Quote:
Originally Posted by namnibor
Right-on! Now, unlike some of the shits on other forums that either LOVE to hate on the Virus OR seemingly always want to get into this debate over whether true analog is only VCO rather than DCO, (even Dave Smith has said many times over that the DCO is real analog with only exception of **digital stabilization** of frequency, hence no tuning issues), I DO wonder if a DCO would be more apt to get to those insane speeds with it's accuracy in and not so much 'glide'...just a thought?! |
I think it's got more to do with stability in tunning, rather then have the phase of the waves recycle for every note. Something that's a "must have" for real stable bass sounds, much used in EDM music - like psychedelic trance, the sound that's become standard for it, it's got this very precise and fast notes, creating a bass floor that's as precise as a swiss clock - maybe even more. But I think it's a good idea to have microchips tunning those oscillators while making them more able to cope with more extreme modulations at the same time. Honestly don't know if there's the option for phase retrigger on those... The fact is, it really doesn't matter much, because it's quite fun to make a sampler instrument out of that gear, takes a lot of work, but will ultimately produce a unique sound that no one else has got.
About that, all it takes (besides a lot of time, and I mean A LOT) is some kind of wave editor, such as wavelab, that lets you zoom in on the audio and select the snap to zero cross values on the waveforms - it doesn't have to be 0 phase, of course, but it's easier that way, because what you're looking for is stability for all the notes on the sampled instrument.
To give you some perspective on it:
pick your virus and build a simple patch with only one sawtooth oscillator, a lowpass filter pretty much closed and with no resonance, add some filter envelope modulation to it, this one have a little decay going, and a touch of release. Now, turn on the ARP (hold mode on), the first pattern is ok, and go to the AMP envelope, have a little decay, little sustain going, and adjust the release so as to make it feel more natural, and add a little attack so that you don't ear the click. Now, bring the tempo up to, say, 160 bpm...
If you add phase init value to it, say value "1", it plays smoothly and steady (once the envelopes are tweaked right), if you turn it off (0 value) it's rather nasty. The Virus is always set to free running mode (with the 0 value on phase init on oscillator section) by default, and that's a feature used to emulate the behaviour of analogue synths, so that every note is slightly different. But for that kind of machine gun sound (funny using this metaphor to you) it's better to have the phase locked, as you can clearly ear. And that's pretty much what we've grown to expect nowadays in most modern genres of electronic music, that's why people say something like "rock solid bass", it's very steady in both presence and timbre.
So, I'll check if there's some DCO's out there with (phase) retrig option on them, honestly don't know
If Korg doesn't release the sequencer, you can take a look at what they used on some of their demos, the Kaos machines. I don't know if they send real CV or just audio, with those, will have to check, but those are great for many stuff. I think the MS 20 probably reads both CV messages and audio could be used as a modulation source as well, right?
Liked the story of the general getting mad with an alien sounding classic synth, of course
Dave has earned the right to drink his tequilla shots
