marino Posted May 4 Share Posted May 4 Sounds good to me. Six oscillators! Web: https://www.synapse-audio.com/thelegendhz.html 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tusker Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 Hans Zimmer is under-appreciated for his ability to get good developers to do great work. He worked with Urs Heckmann to turn Zebra in to Zebra HZ when scoring the Dark Knight. Now partnering with Kevin Schroeder, Hans turns the Legend into Legend HZ. Legend HZ raises the bar for everyone. Definitely on my buy list. My copy of Diva is feeling nervous. 😅 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tusker Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 I own or have dealt with most soft synth emulations of the Minimoog. Most of them nail the timbre of the components and it's not hard to find a musically adequate Moog sound. So why push the envelope? Where the synths sometimes fall down is how the components interact. How does filter resonance change as the oscillators get louder in the mixer? There is an infinite variety of nooks and crannies when the interactions are modeled well. It makes the synth satisfying to tweak. This looks like one of those synths. Simon Le Grec is twisting knobs on presets and the changes feel satisfying. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyberGene Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 It all sounds fascinating but I started wondering whether the current taste for ultra smooth long-tail reverb algorithms (without becoming a mess), which also includes subtle pitch modulation, an inherent signature of the latest decade, is the actual ingredient that makes all current synth demos what they are, rather than the dry synth signal. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tusker Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 It's a thought provoking question and not easily answered. The natural world is full of reverb, so there is no question the average human being is going to want some. They might get it from the room they are sitting in, but they still want it. None of us train our ears in anechoic chambers. Richness comes from interactions between source and space. I tend to be a two-stage sound designer, tending to the synth before the effects. This habit is probably left over from interacting with old hardware synths which didn't have reverb. Very rarely in a modular or semi-modular synth, I will place a reverb or delay module further upstream inside the synth patch to modulate delay time with an LFO or an envelope. You can get some nice smearing effects that way. But that's rare. I prefer to use external reverbs and delays rather than the ones in the softsynth. This is why I look for an effects kill switch as I open a new synth. In the Legend HZ it's conveniently there in the top right. As you said, because so many modern effects are good, it gets harder to tell the great synths from the ok ones. That's why I look for the way the synth changes as you tweak it. If it's responsive it feels like a musical instrument, whether a patch came drenched in effects or not. Some of us are creating music to be played over headphones or other "artificial" sonic spaces. Others are performing in live venues which have their own "natural" sonic signature. A good synth should accommodate both workflows. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baldwin Funster Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 Quote FunMachine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokely Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 Ironically, when I demoed The Legend years ago I took some of my favorite patches on it and removed the reverb. What a massive difference. It wasn't that the patches were "bad" without it, it's that they were completely different....in other words--and not a knock on them--Synapse employs some really nice-sounding fx heavily in their patch design. Same for Dune 3 (same company). Sounded amazing, but very wet patches. With that synth I am a bit leery of one-finger and layered patches that do everything and Dune 3 had a lot of those (though surely it could be used in a simpler fashion as well.) I find that (usually) u-he patches tend to be drier, though that depends on both the plugin and which developer made them. I did a bit of an experiment with the "lowly" Logic Retro Synth by trying to emulate a favorite u-he Repro 5 patch. I had to add plugins to match the ones in Repro before I could get close (maximizer/exciter, chorus, delay, reverb). The end result sure didn't sound that much like the original Retro Synth patch! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AROIOS Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 I'm kinda curious what a 6 oscillator mini can do that 2 minis layered cannot achieve. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tusker Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 On 5/6/2024 at 2:00 AM, AROIOS said: I'm kinda curious what a 6 oscillator mini can do that 2 minis layered cannot achieve. Me too. We may have to wait and see. We live in such richness of musical options that we can create similar outcomes in multiple ways. Stokely, for example was able to make a stock Logic instrument sound like a very well regarded Prophet 5 emulation by using effects. Keith Emerson figured out how to perform some of his iconic GX1 brass parts with digital synths like the TX816. So what do we get with six oscillators before the one filter? More power? More options because of course you will have more coverage of the overtone series? Perhaps. Hans Zimmer and Kevin Schroeder are careful digital luthiers. They could easily have added the versatile wavetable oscillator from Synapse's Dune 3 synth but instead, we see six Moog-like oscillators. Hans has a history of getting particular analog features into synths. He persuaded Urs Heckmann to add Polymoog-like resonators to Zebra HZ. Similarly, he has persuaded Kevin to add the Moog Modular Filter Bank to Legend HZ. This is the joint work of one of the greatest composers of synth soundtracks and one of the most well respected modern synth developers. I am excited to see what the beast can do. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doerfler Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 another video for your viewing pleasure 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Emm Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 All I care about is that I cranked up the preset demo and it came at me like a T-Rex. Its pretty much brimming with the lush character to which we've become accustomed. Its also the most digitized synth to date, so each take on it will be subjective. I'm suffering from an inflamed Mac, so I'm not shopping for More, but I have to say that listening to it was like enjoying a sinful Italian meal made by angels. Damned if it didn't remind me of old music store thrills, playing Moogs, Jupiters and Obies for the first time. WIN. 2 Quote As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. ~ Matt Cartmill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marino Posted May 7 Author Share Posted May 7 22 hours ago, AROIOS said: I'm kinda curious what a 6 oscillator mini can do that 2 minis layered cannot achieve. Well, to my understanding this version has more features and more modulation possibilities, so maybe it should to be thought of more as a small modular system that as a classic Mini architecture... btw I suspect that I would use a maximum of 4 oscillators for audio, and use the other two as lfos... Speaking of which, I hope that the poly modes (4, 8 or 16 voices) are really polyphonic, and not some form of "paraphony". 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerrythek Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 On 5/6/2024 at 2:00 AM, AROIOS said: I'm kinda curious what a 6 oscillator mini can do that 2 minis layered cannot achieve. My first thought is that integration into a single interface makes programming much more fluid and intuitive than jumping back and forth between two separate instances of a plug-in. Jerry 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allan_evett Posted May 8 Share Posted May 8 I'm listening to the first demo posted, the factory presets. Also did an initial quick-skim of the manual. This software synth is very well thought out, and sounds quite good. With how digital modeling has progressed, I could easily see this being a highly useful tool in my MacBook Pro (along with squelching my GAS for a hardware mega-synth, e.g. the Trigon 6. Though I've had Omnisphere since 2008, and carefully updated it, I've never quite warmed to the UI. Not to mention the hurdles I'm currently attempting jump over with it on this 2020 MBP. Using The Legend HZ - along with DIVA, KOMPLETE 14 and a couple others (All of which have been pretty-much 'no tears', compared to Omnisphere) is very tempting. Going to continue listening and studying. Intrgigued.. Quote 'Someday, we'll look back on these days and laugh; likely a maniacal laugh from our padded cells, but a laugh nonetheless' - Mr. Boffo. We need a barfing cat emoticon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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