From Andrew Horton Sent Tue, Mar 27th 2018, 20:49
You realize there was like 20 years of samplers after the mirage, right? You= can find a million fully featured insane sample synthesizers on reverb righ= t now! Sent from my iPhone > On Mar 27, 2018, at 4:35 PM, Brent Busby <xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: >=20 > I've purchased an Ensoniq Mirage rack (not arrived yet), because I > wanted to experiment with my own sampled waveforms and analog filters. > Partially my choice of the Mirage was because of the amount of money I > have to spend right now, not because it was necessarily the best choice > for this. >=20 > I am rather disappointed by its voice architecture though. It offers > two oscillator (sample playback) per voice, but there is only enough > independant control over the pitch of the second oscillator to allow for > chorus/detune type effects. There is one LFO, which can only send > triangle waves, and can only modulate the pitch of both oscillators. > (Basically it's hard wired to be a modulation wheel effect.) > Thankfully, the filter does have its own EG separate from the output > EG. It's 8-bit with playback rates as low as 8kHz, which should be > charaterful, and the filters are CEM chips, but still, it's awfully > hobbled and I would have liked more...like perhaps an SQ80 voice engine > where you supply your own waves. >=20 > It seems though that with sampler/synths you have to choose: You can > have a nice voice architecture, but digital filters, or you can have > analog filters and a very crude voice engine. The Korg DSS-1 is the > only exception I've seen, and frankly I haven't been impressed by the > actual sound of most of what I'm hearing in YouTube demos of it. (This > could very well just be the demos. I've found you have to really > actually have a piece of gear for at least six months to really find out > anything, and I've never had a DSS-1.) But there definitely seems to be > a real vacuum out there when it comes to samplers with deep voice > engines and real analog filters. >=20 > I've heard about an alternative third-party OS for the Mirage called > Sound Process that's supposed to hack in all sorts of things Ensoniq > never thought of, including 4-oscillator/sample per voice (sounds > promising), multitimbral/multitrack operation, etc...basically, some > keen soul with a lot of machine language coding expertise on the Mirage > has hacked it silly and created a whole new environment for it. The OS > disk is about $90 from Syntaur, so I think I'll want to check that out. >=20 > If DSI or some other manufacturer today wanted to fill a void in the > market that's really never been fully addressed though, not even in the > previous analog era in the 80's, they should make something with a > really good polyphonic voice engine with matrix type routing that has > some good analog hardware filters, but have the oscillators be sample > playback...preferably very low resolution sample playback, and you > supply the samples. To me, the problem with PPG/SQ80 style wavetable > has always been that they already chose the waves for me before I had a > chance to do anything. I want to have lots of EG's and LFO's, and have > analog filters, and supply my own waveforms...basically a Korg DSS-1 > with great tone that can interface well with modern computers over USB. >=20 > --=20 > - Brent Busby + =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D > + With the rise of social networking > -- Studio -- + sites, computers are making people > -- Amadeus -- + easier to use every day. > ----------------+ =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D