Why isn't synthesis and sampling combined in Reason yet?

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selig
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14 Mar 2018

chimp_spanner wrote:
13 Mar 2018

One point I'll pick up here is the lack of oscillator phase lock on the Subtractor and Thor.
Thor's Wavetable, Phase Modulation, and FM Pair are all key triggered. I almost always use the Wavetable osc for basic saw/square/tri/sine shapes unless I need PWM.
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RobC
Posts: 1833
Joined: 10 Mar 2018

15 Mar 2018

I saw that Europa has it, too, though I just had a quick check after I installed my new Reason 10. <3 God bless Propellerheads for their super generous offer.

I think the easiest way is sampling though.

Say, Selig did you find a way to change the pitch of a sound live, once it's out of the original oscillator? I mean without buffering, and similar effects. Wait... Not possible.

Why can't the impossible be possible?!

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selig
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16 Mar 2018

RobC wrote:I saw that Europa has it, too, though I just had a quick check after I installed my new Reason 10. <3 God bless Propellerheads for their super generous offer.

I think the easiest way is sampling though.

Say, Selig did you find a way to change the pitch of a sound live, once it's out of the original oscillator? I mean without buffering, and similar effects. Wait... Not possible.

Why can't the impossible be possible?!
There are several ways to change the pitch of a live signal.
Have you tried Echobode?
You’ll have to be more specific as to what you want to accomplish, e.g. a use case that illustrates what you’re wanting to do.



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bsp
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17 Mar 2018

RobC wrote:
11 Mar 2018
I always created sounds from scratch with Subtractor. Never sounded as good as sampled instruments though! Thus, I exported raw synth sounds and drums, then continued editing in NNXT. By setting sample start, they got that missing sharp click and my desired synchronized feel. Not to mention a surprise keyboard tracking effect where lower notes got less fidelity and higher ones got brighter. It's not for everyone's tastes though, but that can be helped with a lot of multi sampling extra work. Anyway, this is just a fraction of what possibilities it opens. Clearly there's the effect where you duplicate your sample and offset their pitch, resulting in that delicious retro, thick, colorful effect. Or when you invert the phase of the duplicate(s), getting a thinning effect. Then multiplication, where you set the sample start differently for one of two (or more) samples, and again the opposite with an inverted phase, resulting in subtraction effect, just like on Subtractor!

Done with the back story, I wonder, why isn't there a synthesizer yet which would work just like that? With a generator-level and then a sampling level. One that would take care of all the hassle and resurrect some of those very powerful, long lost effects? Yes, I heard of Europa and Grain. But not only are they different, but also separate. (I do droll over the phase and ringing-free filter in Europa (seems to be the perfect filter that beats FIR and IIR), but I don't understand why that isn't possible for sampled sounds - even if it can't be done live.) What would be wrong with an ultimate synthesizer? There always are the ones with a lot of features, but not an all-in-one solution that combines everything.
Dear RobC,

such a thing once existed. Around ten years ago (~2010) I wrote a DAW ("st²") that pretty much did what you ask for.

I retracted it since I wasn't entirely happy with the user interface / general workflow (technically speaking, it is still online but I won't link to it now).

Since then I've been focusing on writing a sequencer, and now that this is almost done, I'm back to the audio side of things again.

The way that old DAW worked was that each project had any number sub-projects and you could (auto-)resample the sub-projects into a sample pool, which you could then use in the next sub project(s).

When you loaded a project that had sampling sub-projects, it automatically rendered all the samples.

It was actually "pretty crazy".

Well, the good news is that I am currently working on another, modernized take on this subject.

p.s.: @Auryn, if you're reading this, that's the feature I was "biting my lips" about :-)

Cheers,
bsp

RobC
Posts: 1833
Joined: 10 Mar 2018

19 Mar 2018

What I'm looking for, seems to be what bsp said, too. Would be nice to have a Rack Extension or VST like that. Sounds interesting, bsp!

All I can say, a pitch shifted sound and a detuned one might sound similar, but the effects that can be created will never be the same.
Take a sample in NNXT, duplicate it, detune them differently. Export, import, repeat. You'll hear what I mean, even if you take just a noise sample. Then compare each results. The original will appear very harsh, so the color this type of sampled effect adds is indeed very nice. It's not even the same as comb filtering. It's just... delicious! xD

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selig
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19 Mar 2018

RobC wrote:
19 Mar 2018
What I'm looking for, seems to be what bsp said, too. Would be nice to have a Rack Extension or VST like that. Sounds interesting, bsp!

All I can say, a pitch shifted sound and a detuned one might sound similar, but the effects that can be created will never be the same.
Take a sample in NNXT, duplicate it, detune them differently. Export, import, repeat. You'll hear what I mean, even if you take just a noise sample. Then compare each results. The original will appear very harsh, so the color this type of sampled effect adds is indeed very nice. It's not even the same as comb filtering. It's just... delicious! xD
That's probably the first things many folks did with samplers back in the 80s - I know it's one of the first things I did! It's basically a single swept phase/flange effect as the two samples start in tune and gradually drift apart over time.

The opening sound on this track is doing exactly that (with a cymbal sample):


Repeating the process would be very similar to simply creating more duplicates with different detune amounts, which would save much time (unless you like the sound of interpolation distortion?).
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RobC
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Joined: 10 Mar 2018

19 Mar 2018

If it can be done more easily, and re-triggered, I'm for it.

Though yeah, to achieve just that effect, live, I'm not sure if there are any stock Reason devices.

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selig
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19 Mar 2018

RobC wrote:
19 Mar 2018
If it can be done more easily, and re-triggered, I'm for it.

Though yeah, to achieve just that effect, live, I'm not sure if there are any stock Reason devices.
That effect would be impossible to achieve live, because you would need to be able to have two sounds slowly go out of sync with each other - getting one to go slower would be possible, but getting the other to go faster would require a time machine…
;)
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RobC
Posts: 1833
Joined: 10 Mar 2018

19 Mar 2018

Oh, I read into your comment wrong and started thinking, there would be some trick... never mind.
Now, thing is, when I exported a simple, perfectly tuned sound, the effect didn't really appear, not even with multiple instances, just after repeating the process. Depends on the waveform. Sometimes there's no other way. Could have been some bug. - BUT, in NNXT, it happened before that I did the detuned doubling, it sounded awesome, then restarted Reason, only to find out that the effect was gone, cause some bug occurred and the samples probably weren't in phase. Maybe it was just a past issue, but it did happen with duplicates before.

Not a big deal either way, cause I love the sampling world.

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