Hi !
Well, you see there´s the "schrieb" again in this mail. Now I know it´s being created by Thunderbird, german version, if I recieve a mail.
Yes, I know exactly the intention of all the trial ´n error keeping the old gear alive because it sounds good and sometimes great and because of we all used it so long and therefore are very familiar w/ it.
It´s the old "never change a running system" rule, especially if it runs well and made great music, or not so great but commercially successful music for decades if treated by the creative people,- whatever they did,- sounddesign or composing, arranging or all.
The risk of sales is to run into a never ending learning curve to use new equipent which probably is outdatet already if you buy it and dies after the warranty becomes invalid.
Actually, cloning the dinos is best done by sampling technology and support of complex cloning software.
Samplerobot is such a program and Mimik, used in the Open Labs Neko and Miko machines, is a derivate of Samplerobot.
http://www.samplerobot.de/english/index.php
Even these programs do a lot automatically and over nite, you have to prepare your dinos well for getting the best results as also you need some advanced knowledge to setup such a program properly.
All this is time consuming and steals lifetime, except you are a person who prefers to sit in front of a computer day and nite for cloning gear instead of doing other things which also don´t have to be music related ... :-)
I´m also pretty sure it´s possible to create great virtual instruments, also 1:1 clones, assumed there´s enough calculation power available and great sounding audio interface hardware w/ no latency issues as also the graphics GUI won´t steal all the cpu and shares RAM too much, which is both the typical showstopper today.
Sonicprojects OPX has knobs in the GUI to switch animation of keyboard and levers to off because it introduces clicks and pops w/ some systems and hosts if animation is activated.
Cloning a Xpander or Matrix 12 in software w/ a excellent sound is a target of many coders and I talked w/ some of these because it´s my interest to get such a clone.
All said, the quantity of modulation connections is a potentially problem as also is the menue based user interface, which isn´t up to date anymore. But if you change this, you never get a Xpander clone.
Additionally, the hardware machines are multitimbral in multi patch mode,- means, there are 6 or 12 synthesizers w/ a complex voice architecture running simultaneously and depending on the loaded patches in the multi-patch slots, the cpu consumption would vary or sometimes dramatically rise.
Now think of several instances of all this in a host,- you´d need a very powerful computer which you don´t find actually in a laptop form or in machines of Muse Research and Open Labs p.ex.,- and other software has to run simultaneously on such a machine too.
If life changes and you have to sell your gear because of whatever it is circumstances,- the gear is gone IMO.
"No software replaces a good piece of hardware", - rules !
In such a case, you have to go other creative ways and that´s possible ever unless you resignate.
If you have the time, adjust all your patches you need carefully w/ the hardware and use Samplerobot to clone the patches.
You´ll be surprised how many of the actual sampling libraries are been done w/ this program and are big sellers.
Have in mind to edit the patches such way, you can use your software sampleplayers edit functions, midi controller features and synthesis features to modify the sound later in possibly any way you like and did w/ the real instrument.
Sample pure waveforms at full level and w/ different filter cutoff settings, envelopes to zero attack, no env-amount on filter, full sustain level and a long release time. Sample different pulse width and do longer samples w/ PWM which you can loop later such way you get longer periods of PWM modulation in a sampled waveform.
There´s so much to think about for a good cloning of the characteristics of a synth.
In any way, you´ll need so much time that in the end you make no deal if you sell a instrument like the Xpander, unless you make the decision to do a cut and accept the Xpander (and/or all the other vintage gear) will be history for you.
Karl schrieb:
Hi PeWe,
Your right. I mostly worry about how to clone the dinosaur, not if we
should or not.
Karl