it. It's simple enough to just use multiple instances of the plug-in in your DAW/live host to achieve the same thing. And it's not a hit to your CPU, since 2 instances of a Single Program is the same as 1 instance of a Dual program.

 

Jerry

[jerrythek]

On 12/2/2022 at 3:36 AM, MRBarton said:

 

 

I'm going to jump the gun before you write more to agree and courteously disagree with you at the same time.  Yes, Yamaha did design that filter envelope that particular way for a very good reason, but I will stand by my claim that the 5 controls convey the same information as a "normal" ADSR+amount system.  Both designs control the AD&R timing identically, so we can ignore those.  The IL (initial level) and AL (attack level) control the envelope height which is usually done with the single amount control.  Therefore, both systems do convey the same information and accomplish the same task.

 

The genius part of the Yamaha design is that the sustain level never moves and is always at zero (therefore no need for a sustain control).  This is the envelope phase I refer to as the singing tone, the portion of the envelope where sustained notes spend the most time.  With a conventional ADSR+amount system, when you raise or lower the amount, you alter your singing tone because the sustain level moves with the overall height of the envelope.  You then need to restore it by moving the cutoff control in the opposite direction.  With the Yamaha envelope, this does not occur.  You set your singing tone with the cutoff control and then you are free to bring in and adjust your envelope however you like without the singing tone ever being altered.  It's really very clever, and once you wrap your head around the way it works, using it becomes second nature.  Yamaha could have just as easily put conventional ADSR+amount controls on there and the sounds would be the same, but they thought they had a better idea.  I think they did.

 

--mb

 

I do some writing for Yamaha on their blog site, and when I was researching the history of synthesizers for a series of articles I did for them I came across a document Yamaha wrote when celebrating their 40th anniversary. I just realized that they explained this envelope design in it. I quote:

 

"The other distinctive feature of Yamaha synthesizers was IL-AL type envelope generators. IL and AL refer to Initial Level and Attack Level, respectively, and these envelope generators used a slightly different approach to that of the standard ADSR type. In an ADSR envelope, the value corresponding to the very start of the attack stage is the base value, zero. When we apply the envelope produced by such a generator to a filter, the tone at the start of the sound is determined by the current cutoff-frequency setting; however, the tones at the peak of the attack and while the note is being held are defined by this cutoff-frequency setting in combination with the envelope generator depth and the sustain-level value. Because these tones are thus the result of multiple settings, adjusting the way in which a sound changed over time could become quite confusing. In contrast, when applying an envelope with Initial Level and Attack Level settings, the filter's cutoff frequency determines the tone produced while the note is being held, and the IL and AL controllers can set the tones at the start and peak of the attack stage independently. This approach provides a much higher degree of freedom, especially when trying to recreate natural-sounding tones. As a unique Yamaha feature, the IL-AL type envelope generator further demonstrates the commitment of our developers to high-quality sound creation." 

 

Yamaha 40th Anniversary History Of Synthesizers

 

[MRBarton]

5 hours ago, jerrythek said:

Because these tones are thus the result of multiple settings, adjusting the way in which a sound changed over time could become quite confusing. In contrast, when applying an envelope with Initial Level and Attack Level settings, the filter's cutoff frequency determines the tone produced while the note is being held, and the IL and AL controllers can set the tones at the start and peak of the attack stage independently.

 

Huh, I guessed right.  Who'd a thunk it?

[cherryDan]

On 12/5/2022 at 10:25 PM, Anderton said:

Cherry Audio has taken some liberties with the effects, because (correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not a CS-80/GX-1 expert) the CS-80 had only chorus/tremolo, and the GX-1 had only spring reverb. Cherry Audio substituted a rotary speaker emulator for the tremolo, retained reverb but made it far more versatile than a spring reverb, and added a flanger/phaser as well as a delay processor.

 

Craig, I'm so glad you brought this up, because it's such a great illustration of a topic that comes up a lot with Cherry Audio. So, before I tackle the topic of whether or not Cherry Audio substituted a rotary speaker emulator for the tremolo, please indulge me in a bit of behind-the-scenes synthesizer emulation talk.

 

Often during interviews or during one-on-one discussions about Cherry Audio and our vintage synthesizer emulations, people will ask me what the most challenging part of emulating a vintage synthesizer is. It's a great question. Obviously, matching the quality of the oscillators and of the filter are paramount, and a ton of work goes into this aspect of the recreation. But often the most challenging part is not what you might expect.

 

What we've learned is that the character of an instrument is far more than just the raw tone. It's the shape and speed of the envelope generators, the mono-polar or bi-polar nature of the LFO waveforms, the slope, speed, and linear or logarithmic nature of the portamento, the way the sound gets overdriven when you play too many notes or crank the mixer volume up too high. All of these things contribute to the sound and feel of an instrument far more than you might expect. These details are particularly important in the CS-80, which has all sorts of unusual interactions.

 

For example, because the CS-80 ranks have both a highpass and lowpass filter, and because the keyboard CV is always routed to these filters, there is always a bandpass effect on every note, and this is a big part of the CS-80's characteristic sound. So, in this way, it's not just important to accurately emulate the sound of the CS-80's filters, but it's also incredibly important to accurately emulate the external behaviors that control the filters.

 

So here's what I tell people is perhaps the most challenging part of modeling a classic synthesizer. No matter how well you know a synthesizer, no matter how many years you've played a synthesizer, you probably don't know everything there is to know about that synthesizer. And you have to understand everything about an instrument to  properly recreate it.

 

My favorite example is the Jupiter-4's arpeggiator. The Internet is full of people saying that the Jupiter-4's arpeggiator is unique, and behaves differently than any other arpeggiator. Everyone says it, everybody knows it, but look around and you'll find no one explaining what's actually unique about it. So when it came time to recreate the arpeggiator for our Mercury-4 instrument, I realized that although I've owned a Jupiter-4 for many years and have played with the arpeggiator extensively, I actually had no idea how it actually behaved. It always seems to produce musical results, but it's strange. Most arpeggiators have a "Number of Octaves" control, but the Jupiter-4 doesn't. However, it always plays multiple octaves, except as you play higher up the keyboard, it players fewer octaves. Very strange. Most arpeggiators, if you play a C major triad (C, E, G) will play these notes in order - C, E, G up, G, E, C down. But the Jupiter-4's arpeggiator doesn't always do that. In short, recreating this arpeggiator meant understanding exactly what's happening under the hood of the Jupiter-4, and that took a lot of study. Mercury-4's arpeggiator works exactly like the Jupiter-4's arpeggiator. If it didn't, it wouldn't really feel like a Jupiter-4, no matter how accurate the oscillators and filters were.

 

Now, all of that said, let's talk about the Tremolo switch on the CS-80. 

 

 

As you can see, the CS-80 has a Chorus and Tremolo on/off switch, plus an effects Off/On switch. So it would be entirely logical to assume that you can have either chorus, tremolo, or both turned on. Personally, I've owned my CS-80 for 7 or 8 years, and I always assumed that the Chorus switch turned on a chorus effect, and the Tremolo switch turned on a Tremolo effect. I'm not certain I ever actually tried the Tremolo switch. I am certain I never understood what the Tremolo switch does. The truth is, until we had the task of perfectly recreating this enigmatic instrument, I'd never really understood the CS-80, even after playing it for many years.

 

The Tremolo switch does not add tremolo.

 

Weird, right? How can that be? Why have a Tremolo switch that doesn't introduce tremolo?

 

First, the CS-80 already has a way to do tremolo. The sub-oscillator (LFO) section has an LFO->VCA depth amount, which modulates the overall volume and introduces tremolo.

 

Second, remember that the CS-80 was built by an organ company. Despite the fact that it's clearly a synthesizer and not an organ, it was still built with many organ-like features, and used lots of organ-like terminology, such as "ranks" and "feet", and it has those weird reversed performance paddles, the ones you pull towards you in order to increase the level of a parameter. They still thought of this thing as a fancy programmable organ.

 

With that context, it starts to become clear why the CS-80 has a chorus effect, and why there are Chorus and Tremolo switches.

 

 

The "Chorus" effect is actually meant to be a Leslie emulation. After all, all great organs sound even better through Leslie animation. On the CS-80, turning the Chorus switch on and the On/Off switch turns on the Leslie-style chorus animation. Switching the Tremolo switch on speeds up the chorus effect, just like the fast "tremolo" setting on a Leslie speed switch. Turning Tremolo off slows down the chorus, just like the "chorale" speed on a Leslie. In fact, the CS-80's chorus effect actually ramps up when switching from chorale to tremolo, just like a Leslie. Finally, turning off Chorus and switching Tremolo off and on switches between no chorus and fast chorus, emulating a single-speed Leslie speaker, or a two-speed Leslie speaker with the slow motors disconnected.

 

For GX-80, we wanted to emulate this chorus behavior. The Speed control in the Chorus effect emulates the Tremolo on/off behavior of the CS-80. But we also added a proper, modern rotary speaker emulation, so if that's what you want, you don't have to make do with the CS-80's simplistic Leslie emulation.

 

I was really surprised when I discovered that the Tremolo switch is a rotary-style chorus speed control. I always assumed, as Craig did above, that the CS-80 has a built-in tremolo effect. This was one of a hundred little mysteries about the CS-80 that we uncovered while creating the GX-80. Mark Barton and I could write pages and pages about other surprising things we discovered -- including a number of interesting details that our competition gets wrong -- but I've already written enough for now!

 

- Dan @ Cherry Audio

[MRBarton]

10 hours ago, jerrythek said:

To be clear, the default state of the Detune paddles already produces some pitch beating. Like an analog synth that isn’t tuned as perfectly to unison as one can. Curious, but not a big deal… no doubt Mark B or Dan G will weigh in on why that is.

 

No doubt.  The CS-80 is anything but dead tuned.  Every voice card is different.  Every voice card is different every hour of every day.  In fact, every time to bring up an instance of the GX-80, you get a different one.

[MRBarton]

12 minutes ago, cherryDan said:

For GX-80, we wanted to emulate this chorus behavior. The Speed control in the Chorus effect emulates the Tremolo on/off behavior of the CS-80. But we also added a proper, modern rotary speaker emulation, so if that's what you want, you don't have to make do with the CS-80's simplistic Leslie emulation.

 

Dan left out one important point.  We put in the superior effects because the hardware CS-80 chorus/tremelo effect sounds like a**.  Probably the reason Dan never switches it on.

[cherryDan]

10 hours ago, jerrythek said:

I’m Needy

Top of my list for this section of controls is filters for pitch bend and the sustain pedal when in Split Mode. It’s pretty common in synths/keyboards that offer a split to have this feature. When you’ve set up a left hand bass part you rarely (if ever) want the pedal to sustain your bass notes while you are using it to help play your chords. 

 

It's not obvious, but there are certain additional controls that change based on what layer you're editing, that are outside of the white and orange framed areas.

 

GX-80's left-hand controls, including Sustain on/off, Porta/Gliss on/off, Sustain mode, Sustain time, etc., are actually per-layer controls. So if you don't want sustain on the left hand bass part, just switch to the layer and turn the SUST switch to off, or set the SUSTAIN short/long time to short. If you want a long sustain on the right-hand sound, switch to that layer and crank up the Sustain Short/Long slider.

 

Also - again, it's not obvious - the Voice Assign and Number of Voices controls are actually per-layer, and not global. Your left-hand bass patch can be a giant unison patch, while your right-hand patch can be a giant polyphonic sound. Or - and this is really cool - in Dual mode, your upper layer can be a gorgeous polyphonic string patch dripping in reverb, while your lower patch is a gliding (or glissing) monophonic lead sound, always gliding up or down to the last note you played. The results can be extremely gorgeous!

 

Dan

[AnotherScott]

On 12/3/2022 at 8:21 PM, mate stubb said:

On 12/3/2022 at 7:29 PM, EricP1954 said:

Just curious...is there a parameter or setting on the GX-80 that emulates the volume modulation effect that speeds up in the introl (at 0:24 and 0:52)?

I'm sure it can. It's LFO modulation of the filter, with LFO rate being controlled by (I believe) key pressure. 

 

I think its a knob/slider, not pressure. With pressure, you'd expect to hear the effect diminish as pressure on the key was lessened as you began  to release it. 

[mate stubb]

Sounds lika a patch challenge. Somebody do the Pirates intro.

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, cherryDan said:

For GX-80, we wanted to emulate this chorus behavior. The Speed control in the Chorus effect emulates the Tremolo on/off behavior of the CS-80. But we also added a proper, modern rotary speaker emulation, so if that's what you want, you don't have to make do with the CS-80's simplistic Leslie emulation.

 

I was really surprised when I discovered that the Tremolo switch is a rotary-style chorus speed control. I always assumed, as Craig did above, that the CS-80 has a built-in tremolo effect.

 

Having no experience with a "real" CS-80, your post also explains why the Fast/Slow affects the Chorus, not just the Rotary. Having a tremolo effect available with the LFO > VCA does the job, but I was expecting that if the CS-80 did have a tremolo, which it doesn't according to the standard defintion of tremolo 😆, except of course for Fender calling it vibrato on their amps 🤪...where was I? Oh right, if the CS-80 did have a tremolo, that's why I would have expected to see a rocker switch for it.

 

I'm glad y'all do the work so all I have to do is play the thing!

[Anderton]

8 hours ago, jerrythek said:

"The other distinctive feature of Yamaha synthesizers was IL-AL type envelope generators. IL and AL refer to Initial Level and Attack Level, respectively, and these envelope generators used a slightly different approach to that of the standard ADSR type. In an ADSR envelope, the value corresponding to the very start of the attack stage is the base value, zero. When we apply the envelope produced by such a generator to a filter, the tone at the start of the sound is determined by the current cutoff-frequency setting; however, the tones at the peak of the attack and while the note is being held are defined by this cutoff-frequency setting in combination with the envelope generator depth and the sustain-level value. Because these tones are thus the result of multiple settings, adjusting the way in which a sound changed over time could become quite confusing. In contrast, when applying an envelope with Initial Level and Attack Level settings, the filter's cutoff frequency determines the tone produced while the note is being held, and the IL and AL controllers can set the tones at the start and peak of the attack stage independently. This approach provides a much higher degree of freedom, especially when trying to recreate natural-sounding tones. As a unique Yamaha feature, the IL-AL type envelope generator further demonstrates the commitment of our developers to high-quality sound creation." 

 

Good find, Jerry - that makes a lot of sense.

[Anderton]

The Left-Hand Controls

 

The left-hand controls are straightforward, although we are talking about the GX-80...so there are some interesting twists and turns.

 

 

Let’s start with the Expression and Wah parameters. Of course, the first thing I did was assign a footpedal to the associated paddle. You can enable Expression and/or Wah. The “and” part was actually pretty cool - you can work the pedal and have the wah’s highs coincidence with higher volume levels. To my ears, the combination sounded like a better candidate for the next “Shaft” remake than the wah by itself.

 

Note that apparently, Cherry Audio wasn’t thrilled with the original wah sound. So, they decided to improve on it. The result sounds quite a bit like a Vox Crybaby, and the sweep looked similar when I checked it with a spectrum analyzer. One other characteristic of both the Expression and Wah is that they're global. You can’t apply them separately to different layers, although of course, there are plenty of MIDI controller-related workarounds for controlling expression and filtering differently for different layers.

 

The sustain action threw me until I looked at the manual. Turning Sustain off latches the sustain on (of course!), while Sustain on is the mode you choose when you want to turn sustain on or off with a  sustain pedal. This is the way the original worked, so who am I to argue? In either case, the sustain time is variable from 0 ms to 6 seconds, and gets added on to the current voice VCA Release time.

 

The I / II switch also threw me, until I realized it didn’t relate to ranks, but the interaction between sustain and pitch bend. Mode I is a lot of fun. As long as you’re holding down a note, pitch bend works as expected. But if a note is being sustained, when you release the note, the pitch bend no longer has an effect. This allows for techniques like holding down a chord with a fair amount of sustain, releasing a couple of the notes while holding the others, and moving the pitch wheel. The released notes won’t bend, but the ones you’re still holding will. It gives a sort of manually controlled version of the THX intro.

 

With Mode II, pitch-bending occurs regardless of the sustain status. Pitch bend affects any note you hear, held or released.

 

The Porta/Gliss switch works similarly to the Sustain switch. Turn it off to have portamento or glissando on all the time, and on when you want to enable portamento or glissando with a footswitch. A switch chooses between Portamento (notes glide from existing notes to the next notes), or Glissando (notes slide in half-steps). In either case, the Porta/Gliss slider sets the glide time. Both the Portamento and Glissando work predictably and polyphonically. You’ll have a good time playing with these.

 

The GX-80 offers three aftertouch modes. The manual mentions using this to control the Touch Response parameters at the right of the Voice Rank parameters as well as the Sub Osc parameters, which led me to think you were limited to those parameters. Not at all—you can assign pretty much anything where you’d use a controller to aftertouch, using either MIDI Learn or if that's a hassle when trying to assign pressure, then with the drop-down menus (with handy min and max knobs, as well as a curve bender). Good stuff.

 

The three modes are Mono (the usual channel aftertouch we’ve come to know and sort of love), Poly (the polyphonic aftertouch that we’ve come to know and covet), and Last. Last is a variation on channel pressure, where if you press down on multiple notes, whatever pressure you apply affects the parameter being controlled for only the more recently played note. So for example, if you press down and hold a key and the aftertouch value is fairly low, then you press another key down hard, the aftertouch response will follow the last key you pressed down, and respond to the hard pressure. But if while holding down that note you apply more pressure to the first note you were holding down, it will still affect the last note played.

 

As a proud owner of the mighty Roger Linn LinnStrument, I was able to test these out these various modes, and everything worked as advertised. I had much less success with an Ensoniq TS-10—the LinnStrument is infinitely more responsive as a poly aftertouch controller, and as a result, infinitely more fun to play. I suspect that because of the LinnStrument, the GX-80's Mono and Last buttons won't get much exercise in the years ahead. 

 

Finally, note that except for the Wah and Expression parameters, the left-hand controls are independent for the different layers. So one layer could have massive amounts of sustain, while another layer didn’t but did have glissando. The can be particularly useful with splits.

 

That’s it for the left-hand controls. The real gem here, at least for me, is the polyphonic aftertouch button when paired with a LinnStrument. Between that and the other messages the LinnStrument can generate, it got along swimmingly with the GX-80.

[MRBarton]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

Note that apparently, Cherry Audio wasn’t thrilled with the original wah sound. So, they decided to improve on it. The result sounds quite a bit like a Vox Crybaby

 

Good ear, Mr. Anderton.  It is indeed a Crybaby modeled after a vintage unit I have had for many years.  We discussed which wah-wah pedal to model and we all instantly agreed.  We wanted it to be a pedal that was around when the CS-80 was around to match vintage with vintage.

 

The wah filter in the CS-80 is some kind of 2-pole constant-Q (I think) type which bears no resemblance to a wah-wah pedal's behavior at all and also sounds terrible.  It's debatable which sounds worse, the chorus or the wah.  Apparently, having built-in effects (no matter how bad) in a synth was a huge novelty at the time, so it's kind of like a dog walking on its hind legs.  It doesn't do it well, but you're surprised it does it at all.

 

Our mission statement was sort of like: Absolute authenticity except in the cases where the original sucks (and customers would be sad).  Fortunately, this area was the only "except".

[jerrythek]

Doh!   

 

And I knew that the Portamento was programmable per Layer, I don't know why I didn't see the sustain in the same way. I think it's because it's not important if you turn it off (or on), you just need to set it to its shortest value. Right? That's what I'm experiencing here in my testing. Just another quirk of the CS-80! Thanks for calling me out so gently - I'll revise that part.

13 hours ago, cherryDan said:

 

It's not obvious, but there are certain additional controls that change based on what layer you're editing, that are outside of the white and orange framed areas.

 

GX-80's left-hand controls, including Sustain on/off, Porta/Gliss on/off, Sustain mode, Sustain time, etc., are actually per-layer controls. So if you don't want sustain on the left hand bass part, just switch to the layer and turn the SUST switch to off, or set the SUSTAIN short/long time to short. If you want a long sustain on the right-hand sound, switch to that layer and crank up the Sustain Short/Long slider.

 

Dan

 

[jerrythek]

14 hours ago, cherryDan said:

 

Craig, I'm so glad you brought this up, because it's such a great illustration of a topic that comes up a lot with Cherry Audio. So, before I tackle the topic of whether or not Cherry Audio substituted a rotary speaker emulator for the tremolo, please indulge me in a bit of behind-the-scenes synthesizer emulation talk.

 

Often during interviews or during one-on-one discussions about Cherry Audio and our vintage synthesizer emulations, people will ask me what the most challenging part of emulating a vintage synthesizer is. It's a great question. Obviously, matching the quality of the oscillators and of the filter are paramount, and a ton of work goes into this aspect of the recreation. But often the most challenging part is not what you might expect.

 

What we've learned is that the character of an instrument is far more than just the raw tone. It's the shape and speed of the envelope generators, the mono-polar or bi-polar nature of the LFO waveforms, the slope, speed, and linear or logarithmic nature of the portamento, the way the sound gets overdriven when you play too many notes or crank the mixer volume up too high. All of these things contribute to the sound and feel of an instrument far more than you might expect. These details are particularly important in the CS-80, which has all sorts of unusual interactions.

<clip>

 

- Dan @ Cherry Audio

 

This is a really great insight into what it takes to fully reproduce a classic instrument (or effect) - thanks for going into this level of detail. It's only in this type of interactive review, and without the space limitations of print that we're able to get so much insight and go behind the scenes with a developer. 

[jerrythek]

GX-80 MIDI

Looking at the MIDI implementation of the GX-80 we see some interesting control possibilities, and a wish-list item or two.

 

Basic Setup

When you click on the gear icon at the top of the window:

you’re presented with various settings for General (think of this as preferences for the app), Interface, Account, and Audio/MIDI. In Audio/MIDI:

 

 

 you can select your desired audio interface and settings, and which MIDI devices the application will listen to. I like that it can be more than one device, as you might be playing the GX-80 from a keyboard that doesn’t have all the controllers might want, considering how control-laden the CS-80 was. So you can have your main keyboard/controller and then add another device (or two) to give you more knobs/sliders/switches/whatever to control the synth. There are a number of these devices available, like the Arturia Beatstep, Korg NanoKontrol2 and NanoKontrol Studio, the Novation Launch Control XL and the StudioLogic MixFace, to name a few.

 

No MIDI Channel?

Keen eyes may notice that there is no setting to choose the MIDI channel for the GX. It always responds in MIDI Omni Mode (listening to all channels), which was surprising to me at first. This ends up being true for almost all of Cherry Audio’s software recreations. The thinking is that if you’re using it in a DAW, your track setting will take care of channelization, and if you are creating a computer-based live performance rig your “hosting” software of choice will do the same. 

 

I don’t think that not being able to set the MIDI channel is a big issue, and few, if any users are likely to miss it.  The only case I could think of is a user who runs a very simple setup with only a couple of soft synths open and wants to switch the MIDI channel on their keyboard to select between them. Realistically, that’s not a good way to do things, and you’d be missing out on all the powerful possibilities that using programs like Mainstage, Cantabile, Camelot, Gig Performer, or Plogue Bidul offer.

 

While playing around with the GX, and thinking back to the GX-1, I thought it would be cool to be able to set the MIDI channel of the Upper and Lower Ranks, and then use a dual keyboard setup to mimic the multiple manuals of the GX-1. You can achieve that by using two (or three) instances of the GX-80 so you can get the result, just in a different way than I was thinking of. 

 

MIDI Learn

Moving on, the main MIDI feature of any soft-synth is the ability to assign controllers to the various onscreen parameters and controls. This is easily done by right-clicking on an onscreen control to bring up this dialog window:

 

 

 

Move a controller on your keyboard and whatever message it sends out will be learned. As long as it is a MIDI Note, MIDI CC (Control Change), Aftertouch (called Pressure), or Transport controls that send MIDI Machine Control (MMC). If you want you can also use the QWERTY keyboard from your computer (Key). This should cover the majority of user’s needs. 

 

The only thing missing is support for MIDI RPN and NRPN messages, which some hardware synths use for their control messages, as they offer a finer resolution than MIDI CC’s (up to 16,383 steps of resolution versus 128). But honestly, few, if any soft synths support these messages for MIDI Learn, so this is more of a warning for you to not use a hardware device that is limited to sending those types of messages. Sorry Andromeda owners!

 

Deeper Learning

Unlike many other soft synths, the GX-80 can do more to shape how those controllers assignments behave than just link the message to the parameter. If you press the MIDI field at the top of the window:

you bring up the more advanced view of MIDI assignments.

 

 

Name is the parameter being controlled, Type is the MIDI message that was learned, and Value is the specific MIDI Note or CC that was used. I’ll skip over Preset for a moment, and move to the Min and Max knobs. These allow you to specify, or limit the range of the controller response. Move the Min clockwise a bit (to the right), and the parameter will never go back down to its lowest value. Move the Max knob counter-clockwise (to the left) and the parameter will never reach its highest value. There are a lot of cool applications for using this type of range modification. Cherry Audio makes mention of one in the manual for the GX: the controls on the panel of a CS-80 are backwards to our common expectations. Fully up they represent a value of Off, or 00. As you pull them towards you the value increases. So if you want to set up your MIDI controller to behave in the same fashion, you should set the Min knob all the clockwise, and the Max knob all the way counter-clockwise. This inverts the response, so when you pull your slider towards you, or turn a knob all the way left the onscreen parameter will push up, to its lowest value. And visa versa. This inverting of a controller’s response is also commonly used when you want to map sliders to act as drawbars for an organ instrument. All the way up moves them to 0, and pulling them all the way down opens them up the full 8 value.

 

Looking to the right of the Max knob we see a curve setting for each controller. You can pull down on the line and change the response from linear to exponential, where the response doesn’t happen right away, and has to move further into the gesture before it starts to happen, and then increases quicker towards the latter part of the range.

 

 

Pull up on the line and the response changes to logarithmic, where the response happens quicker and more intensely during the early part of the travel.

 

 

 

This is a great feature; one that I wish more manufacturers offered. I should note that the Arturia CS-80 plug-in does not offer this feature. You may think, “why do I need anything other than a linear response from a MIDI controller?” Let me describe some of my favorite applications for this.

 

1) Personalizing the response of the Mod Wheel

This is perhaps my favorite use. Have you ever felt that the LFO modulation/vibrato on your synth comes in too quickly, and/or too deeply? If so, just pick the right parameter (in the case of the GX-80 it’s the Sub Oscillator VCO lever – be sure to do it for both/all the Ranks that are active) and set the curve to an Exponential value that feels good to you. Don’t forget to invert the Min/Max values, and you’ll have to turn off the ModWhl switch so your custom setting can take over. You can also restrict the Max value so your vibrato/modulation never gets too deep or wacky. In this way you can have a slower entry in the modulation so you can introduce it more subtly. See Fig. 8.

 

 

Another way to personalize the Mod Wheel response is to set it up opposite of this. Sometimes I like to be able to quickly “sting” a note with some fast LFO, and I don’t want to have to make a large gesture to get there. So leave the Min and the Max fully inverted, and change the curve to a more logarithmic setting, and your LFO will come in much more quickly and intensely.

 

 

 

2) I’m glad to see that the GX-80 allows you to map more than one destination to a given controller.

There’s lots of applications for this capability. One of the most obvious is if you want to have a knob/control to sweep the Lowpass Filter Cutoff, and you are using multiple ranks, you’ll want the knob to sweep each of those filters at the same time. Same thing if you want a control for Amp Release and many other types of tweaks.

 

Sticking with the Mod Wheel for one more, sometimes it can be nice to introduce a little bit of tremolo along with your vibrato. When I do that, I want the tremolo to happen later in the range of the wheel’s sweep, so the gesture starts out as vibrato, and only adds the tremolo near the top of the movement. Think of it like a delayed tremolo, only it’s still under your control. So add some Sub Oscillator VCA modulation from the Mod Wheel, with a significantly Exponential Curve, and it will only be heard towards the top range of your wheel movement.

 

 

I’ll be covering my favorite aspect of Cherry Audio’s MIDI Learn in another post shortly.

[Dr Mike Metlay]

16 hours ago, cherryDan said:

16 hours ago, cherryDan said:

The Tremolo switch on the CS-80 does not add tremolo.

 

Weird, right? How can that be? Why have a Tremolo switch that doesn't introduce tremolo?

 

[...]Remember that the CS-80 was built by an organ company. Despite the fact that it's clearly a synthesizer and not an organ, it was still built with many organ-like features, and used lots of organ-like terminology, such as "ranks" and "feet", and it has those weird reversed performance paddles, the ones you pull towards you in order to increase the level of a parameter. They still thought of this thing as a fancy programmable organ.

 

 

For GX-80, we wanted to emulate this chorus behavior. The Speed control in the Chorus effect emulates the Tremolo on/off behavior of the CS-80. But we also added a proper, modern rotary speaker emulation, so if that's what you want, you don't have to make do with the CS-80's simplistic Leslie emulation.

 

I was really surprised when I discovered that the Tremolo switch is a rotary-style chorus speed control. I always assumed, as Craig did above, that the CS-80 has a built-in tremolo effect. This was one of a hundred little mysteries about the CS-80 that we uncovered while creating the GX-80.

 

When in doubt, think of the GX-80 (like its predecessors) as a really cool-sounding organ. That mode of thinking can get you out of a lot of conceptual holes.

 

mike