The Lack of Good Tone Generators

pete

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
First, a tone generator for this subject needs two parts: it has to be 100% compliant with a wind controller and it has to sound good.

Very, very few do either well and none do both well.

I'm very old school: my wind controller was a WX11 that I owned back in the late 1980's/early 1990's. I did not but the tone generator from Yamaha because I didn't really care for the sound -- and I owned A Roland D-5, D-50 and U-110 (a sample playback module).

...Surprise! None of my Roland stuff was completely compatible with the WX11.

I've recently gone out and played with new samplers/sample playback/synths and they sounded ... worse than the stuff I used in the 1980's.

So ... anyone find a tone generator that they're actually impressed with that works well with a wind controller?
 
Well, I've always wanted something more acoustic-sounding, thus the reason for the U110 (I sold that years ago, BTB).
 
Does the VL70m have a sampler on it as well?

The chip seems pretty expensive.
 
I would think that the replacement chip is just full of decent samples. Too bad the original unit doesn't have that capability.
 
Ahhh! Here's the rub on the sampling thing:

"KEEP IN MIND that NO SAMPLES were used in the making of these audio clips. The VL70-m is a true SYNTHESIZER! What you are hearing are 100% SYNTHESIZED sounds programmed and played by wind controller sound designer Matt Traum! What this means is that these physical modeled sounds are free of the numerous limitations that are inherent in sample-based systems such as noticeable shifts in timbre at keymap break points and velocity layers, bad or non-existent legato implementation, unrealistic or non-existent transitions from loud to soft WITHIN a note, etc... The physical modeled TURBO VL70-m overcomes the limitations of sample-based systems!"

You can buy the VL70m from them with the turbo chip preinstalled but it's about $300 more than street price for the standard version.
 
Now it has been some time since I played with samplers but I don't remember them being that bad.

Does anyone recall the Todd Rundgren CD where all he does is sample stuff?
 
The VL70m is an FM synthesis module. Sorry; I didn't know there was a question on it: I would have responded sooner.
 
Ed Svoboda said:
Now it has been some time since I played with samplers but I don't remember them being that bad.

Does anyone recall the Todd Rundgren CD where all he does is sample stuff?
Click to expand...


Ed,

I didn't say I agreed with that statement in full. I was just sharing the information from Patchman's site. It also needs noted they're pimping their high priced "tubro chip" with all their techno speak too. :emoji_relaxed:

Glen
 
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