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 Now online (3)recycle belb dariusgriffin ...and 112 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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Members 8025Messages 2613461 Today 4 Topics 127500 |
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Roland GAIA SH-01 synthesizer Features: * 3 Complete Virtual Analog Synths * 64 Note Polyphony * 3 Oscillators * 3 Multi-Mode Resonant Filters, LFO’s and Amplifiers, Plus 9 Envelope Generators * D-Beam Sensor * Combined Pitch Bender and Modulation Controller * Comprehensive Selection of Effects Including: Reverb, Distortion, Fuzz, Bit Crash, Flanger, Phaser, Pitch Shifter, Low Boost, and Delay with Panning and Tempo Sync. * Up to 5 Simultaneous Effects * Experession Pedal Input on 1/4″ Jack * Full USB DAW Compatibility for Midi Data, and Storing Patches and Phrases To USB Flash Drive * External Input for Playback of External Sources |
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nice |
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you got one? |
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nope. it's just been announced |
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it looks tasty |
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looks fun |
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i love the "Virtual Analog Synths" |
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wonder if I can make dubstep on this |
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Who the hell came up with this "virtual analog" term anyway? Since when did "analog" become an object of some sort that can be emulated digitally? It seems this term really is just to sell this sort of stuff. For what it is now, i don't like it, can't say anything about the sound. |
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D BEAM |
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no sequencer? |
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i think novation did |
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Everything can be emulated digitally. Some things are emulated better than others. Virtual analogue is as reasonable a term as subtractive synthesis. Up until a few months ago, I would have never thought anything would have measured up to my moog and mopho, but thats changing. . Really excited about this one... |
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actually i dont know and dont really care |
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Then call it "emulated subtractive synthesis" and not like Analog is something you breath in or something |
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Well, it is subtractive synthesis, so calling it emulated would be a misnomer. I don't see why you seem to be getting worked up over something that really doesn't matter. |
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Shouldn't i be pointing out something if i want to? |
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yeh you're right it's utterly idiotic, Taxidermist is and idiot. |
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It can run on AA batteries, does this mean it could be circuit bent or would it still be way too high a voltage? |
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XILS-TRONIC :] |
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How do you play notes on that keyboard? |
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Yeah. I'm just saying, there really isn't much of a point in getting worked up over it. Its all bullshit marketing labels anyway. |
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It's not all bullshit marketing labels. Stick to your guns! |
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I think the reasoning behind the term "virtual analog(ue)", at least from a marketing standpoint, was that early digital synths had a super characteristic sound and when manufacturers started breaking away from that sound, they wanted consumers to know their products were intended to sound closer to the analogue roots. It may not be very relevant today but it served a purpose at one point, a long time ago and in a galaxy far far away. |
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Fun fact: the earliest moogs aliased like crazy and had outrageously steppy filter cutoff knobs. Today's moogs sound more analogue. |
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Well, i have a different view on it because i'm kind of in the middle of this whole gear thing of today's time. |
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It doesn't have a multiple touch screen and a dishwasher setting. |
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Is software hyperreal? Are oil paintings hyperreal? Is political theory hyperreal? Is language hyperreal? These are serious questions and I expect a short essay from each of you when we return to class in the new year. |
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I think what Terence and Fah are trying to say is that 'virtual analog' is hyperreal. Taxidermist doesn't seem to give a shit, which I can empathise with; we are inside, watchagawndo. Marketing create powerful images which blend truths, it's very easy to believe in these images but lets not get it twisted though, we love it. |
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Taxi's point, I think, is that it's already synthesis - it's already fake, illusory, hyperreal - so what difference does it make if it's not "real" synthesis? It's like complaining that a cartoon is on a web page instead of on paper. |
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it's smart marketing. marketing is always pretty evil |
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Errrr? The earliest Moogs had aliasing? I can't see how this is true as the earliest Moogs used analogue electronics operating in continuous time and you need to be operating in discrete time for aliasing. I think the virtual analogue term was used by marketing to describe the type of sounds and interface which resembled traditional synths rather than things like the DX7 which were rather different. Interestingly the whole analogue/digital thing uses the wrong terminology. The reason why additive and FM synthesis never took off in the "analogue" days is that it is expensive to have so much duplication of complex circuitry. To do it digitally it is simple and inexpensive. Equally it's possible to have an analogue sampler, such as the Mellotron but again it is complex and expensive. EMS, the creators of early synthesisers in Britain sold the VCS3 to fund the development and experiments they were doing with PDP computers and sampling while Moog was still messing around with Mini-Moogs. See the "What the future sounded like" documentary online for more of the fascinating story. |
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There's really no difference between analog and digital because they both use transistors. But computers have more transistors, which is why even the cheapest VST sounds better than alanog synths. |
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Correct me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression the DX7 was partially responsible along with the M1 and D50 for causing the death of analogue synthesizers back in the 80s. |
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1 - it doesn't matter what kind of synthesis it is, they both can be used just as effectively in making good or bad music. 2 - its ridiculous to get worked up over a word used for marketing. its like getting mad at the word cupcake. |
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You lot still on about this synth? It's a shit synth, all the music made with it sounds shit. Deal with it motherfuckers. |
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MOTHERFUCKING CUPCAKES, WHERES THE GODDAMN CUP??? |
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Not very many shitty synths out there. A lot of uncreative musicians tho. |
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Sounds like some dude who I'd meet at a raw food party. |
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I know i know, i hoped the silly was obvious. |
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Although during the 80's I was busy climbing trees and playing with Lego, from what I've read the DX7 was the primary cause for the analogue market to collapse. The DX7 sounds pretty decent, but must have been impossible to program due to menus and lack of knobbyness (also FM operators are far from intuitive). Here's a lovely showing the DX7 in action. Roland managed to survive probably due to their product diversity (look up Roland DG, they make plottters!) and came out with the D50 which is lovely. Dave Smith's Sequential Circuits went under but some of the engineers went on to Yamaha (ironically) and then Korg (to create the Wavestation). I couldn't tell you about Oberheim or Moog. The DX7 had a hand in the death of PPG, see Mr Palm's blog here for the whole interesting story . At the time he was working on the "Realizer", the first virtual analogue synth! I have mixed feelings for synths like this Gaia. For someone starting out it's very powerful and quite cheap. It can make sounds which a lot of people would be very happy with. It doesn't require frequent servicing and calibration, it has stable temperature co-efficient and appears to be very light. On the other hand, it is lacking a bit of soul. Analogue has imperfections. My job is designing RF electronic circuits where distortion is the enemy. For analogue synth designers, distortion gives character and is often desirable! A noisy oscillator control voltage for me is a big deal, but for your Jupiter 4 it gives it a nice sound! As I mentioned before, "proper" analogue works in the continuous time, which means that there is continual variations of voltage over an infinite range with infinite resolution. Virtual analogue and digital synths work in the discrete time domain, where at given time intervals the voltage is sampled and digitised into one of a number |
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... of pre-defined levels. This causes the loss of character from the sound. For example at "CD" quality you sample at 44100Hz with 16bit resolution. This means 44100 times per second a snapshot of the voltage is taken and it is matched to the nearest pre-defined level in the range 1-65536. (N.B. 2^16 = 65536). Anything that happens between the snapshots is lost. Any slight level variations which don't cross the threshold between one level and another are lost. The Nyquist sampling theorem dictates that the maximum frequency is half the sampling rate, so for a CD it can playback up to 22500Hz. I doubt most people can hear this high, yet I believe higher frequencies do influence our hearing. Higher frequencies can intermodulate down to the audio range and seem to add "something". You can see that digital can on paper work well, but misses out a lot of information. The tiny subtle almost psycho-acoustic information is what makes "real" analogue sound lovely. A virtual analogue synth may well have algorithms to simulate distortion and control voltage noise but these are still operating in discrete quantised chunks of time and amplitude. What I would like to see is companies like Roland going back to producing synths like the Jupiters with modern components and features. I think with modern surface mount component tolerances it should be possible to eliminate most hand tweaking. I am myself designing (slowly) a hybrid analogue digital analogue synth (a bit like a PPG but with a twist). I'd love to see the Rolands of this world do something similar not these DSP driven synths. Also I'd like to see a modern take on the Synclavier. (Am I stuck in the 80's? Possibly :-s) |
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One of the best digital synths is the dave andrews mofu, which is a virtual digital but sounds really analog because it has a computer inside. |
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Oberheim was bought by Gibson, and they kind of ran it into the ground, however they still use their technology patents to make guitar stuff. Moog went out of business in the eighties because of extremely expensive and risky projects like the memorymoog, and supposed mismanagement. Robert Moog wasn't a part of the company at the time. I could see korg and possibly yamaha making an analogue workstation like your talking about, but I don't think roland will ever revisit their heritage like your suggesting. |
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This reminds me of that one Planet µ thread. |
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if you want modern poly analogue you can buy yourself an alesis andromeda |
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No! Andromeda is not a good idea... here's why. The Andromeda A6 name is a bit of a give away. A6 == ASICS, applications specific integrated circuits. To make the synth economically viable they designed and fabricated chips which had lots of analogue circuitry on the chip die itself. This is very cheap if you're making lots of synths and by keeping things on the same die they're at the same temperature so you can produce circuits with very good temperature co-efficients and you have excellent control of tolerances, etc. This is all well and good until you need a replacement chip and you find that oh no.... only the Andromeda used these chips! You can't buy them as they're not standard parts.... You're screwed. This situation exists to a certain extend on other synths which used SSM chips for example. Also SID chips for C64s, etc My synth design uses standard parts for all circuitry so repairs and longevity are ensured. If you stick to transistors and opamps you can't go wrong. For the digital stuff you can use an FPGA and write the logic circuits in VHDL so it can be easily ported to newer devices. You can even implement CPUs in VHDL so obsolescence problems can be almost totally eliminated :-) The use of ASICS makes products cheap to manufacture in volume but terrible to service, often causing BER (beyond economic repair) status to be attributed when they go wrong. One other thing to watch out for is the synth community living off bin stock. Almost all analogue modular designs use transconductance amplifiers(OTAs) (e.g. CA3080, LM31700, etc) in VCOs, VTFs, VCAs as they implement a voltage controlled current source (v.useful). Guess what... these chips are obsolete, no longer manufactured and new designs are still coming out where you are forced to live off ever dwindling stocks! Sure, OTAs are easy to use, but have some due diligence and design something future proof with standard parts! (rant over) P.S. I think that the Andromeda interface looks terrible :-( |
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good explanation |
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