What the pluck?

[Barnelby]

So after the dust cleared of my initial amazement with the ti2, there are a few things that either I haven't gotten ahold of yet or may be a weak point in the virus (my money is on the former). For the life of me, I can't seem to get a good plucky sound out of it...nothing special, just the typical pluck sound such as this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ECNZL_DJE

Go to around 1:40

Now I know that is probably some huge analog synth; I'm not expecting the TI2 to be the mother of all pluckers, but the thing is I have EASILY created harder, more crisp pluck sounds out of sylenth and the ES2 in logic than I have been able to make with the TI2...every time I try to make something like that it ends up lacking that sharp attack.

Any pluckin tips?

Thanks!

[MBTC]

I found good plucks to be somewhat elusive.. and they are a very important component of the type of trance I like. I had a Virus briefly and I did not hear any mind-blowingly good plucks.

Nexus has some in some of the sound sets, but being a rompler its not that useful because you can only do so much with them.

Gladiator has an amazing Armin Van Buuren Pluck sound that is as good as anything out there, but it uses a weird "HCM" synthesis technique that makes it hard I think to produce other similar plucks.

The good news is that probably the best tool I've seen for this is a little synth called Oresus.. its a VST that only costs $45... The reason it is so good is because it gives you these visual, curved (exponential/logarithmic) filter envelope modifiers that you can tweak with the mouse. It turns out that the exact curve/slope of the filter envelope is fairly critical to putting that trancey "bite" in a pluck that makes it slice through and sound like a trance pluck. That is so much more important than any other aspect of the sound... harmonics dont mean much with such a short decay. Also because you can see what you're doing with the filters visually, it might help make good plucks using other synths. I've had some pretty nice luck with Dune, but the ability to put together plucks with Oresus really blew me away.

One thing I will add, after I listened to the plucks in your vid... part of what makes them nice is the movement with the cutoff filter and the arp.. the arp can be done a million ways, and the cutoff maybe too, to some extent but as far as I can tell, at least in FLS, with the Oresus VST I recommended, the curved filter slope cannot be automated / recorded into the DAW (MIDI signal) which was a little bit of a disappointment.. I have not explored further to see if it can be done. It doesnt mean it would stop you from doing what you want, but with Oresus you might be limited to manipulating cutoff / all or none... its a somewhat limited synth in some ways.

[feedingear]

Originally Posted by MBTC

I had a Virus briefly and I did not hear any mind-blowingly good plucks.

Honestly mate did you even dig through the banks and the extra soundsets?

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by feedingear

Honestly mate did you even dig through the banks and the extra soundsets?

I listened to every default patch that came on the Ti2. Not sure about extra soundsets, do you mean sounds from outside sources? If so, no.. I didn't get that far before I had to return it. Trying to wrestle with the FLS and latency issues consumed the bulk of my 30 day return policy period.

Also with regard to plucks, I think you need near zero latency between the keyboard and the sound to play plucky sounds properly. I was using a Ti2 desktop, which means that if you play a trance pluck or stab sound in FLS you're dealing with something like 1/8th of a second (125ms) latency which completely defeats the purpose of plucks or stabs. I might have had a completely different impressions if I had a Ti2 keyboard or polar, assuming there was the same instantaneous sound response (or likely better) than what I get with a low latency FLS setup (4ms). I think folks that play the virus live, and have more of an interest in live tweaking than DAW workflow and automation are going to have trouble relating to what I'm saying. Also, I know you mentioned cubase and I think someone else said under XP 32-bit a lot of the issues go away? I dunno, not an option for me at the moment.

[Barnelby]

Oh man, I picked up the demo of dune today and holy pluck. My favorite plugin synth to date and I've tried em all...well except nexus... I'm a logic guy so i dont deal with vsts a lot...but i guess i could fire up abe and try it out. But yeah, good pluck sounds with dune is as easy as pressing a key on the keyboard....I haven't lost faith in the ti2 but I have to admit I am definitely disappointed in this glaring blind spot in its sound. Even though the ti2 is a beast in so many areas, this one gimp is a major limitation to my music and considering that I could afford a tetra and all the plugins a kid could ever dream of for the price of a used ti2....Im kinda at a crossroads here

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Barnelby

Oh man, I picked up the demo of dune today and holy pluck. My favorite plugin synth to date and I've tried em all...well except nexus... I'm a logic guy so i dont deal with vsts a lot...but i guess i could fire up abe and try it out. But yeah, good pluck sounds with dune is as easy as pressing a key on the keyboard....I haven't lost faith in the ti2 but I have to admit I am definitely disappointed in this glaring blind spot in its sound. Even though the ti2 is a beast in so many areas, this one gimp is a major limitation to my music and considering that I could afford a tetra and all the plugins a kid could ever dream of for the price of a used ti2....Im kinda at a crossroads here

Glad you like Dune. I really haven't found any sort of shortcoming of this plug-in yet. Hardware-like sound and pretty much any category of trance sound is possible in top-notch form.. warm bass, lush pads or string sounds, amazing leads, good onboard effects and truly amazingly efficient CPU usage. I can produce an entire track using just this plugin and get the polyphony-voice count equivalent of about 5 or 6 Ti2s while my CPU doesnt break a sweat.

[infraction]

Originally Posted by MBTC

I had a Virus briefly and I did not hear any mind-blowingly good plucks.

Haha that's a good joke that

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by infraction

Haha that's a good joke that

Not joking.. I mentioned before that I only went through the factory patches. I have no doubt the box is capable of good plucks, I just didn't hear them while going through factory patches.

[infraction]

Originally Posted by MBTC

Not joking.. I mentioned before that I only went through the factory patches. I have no doubt the box is capable of good plucks, I just didn't hear them while going through factory patches.

That might be the problem

[Barnelby]

Alright alright alright everybody just calm down. Maybe the best way to get to the bottom of this whole pluckin' thing would be a little show and tell. I'm not with my virus right now, but later today when I have a chance I will record a few examples of my frustrations with trying to make plucks. For now though, here is a little clip I just made in Dune:

http://www.mediafire.com/?b4j4jwkfr06vkoi

Im pretty sure you can download that even if you don't have a mediafire account, but if you guys have any problems I will upload it again another way.

So just to clarify- What is in question right now is NOT sound quality, not warmth, not body, not all the things that the virus OBVIOUSLY still has the upper hand on.

Fact of the matter is, I just clicked a random preset and effortlessly achieved a nice distinct pluck sound with ZERO tweaking. And that is my entire concern/confusion/case in point.

Like I said before, I BELIEVE that the virus can do anything...I am still fairly inexperienced with the thing, so I still have a lot to learn. It is just this strange quality of these plugins being able to excel at something seemingly so simple so quickly that has me scratching my head.

But enough talk, back to the point:

To those who say they can get some great pluck sounds with the TI series virus.....

let's hear em!