arturia jupiter 8 v demo

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:43 pm

There is a segment of the market that has totally bought into this 'old synths are best' idea. It is those people who will place a high value on a synth 'looking like' some old synth. They are recreationists who believe some mystic historical mojo will rub off on them if the synth looks enough like the 'original'. Because these people form a large portion of the market I can totally believe that Arturia would sell less of their product if it looked unlike the 'originals'.

I'm not a fan of the tactic myself, I've tried a few recreations of synths I own
(mainly the korg series) and frankly the interface was confusing!

Old synths looked like that for a reason, the same way it makes sense a steering wheel is round or a brake pedal is on the floor - it is the most appropriate interface. The best thing about my old synths is simply - one knob for each function. there is a switch for ring mod and a dial for filter .. it's always in teh same place and after a year or two you can find it backwards in the dark. THAT is the benefit of the old analogue hardware 'interfaces' - dedicated controls.

Some software instruments we have today are more powerful for creating sound, but do we have the 'appropriate interfaces' ?
My real MonoPoly still beats my software recreation because I can see and tweak the real one so easily. No amount of animated dangly wires will let the software beat the hardware in that arena.

It is not meaningful to put a ribbon controller on a screen, what is the point of a picture of a ribbon control? Anyone who has used a ribbon knows how great it is to fiddle with , meanwhile a picture of a ribbon is a pathetic joke.

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 11:33 pm

Angstrom wrote:There is a segment of the market that has totally bought into this 'old synths are best' idea. It is those people who will place a high value on a synth 'looking like' some old synth. They are recreationists who believe some mystic historical mojo will rub off on them if the synth looks enough like the 'original'. Because these people form a large portion of the market I can totally believe that Arturia would sell less of their product if it looked unlike the 'originals'.

I'm not a fan of the tactic myself, I've tried a few recreations of synths I own
(mainly the korg series) and frankly the interface was confusing!

Old synths looked like that for a reason, the same way it makes sense a steering wheel is round or a brake pedal is on the floor - it is the most appropriate interface. The best thing about my old synths is simply - one knob for each function. there is a switch for ring mod and a dial for filter .. it's always in teh same place and after a year or two you can find it backwards in the dark. THAT is the benefit of the old analogue hardware 'interfaces' - dedicated controls.

Some software instruments we have today are more powerful for creating sound, but do we have the 'appropriate interfaces' ?
My real MonoPoly still beats my software recreation because I can see and tweak the real one so easily. No amount of animated dangly wires will let the software beat the hardware in that arena.

It is not meaningful to put a ribbon controller on a screen, what is the point of a picture of a ribbon control? Anyone who has used a ribbon knows how great it is to fiddle with , meanwhile a picture of a ribbon is a pathetic joke.

i agree with you within the contex of yourself, but all of these gui enthusiast
or 'recreationist' as you call them (lol, sounds like something bill oreilly would say, anyway these folks feel differently, tha's the whole point, if music is about feel and if there is a correlation between what one sees and how one feels before they strike the note then i think thats all the validity that these recreated guis need.
the brain sees the ribbon controller and hopefully produces as close as possible the chemical reaction that seeing the ribbon controller on the real instrument produces.
there are about a million people who would never touch software if it didn't look like reason, the same probably goes for synths.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 11:51 pm

I suppose then, it seems you are saying it is an equivalent to something like pornography. Where a picture of something valued and tactile is enough to trigger the appropriate pavlovian response in the viewer. It makes the viewer happy, nearly like they had seen the real thing.

But I would say it is like giving your new girlfriend a mask that looks like a porn star. The 'new girlfriend' is perfectly functional in their own right. If the user needs to believe their synths are something else which is more emotionally 'valuable' then perhaps they should simply realise the value of the new synth?

Learning how the 'new girlfriend' works and establishing a sensible relationship with your 'new girlfriend', is much more likely to produce good results than pretending she is Sylvia Kristal (!) when you want to 'play' her.

I'm only half serious about all this btw, I often force my girlfriend to wear a Lynda Carter mask.

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:29 am

hahaha

your absolutely right about the girlfriends but the synths issue
the jury still out on that one, cause what about the element of the fact that usualy people who like those types of synth emulations are trying in most cases to have that old girlfriend experience. so trying to have a new experience is most likely not what they're after, even though they might get more out of the synth if they looked at it as something to forge new ground with.

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:32 am

btw Lynda Carter , that's good taste

J.Daniels · Post by **J.Daniels** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:53 am

One thing that bothers me about the GUI's of softsynths, is that has so much potential to be something more than the hardware counterparts that they try to emulate.

In addition, midi controllers should try extent the keyboards,knobs and sliders and get really creative and forget about whats familiar. I would like to see something like a wii remote with like 50 little assignable triggers, and you could hold like 4 down at a time and you turn the remote sideways and it changes the parameter for all the controls at the same time!

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:00 am

J.Daniels wrote:One thing that bothers me about the GUI's of softsynths, is that has so much potential to be something more than the hardware counterparts that they try to emulate.

In addition, midi controllers should try extent the keyboards,knobs and sliders and get really creative and forget about whats familiar. I would like to see something like a wii remote with like 50 little assignable triggers, and you could hold like 4 down at a time and you turn the remote sideways and it changes the parameter for all the controls at the same time!

that's what i'm saying, it's a valid point that your making it's just that the 'familiar' does alot for folks, I think it would be a mistake to be so foward thinking at the expense of what's familiar, kind of like giving up the past for the future, you really can't know where you're going until you know where you've been. I think devs should simply cater to the two camps of users, guis are easy enough to make so they should include some for those who need what's familiar and those who want to get away from whats familiar. but just throwing away the past doesn't make much sense imho

nathannn · Post by **nathannn** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:29 am

hambone1 wrote:I don't know why interface designers feel compelled to patronize us with interfaces that look like phony hardware.

What a ridiculous waste of resources...

i much rather have something that looks like real gear than something that uses a host interface.

Naive Teen Idol · Post by **Naive Teen Idol** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 5:01 am

One of the things I'm trying to do now is figure out the best way to control my CS-80V from my UC-33e and MIDI keyboard -- to essentially recreate as much of that intuitiveness of the hardware beast as possible. (For an idea of how the real CS-80 controls worked and sounded, go here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~avanheck/ -- it's an amazing site)

Anyway, the verdict? It's not easy. There's virtually nothing I can do to mimic performance controls like the ribbon controller or polyphonic aftertouch (which Live doesn't record, mind you). You pretty much need to figure out what all the controls did (and that site above helped), use your ears, assign as many of the controls as you can, and go from there. And the bottomline, there's virtually nothing Arturia can do to help me there. If you want a softsynth emulator of a really quirky hardware beast--and most were--that's pretty much what you have to do.

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 7:20 am

I have to say that they added so many useless functions in there....

I own NI's Pro53.. and love it...

What I like about it is that aside from the ability to add to the polyphony...
They didnt change a whole lot with the interface....
or the functionality...
the CPU usage is great... and so is the sound...

They were 'respectful' to the original design... and functionality of the instrument...

Pasha · Post by **Pasha** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:11 am

hambone1 wrote:Efficient, intuitive, and ergonomic software interfaces can go a long way in enhancing the use of any software. There are SO many advantages a software interface can have over simply trying to copy the hardware interface.

+1

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:07 pm

Some people just prefer minimalist guis with minimal clutter etc. I get that.

At the end of the day, how the stuff sounds is what is the most important thing. I personally like the Korg Legacy Digital and Arturia GUIs but I use them for the sound.

I don't know why people criticize stuff like the step sequencer and extra add ons in the JP8V. Sure if you are a traditionalist and don't like the step sequencer, then no one is forcing you to use it, then again, it might be useful for others and given that this can be run standalone, is potentially useful for anyone running it standalone.

I saw people criticizing Creamware's Prodyssey recently because it included an extra filter for Minimax as well as the Odyssey filter - WHY? It's an optional add in that does not compromise the sound of the Odyssey filter and makes for some interesting alternative sounds but because it's not 'authentic ARP Odyssey' it cheapens the product? Others complained about a niggly bug that occurred in the hardware synth being fixed in Creamware's version - strewth ! Some people just need to get a life ...

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:53 pm

some of the add-ins are great, but some seem a little contrived.

I had a demo fo the cs-80v for a bit and was impressed with the way you could cycle through the oscillators in a way familiar to me from my MonoPoly. On the CS80v this feature was taken to a really interesting place, it seemed very powerful.
Also - new filter types are great idea in my opinion.

The key point you are missing is : The people who complain about 'new filter types' are the people who are 'buying history' (not the 'clean gui' people). For the recreationists a new filter breaks the myth for them.

they obviously aren't really buying a Prodigy, but they want to believe they are - and those additions break the dream. This is why recreationist fantasies are a little bit weird. They are reductionist.

In the 1970's there was a limit to what could be done with sound, but now we can do more. But we like to pretend we can do less and when we pretend that - we like to pretend it in a way that is inappropriately hard to control.

Naive Teen Idol · Post by **Naive Teen Idol** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 2:32 pm

Angstrom wrote: I had a demo fo the cs-80v for a bit and was impressed with the way you could cycle through the oscillators in a way familiar to me from my MonoPoly. On the CS80v this feature was taken to a really interesting place, it seemed very powerful.
Also - new filter types are great idea in my opinion.

Angstrom, what do you mean by "cycle through the oscillators"?

Angstrom wrote:In the 1970's there was a limit to what could be done with sound, but now we can do more. But we like to pretend we can do less and when we pretend that - we like to pretend it in a way that is inappropriately hard to control.

I think you hit on an interesting point. The point about the early gear was that the limitations of the technology and the choices made by the manufacturers/designers within those parameters were what gave these synths their unique sound. It's natural today to try to apply those choices to today's technology -- like, say, by syncing the LFO's to MIDI tempo.

The question facing designers today is how far do you take it? At what point have you sort of blown past those limitations and just put another softsynth on the market?

For my part, I think it's less a matter of how many "modern" features you include (FX, step sequencers, etc.) than it is how they're presented within the original layout. Like, can you play the synth just like it was originally? Or would a user have to know which features are new and which aren't?

CR78 · Post by **CR78** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 4:42 am

I so wish Dave & his team at GMedia could/would take a crack at the Jupiter/CS80/P5. I think they hands down have done the best job regarding emulations; they just sound so much rawer to me

Not long ago I emailed him to just to tell him how much I loved their synths. In his reply he said the difference is that he and his team start building the code from scratch(bottom up) to mimic as closely as possible the original synth/keyboards,quirks and all. He said some companies just use a sort of generic template and go from there. I don't know or pretend to know shit about coding.

sidenote o/t: I really miss the Timewarp 2600 since going Intel/UB. Another kick ass emulation:soundwise, smokes arturia's imo. Wonder if they will ever update it.