PPG Phonem (Advanced Vocal Synthesizer) official released

[J_L]

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[J_L]

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[ENV1]

I find it scary that I can potentially change a bunch of presets without even knowing which ones I am changing. Improving a resource does not mean I will like the change for every preset.

Thats what i dislike about the WAVESTATION. Alter a WAVE SEQ and all Patches that use this WAVE SEQ will be altered along with it. Likewise alter a Patch (its WAVE SEQ or other elements) and all Performances that use this Patch will be altered along with it too. While one could say that this kind of system might have its advantages in certain scenarios, i myself always found this concept of 'nesting' stuff in such a manner rather suboptimal because the potential to accidentally destroy some of your previous work is always there, and its high. Make only one mistake...


BTW the same goes for Banks and how they are saved into projects too. Very easy to lose a lot of work if youre not always paying close attention since Hosts always save the WAVESTATIONs complete machine-state into the project file, in other words when you load an older project you will inevitably load an older version of your Bank, which, in the worst case, might only contain a fraction of what the most current version of the Bank contains. Now if you make any changes special for that project, and then in a careless moment save these changes into the default Bank simply out of habit, you will have completely wiped out everything you saved into that Bank since you stopped working on that old project. What remains will be this old version of the Bank plus your latest edits, everything newer will be gone with no means of restoring any of it.


Like i said, pretty suboptimal. The only way to at least halfways safely avoid disaster with plugins that use an external 'default' Bank as the primary means of storing ones work is to make backups and backups and backups of the Bank so you dont lose too much work if something goes wrong. Thats why a solution that is based on a single file (or a bunch of single files) for each preset is definitely preferable since the worst that could happen then is that you might accidentally screw up one single preset, but never the entire collection of everything you made up to this date.




@Wolfgang:

I always wanted to ask this:

How do you think about the Realizer in light of todays possibilities?

Do you think it could have a place in software?

Always wondered if the idea really died back then, it seemed like such a nice and versatile concept.

(minimoog emulation in 1986. Talk about forward-thinking!)

[origwt]

I find it scary that I can potentially change a bunch of presets without even knowing which ones I am changing. Improving a resource does not mean I will like the change for every preset.

Thats what i dislike about the WAVESTATION. Alter a WAVE SEQ and all Patches that use this WAVE SEQ will be altered along with it. Likewise alter a Patch (its WAVE SEQ or other elements) and all Performances that use this Patch will be altered along with it too. While one could say that this kind of system might have its advantages in certain scenarios, i myself always found this concept of 'nesting' stuff in such a manner rather suboptimal because the potential to accidentally destroy some of your previous work is always there, and its high. Make only one mistake...


BTW the same goes for Banks and how they are saved into projects too. Very easy to lose a lot of work if youre not always paying close attention since Hosts always save the WAVESTATIONs complete machine-state into the project file, in other words when you load an older project you will inevitably load an older version of your Bank, which, in the worst case, might only contain a fraction of what the most current version of the Bank contains. Now if you make any changes special for that project, and then in a careless moment save these changes into the default Bank simply out of habit, you will have completely wiped out everything you saved into that Bank since you stopped working on that old project. What remains will be this old version of the Bank plus your latest edits, everything newer will be gone with no means of restoring any of it.


Like i said, pretty suboptimal. The only way to at least halfways safely avoid disaster with plugins that use an external 'default' Bank as the primary means of storing ones work is to make backups and backups and backups of the Bank so you dont lose too much work if something goes wrong. Thats why a solution that is based on a single file (or a bunch of single files) for each preset is definitely preferable since the worst that could happen then is that you might accidentally screw up one single preset, but never the entire collection of everything you made up to this date.

i still think the pool concept is a good idea and should not totally be discarded.
especially for wavetables and TCS resources.
so why not collect and sort your favourite resources in folders.

anyway, i also see the advantage of not being forced to always save small changes of utterances etc.
so i am working on a solution now to auto-save your changed resources in the presets, if you did not save them manually to your pool folders.

so please give me some days to come up with an update.

[origwt]

@Wolfgang:

I always wanted to ask this:

How do you think about the Realizer in light of todays possibilities?

Do you think it could have a place in software?

Always wondered if the idea really died back then, it seemed like such a nice and versatile concept.

(minimoog emulation in 1986. Talk about forward-thinking!)

the idea of the Realizer was to have a complete studio in one workstation and that all audio components work in the digital domain. i think this is what VST is doing now

the idea died because of lack of money to bring the project to the end.

[ENV1]

i still think the pool concept is a good idea and should not totally be discarded.
especially for wavetables and TCS resources.
so why not collect and sort your favourite resources in folders.

anyway, i also see the advantage of not being forced to always save small changes of utterances etc.
so i am working on a solution now to auto-save your changed resources in the presets, if you did not save them manually to your pool folders.

so please give me some days to come up with an update.

No problem, i was just generally speaking.

(Not a Phonem user at present, but i intend to demo.)

the idea of the Realizer was to have a complete studio in one workstation and that all audio components work in the digital domain. i think this is what VST is doing now

True enough. Still as someone who always liked compact solutions i am quite fascinated by the thought of how good this could be. Sampling (not just sample playing), emulation of different synths, sequencing, mixing, all in one neat package, i guess this could be a lot of fun. (I love workstations, always did.) But youre right of course, seeing how things have changed it wouldnt be quite as 'groundbreaking' anymore as it was back in '86.

the idea died because of lack of money to bring the project to the end.

A shame. Not that i could have afforded one, but i always thought the concept was really good.

(In fact in a way you 'predicted' the future here.)

Thanks for answering.

[pdxindy]

i still think the pool concept is a good idea and should not totally be discarded.
especially for wavetables and TCS resources.
so why not collect and sort your favourite resources in folders.

anyway, i also see the advantage of not being forced to always save small changes of utterances etc.
so i am working on a solution now to auto-save your changed resources in the presets, if you did not save them manually to your pool folders.

so please give me some days to come up with an update.

Please do something about the situation I described. If I have edited a resource but not saved it, then select save as for the program, at that point I am forced to either over-write the resource or lose my changes. There needs to be a way to cancel out and not lose the program I've been working on

[origwt]

i still think the pool concept is a good idea and should not totally be discarded.
especially for wavetables and TCS resources.
so why not collect and sort your favourite resources in folders.

anyway, i also see the advantage of not being forced to always save small changes of utterances etc.
so i am working on a solution now to auto-save your changed resources in the presets, if you did not save them manually to your pool folders.

so please give me some days to come up with an update.

Please do something about the situation I described. If I have edited a resource but not saved it, then select save as for the program, at that point I am forced to either over-write the resource or lose my changes. There needs to be a way to cancel out and not lose the program I've been working on

as it is planned now, when you forget to save manually, the resource will be embedded in the preset, so you cannot lose your work.

in the current version, the normal way is to use the Save or Save As before you switch to another preset.

[camsr]

I want to say this thing sounds amazing and very creative!
A demo version would be much appreciated to test before commiting to a purchase. Do you have any sort of refund policy or are sales final?

[origwt]

I want to say this thing sounds amazing and very creative!
A demo version would be much appreciated to test before commiting to a purchase. Do you have any sort of refund policy or are sales final?

it is not decided yet, whether we will offer a trial version for Phonem.
there are so many demo videos and tutorials out, that should help you make a decision.
sales are final, yes. see our policies on our shop page.

[camsr]

It's not the sound quality in question IMO, just whether I will enjoy using it.

[maximoog]

I want to say this thing sounds amazing and very creative!
A demo version would be much appreciated to test before commiting to a purchase. Do you have any sort of refund policy or are sales final?

it is not decided yet, whether we will offer a trial version for Phonem.
there are so many demo videos and tutorials out, that should help you make a decision.
sales are final, yes. see our policies on our shop page.

Sorry, demo videos are not the same like a trialversion of a software. I want to test my software previously on my system, and decide. Videos are no help to me.

where is the problem of a trial version , the product is then not so well?

[Aspects of Tone]

it is not decided yet, whether we will offer a trial version for Phonem.
there are so many demo videos and tutorials out, that should help you make a decision.
sales are final, yes. see our policies on our shop page.

This is disappointing to hear.

I am most interested in Phonem for virtual singing. As it says on the web site:

'PPG Phonem lets the user create expressive vocal synthesis beyond anything ever heard before. With its advanced routing system every aspect of the voice can be controlled and modulated in any conceivable way. Anything from a quiet whisper to a scream. Use the intuitive text to speech tool to make Phonem say whatever you want.' and 'Create your own singing style'.

So my question has been can Phonem sing intelligible lyrics for a whole song? Is it better or worse than say, AlterEgo or Vocaloid? I have yet to see much evidence of this. Nearly all the videos are about the sound synthesis and, while I don't want to take away from that, it's not what I'm looking for. Where are the examples of screams and whispers, or different singing styles? Is this very difficult to do?

Unless I have missed it, there is not an example of a song in any of the demo videos. There is one bit at the start of the show and tell video that sounds promising (a female singing: yea eee yeaaah), but that is all I could find.

Also how can I know if it will work with my system? I would like to place a request for a trial version so I can test this myself, especially as all sales are final.

[masterhiggins]

I think trials would increase sales. Is it possibly because the demo version and full version require separate maintenance and he has such a small team? I'm not saying that's the case. More of a question.

[ENV1]

it is not decided yet, whether we will offer a trial version for Phonem.

Please do. (Offer a demo i mean.) Getting some hands on experience is always the best way to find out whether you really want something, plus there is also the fact that not all software runs problem-free on all machines, which means this had to be ascertained before purchasing when sales are final.


PS: I could have sworn that i read that a demo IS coming. Guess it must have been late or something...