[sdiy] The extreme low cost of audio gear... my little comment somehow got out of hand :P

[Richard Wentk]

At 15:07 02/09/2004 +0200, Rainer Buchty wrote:
> >Commercial synthesis stopped being interesting after the Kurzweil K2500
> >and the Kawai K5000.
>
>Ah, don't forget the Yamaha FS1R.

That's certainly a nice machine - I wish I had one - but conceptually it's 
really just FM++.

>And the Hartmann Neuron.

Okay, that's different. That is probably the one really exciting and 
innovative design of the last few years.

But I think it's not doing as well as it should because it's 'not 
analogue.' (Or near offer.)

>And having read that Roland VariOS users can now buy a (literally)
>program card to load a D50 into their machines makes that also quite
>appealing.

Except that after spending a fortune developing the technology, they don't 
seem to be doing anything much with s/ware support. Except more retreads.

>But then, the question remains. What is the "next generation" synthesis
>method? Subtractive synthesis was what could be done easily with analog
>hardware which got refined on the wave-generation side by wavetable
>sequencing or plain sample playback and multiple filter characteristics
>on the processing side.

Or better - what could it do musically that can't be done today? The 
difference with Mk 1 analogue was that suddenly you had a huge new pallette 
of exciting and original sounds that were *completely* unlike anything 
anyone had heard before. The DX7 offered something similar.

The problem today is that it's hard to imagine any new synthesis technique 
that's going to sound radically, jaw droppingly different to what's 
available now. Electronic sound is an everyday thing now, and even when 
people hear some amazing new process it just gets filed in the 'electronic' 
bin with everything else that lives there.

There probably won't any really radical progress until new reproduction 
technologies appear, like a direct brain interface or something like that.

>So what's to come next, especially if the constraints are
>
>- expressive, formerly "unknown" sound
>- ease of use
>- alternatively to ease of use: a sound everyone wants so that
>   noone cares that only god-like programmers grok it, thus everyone is
>   using the same sound libraries over and over again
>
>Would a specialized synth, e.g. a "vocal synthesizer" or a
>Karplus-Strong-based machine, really hit the market?

There are already Lola and Darla, which are sampled-based 'synthesizers' 
that let you string vocal phrases together.

I think a genuine virtual vocalist would be an interesting thing. Or maybe 
a vocal reprocessor that takes your voice, tidies up tuning and intonation, 
and syntheses someone who can *really* sing.

A good physical model of a piano would doubtless be a strong seller too.

But I think at the moment we're in a mflops gap - plenty to do the familiar 
stuff, not quite enough to do anything really outrageous. So it's hard to 
see anything much changing over the next few years.

Having said that, if I had a decent R&D budget I can imagine some new-ish 
ideas, especially in the modular world. But I don't. :(

Richard