Guy Rowland wrote:I spotted an ABSURD deal on v5 + Spark 2 on KVR 2nd hand. Bought for $180... how could I not? As you said earlier Bill, the SEM sounds absolutely terrific (far better than the Prophet or Juno emulations) and it looks like I'll be able to get my head round it ok. X-bassist, the low end of the SEM is miles better than the others I've tried so far. I can see this being an 80s workhorse. Love that they all cheat a bit, especially having arps built in even if the originals didn't. Much as I want my 80s project to be quite faithful and I approach it in a far more restrictive way than I usually would, I have my limits...
Spark 2 may be the answer to my rhythmic prayers (do you all have those?), I can't think why I haven't properly evaluated it before, but that's one for another thread.
Good deal. I looked at Spark but was surprised how few samples are in each kit, but older drum machines were about the same. I suppose for 80's music it's a good choice.
One I forgot to mention is AAS Ultra Analog. No retro sounds, but combined with some of their better add on packs (recently $19 each and UA goes for $99 during sales) It has some great stuff. I can recommend Analog Essentials, Low End Theory, and Raw for some unique analog bass and distorted leads. Even the AU factory presets have some great bass sounds that are clean and unique- just takes some CPU. https://www.applied-acoustics.com/ultra-analog-va-2/
Muzikulp - yes, the Solina sounds absolutely spot on, doesn't it? X-bassist, I'm about to post in the drum machine thread re Spark (and other matters)...
Larry and Jay - apologies as some of this is older ground from earlier in the thread, but there's no question to me that Omni and all those other synths will cover pretty much everything extremely well, and u-he's sound engine is second-to-none. But I've always said that a synth - or any instrument - can only ever be partly about the sound. How you interact and program with it is every bit as important.
I'm a well known Omni-lover. I've trialed earlier versions of Arturia stuff and never bothered in the past because it covers so much of the ground that Omni can handle (and far more besides) in the end, sonically. And moreover, I like the way Omni gets me there, but Arturia was always deeply flawed to me - clicking these tiny little buttons and knobs with a mouse that in no way came 1% towards making it feel like you were working with the real synths. But the new UIs in V5 have been a really quite enormous change. Of course it's still way off hardware, but it is now much easier to work with (and also they've improved the sonics of some of the engines). It's no longer a frustration, a bit more of a joy.
In theory, what I should do to be faithful to the 80s spirit is blow £20k on actual vintage kit and then hire a big room to put it all in. Given that is impractical, I'm looking for the next best thing - to work with synth emulations that would broadly give me a similar steer and workflow to building a track a-la 70s-80s. The trouble here with Omni is that its almost too easy to get sidetracked, to press a button that makes it sound "nicer" or more interesting and before you know it, that authentic vintage spirit is lost. That doesn't matter if you're just creating something that sounds good, but it does for this project for me. Indeed, I've always counted its UI as a major plus, by NOT emulating old synths it suits computer working much better - certainly against the deeply flawed experience of Arturia in the past.
As for u-He, I think in a couple of years they'll have advanced to the point where I can properly embrace them. At the moment its still far too fiddly for me to get on with. Arturia's browser is 100x better than U-he's - I know Urs has said that browser improvements are coming, but are probably at least a year away. I think the Repro 1 would be ok for the rest of the UI as its a pretty simple synth, but Diva is just a horror show to me. I simply can't follow what's going on for even basic stuff - the tabbed pages and tiny writing make it impenetrable. I want to be able to load a preset then know where I am enough with the synth to start modifying. Omni or indeed VPS Avenger are good there, clear workflows and modulation routings etc. With the V Collection, the ARP or the Modular are always going to be pretty impenetrable without some serious work (and I'm minded to for the ARP perhaps), but the simpler synths at least I want to be able to get in there.
Anyway, all a long winded way of saying horses for courses. If I didn't have this project on (well, 2 actually) then I wouldn't be buying it. But there's something quite exciting about trying to work in a slightly different way when doing something new, don't you think?
For me it is always going to be about the sound. When I became a level 2 Certified Trainer for Logic (a designation that no longer exists) I had to learn to teach students about the Logic synths, like the ES 2 polyphonic synth and Sculpture, not the easiest GUIs in the world, so I am not daunted the the U-he UI's.
At the NAMM show,, a guy showed all th U-he synths and given the fact that I am not a programmer, and frankly don't have much interest in becoming one, this is the one he recommended for me that will probably be the next synth I buy. when I get an appropriate project. Once again, I was bowled over by the obvious sonic superiority to my "go tos" like Rob Papen's Albino and the Arturia Moog Modular.
It's great for unique pads, and ambient sounds with a bit of creative tweaking, and effects treatment.
I would go one step further and say it is a hidden gem in between all the other synths in the Arturia V Collection 5. also like the GUI.
As someone who owned and played a Farfisa Combo Compact back in the '60's, I don't have that much affection for the sound, although I bought a Leslie speaker for it, which helped. Back then, I wanted a Vox Continental instead but could not afford it, so I bought the Farfisa.
Charlie Clouser: " I have no interest in, and no need to create, "realistic orchestral mockups". That way lies madness."
wst3 wrote:A couple hundred bucks... and apologies, the only one that really fascinates me is the Synclavier... have you had time to play with it?
A little. Unsurprisingly, I've never played with a real one. I had the idea it was quite unique sounding, but I'll confess I was a little disappointed there - it felt like an FM synth. Looks like the programming is unique though, so I can see why its of interest to many.
It IS an FM synth.
<minor nitpick> The Synclavier II was actually an (8-bit) FM/Additive synth. </minor nitpick>
Arturia worked with Cameron Jones, who wrote what became the Synclavier I software, and who ported some of the original source code into the new instrument:
One thing I love about this video is that folks use both pronunciations of "Synclavier," thus ensuring that the (extremely tiny) controversy endures..... :-)
finally, a real application for social networking!
(Bryan Bell tried this in the early 1980s with SynthBank - it was very popular amongst musicians with Telenet or Tymenet access to the internet, and blazingly fast modems - think 9600 baud, and an understanding of telnet and ftp - which is to say he was a little ahead of the curve!)
Just a heads up that 5.3 is now out for the V Collection. Some promised stability fixes (my Synclavier was always a bit iffy, here's hoping things have improved), and there's a sound shop for presets in Analog Lab (including a few free ones).
Analog Lab came free with my Arturia controller. Analog Lab 2, which I downloaded thanks to Guy's heads up, seems like a vast improvement in that it now seems to remember its settings within a Cubase project (which AL1 failed to do for me.)
Oh boy.... Just finished updating it this morning.
The downloads were super slow, so had that going all night, finished the installs this morning.
I also noticed that each Installer installed some common files from NI's Service Center, I wonder if those are the samples, or something else. Anyone know what these are, and why from NI ?
Yeah, they sell it for a ridiculously low amount, now. But never have they made a good offer to update my older version ... I am not giving more money to companies that want to charge the same from an older customer than from a new. An upgrade has to be cheaper than buying new at one time ...
