Sources for Sound design

[tenorjazz]

I'm new to programming this kind of synth and find the manual a little hard to understand sometime. Are there any other sources for information about learning how to program the Virus other than the manual and this forum? I am doing the MacProvideo course on programming analog synths but sometimes can't figure out how to translate the information over to the Virus.

Also any tutorials on Sound Design would help as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[Ruari]

There's two places you can head to

Howard Scarr wrote an excellent tutorial for the Virus

Also Sound on Sound ran an excellent series called Synth Secrets

[MBTC]

Simon Cann has written books on sound design... somewhere on there I think you can still find a link to a free e-book.

http://noisesculpture.com

Howard Scarr was mentioned above, he might be one of the more important sound designers of our time, and now works for u-He (makers of the Zebra2 softsynth)... you might download at least the demo for Zebra2 and work through some of his tutorials on it, because Zebra2 is a semi-modular synth that once you learn some finer points about it, programming the Virus is going to seem like cake.

http://www.u-he.com

[tenorjazz]

Thanks for the information!!!

All the sites look very interesting, but I particularly like the http://noisesculpture.com site. I plan on ordering a couple of books later tonight.

The site with the "soft" analog synth looks real interesting too, but at this point in time I have pretty much spent my "music money" for a while and I know if I start looking at some really cool product, I will probably want to buy it. I don't even want to try it till I get a little money saved, I figure I should probably be able to work through my learning curve with all my current synths.

But I do have a question about the Zebra 2... I was watching the tutorial on MacProvideo and noticed the soft synth he is using makes "stepped" sounds as he makes knob adjustments. I was reading somewhere that this was a common problem with virtual and soft synth, but also read that the Virus doesn't have this kind of problem, which I have found to be true so far. Can you tell me if the Zebra 2 makes notched or stepped sounds when you turn the knobs or is it smooth like a real analog synth or the Virus?

I've also been eyeing a couple of other virtual synths for the future, the Arturia and the Korg MS2000 and was wondering if anybody had one of these and had problems like I'm talking about?

Anyway, thanks again for the information and it looks like I'm going to be real busy learning a lot of new things.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by tenorjazz

Thanks for the information!!!

All the sites look very interesting, but I particularly like the http://noisesculpture.com site. I plan on ordering a couple of books later tonight.

The site with the "soft" analog synth looks real interesting too, but at this point in time I have pretty much spent my "music money" for a while and I know if I start looking at some really cool product, I will probably want to buy it. I don't even want to try it till I get a little money saved, I figure I should probably be able to work through my learning curve with all my current synths.

But I do have a question about the Zebra 2... I was watching the tutorial on MacProvideo and noticed the soft synth he is using makes "stepped" sounds as he makes knob adjustments. I was reading somewhere that this was a common problem with virtual and soft synth, but also read that the Virus doesn't have this kind of problem, which I have found to be true so far. Can you tell me if the Zebra 2 makes notched or stepped sounds when you turn the knobs or is it smooth like a real analog synth or the Virus?

I've also been eyeing a couple of other virtual synths for the future, the Arturia and the Korg MS2000 and was wondering if anybody had one of these and had problems like I'm talking about?

Anyway, thanks again for the information and it looks like I'm going to be real busy learning a lot of new things.

In short, knob adjustments are as analog as they are on the Virus -- by that I mean softsynths are "virtual analog" and so is the Virus (in other words they are really digital emulating analog properties). I'm not quite sure what you mean by "stepped"... if you point me to the particular video you watched and let me know the time in minutes/seconds I will take a look, but basically you can make adjustments to any parameter at such fine granularity that you would not be able to distinguish it from analog.

Now, how easily the control surface you use (the Virus, or other MIDI controller etc) supports this, I'm not sure. For example I'm a long time FLStudio user that is recently playing with Logic on the Mac. In so many ways Logic seems flawed (as does the Mac itself), but there are some things it does out of the box with AU synths that I don't think FL does, at least I've never seen it. For example on the Crimson Flute default patch on Zebra2, aftertouch from my MIDI controller adds vibrato without me having to do anything. In FL I think I need to specifically map a knob to aftertouch for it to do that. I read somewhere (KVR probably) that Urs, the author of Zebra2 said there was something with the VST standard itself that accounted for this. But if you're talking about the numeric increment that a knob on the software plugin increases when you turn it, with most synths there is a "large value / small value" option, like holding down shift while you move the mouse, like increasing a parameter by 1.0 versus .01 increments. As far as the physical knob on the control surface and mapping to the plug-in, that has more to do with how your DAW handles it (or in some cases utilities that come with certain MIDI controllers, like Automap for Novation controllers).

Hope that answers your question. The only Korg plug-ins I have are M1 and MS-20 and they are both very good, the MS-20 being the one you want for a more analog feel (the M1 is a very good representation of the original, probably even identical, but is a waveform based synth with an 80s sound).

Pretty much every soft synth offers a demo that lets you get accustomed to it before buying. I think the only limitation in Zebra is that it starts changing octaves on you after 20 minutes or something, you can easily delete the instance and start over to keep playing.

Shoot me the vid link and I'll take a look and see if I can see what you're referring to.

[tenorjazz]

The video I was referring to is on the MacProvideo site, it is:

Richard Lainhart : Analog Synthesis in a Digital World
Lesson 37. Sawtooths and Extreme Low-Pass Resonance (04:03)

Just a little way in, the video doesn't show a time when it's playing so I can't tell you the exact spot, but you can hear the sort of stepping I was referring to very clearly, when he twists one of the knobs. However, when I was looking for the this spot in the video I noticed when he was sweeping other knobs I didn't hear the very distinct steps from one sound to the other. So playing with the Virus I noticed I could get the same sort of sounds that are in the video, when I twisted the "Wave Sel/PW" knob in the Oscillator section, so I guess I don't really understand what's going on here.

I know my terminology isn't right here. I sort of differentiate between "soft synths" and "virtual analog" synths even though in the end they are all digital in that the sounds are created by a digital computer rather than real analog Oscillators and voltage controllers. I think of soft synths as those things you load into your Mac or PC and are controlled by some kind of controller and "virtual analog" synths as stand alone systems that have a dedicated controller. I know in the end they are all essentially the same. You know people say they can hear the difference between analog records and CD's, saying that the sound is harsher on the CD's and not like the real instruments because the sound waves are "stepped" when they are digital and "smooth" when they are analog. All I know is that I think that CD's sound better because you don't hear all the scratches. But to tell the truth, my hearing isn't so good any more so I really can't appreciate the "smooth" sound of analog.

Still it would be sweet if one day I could get a room full of real analog synths to play with, but for now the virtual instruments are the best thing for what I am doing.

[MBTC]

I can't see the video you're referring to other than a preview, I guess for some reason I assumed you were referring to a free youtube vid somewhere.

What you're referring to as stepping is usually referred to as aliasing, and as you pointed out is characteristic of any digital signal that's emulating analog tone, just like the example you cited with CDs. Throughout history, in most scientific blind studies, most folks fail the test of being able to consistently choose which signal is analog and which is digital. Many of the better softsynths have a way for you to control the quality of the aliasing (higher quality uses more CPU), but most find the difference so indistingushable that it's more of a "peace of mind" or maybe I should say placebo thing. The other big characteristic of true analog is "drift", where there is a slight amount of inconsistency in the harmonics (i.e. subtle pitch changes), and a lot of good soft synths will even emulate that.

Anyway long story short, I don't think what you experienced in the video will be an issue you encounter with soft synths or the Virus. There are folks out there who have sold their CS-80 boards or Jupiter 8s in favor of the Aturia software emulations because they truly could not tell the difference once the audio was routed similarly.

Best thing about soft synths is you can always try the demo before buying, and the price is right.

If you download the Zebra2 demo, be sure to grab some of the free patches off the site to test drive. In my opinion the factory patch banks do not even hint at what this beast is capable of.

If you'd like something a little easier to jump into, grab Dune

http://www.synapse-audio.com/dune.php

Another one to check out that sounds warm is Sylenth1

[tenorjazz]

I know what you mean about analog drift, I use to have a Mini Moog. Now that I understand this all a little better I sure wish I had it back, with oscillator drift and all!!

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by tenorjazz

I know what you mean about analog drift, I use to have a Mini Moog. Now that I understand this all a little better I sure wish I had it back, with oscillator drift and all!!

You can accomplish much the same with soft synths, it's just that you can opt to have it on or off and it is more controlled than accidental. Its not quite as cool as having a Moog in the studio, but infinitely more versatile

For example, Zebra2 has a "Voice drift" on /or off switch, some softsynths will have something like a per-oscillator "analog" option that does same. Dune lets you do things like turn on unison for an oscillator and specify a number of voices, then modulate different aspects of particular voices within the unison, like apply LFO3 to the fine tune pitch of voices 1,3 and 5 out of 8. The end result is a lot like drift.