Quote:
Originally Posted by bluesmoose
Thanks to feedingear, chimney chop, and MBTC for their posts.
I have some things to experiment with.
Thanks.
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No love for Tweakhead? I DECLARE SACRILIDGE!
Seriously though, Tweaks posts are almost always worth a read, even when I find his opinion not aligned with my own.
To clarify my position here, there are lots of ways programmatically to achieve logarithmic and exponential slopes of lines without recursion, so I do believe it is going ass-over-elbow-to-get-to-thumb. Not an elegant solution.
Was there a technical reason it was done with the DSP's of the early Virus models? Very possibly, I cannot comment on that. I was absent from the synth world (in terms of ownership of one) from about mid 90s until 2006-ish, and when I look at the evolution of electronic music brought forth by the legendary Virus line, it's clear that this is not a feature the synth necessarily needed to be successful. The Virus can produce good sound, even if sometimes unintuitively. Some synths have implemented slope algorithms for various features in a way that is non-modifiable, and to some extent that can be a musically "good thing". It can give a synth a specific profile or individual character, that lets you potentially recognize a synth's sound. Thinking about that for a second, that's exactly what occurs with acoustic instruments like piano or guitar for example. The sound profile is inherently parameterized... basically limited by the physical characteristics of the instrument. Good for character, but not so much for flexibility.
Back to my position -- what I was trying to say is that the Virus models that implement curves via recursion (for better or worse in terms of computation speed), the equation could still be expressed graphically somewhere. I wouldn't necessarily expect or want the TI2 line for example to be able to produce filter slopes that were vastly incompatible with previous models, but the bottom line is that the slope is what it is, regardless of derivation. This means that with regard to VIRUS CONTROL SOFTWARE (operative concept here), it *COULD* be expressed visually, and even given a very user-friendly way to tweak it.
I've got a softsynth called Oresus that I paid something like $25 for. It lets you use the mouse to bend the curves like they are rubber bands. The math behind them is so much less important than the visceral relationship between the sound sculptor and his design goal.
So, all I was really saying is that it wouldn't take much for Access to include a feature into Virus Control, without affecting existing patches, that would allow users to easily manipulate these lines. The math behind them can remain what it is, however efficient or convoluted or whatever. That's just a modern expectation of audio software.
If I seem down on the Virus, I'm really not. I want one. Its just that from someone who cares about overall value, I just wish they could keep up with $25 softsynths in terms of technological progression.