WHY? (was Re: [sdiy] ... Simulating a Moog)

[Rainer Buchty]

> WHY, oh why, is everyone so obsessed with simulating Moogs/Arps/SCI stuff?
> yes, it sounds good, fine, but there is soo much more yet to do with
> synthesis.

Let me answer this by asking another question: "Why, oh why, is everyone
so obsessed with stupid groups casted through stupid TV shows?"

Because it sells.

When the digital age rose, people were dumping their analog "crap". Then
some DJ created a hype about 303, 909 and the likes and suddenly analog
was great again, prices climbed into insane regions. The marketing guys
saw it and decided that there is a market. The first VA machines appeared,
PCs got fast enough to be used as soft synths -- and Steinberg had an
instant hit with their PPG 2.V

Now everyone wants a share of that cake.

Why's the user buying?

- because they never digged anything beyond VCO-VCF-VCA anyway. Take FM
for instance: although the DX7 offered a flexible synthesis and was the
best-selling synth ever, I guess hardly anyone really programmed it.
People just bought/copied sounds.

- because it is cool (for whatever reason the amount of plugins and soft
synths you have has become something "masculine" in a way a big engine or
an extra sized exhaust is)

- because they want to have the sounds of the originals without the hassle

But I guess the last group is quite small.

>   This years FrankFurt MusicMesse was a real eye opener, why? not
> because of any new gear but because of the lack of it. The lack of
> anything and everything new and also several manufacturers and also
> people!

That was my impression back in 2002 already. Nothing really new, really
exciting, everything was so-so. Ableton Live and the Hartmann Neuron
were about the only really new things there. The latter took two years to
mature into something almost usable and I'm still not sure how this beast
will behave as an *instrument* in a sense that it will play well
together with other machines -- and not be some sort of bombastic effect
box and the dominant player in a setup.

> I feel that the synth industry is stagnating, its vanishing up its own arse
> at a fast rate.
>
> But WHY?

Because people are stupid? The success of General MIDI and the likes is
the best example...

To be more fair: What do you expect from the synth industry? So far we
had:

- subtractive synthesis
- additive synthesis
- FM/PM
- wavetable scanning and vector synthesis
- virtual modelling
- filter morphing

But in the end they all came back to virtual analog cause that's what
people can think and use... If you make the other syntheses easy enough to
use, then they get narrowed down and limited in their range. Think of VM
which is nailed down to a string algorithm where you can only adjust
"material", "pickup position", "pick/hammer type and material", and
"damping".

> Everytime someone tries to do something new, eg. Neuron, it gets slagged
> off because no-one can be arsed to understand the technology.. Is
> everyone here TRULY happy with the standard VCO->VCF->VCA combination?

So here you have the main reason. People might not be happy with the
VCO->VCF->VCA combination, but they can understand it -- plus it's easy to
tweak for live performances. Take the SY77 for instance: a 4AFM voice
creates a dump of incredible 4kB. 4096 Parameters for a single sound.

People aren't even able to program their VCR, and that only means typing
in that 6-10 digit showview number.

Where I fully understand your frustration about the "that was it? is there
nothing new?" part, I can't really see any new synthesis method which
would be as groundbreaking as e.g. the wavetable and FM machines were in
the early 80s. They had a distinct sound which everyone would recognize.

But today? When was the last time you wanted to get a machine just because
of its unique sound which you couldn't get with other machines? What would
be the dream machine *you* would buy which isn't on the market yet as some
sort or other? (*)

Or let's take a synthesis method which I think I never saw on the
commercial market: Karplus-Strong. Would you buy a synth which does nice
string-alikes but only these? Especially when the VM synth can do even
better / more realistic?

To come up with another example: The FM-7 also came with the DX7-II
factory sounds. I remember how thrilled we were of the DX7 sounds back in
1984.  But today? My instant reaction to them was "boy, they stink. How
could we ever be so excited about this cheesy bass/brass/piano/epiano
sound..."

(*) A couple of years ago Peter "Wizoo" Gorges started a
competition in the German Keyboards magazine: "Here are 10 mini-songs
realized with a single machine each. Tell me which machine I used for
what song." ... IIRC the best result was 8/10. But the differences were
often so subtle, you wouldn't even notice in a mix...


See, what *I* would like to see is some sort of software which takes a
sample, analyzes it and spits out a "soundalike" for various synthesis
models, e.g. 6-op FM. That might lead to interesting results. But when it
comes to novel synthesis models, I have a feeling that there's not much to
come -- especially nothing, which will survive on the market.

Rainer