Re: CRAP Poll: My Mouse Is...

On Sun, 02 Jun 2024 06:53:32 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 01 Jun 2024 08:58:29 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

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On Sat, 01 Jun 2024 05:48:11 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
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I had a SB16 ISA with Creative's WaveBlaster daughter card. Ha!

>
I remember the Waveblaster. If I didn't have the Roland card, I think
I would have had that instead.

>

I remember looking at the Waveblaster with some envy. Don't mistake
me, I was quite happy with my Gravis Ultrasound, but it was undeniably
falling behind the times, and compatibility issues were /always/ a
problem. While I was confident at the time that the GUS was superiour
technology -at least conceptually- it was getting harder to deny that
the Waveblaster offered better sound.

>
Really? I thought GUS had better audio than SB and its WB. I remember
playing classic DOOM 1 with a college guy's GUS. OMG esp. MIDI in E1M8
boss level. :O
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>

The only reason I never purchased one was that I never actually saw it
sold in stores.

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But by the time I was seriously considering switching, MIDI was
already on its way out, and MIDI 'softsynth' emulation was becoming
increasingly good, with the major downside being its uselessness
outside of the Windows environment.

I *think* you might be discussing some very specific gaming context
around MIDI here?

MIDI is still very much alive and well, almost to the point where it
is a fundamental component of modern music production that involves
any level of electronic instruments at all.  These days, even more
advanced pedals like delays and reverbs are equipped with MIDI ports
so they can sync to clock.

Softsynths (in the music world more commonly called VSTs these days
due to the Steinberg format) are ubiquitous now (to the point that a
lot of successful artists use them exclusively, as they are typically
easier to work with from a workflow perspective than hardware synths),
but there is nothing about them that's exclusive to MIDI.  If a
musician is playing a synth into the DAW, much of the time they are
recording MIDI data...  MIDI is just the data and timing of notes
played, parameters tweaked, etc and is independent of the sound source
that uses that data to play.

Over the years I purchased several
MIDI emulation packages (at least one from Yamaha, and one from Roland
that I recall), and they definitely sounded a lot better than my
Gravis.

Ultimately, even the Gravis became moot when TiMIDIty (a Gravis
Ultrasound soft-synth) was developed. It's still pretty good when
paired with 200MB patch-sets (although its limited effects mean it's
definitely inferior to 'proper' soft-synths).

>

Of course, these days the retro community is all about re-creating the
rough, artificially sounds of FM synthesis. Who wants music that
sounds like actual instruments when you can have something that
recreates the beeps and boops of yesteryear? ;-)

FM synthesis, in itself really isn't about beeps and boops, it just
sounded that way in some video game implementations.  The Yamaha DX7
was originally popular among musicians because it could do sounds like
electric piano, and other bright sounds that sat well in a mix. Better
yet, being digital it stayed in tune when on stage -- the analog
synths that came before it were prone to drifting out of tune when the
temperature fluctuated, so calibrating them to sound good in various
stage environments was a challenge. 

The reason FM synths are still popular is because of that
bright/punchy sound that's all over records from the 80's..  They are
good at certain categories of sounds that were difficult to achieve
any other way.

FM synthesis in general is kind of a bitch to program... the DX7 was
notoriously horrble about this.  Korg has an interesting FM synth
called the Opsix, which uses a combination of knobs and colors to make
it somewhat easier to understand the carrier/modulation relationship
between the operators.  The Opsix does all of the same algorithms
(which are basically operator routing combinations) that the DX7 did,
yet I still think it sounds nothing like it.

The best software-based clone of the DX7 I have found is OPS7 by
Plogue.  The developer is really talented, and figured out that the
unique sound of the DX7 was not just in the synth engine but also in
the DAC, so he emulated that as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDlqXe0M2as&ab_channel=PlogueArtetTechnologie%2CInc.