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Synths that haven't made it to software yet...?


David Emm

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4 hours ago, J.F.N. said:

 

I wonder what happened to Yamaha's partnership with Stanford for the physical modeling stuff, the VL/VP machines, it would have been FANTASTIC if they included this technology in one way or the other in their flagship machines, but also created some interesting software/plugins, I assume that would be Steinberg taking care of this. I have the EX5R which contains some flavours of this, and I will never sell that machine!

Those patenta are really Stanford's and the work of Scott A. Van Duyne and Julius O. Smith, III, covering waveguide technology. They deserve the bulk of the credit. Yamaha paid for the rights and controlled it for a period of time. And everyone that explored that field had to pay their license fee.

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Axcel would be a great candidate. I traveled 700 km to attend a full demonstration by the inventor at the Milan University, it was an incredible instrument. There's a video tutorial explaining most of its functions.

And of course, GDS. Beauty in the Beast, Digital Moonscapes...

 

More down to earth, I would like a software Alesis Ion. I still use it for teaching the basis of synthesis, and I would find wonderful to have a software copy, for the students to practice at home.

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8 hours ago, obxa said:

Cherry Audio rumored to release the Chroma on  5/14/24

 

Love to see the Roland JD990 &   MKS70  as virtual. Haven't been too impressed with Roland Cloud stuff.  I've got enough mono synths.  I've always felt the PCM-hybrid sample  type stuff (e.g. Wavestation) actually sound better in software.


Roland released a sampled version of JD-990 called "Anthology 1993". It covers all the factory presets and might fit the bill for folks not planning on tweaking/programming they own.

There's an excellent free synth called PG-8X that does a good job of emulating the Roland JX-8P. Stack two of them together and we have a decent approximation of the MKS-70.

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5 hours ago, jerrythek said:

Those patenta are really Stanford's and the work of Scott A. Van Duyne and Julius O. Smith, III, covering waveguide technology. They deserve the bulk of the credit. Yamaha paid for the rights and controlled it for a period of time. And everyone that explored that field had to pay their license fee.

 

Yes indeed, and considering that the KORG counterpart products comes from Stanford's Sondius program as well (same as Yamaha) and that the Prophecy is available as a software these days, it would be interesting to know if Yamaha still would have the right to do something similar today. 

"You live every day. You only die once."

 

Where is Major Tom?

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PC3, HX3 w. B4D, 61SLMkII, SL73, Prologue 16, KingKORG, Opsix, MPC Key 37, DM12D, Argon8m, EX5R, Toraiz AS-1, IK Uno, Toraiz SP-16, Erica LXR-02, QY-700, SQ64, Beatstep Pro

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23 hours ago, jerrythek said:

How about a recreation of one of their combo organs like the YC-45? I don't think it is available within their reface model, is it?

 

Yup, the Reface YC emulates a Yamaha YC combo organ (along with Hammond, Vox, Farfisa, Acetone)...

 

ScreenShot2024-05-13at11_02_04AM.thumb.jpg.0ff9d9689a223edbe056d871b1aec493.jpg

 

...and these same options are in the reface-derived organ section of the CK61/CK88.

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Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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17 hours ago, jerrythek said:

Those patenta are really Stanford's and the work of Scott A. Van Duyne and Julius O. Smith, III, covering waveguide technology. They deserve the bulk of the credit. Yamaha paid for the rights and controlled it for a period of time. And everyone that explored that field had to pay their license fee.

 

Didn't Yamaha do the same with John Chowning and FM back in the 80s?

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5 hours ago, CHarrell said:

 

Didn't Yamaha do the same with John Chowning and FM back in the 80s?

Yes, but they did a lot of further development work on the FM technology, and advanced it greatly. I interviewed Dr. Chowning for an article I wrote for Yamaha a few years ago, and he related how much work they did. As an example, the concept of feedback in an algorithm was Yamaha's idea. No doubt there are more.

 

I'm not an expert on this, but I'm not sure how much further development they did on waveguide science. Perhaps they did as well.

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17 hours ago, J.F.N. said:

 

Yes indeed, and considering that the KORG counterpart products comes from Stanford's Sondius program as well (same as Yamaha) and that the Prophecy is available as a software these days, it would be interesting to know if Yamaha still would have the right to do something similar today. 

I can tell you that Korg did all their own work developing algorithms for the Prophecy/Z1/Oasys/Kronos etc. But we were legally bound to pay the license/show the mark on our products.

 

I'm sure that Yamaha (of all companies) would have the ability to use the technology as they wanted.

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4 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

I can tell you that Korg did all their own work developing algorithms for the Prophecy/Z1/Oasys/Kronos etc. But we were legally bound to pay the license/show the mark on our products.

 

I'm sure that Yamaha (of all companies) would have the ability to use the technology as they wanted.

 

Some interesting memorabilia

https://web.archive.org/web/20131126203942/http://sondiusxg.com/korgpr.html

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"You live every day. You only die once."

 

Where is Major Tom?

- - - - -

PC3, HX3 w. B4D, 61SLMkII, SL73, Prologue 16, KingKORG, Opsix, MPC Key 37, DM12D, Argon8m, EX5R, Toraiz AS-1, IK Uno, Toraiz SP-16, Erica LXR-02, QY-700, SQ64, Beatstep Pro

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23 hours ago, YashN said:

Not everything VA-1 has been ported over, Dave would be able to give more details, but a lot of the important things like the improved Ladder filter, anti-aliased oscillator and other blocks. And they managed to give us these things with up to 32 layers of Cascade and Dynamic Edit too.

 

The integration of those within the rest of V.A.S.T. and in a workstation like a PC3 line or Forte or PC4/K2700 and soon to be K2061/K2088 is fantastic enough not to have to lust after a VA-1 IMO.

Except for all that dedicated real-time control!

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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25 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

Except for all that dedicated real-time control!

V.A.S.T. has very extensive internal Controls - it suffices to either use the on-board controls which can also be paged, or if you still need more, use a MIDI Controller (something with several knobs and/or faders and switches) to map additional ones.

Kurzweil K2500XS + KDFX, Roland: JX-3P, JX-8P, Korg: Polysix, DW-8000, Alesis Micron, DIY Analogue Modular

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There are still quite a few I would like to see in software, both from a nostalgia perspective and from a modern UI perspective.

 

I’d love to see Korg add the DS-8 4-op FM synth to their legacy collection, and perhaps the Trinity. The Z1 would be a nice add as well.

 

A Kawai K5000 would be awesome (previously mentioned). And I’d love to see whatever remains of Emu released as software (Proteus, etc). Arturia recently did the Ensoniq SQ80, but it would be cool to have a true VFX as well. Last but not least, I’d love a model of the Roland JX-10. IK’s Syntronik/Sampletank has a sampled version that is OK, but that simple digital/analog hybrid has always been special to me.

 

On the modern front, I’d love to see Kurzweil do a native VAST-based soft synth. They won’t, but it would be awesome to edit on large screens.

 

Todd

Sundown

 

Just finished: GatewayThe Jupiter Bluff

Working on: Driven Away, Eighties Crime Thriller

Main axes: Kawai MP11 and Kurz PC361

DAW Platform: Cubase

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2 hours ago, Sundown said:

And I’d love to see whatever remains of Emu released as software (Proteus, etc).

 

It's abandonware, as in abandoned years and years ago, but there is a plugin called Proteus VX (I think) that compiled all the Proteus sounds into one software spot.

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11 hours ago, Sundown said:

Arturia recently did the Ensoniq SQ80, but it would be cool to have a true VFX as well

You reminded me... my favorite synth we ever did at Ensoniq was the TS-10/12. I'd love to have that in software... The MR-Rack (including its expansion boards) would be wonderful as well, but both require licensing of the waveform ROMs, which are owned by Creative Labs. But they did allow Tim Swartz to release sound libraries from Emu and Ensoniq stuff, so perhaps it would be possible.

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12 hours ago, CHarrell said:

It's abandonware, as in abandoned years and years ago, but there is a plugin called Proteus VX (I think) that compiled all the Proteus sounds into one software spot.

 

That would be an immense project. Even the simplest Proteus 2000-era synth had a seriously modular internal structure, never mind ownership of the sound data. Digital Sound Factory sells the sounds, but no synth in programmable total, nor the highly creative arps. Modulation routings that were SOP in E-mus took years to start seriously appearing elsewhere. Its less a matter of being abandoned and more one of IP being locked away in a few places.

 

If someone super-enterprising offered a "Proteus" framework into which you could plug the various libraries, arps included, I'd be in line early. The design was several generations ahead when it first appeared. NOW I could understand it far better than I did back then. 🤓    

Do what makes you happy this week.
So long as it’s not eating people.
Eating people is bad.
People have diseases.
      ~ Warren Ellis

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34 minutes ago, David Emm said:

 

That would be an immense project. Even the simplest Proteus 2000-era synth had a seriously modular internal structure, never mind ownership of the sound data. Digital Sound Factory sells the sounds, but no synth in programmable total, nor the highly creative arps. Modulation routings that were SOP in E-mus took years to start seriously appearing elsewhere. Its less a matter of being abandoned and more one of IP being locked away in a few places.

 

If someone super-enterprising offered a "Proteus" framework into which you could plug the various libraries, arps included, I'd be in line early. The design was several generations ahead when it first appeared. NOW I could understand it far better than I did back then. 🤓    

 

My apologies if I'm misunderstanding or wasn't clear enough, but are you saying this plug-in by EMU doesn't feature these elements?

 

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/proteus-vx-by-e-mu

 

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5 minutes ago, CHarrell said:

My apologies if I'm misunderstanding or wasn't clear enough, but are you saying this plug-in by EMU doesn't feature these elements?

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/proteus-vx-by-e-mu

 

It does not appear to do so. Its a player for 1000+ Proteus patches, with 16 assignable controllers per preset. The library is limited by definition, the creative arps are not included and its tested on Windows XP only. If you are satisfied to just have a tweakable grab bag, it seems perfectly usable. I'm sure many people will be happy to drop it in as a VST, like any other useful instrument. Its valid. I massage E-mu sounds with modern tools, just like anyone else! 👍  

Do what makes you happy this week.
So long as it’s not eating people.
Eating people is bad.
People have diseases.
      ~ Warren Ellis

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