what are your experiences with tension, electric, analog?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
forge
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what are your experiences with tension, electric, analog?

Post by forge » Sun Dec 07, 2008 9:46 am

as discussed in this thread: http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=102192

I have been thinking about making some tutorial videos on these for a while, but after a bit of a search on the forum I've been surprised at how many negative comments there are about these synths and people who got them in the suite trying to sell them etc

I'd really like to make some tutorials on them, but I really don't want to waste my time if nobody would be interested

do you think the problem is that people need some tips on how to use them better, or is it just that they don't like them?

what have your experiences with these synths been?

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Post by Pasha » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:38 am

Electric is present in 90% of my projects, Tension 15% and Analog close to 10%.
The reason behind that is not that the Instruments lack features, but they lack usable presets, especially Analog. Being a Bass Guitar and a Guitar player myself, I use Tension only when it is suitable for an arrangement by using a Nylon Guitar/Acoustic Guitar presets, which I like. Tension has other usages and I like it especially for soundscapes racks. Analog usage went down after I bought Zebra2 that I use more as a preset bank with some tweak ability rather than a sound creation tool. Analog is not complex and I use it primarily for simple Pads (I have Operator for fat FM ones) but when it comes to CPU usage is too much. So in summary I like the three of them but Electric is King when compared to the other two. As a Boxed Suite owner I can say that it contains all the necessary things to make music. It was only because Analog is a CPU eater and has compared to all three the worse selection of playable presets that I got Zebra2 and that's the main point: Presets should cover a wide range of music genres and applications. Maybe it's because I'm lazy creating a sound myself from scratch but I come from the Hardware Synth generation where Roland D50 and DX7 were something with their innovative sounds and at that time it was easier to buy sounds than to program them. So when dicussing tutorial needs, well there are people who would like to be guided in detail through the process of creating a Bass, Pad, Organ, Metallic, Organic sounds, from the basics, explaining why you choose a sine wave for a Bass and a PWM for a Pad.
Than you can apply those generic stuff to the instruments (Tension is another animal BTW). The idea is how many of us can really call themselves sound creator/sound programmers? There's a lot of people who really need to dive deeply into the subject because they always used presets on romplers or synths of some kind.

My 2 cents,

- Best
- Pasha
Last edited by Pasha on Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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forge
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Post by forge » Sun Dec 07, 2008 12:37 pm

thanks Pasha


yeah I've pretty much talked myself out of it already - I might include some in a more general upcoming Live tips and tricks series instead, but I think it would probably not be a wise use of time to make a whole series on each instrument, or even all 3

Macrostructure
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Post by Macrostructure » Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:51 pm

I've been trying out the demos on my work PC the last few days and they are basically good synths but:

1. the physical size of the GUI is a limitation for me. I like to see everything at once.

2. as yet, I find the layout of the controls a bit hard to get used to, it's all visually to same'y. I might get used to that though.

3. I'd agree with a previous poster in that the main limitation with these synths is the lack of usable/modifiable presets, with exception of Operator.

4. My take on all this is that Live is put forward as a quick tool for getting compositions together and above all, for Live performance, as in - on the fly. This has also been stated by Ableton on this forum in the past in discussions on the quality of Live's on board effects e.g. compressor and chorus (I actually think Live's effects are pretty good b.t.w). As such to make synths that require more fundamental programming, or which as yet yet have limited numbers of presets, goes against the grain a bit.

So they perhaps lack the immediacy of the rest of Live?

I'm only a few days into testing these things though.

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Post by Pasha » Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:10 pm

Macrostructure wrote:I've been trying out the demos on my work PC the last few days and they are basically good synths but:

1. the physical size of the GUI is a limitation for me. I like to see everything at once.

2. as yet, I find the layout of the controls a bit hard to get used to, it's all visually to same'y. I might get used to that though.

3. I'd agree with a previous poster in that the main limitation with these synths is the lack of usable/modifiable presets, with exception of Operator.

4. My take on all this is that Live is put forward as a quick tool for getting compositions together and above all, for Live performance, as in - on the fly. This has also been stated by Ableton on this forum in the past in discussions on the quality of Live's on board effects e.g. compressor and chorus (I actually think Live's effects are pretty good b.t.w). As such to make synths that require more fundamental programming, or which as yet yet have limited numbers of presets, goes against the grain a bit.

So they perhaps lack the immediacy of the rest of Live?

I'm only a few days into testing these things though.
Take Zebra2. Is far from having all knobs at the same time but the commercial libraries and the free ones cover really a lot of genres. I am a Level 42 fan and can you imagine my face when I found free Prophet 5 brass presets with the names (and sound) of my favorite songs? Diving deeply, most of them use a couple of oscillators and some filters, nothing you can't do (probably) with Analog. That's the point the lack of usable presets makes the instrument appear as if it's under quality while it's not. It takes time I do not have to create your sound library, that's why I went the Zebra2 route, but Analog is a good synth if you have time to play with.

- Best
- Pasha
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Live 12 Suite,Zebra ,Valhalla Plugins, MIDI Guitar (2+3),Guitar, Bass, VG99, GP10, JV1010 and some controllers
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forge
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Post by forge » Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:24 pm

Pasha wrote:
Macrostructure wrote:I've been trying out the demos on my work PC the last few days and they are basically good synths but:

1. the physical size of the GUI is a limitation for me. I like to see everything at once.

2. as yet, I find the layout of the controls a bit hard to get used to, it's all visually to same'y. I might get used to that though.

3. I'd agree with a previous poster in that the main limitation with these synths is the lack of usable/modifiable presets, with exception of Operator.

4. My take on all this is that Live is put forward as a quick tool for getting compositions together and above all, for Live performance, as in - on the fly. This has also been stated by Ableton on this forum in the past in discussions on the quality of Live's on board effects e.g. compressor and chorus (I actually think Live's effects are pretty good b.t.w). As such to make synths that require more fundamental programming, or which as yet yet have limited numbers of presets, goes against the grain a bit.

So they perhaps lack the immediacy of the rest of Live?

I'm only a few days into testing these things though.
Take Zebra2. Is far from having all knobs at the same time but the commercial libraries and the free ones cover really a lot of genres. I am a Level 42 fan and can you imagine my face when I found free Prophet 5 brass presets with the names (and sound) of my favorite songs? Diving deeply, most of them use a couple of oscillators and some filters, nothing you can't do (probably) with Analog. That's the point the lack of usable presets makes the instrument appear as if it's under quality while it's not. It takes time I do not have to create your sound library, that's why I went the Zebra2 route, but Analog is a good synth if you have time to play with.

- Best
- Pasha
yes, lack of decent presets is something I've hassled Ableton about a lot - they really are under-selling their synths

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Post by Khazul » Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:31 pm

The comment about usable presets is pretty the same here too - when I have time and can be bothered - then I spend some time tweaking them, but mostly I'm more focussed on music which in sound workflow terms mean finding patches or samples that are close enough to be moulded to what I want rather than building up sounds from scratch (personally i find if I spent too much time messing with sounds, Ill loose the plot of the music!) - I only tend to do that with the Virus TI.

In the end I guess I tend not to use them very much. If there was a broader range of useful patches as starting points, then maybe I would use them alot more - probably layered.

Its the same reason I tend not to use operator that much either beyond layering it in for energising other sounds - which is where tension could be useful if I spent more time on learning to program it.


They should get Vengence on the job to design some sound for them :)
Last edited by Khazul on Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by leedsquietman » Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:39 pm

+1 for Ableton's presets. A lot of the presets in ALL the live devices seem either very generic or too far out to be useful.

Electric is my favourite electric piano synth bar none. I use that in about 2/3 of my recordings. If you need an electric piano, forget sampled sounds, forget NI Elektrik, this baby does it all.

Tension is awesome, it brings something else to the table with it's physical modelling that wavetable synthesis and sampling cannot produce. It's presets are probably among the most useable of the bunch, but I tweak them anyway to fit the sound I need. I like the bowed effect for orchestral strings and the way a note sounds if you take it from low to high suddenly, the creaks and squeaks etc that would happen in a real life scenario, although I often find myself layering sampled sounds with it too for even more realism. The strings sound OK, but sound even better with some good layers of good sampled strings etc. I use it in about 60% of the recordings I've made since beta testing Live 7.

Analog - It has a beauty and charm of it's own and is definately a bit unusual sounding, I am hearing Zebra and Sylenth and Massive and even stuff like Albino and Vanguard pretty much everywhere. Sometimes, I can just hear the sound and say 'yes, that's the -------' preset from Zebra etc. But really, it's use is not optimized by the presets, covops number cruncher live pack does a much better job of showcasing it. I probably don't use it that much given that I own Zebra and Massive, plus Arturia softsynths for vintage emulation. I have tried to use it more in recent projects, but then decided that just using a synth because it's not being used is not the most positive thing to do, so now I just use whichever synth is most suited to the sound requirement and that leaves Analog on the outside looking in for me. I've used it on about 4 tracks of the 20 odd I've recorded since I got it.
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Post by coupdetat » Sun Dec 07, 2008 3:03 pm

Tension string setting sounds diabolical
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Post by leedsquietman » Sun Dec 07, 2008 3:21 pm

blend them with sampled strings and everything sounds amazing.
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Post by Tarekith » Sun Dec 07, 2008 4:26 pm

I've been using the Suite synths a LOT lately, and more or less can only echo what's been said here. The smaller GUI's are my biggest gripe, having to page between settings instead of seeing everything at once really slows things down for me. In terms of sound quality they are fine, but more often than not I struggle with the interface more than anything.

In terms of presets, I whole-heartedly agree, they are lame. Some of the worst of any DAW or synth I've ever used. I hate saying that, because I know someone spent a lot of theit tie making them, but they are just not that good sounding. Not a biggy for me, since i like making sounds from scratch anyway, but when you have an idea and you just want to call up a sound and get going, Live is definitely not the tool to use (cue Logic and it's awesome preset library). Also, the presets are not oganized very well either, some are in the instruments own sections, some are in the racks sections, some are under other names, etc. I hope in the future all presets are organized by type (bass, lead, pad).
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Re: what are your experiences with tension, electric, analog?

Post by Newecho » Sun Dec 07, 2008 4:57 pm

forge wrote:do you think the problem is that people need some tips on how to use them better, or is it just that they don't like them?

what have your experiences with these synths been?
In general I try and support Ableton. I've looked at these three instruments carefully when they first came out and decided to pass. On paper they seemed appealing (integrated with the live interface...) but as others have mentioned, the presets are lackluster - especially when compared against Predator, Zebra... and other synths at similar price points. Obviously with some work, one could create some killer patches by adding in Ableton FX and such, but I can get there faster with my existing VSTs.

So, having great demos on this would not make me more interested in these synths.

Perhaps the real target audience are people who have already bought. Maybe Ableton marketing can give you some numbers and a list so you can formally survey the audience. Another idea would be to produce a few tutorials and see what kind of traffic you get before committing to a full on project.

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Post by monobeach » Sun Dec 07, 2008 5:59 pm

using presets ór not discussion aside: I LOVE the presets of Electric (and I also own the real thing) - instant inspiration

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Post by djsynchro » Sun Dec 07, 2008 6:55 pm

I grew up on real Rhodes and Wurlitzer so I can't hear those sounds anymore but i have started to use Electric for all sorts of toy-piano, waterdrop, deep plinky-plonky melancholic sounds. Also just like a real Electric piano, it reacts reall well to distortion and you can get great guitar like tones that way.

Tension is great, another one-trick pony within a narrow field (strings) it has some great sounds. If you're into the more "organic" side of electronic music, another great one.

Analog, I love the interface, they could have left more routings out even, but it fails at the basic test: Saw wave, Square wave 1 octave below, 24db filter, phat bassline. It doen't. It can sound good but it needs work. Compared to Sylenth it sounds grainy and thin.

Operator is great, it sounds way better than my Yamaha DX11 which sounds too dirty envelopes are not so great on the Yamaha either.
Sampler (I guess you're asking about the suite) is super good

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Post by fiz » Sun Dec 07, 2008 10:30 pm

For me, Sylenth makes Analog redundant, first for cpu efficiency, second for sound phatness, third for a workable gui. I still like Analog enough to hang onto it, but it really suffers by comparison. Almost seems like a dated beast nowadays. I'm starting to wonder why Abes picked it to begin with given how much of a road hog it really is. One thing I love it for is as a noise palette -- it works great for that. Nice, phat noise when you need it. Almost everything else VA-wise I ship out to Sylenth or Zebra.

I actually asked A|A|S if they had ever considered integrating the much easier gui of Ultra Analog directly with Live's version. I was surprised to hear that yes they had, but the Abes folks wanted to drop the integrated effects, which made the idea impossible. Too bad!

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