Trance Lead

[DJ REMIDI]

How is everyone tonight? I was bored and I made these two typical trance leads; one was made with Virus|PowerCore and the other one with Emagic ES2. Can you guess which one is which? Which one do you like better and why? Let me know what you think!

Sample 1

Sample 2

There's a delay and reverb on both sounds - same exact settings and wet/dry amounts; other than that these sounds were not processed in any other way - no EQ, distortion, phaser, chorus, etc. There was a multiband compressor on a master buss to prevent clipping though.

-REMIDI

P.S. Post your version of a typical trance lead made with Virus if you feel like it. Here's the midi file of the melody:

[hatembr]

i think the 2nd one is the virus, at 33s, the filter sweep let me think it is a virus.... ?

[Tomer=Trance]

the second one is the virus.

[Timo]

I think I still prefer clip 1, even though clip 2 sounds like it's probably the Virus. The transients appear to be more dynamic at the start of clip 1. I think the sound in clip 2 is just slightly detuned too much. Clip 1 sounds purer, and to me, slightly more attractive.

[Hollowcell]

I'm leaning towards number 2 being the Virus too, but I'm with Timo on liking the first one better.

Honeslty though, neither of the sounds would probably fit in the "noise" I call my music. It's hard for me to judge the Virus when it's not convered in distortion and using the moog filter.

[MADSTATION]

I'd say #2 is the virus!

Can you guys guess which synth is this(same melody, with reverb+delay)
www.madstation.net/my_religion.mp3

[harrystainer]

JP-80x0?

[Wandering Kid]

number 2 is deffo the virus theres a roundness and clarity to the sound that i havent really heard much of outside of software romplers (which were sampled from hardware anyway). also the bass end on it is huge which is characteristically virus. number one sounds thinner although i prefer it as mentioned above - the second one is detuned too much and has too much of a bouncy squelchy quality. it just sounds clumsy and a bit silly when playing that melody because of this. if you were to lower the detune and maybe up the release on the amp and filter envelopes just a touch it would sound v nice. just enough so that the previous note kind of cascades into the next im not sure what filter configuaration you got on but a low pass and band stop or double low pass would be smoother, less harsh and would make a v nice filter sweep using the cutoff.

i can have a go at posting a virus trance lead but im afraid it wont be that great cuz im not very good at programming my virus b

[Wandering Kid]

mad station with the jp 8000 i see :O i really want one of those...oh baby...

just a quick question mad - did you use the delay and reverb on the jp or an external reverb/delay unit/plugin?

EDIT:

i built a lead using a single patch on my virus b desktop and fruity delay, SIR reverb, 1 fruity compressor and 1 buzz effect adaptor just to position it in stereo! i scribbled down some settings for some of the pluck presets on the virus + mad station's sound as a reference and (predictably i suppose) it ended up sounding nothing like a jp. but. i think it sounds quite nice anyway:

http://www.soundclick.us/fastk6/09/0...nviruslead.mp3

there was quite a bit more post processing on this than on the others so far in this thread. SIR decided it wanted between 20 and 40% of my cpu straight off which annoyed my ASIO drivers causing lots of pops and crackles. so i had to rerecord with a latency of 20ms. i had to cut this static burst off the beginning. you can still hear part of it. dont know why its there but it has something to do with SIR (and my ASIO drivers probably). when i bounced it, i found there were alot of peaks where the filter cutoff was quite open/fully open. i used a compressor to squash some of those peaks and got about 2 to 3 dB extra headroom out of it. i used rymix's stereobox in the buzz effect adaptor in fruity and moved the centre and stereo width slightly to the right and to the left respectively. it will be slightly louder in the right channel but the pluck part now seems a little more separate from the sub and bass part of the lead.

during this process it was fed through 2 SIR reverbs, both using PCM91 hall impulse responses - it created a lush, washed out effect which smoothed out the filter sweep and made it overall feel wetter (which i like!).

as for the patch itself. its a single patch using all 3 oscillators (with the 3rd on saw) and the sub oscillator which is set to around 3 o clock. FM amount is set to about 11 o clock and the detune is 58 (unison is enabled at x4). i experimented with more detune but it started to sound like a dying mosquito and decided to keep some of the purity and simplicity in the sound.

i only used 1 of the filters for this (set the filter balance all the way to 2) on series 4, low pass. set cutoff 2 until cutoff 1 just emits a faint bassy rumble when full closed then widened it all the way. 0 resonance. 0 key follow. envelope amount set to around 10 o clock. theres a saturation curve on this set to rectifier and osc volume is set to around 3 o clock (made it sound very slightly harsher and more forward)!

the envelope is 0 attack and sustain for both filter and amp. decay for both envelopes set to around 1 o clock. release for both envelopes set to around 2 to 3 o clock.

LFO 1 is set to modulat pulse width for both oscillators 1 and 2 and its set positive and about half way up. LFO rate is fairly slow and is set to around 10 o clock.

[MADSTATION]

The clip is actually pro53 with a preset designed by Icone

Regarding the JP8080...there is no onboard reverb so I usually record it dry, or with very little delay and then add my own effects!