Brass sounds with Virtual Analog

Originally Posted by Kaiyoti

No plans yet, probably commercial distribution in the future when I have more patches set up and custom plugins developed for it. If that were to happen, the presets won't be released, just the sounds, or in some other format.

What, you mean samples? All the appeal (and much of the purpose) of this concept is entirely lost on me, in that case. This is some very good synthesis work (it is!), but there's just no way I would buy these as samples.

Good work, though.

If I were you, I'd have the same logic, much of the integrity will be lost if sampled. But that's also because you were told that these are synthesized. Had I mislead you from the beginning claiming that these are recorded samples, your opinion would no doubt be different.

I also thought of the fact that if I wasn't the creator for these patches (say someone else is), and let's assume this other person decides to sell the patches. I'd probably buy these patches, tweak it, sample it, and sell it "as recorded". Yes, unethical (possibly illegal depending on the agreements) but if I can think of this, other people can as well. Synth1 patches can't be locked, the possibilities are endless, so there are no way for the original creator to figure if it's been stolen and sold elsewhere, it's also harder to prove copyright infringement. This is a common trend amongst sample developers, they are starting to move away from major samplers like Kontakt or Gigastudio, they want move towards engines with locked states (where users can't modify or extract samples). For example, the Kontakt Player Engines, or custom built sampling engines (PLAY from EWQL).

I'm just playing it safe. The original intention was simply for private use... but I'm getting a lot of people interested in these sounds. However, the patches are in their early stages of development, nothing is planned yet. For now, I'll keep them private.

Originally Posted by Kaiyoti

I learned it by trial and error, and experience with various other synthesizers. If you've never used synthesizers before, I'd suggest learning the Moog emulation synth "Minimogue VA" first. It's also a free synth. Synth1 is a Nord Lead emulation, which is a little more complex.

Will do. Thanks for the advice.

Originally Posted by Kaiyoti

If I were you, I'd have the same logic, much of the integrity will be lost if sampled. But that's also because you were told that these are synthesized. Had I mislead you from the beginning claiming that these are recorded samples, your opinion would no doubt be different.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say. If you were me, you would think that much of the integrity will be lost if sampled--but you do not in fact think it will? Why not? How is the "amount of integrity lost" in any way dependent on the observer's knowledge of the fact that they're synthesized? The issue as I see it is that you're thinking about releasing mediocre "samples", when you could instead have released awesome patches. I think it's a waste of skill.

It also seems like you're suggesting that if you hadn't said that these are synthesizer patches and not samples, nobody would realize. As I've said, these are very good patches and you obviously have very good programming skills, but do keep it in perspective.

Huh? I meant that if I were you, I probably wouldn't buy these samples. Integrity is lost since with synthesizers, you're saving HD space and synth1 is one of the few CPU efficient synth as well as the freedom to modify. Sampling them would lose these aspects. My point on integrity had nothing to do with recognizing the sound authenticity.

When I mentioned that your opinion will be different if I lied about the source of these sounds... I meant the fact that people's not going to buy fake sounds if they know it's fake. It's not because I think these samples are super realistic. However, I do believe that it's semi-realistic enough so that if I tell people these were studio recorded, the thought of it being synthesized will probably never cross their mind. I've used some of these patches in their early raw format for brass support in some of my latest soundtrack production Feature Action Film Score, and no one has yet figured it out. The patches I used were less convincing than that of now. As a matter of fact, about 60%~70% of the sounds are synthesized, some are less subtle than others as they serve only to provide timbre to brass and percussion. Most of the strings were synthed... most, not all.

The number one reason is that these patches were originally for myself, not for public release. But it seems there are few raised eyebrows and I was encouraged to think about some form of release. Profit and reflections on me are the least of my concerns. I'm a music arranger too, competing against other sample developers isn't my intention and will never be. I'm not tailored to provide "goods" to customers. Let's face it, no one is going to pay a good sum for these patches, especially if it's from someone who never been heard of before. Also as I've observed from the "patch" selling business, they don't usually sell for high prices. But I personally find these sounds very useful and special (since they're synthesized). So marketing them at low cost is pretty wasteful in terms of quality to cost.

But if I can make some cash from this, I might as well think commercially and figure out ways to maximize the profit. It's not a waste of skill if I sell them as samples. At the end of the day, these will still sound "generally" the same whether it's samples or patches. I'm still the one with the skills to produce these sounds. Bread and butter synth programming is really an art lost to "orchestral" composers, these days synthesizers are usually defined by the quality of factory sounds, not the flexibility of the synthesizer. This is why I have much respect for big film guys from the 90's who program synths from the most basic modular synthesizers like Zimmer, Elfman, and Rabin. If I can provide a convincing audio sample from the sampled version of these sounds, people will still pay for them. Believe me when I say this but I honestly find "sampled synth" a ridiculous concept, I mean why waste ram usage, money and possibly cpu when you can program them yourself? I guess I understand now why developers still sell them. Because most people don't know and don't want to learn synth programming, it takes a long time to become comfortable with synthesizers. Sampled synth are shortcuts for them. They're essentially factory presets with modification limitations. This is what people want as consumers.

Take this for example (about modification flexibility), KVR: HV Synth Design TrumpetCollection - Virtual Instrument (if the developer for this product stumbles across my post, please read the following as a personal opinion). Those are synthesized as well. This fellow is selling them for $180 each. I for one find a lack of a certain texture (But it's his product, he can sell however he wants). Even then, there are controls that he wants to keep private which would disallows freedom. For instance, if he sells his other library: "Low Brass Collection" with complete flexibility to modify, people can tweak it to suit the trumpet collection he has. But since synthmaker (the engine he used to build this on) can lock and hide some of these parameters, he makes use of that. Synth1 can't. That's why when I said "other format", I meant that it could be a rendition of the same sounds through sythmaker or sythedit, I didn't mean just "samples". I've also been suggested to use tools like Kore2 from Native Instrument or Reason Combinator.

But if I haven't made this point across yet, for now, it's under private development. Whether it becomes commercial is still a question.

Links are not working here... Anything wrong?

My domain is being renewed, you can hear all the relevant demos on a backup server Index of /~kaiyoti/synthesis

New demo with prototype of sustained notes

Demo has no midi programming, recorded through midi keyboard and directly into audio. So there are trumpet sounds interpolated to the lower registers

http://www.kaiyoti.com/music/synthes...0Demo%2002.mp3