"As the development process of the new nord wave is about to be finalized, we would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the astonishing sounds that has been flying around the office the last couple of months. The latest nord invention closes the gap between analog and digital; now you can use digital samples in an virtual analog environment. That means that you can take a sampled sound and tweak it into something completely different. Here is an example using a sampled trumpet - the sound is tweaked in real-time. The nord wave has a classsic analog synthesizer set-up with filters, LFO's and envelopes plus a massive oscillator section capable of producing classic analog waveforms (with sync), FM-synthesis, wavetables, sampled waves (wavetable with attack), noise and other miscellaneous waveforms as well as - yes - samples. Plus, oscillator modulation allows you to modulate one oscillator with the other; for instance a FM-sound modulated by a sampled sound - the character of the sample is applied to the FM sound - this example uses a sampled persian santur, as well as a classic analog lead. At the end, the lead is tweaked into a drone like sound as it is modulated by a sampled accordion(!). Every sample in the nord wave can be replaced. You can use your own samples - simply map any standard .wav-file in the nord wave manager software (for Windows and OS X) and transfer via USB. Here is an example using a custom loop with some filters and overdrive, and adding some analog stuff as well as a some oscillator modulation using a Mellotron violin sample (multi-track recording). Since the nord wave uses flash ROM to store samples, even user samples are constantly available at power-up - no external loading media is required! The nord wave has a few more weeks to go in developement - more information to follow!"more info on the Clavia website.
The samples are really awful. FM with complex waveforms always ends up sounding like distortion. Folks familiar with the Yamaha SY-99 / TG-77 will know what I mean. Once in a while that kind of timbre is nice but I don't get why Clavia is hyping this one thing so hard.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that said, I think the VA side of this will be sweet as they've finally addressed all the things that eventually drove me crazy on the Lead2x - no aftertouch, no display or patch naming...being able to layer some complex waveforms in there can only be a plus.
I'm in the "wait and see" crowd for now.
I think I first achieved this type of sound algorithm back with Reaktor 2 on the 486.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, more power to em.
WOW A SAMPLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDelete"all the things that eventually drove me crazy on the Lead2x - no aftertouch, no display or patch naming"
ReplyDeleteNL3's got all that and a much better interface too. Which doesn't mean anything if you don't dig the Clavia sound.
I agree samples + FM is generally a waste of time. I think the sample memory in the Wave will be more useful for wavetables. Especially if different wavetables can be key zone mapped.
It may sound like distortion Carbon, but to my ears, it's a good kind of distortion.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely interested to see how it's going to turn out, and I'm more interested in whether Clavia is going to make a G3, with all the features of the Wave.
The NL3 left me cold sound-wise so I sold it and got a 2X. Much happier for a while but it wasn't as nice of a controller.
ReplyDeleteI did say I think the VA side of this will be sweet and that being able to layer some complex waveforms in with the VA engine could only be a good thing. Played around with the "Synth" section on the Nord Stage and it didn't sound half-bad...I'm actually looking forward to hearing this board. I'm generally a big Clavia fan.
If it only ends up with two megabytes of sample storage as originally announced, no ammount of buzzy distorted MP3s will save it ;)
i don't know why they ditched the NL3 interface. those led encoder rings around the knobs are the bomb. seems like they should have stuck that interface on this new synth or just come out w/a G2 tabletop edition like everyone wants.
ReplyDeleteSounds good to me. Also, this is relaly just one small feature (FM with complex waveforms) in a much larger picture. Wavetable OSC's are very powerful and distinct!
ReplyDelete96/24 + analog filters plz
ReplyDelete96/24 would be nice, but why would Clavia (the company who pioneered VA and has some of the most extensive knowledge of DSP based Analog modeling) use analog filters?
ReplyDeleteBecause no digital emulation can come close to a polysynth like the Andromeda.
ReplyDeleteWaldorf, a company that has been around in one form or another since the 70's, puts analog filters into their flagship products.
Buy a Q+?
ReplyDeleteAh you're right, every company in the world should do the exact same thing as Waldorf, regardless of what their design philosphy is!
ReplyDeleteLike it or don't, it doesn't matter, the point is just that Clavia as a company is pretty much exclusively into doing DSP based analogue modeling, so it wouldn't make much sense for them to suddenly say "Nah, that whole thing we pioneered and have worked on for over a decade just didn't pan out".
i love my nord lead 3 ... why is it so insane to think that they might consider analog filters?
ReplyDeletewaldorf did a great thing by adding analog filters on the Q+.
point being - i probably won't buy this. i have enough 44.1/16 VA's. Would I buy a clavia like I described? HELL yes!
For me, the affair with NL has been a tumulous one. At first few tries, I hated it - each and every single one of the NL series 1, 2, 2x, even 3.
ReplyDeleteAs I matured more as a synthesist, I found myself blown away by sonic capabilities and true warmth coming out of a VA synth. After twidling around with NL3 for several days, I realized I fell in love with it.
The re-discovered love of NL sound led me to purchase the "original" NL few days ago (of course with PCMCIA expansion + cards). Can't wait for it's arrival. I'll definitely be checking out the Wave when it comes out. If it's anywhere as good as marketing hype would have you believe, I'm breaking out my plastic. Hopefully I'll get to play with it or hear it at the Winter NAMM (if not sooner)!
mintari, what exactly makes you think the Nord Wave will only be using 16-bit DACs, when even the original Nord Lead used 18-bit convertors, the NL3 used 24-bit DACs, and the 56xxx has always been a 24-bit DSP? Indeed, I would be somewhat surprised if you could point to any 16-bit VAs on sale today.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, SVFs have to be double-sampled (if not triple-sampled) in order to avoid stability problems at high cutoffs, so they're already running at 96kHz or so - running the whole synth engine at that speed wouldn't necessarily be too arduous, and being able to use slightly less CPU-intensive antialiasing techniques might mean that polyphony is unaffected by the switch.
But the synth engine speed isn't the same as the convertor speed; the benefits of a high-rate synth engine will still be audible through a low-rate DAC (not that such beasts exist; almost every DAC is sigma-delta these days, and those that aren't are oversampled).
My mistake - I was speaking of 96k more than anything.
ReplyDeleteAlls I's knows is that when I run a _GOOD_ softsynth at 96/24 and then at 44/16, I can hear the difference.
ReplyDeleteNo VA has ever "fooled" me into thinking it was actually analogue. whatever it takes to further bridge that gap.
The problems with digital systems, when they're pretending to be analogue systems, remain bandwidth (minBleps are a neat hack, but they only go so far - the only real cure for aliasing is going to be whacking sample rates up as far as analogue bandwidth - MHz ranges), simulating nonlinearity (analogue components are miles off perfect), and different component tolerances (a 1% variation in a component's value is huge) - but none of those are insoluble, given sufficient processing power. (Regarding the latter, someone somewhere suggested that if digital synths could somehow "acclimatise" themselves after a week, so that two digital synths next to each other would sound just subtly different, that'd be a huge step towards making them more "analogue". I suspect it's more, even, than that - each voice of a digital synth would have to initialise itself in a slightly different way, to take account of the variations inherent between analogue voices... slightly different nonlinearities in each filter and oscillator, slightly different responses to control voltages... the key would be not overdoing it, but if the "personality" of each instrument were generated at factory reset as a set of virtual tolerance parameters, and then superimposed on every voice as it's allocated... no more identikit VAs, certainly; and if you get a dodgy one, all you have to do is reset it until it warms up!)
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, digital can do things that analogue can't touch, which is why the decade-old trend towards analogue emulation is just really annoying... I like digital synths best when they're being digital, damn it! FM is much happier on digital anyway, oscillator sync can be faked with wavetables, and "fatness" can be solved by throwing a dozen slightly detuned, slightly fluctuating oscillators into the mix (which really isn't a problem if your DSP can produce 1024 of them at once) - but the only analogue module that's ever going to be switchable between 20 different filter models is a breadboard.
Nonetheless, I don't think digital synths are necessarily condemned to sounding forever different from analogue ones. That they do now is only a testament to the primitive design of VAs - or possibly, to their oversophistication; because current technology precludes simply whacking up the sample rate to 1MHz or so, VA designers have had to come up with much more delicate schemes for removing aliasing and adding nonlinearity...
...but that's the heart of the matter. Doing things the simplest way possible in analogue terms gives you oscillators and filters that clip and distort all over the place; don't respond linearly up the frequency range; change behaviour with to heat, humidity and prevailing wind direction; go insane at silly places... and sound fucking wonderful. Doing things the simplest way possible in digital terms gives you perfect, boring, characterless filters, perfectly tuned oscillators, and nasty enharmonic aliasing and quantisation noise if your sampling rate or depth are too low - but on the bright side, it does at least sound the same two days, or two models, in a row.
(Er, I seem to have written an essay. Sorry about that.)