New Member, questions re: polyphony and...

[phil]

Dear Forum:

From the TI polar demos that I have seen, especially the ones by:
The keyboard wizard: http://www.michaelwalthius.com/
I like what I hear and see.
However, as is usual with most manufacturer's ad copy, things are overstated or less than realistic overviews are expressed.

When I did some looking around at end-users comments, the two main issues I saw regarded polyphony and stability.

Many users stated that polyphony isnt all that robust dispite the numbers.
I didn't know that effects processing, as they claimed, also eats into the poly or system resources. Of course all processing taxes all resources-generally.

Stability is a major concern for me, due to performance considerations.

Please comment on these matters.

Phil

[Doc Jones]

Hey Phil,
welcome to the forum.
As far as polyphony I've never really had a problem. But honestly I use at most 3 or 4 different TI patches simultaneously in a song. Any more than that and my songs start to get oversaturated. Also note that even though I use 3 or 4 simultaneously, I typically have 8 to 10 patches loaded up. I forget what update included it, but each patch now has an indicator as to how many voices it uses (I believe on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most).

As far as stability, all I can say is that my ti has been pretty rock solid since the 2.5.x days.

[phil]

Thanks Doc:

Polyphony performance depends on the machines design.
The way in which the machine actually behaves can and ususally differs from specs.
On older machines, say for example an Ensoniq SD1-32 voice, you get exactly
what the numbers promise...always.
The use of some reverberator or other feature, multimode setup, etc versus poly does not change poly behavior.

Now I know what some might say... well you got this digital resource and it has to do this or that whatever.

This is exactly why manufacturers are allowed to design these type systems because people simply restate what the sytems are doing or what the manufacturer gives them.

Given the present situation where enormous features/power are advertized at the expense of the whole system simply working very well is an outgrowth of designers knowing that the trend is never to actually build something correct because the customer works as a free beta tester.

I do understand that this is the way it is.
However some companies do better than others.

Given that more often than not forums tend to be biased regarding their instruments of choise, I hope I will not cause any sensitivities here.

So about polyphony. It is not helpfull enough to simply say you have no issues. Some do and others don't. I wish to know more scientifically what this machine will do. If the unit is even designed fairly well then poly should be able to be examined and even stated fairly clearly at least by the engineers who designed it, so lets go...

Lets start out from the basics, please correct me if my assumptions are just that.

1. Poly is stated at 80 normal voices, I am not even considereing the feature of the 9 simultaneous saw or square waves on the one key-down event feature, because they don't work to add to the voice-count pool when not in use, true?
2. So in simple terms, I would expect when using a one osc patch, no effects processing, no modulation, etc., 80 oscillators sounding with keys in sustain position, divided of course by however many key downs are neccessary to make the 80 voices, since neither model has 80 keys, we'll make a 2 osc patch same as above and hold down 40 keys on the virus 61 key version.
Will Access state this to be true?
3. If so, and keeping the above as a reference, start to list what additional processes will be begin to intefer. In other words, with the above 80 voices actually sounding, if I switch on a reverb, what will happen?
4. If I divide the 80 voices- 40 on channel 1 and 40 on ch 2 in multimode, is there some issue?
Finally, I could go on, but it is enough for now.
What I really want to know is, if Access states 80 voices, then they must know under what conditions...simple, I hope!

Thanks in advance
phil

quoteDoc Jones;283982]Hey Phil,
welcome to the forum.
As far as polyphony I've never really had a problem. But honestly I use at most 3 or 4 different TI patches simultaneously in a song. Any more than that and my songs start to get oversaturated. Also note that even though I use 3 or 4 simultaneously, I typically have 8 to 10 patches loaded up. I forget what update included it, but each patch now has an indicator as to how many voices it uses (I believe on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most).

As far as stability, all I can say is that my ti has been pretty rock solid since the 2.5.x days.[/quote]