So Eisenberg Einklang all over again thenjacqueslacouth wrote:no control over the sounds other than morphing the sounds that are included
GalaXynth? What do you think?
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
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jacqueslacouth jacqueslacouth https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=48379
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1149 posts since 18 Nov, 2004
Einklang sounds better than thisNumanoid wrote:So Eisenberg Einklang all over again thenjacqueslacouth wrote:no control over the sounds other than morphing the sounds that are included
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
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- KVRist
- 47 posts since 24 Nov, 2009
I just tried it out, since I love "new ideas" synths. It is not smooth or polite, the characteristic artifacting reminds me most of granular and additive resynthesis and whatever the engine is doing probably draws from that spectrum of techniques. That in turn can often mean a "hyped" or "digital" feel depending on how it's tuned. A traditional LP filter stage added on top would go a long way towards making it palatable to the masses. The original samples are very "90's Proteus" on the whole, aiming for a nice impression but not too close to realism, and it's easy to make a harsh, unusable sound by trying to blend two or three radically different samples. That said, I want to keep playing with it more. It is easy to tweak.
The bottom modulation knobs are crucial - as is often the case I had a much easier time programming with a sequence looping in the background. They let you dial in dramatically different timbres on top of the samples very quickly, including, for better or worse, many ugly ones, but also some beautiful and unique timbres. Any sound can become a supersaw by adding enough "fatness", or transform between a pluck or a pad by adjusting "flatten". When you start turning more than one of them it becomes very easy to go out of the usual boundaries and into "I have no idea what this is doing".
I tested how well it works to play the knobs and xy pad - there are obvious jumps at certain crossover points but also possibilities for doing a drone or evolving pad. The keyboard mode soon demystified as a convenient alternative to traditional splits and when I set a few keyboard-style patches up on a SMF it proved about as usable as any other rompler aiming for these sounds, but with more leeway to do interesting blending and expression. I'm on board with using it in this way since for me, the artistic use of romplers is to make expressive synthetic impressions more than it is to fill in for real instruments. There are built in effects and the quality is generally OK, but tastefully understated.
The selling point for me is going to rest on whether I keep turning to it rather than trying to wrestle with a custom patch that cobbles together my existing tools to do a similar blended effect - it's packing a lot of function into a tiny number of parameters. But the sound engine probably isn't to most folks' taste since it cheerfully embraces the uncanny valley between synthy and acoustic, and there are more powerful tools out there if you are trying to design such sounds.
Also, the demo is adding progressively more time each time I load an instance which is kind of annoying given my demo strategy involves loading it up on a lot of existing sequences. It's up to 50 seconds now.
The bottom modulation knobs are crucial - as is often the case I had a much easier time programming with a sequence looping in the background. They let you dial in dramatically different timbres on top of the samples very quickly, including, for better or worse, many ugly ones, but also some beautiful and unique timbres. Any sound can become a supersaw by adding enough "fatness", or transform between a pluck or a pad by adjusting "flatten". When you start turning more than one of them it becomes very easy to go out of the usual boundaries and into "I have no idea what this is doing".
I tested how well it works to play the knobs and xy pad - there are obvious jumps at certain crossover points but also possibilities for doing a drone or evolving pad. The keyboard mode soon demystified as a convenient alternative to traditional splits and when I set a few keyboard-style patches up on a SMF it proved about as usable as any other rompler aiming for these sounds, but with more leeway to do interesting blending and expression. I'm on board with using it in this way since for me, the artistic use of romplers is to make expressive synthetic impressions more than it is to fill in for real instruments. There are built in effects and the quality is generally OK, but tastefully understated.
The selling point for me is going to rest on whether I keep turning to it rather than trying to wrestle with a custom patch that cobbles together my existing tools to do a similar blended effect - it's packing a lot of function into a tiny number of parameters. But the sound engine probably isn't to most folks' taste since it cheerfully embraces the uncanny valley between synthy and acoustic, and there are more powerful tools out there if you are trying to design such sounds.
Also, the demo is adding progressively more time each time I load an instance which is kind of annoying given my demo strategy involves loading it up on a lot of existing sequences. It's up to 50 seconds now.
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- KVRAF
- 1562 posts since 13 Jan, 2014
Did not know there already was a thread cause I was just thinking about one 
I must admit that I am mostly using presets so I really like the general idea of just visual mixing instruments without having to worry about "all that knobs"
So I love the general idea of the synth and it looks nice, easy and cleaned up. So I think you know whats coming now
its the BUT:
To be honest, the sounds reminds me just to a toy-synth....
Think most of you know wolfgang palms plex 2, now freeware, years (decades ?) old, in general comparable idea (I would think without knowing much about the technical details) but the sounds are sooooo much better. As I said: I only compare possibilities of the presets and morphing them visual which is possible in both synths. Just my two cents...
For me definitely not worth 100 euros. If I compare to actual commercial synths biotek comes to my mind (which is sometimes in sale or im package sale with Tracktion in same price region or even lower) and I must say I only can if I just THINK about comparing these, they are not out of one world (or maybe same world, ages in time apart).
I must admit that I am mostly using presets so I really like the general idea of just visual mixing instruments without having to worry about "all that knobs"
So I love the general idea of the synth and it looks nice, easy and cleaned up. So I think you know whats coming now
its the BUT:To be honest, the sounds reminds me just to a toy-synth....
Think most of you know wolfgang palms plex 2, now freeware, years (decades ?) old, in general comparable idea (I would think without knowing much about the technical details) but the sounds are sooooo much better. As I said: I only compare possibilities of the presets and morphing them visual which is possible in both synths. Just my two cents...
For me definitely not worth 100 euros. If I compare to actual commercial synths biotek comes to my mind (which is sometimes in sale or im package sale with Tracktion in same price region or even lower) and I must say I only can
if I just THINK about comparing these, they are not out of one world (or maybe same world, ages in time apart).-
- Banned
- 12368 posts since 30 Apr, 2002 from i might peeramid
to be fair i haven't examined it myself (some synthesis concepts are more subtle than others) but "variety only via purchase" would explain "galaxy" - milking it.jacqueslacouth wrote: As far as I can see you have virtually no control over the sounds other than morphing the sounds that are included or through purchasing additional sound banks.
you come and go, you come and go. amitabha neither a follower nor a leader be tagore "where roads are made i lose my way" where there is certainty, consideration is absent.
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- KVRist
- 47 posts since 24 Nov, 2009
I took a second look after sleeping on it and figured out why I was getting so many harsh sounds: These knobs are mapped to a linear range, which leads to unsubtle play. If I dial in <20% differences it's enough to get good, interesting changes without being hugely disruptive, but the ranges will go to 400% in some instances leading to a vast area of "wow so extreme". This goes for the envelopes, too, most crucially, and the defaults there are a little bit fast and "edgy" so I find myself going into every preset and pushing the attack to -15% and the release up to 0.5. Most commercial plugs will account for large ranges in their UX by mapping knob positions to values non-linearly.
Knowing that I had to be gentle, and then going ahead and putting on my own reverb and compression instead of the built-in, I got a lot of smooth and usable stuff. I still don't know what "Life" does exactly. Sometimes it has no obvious effect.
If I had to tell the author one thing at this point it is to do another round on the UX to clean up the above, and possibly to give some more options for changing envelope character and to tune the morph sounds independent of the global controls. I imagine I could put together even more combinations if I had the ability to work on the original sample by blurring it or adding EQ, and I am a big fan of envelopes with adjustable curvature as they do so much for the character.
I'm not going to buy this yet, but I will be keeping it around. It's fun.
Knowing that I had to be gentle, and then going ahead and putting on my own reverb and compression instead of the built-in, I got a lot of smooth and usable stuff. I still don't know what "Life" does exactly. Sometimes it has no obvious effect.
If I had to tell the author one thing at this point it is to do another round on the UX to clean up the above, and possibly to give some more options for changing envelope character and to tune the morph sounds independent of the global controls. I imagine I could put together even more combinations if I had the ability to work on the original sample by blurring it or adding EQ, and I am a big fan of envelopes with adjustable curvature as they do so much for the character.
I'm not going to buy this yet, but I will be keeping it around. It's fun.
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- KVRAF
- 2281 posts since 25 Apr, 2009 from Doritos Land where no goblins are allowed
Crashes Cubase everytime I load a sound and play a note or two on my MIDI keyboard. Cubase Pro 8.5 64, Win 8.1 64.
Please don’t read the above post. It’s a stupid one. Simply pass.
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- KVRian
- 726 posts since 17 Feb, 2015
Einklang is certainly disappointing and odd, but I wouldn't call the sound quality bad at all. I think it's the sound sources that lack in the quality department.jacqueslacouth wrote:Einklang sounds better than thisNumanoid wrote:So Eisenberg Einklang all over again thenjacqueslacouth wrote:no control over the sounds other than morphing the sounds that are included
Or I don't know. It's an odd synth with a beautiful and empty GUI. There's so much potential in there, but it feels half-assed. Like the developer made half of a bigger product and then thought "well, okay, let's just leave it that and start making expansion packs for it".
I guess I would use it more, but it has a bug that produces a hanging note for me. Have you experienced this?
