alesis ion's flexible oscillators

[cuwise]

i really love how glitchy the ion gets when you push its oscillators and fm function to extremes.
even without touching the mod matrix it can sound incredibly strange and out there, like a circuit bent machine. sometimes almost buchla-like!

the nord modular can get similar results with good programming, but other than that.. i've not heard anything quite like it from a va..

8(!) years on, are there any other va's that can do similar things and beyond? or vst instruments even?

cheers

[cuwise]

bump..

so what i'm talking about is stuff like this:
i'd really like to know if there are other va synths out there that can produce that kind of broken sound
any help would be great

[monotron]

[clubbedtodeath]

Blofeld

Seconded. Love the comb filters.

[stephen]

The An1x sync, FM, feedback and free envelope generator can start to get into this territory.

[RyanC]

Though its interface isn't nearly as immediate as the Ion, the Fusion can reach similar territory with its VA engine and sometimes venture a bit further out. The FM routing is more flexible in the Fusion, but only, uhh, 'regular' FM is offered, not both linear and exponential as with the Ion. And syncing in the Fusion is more flexible as well, but only hard sync is offered. Either way, the oscillators can certainly glitch and freak out when you set aside the rational approaches to synth programming.

I threw together a quick demo of this from a few patches I made 3-4 years back when I was trying to find the Fusion's limits. Maybe it's in the ballpark? Oh, and each sound is dry with no effects, EQ, compression, etc.

[balma]

I always have been seriously interested on what digital emulations of modular synths can do. Made a post about it but died with only a couple of replies.

Not a VA, but the Proteus Engine (Proteus 2500 and Command Stations) from E-mu have an ultra flexible arquitecture thanks to their matrix modulation section, or patch cords.

A single patch can have 96 different connections between sources and destinations, allowing to create a huge variety of sounds only limited by the imagination of the programmer. With the special patch link feature, a patch can have 12 layers of sounds and 188 different patch cords.


This feature from the proteus and command stations is very unknown for most of their users, that's a shame.

I wonder how much rompler engines out there, can make weird stuff like this:

[Plumpudding]

Balma, I can't count how many post's, tracks and whatnot you've posted that have made me want a command station. That's great stuff.

[balma]

Indeed they are great synths and it's amazing how cheap they are. They are known for being great sequencers, but its arsenal of features is really unknown for synth players.

That sound is only one C2 note holded during 40 seconds. You can hear how many shapes adopt during time. The engine results extremely flexible for programming any kind of sound you want to obtain, but requires a lot of practice and experimentation inside the modulation matrix. After that, everything is pure pleasure when tweakig sounds. You invent a cord between several parameters, later you invent how to tweak it. Is a extremely flexible engine, and totally customizable
The problem is that only a few users takes seriously a 300 dollars rompler. . The PROTEUS 2500, has the same engine of the command station btw.

[monotron]

Forgot about the SH32:



http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/ROLSH3 ... d02a7d.mp3

[cuwise]

thanks a lot everyone!

balma: that's exactly how i've been using my proteus 2000, especially love it for odd drumkits. besides the controls, what's the difference between the 2000 and the 2500/command station?

i will def consider the blofeld and the fusion as well, especially the latter considering it also does sampling. its specs make me suspect it could be sort of a poor mans vsynth maybe?

[balma]

thanks a lot everyone!

balma: that's exactly how i've been using my proteus 2000, especially love it for odd drumkits. besides the controls, what's the difference between the 2000 and the 2500/command station?

The only difference between them are the sensitive pads on the command station, engine and controllers are the same.

[clubbedtodeath]

I've just remembered - there's a secret mode on the Nord Lead, which can do quite extreme sounds.

It's called Pelle's Mod, and here's an example:



For more details see http://nm-archives.electro-music.com/02 ... 7sMode.htm

Cheers