Hypersonic

[Guenon]

I wwas listening to this guitar piece, at String Studio, itt wasnt that bad, for a guitar...It'll get there real soon tho. Im all up for sftware, but until then...we'll just have to wait.

As long as we're at it, listen to the Real Guitar VSTi demos here.

Edit: please also note that here, too, the key is the flexible performance control which L. A. Stone discredited as being a weak aspect of software modules. As the whole software has been custom made for the purpose of enabling you to play guitar sounds through MIDI as expressively as currently possible, the whole control scheme can be made very elaborate. A quote: the "Guitar Touch technology lets you easily imitate basic guitar techniques (strumming, plucking, sliding, bending, muting, etc..), using standard MIDI keyboard and MIDI controllers, such as Pitch Bender, Modulation Wheel, Sustain Pedal, Aftertouch."

And the price? Just below 200 euros. Not exactly "very, very expensive" -- and a real bargain if you already have an audio setup and are in the need of some very nice guitars.

In any case, I guess this thread should mainly be about Hypersonic, so let's see if someone chimes in to say something constructive about it after a while, too

 

[L. A. Stone]

As long as we're at it, listen to the Real Guitar VSTi demos here.

Edit: please also note that here, too, the key is the flexible performance control which L. A. Stone discredited as being a weak aspect of software modules. As the whole software has been custom made for the purpose of enabling you to play guitar sounds through MIDI as expressively as currently possible, the whole control scheme can be made very elaborate. A quote: the "Guitar Touch technology lets you easily imitate basic guitar techniques (strumming, plucking, sliding, bending, muting, etc..), using standard MIDI keyboard and MIDI controllers, such as Pitch Bender, Modulation Wheel, Sustain Pedal, Aftertouch."

And the price? Just below 200 euros. Not exactly "very, very expensive" -- and a real bargain if you already have an audio setup and are in the need of some very nice guitars.

In the case of "Real Guitar" which is indeed cheap, You're watching a demo setup under very specific conditions. Similar results could be obtained with probably soundfonts when played to their specific strengths including the type of music, etc. But the real test is when you listen to the mp3s which were pretty unimpressive. That is where they attempted to show you that it was flexible enough to convincingly do different kinds of music and the mp3s aren't convincing at all. There ya go. You know what, Steinberg Virtual Guitarist has even more impressive demo tunes and I guess we all know exactly how crappy that crap is. "You can't believe everything you see on TV" LOL. I don't know though, you might be impressed by the mp3s of Real Guitar so what can I say. I'm not.

 

[Guenon]

Similar results could be obtained with probably soundfonts

I don't know though, you might be impressed by the mp3s of Real Guitar so what can I say. I'm not.

That's clearly true. So, can you tell me of some of the products that replicate the acoustic guitar with the kind of control and sound that indeed has impressed you? Preferrably something that also has this level of actual playing control (or more).

 

[L. A. Stone]

"Funny, I've seen so many setups over here meeting those requirements that it would be hard to count them. It's me who's trying to keep it realistic ... A hardware workstation has a lot of uses, but it doesn't justify describing and treating software with dated impressions."

The impressions aren't really dated when you consider that this is where we are and this is what people are using. You're naming off stuff that no one is using and no one is even considering using and using that as a justification of how far software has come. I've never read an article where some was using GigaStudio, that didn't have a setup involving several computers at least, having them all sync'd up and tons of other stuff they needed to manage such a mess. Again, not the kind of setup we're typically using.

And I believe you're misleading people about how much they can expect to pay for a GigaStudio setup. From what I'm seeing, you have to pick which one of 3 flavors you want. The GigaStudio Orchestra flavor is $500.00. That's just for the Orchestra and nothing else. Now check the price of additional libraries. Anywhere from about $100.00 for a 2 or 3 instruments "collection", up to $800.00+ for a woodwinds collection. That's just what I saw just now but some of the libraries are probably even more expensive. How much is it gonna cost you to get a variety of instruments like what you find on a Motif? How much Ram, how much hard disc space, CPU, and apparently, the pros find that they need extra computers to have a decent GigaStudio setup. But maybe you know something they don't know.

 

[L. A. Stone]

You're attempting to misquote me above when I mentioned about the soundfonts. No matter, it's still true. You get a high quality soundfont and get someone who is really good at using it and you could probably come off with some incredible results, for a very specific type of music, under very specific conditions and so on. That's exactly how you were fooled by Real Guitar's genius even when the MP3's say otherwisejavascript:smilie('')
smile

The whole thing with GigaStudio reminds me of the offers for High Speed internet.

"$19.00 per month!!!!


For the first 1.5 months. Taxes and restrictions do apply. Not available in 47 states. Must be 65 and older............."

 

[skillz]

"Anywhere from about $100.00 for a 2 or 3 instruments "collection", up to $800.00+ for a woodwinds collection. That's just what I saw just now but some of the libraries are probably even more expensive. How much is it gonna cost you to get a variety of instruments like what you find on a Motif? How much Ram, how much hard disc space, CPU, and apparently, the pros find that they need extra computers to have a decent GigaStudio setup.

800? half way to a second hand Motif...?
You get all the bread and butter sounds, relaism and less hassle...Sync it to your pc and there you go...


Software can be amazing, but to be running all this equipment as LA Stone said previously were at home, paying bill's and what not, & to keep it all running you need alot of PC space, RAM..Etc...

 

[Guenon]

You're attempting to misquote me above when I mentioned about the soundfonts. No matter, it's still true. You get a high quality soundfont and get someone who is really good at using it and you could probably come off with some incredible results

Bear with me. The most important point here was performance control. You described how you feel it's the strong point of hardware (and the weak point of software) to provide us with sounds that have this level of control. You even used a guitar sound as an example, describing how the sound lives under your finger when playing, so to speak. Here we have a piece of software that provides us with the same degree of control -- and moreover is written from ground up with the possibility of controlling a guitar performance in mind.

If you now come back with a remark how someone "who is really good at using soundfonts" could recreate that level of control for a very specific type of music, how does that connect with the whole software/hardware thing anymore? Couldn't you say exactly the same thing about the sound of a hardware unit that gives you this level of performance control?

Still, I realize you already have a clear opinion about this, and that's cool. Not to drag this any further, anyone who is interested should try the demo over here for themselves and draw their own conclusions

That's exactly how you were fooled by Real Guitar's genius even when the MP3's say otherwise

 

[Guenon]

You're naming off stuff that no one is using and no one is even considering using and using that as a justification of how far software has come.

Now that is just plain silly. In my opinion, of course

I've never read an article where some was using GigaStudio, that didn't have a setup involving several computers at least

I've read several. For instance, Electronic Musician, May 2005: "With a high-end Pentium 4 and a separate, fast drive for your samples, you can reasonably expect to get hundreds of notes of polyphony. (Tascam claims that many users have reported polyphony levels well beyond 400 notes.) That makes it feasible for the first time to assemble and play back large-scale orchestral arrangements on a single machine."

And I believe you're misleading people about how much they can expect to pay for a GigaStudio setup.

I believe I'm not. But then again, I believe all this believing stuff is quite subjective. (Eh.) First of all, the naming ("Solo", "Ensemble", "Orchestra") is all about the polyphony of the software. You can very well pick up the 240 euro "Ensemble" version if you can live with a puny 160 note polyphony and after that, target a good part of your investment to such particular instrument sounds that you consider critical in the kind of music you personally make. Oh, by the way, there's also a built-in high quality convolution reverb included for generating acoustic spaces based on impulse responses.

All that being said, you can assemble even a completely separate Gigastudio rig for standalone operation very economically these days -- and that's why many people indeed still do exactly that.

As a sidenote, a quote from AudioMIDI.com: "I am pleased to say that the import in Kontakt 2 is vastly improved, especially in the GigaSampler import, and this is no small feat as it means mapping many, many parameters from one program to another. But programs imported into Kontakt keep the liveliness of the original programs." I assume you have at least seen Kontakt and Kontakt 2 being used quite often, even if you haven't come across Gigastudio users? And yes, Kontakt 2, also sporting convolution operations and a horde of other sound shaping features, is all in all a great example of the possibilities of software today.

Enough about Gigastudio & co in a Hypersonic thread on my part, however.

You are already coming up with secondary justifications instead of talking about the actual sound of software, by the way. To recap, my intention was only to debunk the old ideas about the sounds of software solutions, especially about them a) being inherently less responsive to performance control and b) commonly lacking in realism and presence. That's all I wanted to do, and now I've done it. Anyone can draw their own conclusions based on these posts -- and if someone is suddenly inspired to do more research on their own, without the old presuppositions, I very much encourage them to do so.

After all, it's not an either/or choice, it's about realizing the sounds you're personally after, it's all very interesting and it can only make your options broader. Yay! Take care

 

[L. A. Stone]

"You are already coming up with secondary justifications instead of talking about the actual sound of software, by the way."

You mean like your Kontakt import for Gigasampler pitch there? LOL. I couldn't find any reason for you to mention that but it's all good.

What I said originally was probably vague and misleading. So to clarify it again for you, I was thinking of the specific software sound modules that people who frequent these boards typically use, or consider using or want to know more about. That would be including, but not limited to, Sampletank, Sonic Synth, Hypersonic, hardware workstations and racks like Tritons, Fantoms, and Motifs.

" Originally posted by L. A. Stone
You're naming off stuff that no one is using and no one is even considering using and using that as a justification of how far software has come.



Now that is just plain silly. In my opinion, of course "

I think you're being silly. When I said, "nobody using these high end programs", I meant the people frequenting these boards. Do you really think I meant, "nobody in this whole big wide world uses Gigasampler"? LOL Work with me here.


"To recap, my intention was only to debunk the old ideas about the sounds of software solutions, especially about them a) being inherently less responsive to performance control and b) commonly lacking in realism and presence. That's all I wanted to do, and now I've done it."

No, you're just saying the same thing over and over although I mentioned already that I was speaking specifically about the stuff that we are using hereabouts. The rest of what I've said about the cost of it is a possible explanation as to why people probably aren't using it. Prohibitive costs, additional hardware, ram etc necessary.


Actually, you made my point by pointing out that cheaper usually means cutdown. The cheaper Gigasampler has less availabe polyphony, and you stated that the cheaper Gigasampler versions were only cheaper due to reduced polyphony. Well, that's not true actually.

Gigasampler Orchestra has "16Gigs of sample library.

Gigasampler Ensemble has 10Gigs of Sample library.

Gigasampler Solo has 3 gigs of sample library and a mere 96 voice polyphony. You won't be doing much layering with that one, something that you can pretty much take for granted, polyphony, is a precious commodity with this cutdown version of a high end system. Hypersonic has a max polyphony of 1024, not that you're gonna have a system that can handle that (unless you're running several machines). You see, it's all about introducing you to an expensive solution, keyword being "introducing". In other words, 2 dollars at the door, but drinks cost $30.00 a pop.

I'm out.

 

[Guenon]

(Edit: sorry for dragging this onwards with still one message, I just had to answer )

Gigasampler Orchestra has "16Gigs of sample library. Gigasampler Ensemble has 10Gigs of Sample library.

I actually got you to write an affirmative of how much you get for $499

Polyphony being the crucial limitation of the cheaper versions, the Orchestra version which comes standard with a big library has no other polyphony limitations than your system resources -- and it really runs with a high polyphony in a modern audio system. I really, really do mean the kinds of setups I have noticed many people here already using.

That $499 package, even with additional libraries, may very realistically be among the cheapest solutions if you've already got a nice DAW going and want to create original music containing very high quality acoustic instrument sounds which respond expressively to performance control. Unless you can just readily access an actual orchestra and players, of course.

It just bugs me if you're really just abusing old conceptions about the inefficiencies of software in order to merely debate, even when the examples presented here can clearly be very beneficial choices for many, that's all ... The situation is really a lot different now than some years ago.

(I mentioned Kontakt's Gigasampler import because you said I'm using examples of software that "no one uses" to justify the claim of how far software has gone. The whole point, as I have said, is that there is a lot of software which indeed enables you to do the very things you said software fails in, and as we have now been stuck with talking about software samplers and Gigastudio in particular, the example was to show that Gigastudio naturally isn't the only software sampler which makes intricate levels of control possible.)

I was not once talking down on using hardware or suggesting that anyone should go and replace their ways of working with another. Making demeaning and misleading remarks of other solutions in order to make something else look better would be a cheap way to underline an otherwise valid point. I was only pointing out, as I have said multiple times, that you can get great and expressive sounds out of software these days.

But yes... Now I do sincerely understand that you weren't talking about all software when stating your opinion about the differences between software and hardware solutions. Let's not let that enhance the stereotypes of software in general, however. Peace.

 

[MDC]

800? half way to a second hand Motif...?
You get all the bread and butter sounds, relaism and less hassle...Sync it to your pc and there you go...

since i can't post as dexters lab anymore[argument]

800? the new "motif rack es" is only 1099 at GC.

my fantom-s came,that joint is a monster.

after going through all of the sounds I see your point "LA" on the sound patches of hyper and the motif,i did a bit of comparing myself.

but i think after a couple of srx expansion boards for the fantom,ima cop the motif rack anyways.

them two with:

novation v-station
hypersonic
sampletank
trilogy
proteus [soundfonts and the X]

no reason i shouldn't have a hit or 2 eh?

 

[L. A. Stone]

since i can't post as dexters lab anymore[argument]

800? the new "motif rack es" is only 1099 at GC.

my fantom-s came,that joint is a monster.

after going through all of the sounds I see your point "LA" on the sound patches of hyper and the motif,i did a bit of comparing myself.

but i think after a couple of srx expansion boards for the fantom,ima cop the motif rack anyways.

them two with:

novation v-station
hypersonic
sampletank
trilogy
proteus [soundfonts and the X]

no reason i shouldn't have a hit or 2 eh?

Hehe. No doubt. I'm feenin for that Fantom but I'm not gonna buy anything else until I make that hit like you said.

 

[qbsfinest]

Yes, all the above is completely doable in FL Studio. You can record the midi, and edit it in a piano roll until you like what you hear, then, decide to bounce that to an audio track. You're gonna have to bounce it to an audio track to export it to a wave file though. Midi outs don't send audio to the mixer. Then, after you bounce to audio, you can mute the midi track so that they're both not playing at the same time. Yes FL can do all the above in FL Studio.




Well, of course he needed some kind of monitors. A respectable sound card is mandatory. You can't be trying to record audio at 30ms latency. My card is getting 2ms latency without a hiccup. I also used my old audio card and it also worked along with it's ASIO drivers. The mixer is again, an option but completely not needed unless you need it to mix in additional external modules, but a sound card with plenty of ins and outs would make that also not necessary. I still say he did good by getting himself a box o Cubase. Speaking of which, I just got back from Guitar Center. I picked up SX3 so I'm just now shaking it down. I'm having a look at the Yamaha Studio Manager Plugin. It looks quite serious. Looks like I can edit all kinds of parameters of the Motif on each preset instead of on the Motif itself in that ridiculously tiny window. I still haven't tested the Total Recall which will mean that you won't need to bounce things to audio immediately before saving and closing a piece, you could leave it as midi. I'll let you know how that works out in another day, or maybe later tonight.



That depends on what VSTs you're using. Some are efficient, some are not. Some are just downright ridiculously resource hungry like Stylus RMX. This is a major problem for Cubase but for FL Studio, it's much less of a problem. Then again in Cubase, there's always the option to freeze tracks. I haven't tried that out yet either so I don't know how fluid or disruptive it is to flow. I'm using an AMD64 3200+. There's a new reverb in Cubase SX3 called roomverb and it's funny, I patched it onto a drumkit and instantly it turned the drumkit into the same one that is used on that new track "Turn Around" by Bobby Valentino. I started programming the beat since the sounds were "right there". It's probably the most unique reverb I've seen so far and it sounds good too, but it has an insatiable appetite for CPU. I hope that freeze is done well in SX3 cause I'ma be using this reverb on a lot of tracks.




I checked out the Fantom and Motif extensively before dropping loot on the Motif Es Rack, and then only because it was slightly cheaper and I knew I could also get the Fantom at some time in the future. But they had a whole lot of sounds that were very similar. All the meat and potatoes stuff is well represented in any of the workstations.

To be honest, I realized that the drums on the Motif aren't really better than on my DR-008 so I've been using that for drumd mostly with some added percs from the Motif. Now, back to shaking down this new Cubase SX3. Within the first 30 minutes I'm finding bugs and the windows stopped recognizing the dongle. LOL.

Yo How do u record ure motif rack with Fruity LOops??? I've been trying to figure that out for a awhile, i've been having to record my melody in cubase but i wanna do all dat **** in 1 program. Can you tell me how to do that cuz FL Support at da site won't help me w/ it. Jus give me SIMPLE instructions.

 

[L. A. Stone]

Yo How do u record ure motif rack with Fruity LOops??? I've been trying to figure that out for a awhile, i've been having to record my melody in cubase but i wanna do all dat **** in 1 program. Can you tell me how to do that cuz FL Support at da site won't help me w/ it. Jus give me SIMPLE instructions.

If you have FL Sudio 5 with the audio recording features you can do it. You have to set up a midi out. put it on the same port as the Motif. Hit F10 and set up the Motif's channels. Set a port for each one. If you put the Motif's number 1 input to port 1, then do the same with the Midi out. Go back to FL and go to the mixer. At the bottom of all the channel strips is an audio recording input option. click there and choose the audio input of your soundcard, or wherever you have your Motif coming in at. I don't know how to tell you how to setup your soundcard since it's gonna be different than mine. Once you select the audio in, it will be "armed" for recording. You should be able to play some notes and hear them now. If you're in song mode, you should be able to record both midi and audio. If you're in pattern mode, you should be able to record midi. I know this explanation is sketchy but there's a great deal to write and I don't really have all the info about your setup.

Good Luck.

 

[qbsfinest]

under "midi settings" Like where my keyboard controller has it's own port ,,, Will the Es rack have it's own port to? And also,, can we assign the midi out channel to a mixer track and add effects?? I have version 4.5 right now but when i buy my es rack in a month ,,, im gonna get the version 5 XXL version,,Does the XXL version come with the audio recorder ure talkin about?

 

[qbsfinest]

SO when you record your motif All the notes you play are automatically assigned to the Piano roll after ure done recording?

 

[L. A. Stone]

under "midi settings" Like where my keyboard controller has it's own port ,,, Will the Es rack have it's own port to? And also,, can we assign the midi out channel to a mixer track and add effects?? I have version 4.5 right now but when i buy my es rack in a month ,,, im gonna get the version 5 XXL version,,Does the XXL version come with the audio recorder ure talkin about?

Under Midi settings, at the top you'll see "output port mappings". In there I can see 8 Yamaha ports. Select each one, then set a port number for each one in the grey "Port Number" box at the bottom right of the ports window. The first one is the one you should use for the single "Voice" setup, but each port is able to handle up to 16 instruments in the Motif's "Multi" mode.

Midi outs can't go to mixer tracks, but you can still add FX because you will monitor the Motif's output through an audio track. At the bottom left side of FL's mixer, you will see "In". select the input of your audio card there and if you have the Motif audio cables hooked up correctly, you will hear the Motif playing, and see the meters on whatever channel you're on. First select a channel in the mixer, then set the input at the bottom left. On the other side, you can also route that channel to another channel, but nevermind that for now.

You have 4.5 of which version of FL. FL Studio Producer Edition, or one of the lesser versions. Producer Edition gained audio recording at version 4. The lesser editions don't have audio recording at all, at any level.

When you record midi the way you always record midi, the notes go into the piano roll. It's the same with the Motif. You don't have to commit this to an audio track until you're ready to. You can record both midi in the piano roll, and to an audio track at the same time if you want, or one or the other. It's up to you. I'll warn you though, FL is not gonna handle all this as well as major sequencers like Cubase, Logic, or Sonar.