Multitimbral with V-Synth GT?

[daX6fantom]

As I understand it, there is only one way to use a V-Synth GT multitimbrally, and that is to use key zones, which means that you can't play across the entire pitch range with two different individual sounds.

Or am I overlooking something? Is there any other way to play two different parts with different sounds on the GT?

Seems crazy to me because the whole point of the GT is ostensibly to have the power of two V-Synths in the one box, but it actually has less power in this regard than the XT because the XT can play different tones from different MIDI channels I believe. I think even the original V-Synth can play different tones on different MIDI channels!!

I can't believe they didn't make it so you can make each tone (upper/lower) listen on a different MIDI channel.

Is there any other way to achieve some multitimbrality on a GT?

[vsyn7425]

Hi daX6fantom, I've only got a standard V-Synth but I always thought a V-Synth GT was truly bi-timbral i.e. each tone could have it's own midi channel. But apparently not.

I think this is disappointing as I can confirm that the original V-Synth is truly 16 part multimbral and has 16 zones per patch. This multi-timbrality has it's shortcomings though as you can only edit the patch in part 1. You would think that the V-Synth GT could have easily improved on this.

It looks like the only option to have partial multi-timbrality in the V-Synth GT is via key zones or using a keyboard split on the two tones per patch.

[daX6fantom]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it's absolutely ridiculous that the GT would have such an arbitrary limitation. I have no idea how they could have overlooked this, and how it could have not been mentioned in the reviews that I looked at. I'm pretty sure the GT cost more than two XT's!!

I'm still happy I bought it, but I was imagining that I could have patches that fade between two different sounds on the upper and lower tones with the GT.

In fact even the crappy Waldorf Blofeld I had, even with all it's bugs, could do that. Almost every digital synth seems to be multitimbral except the GT!!

So if I want to do it, I need to muck around with stupid key-zones. Crazy.

[vsyn7425]

I've noticed that the specs describe the GT as being "dual core" and not "bi-timbral" as I thought. I was thinking about the extra power this gives as each core has it's own FX I believe, but this doesn't make up for the lack of true bi-timbrality. If you want to morph between the two cores couldn't you use a realtime control somehow to fade between them?

I've got an old Yamaha AN1-X that is a fair few years older than any of the V-Synths and that has true "bi timbrality". The two scenes can be addressed seperately via different midi channels and the scenes can also be morphed via the modulation wheel. I think this is how the V-Synth GT should have been created. In the standard V-Synth I would have gladly given up the 16 part keyzoning per patch for decent multi-timbrality.

[daX6fantom]

I've noticed that the specs describe the GT as being "dual core" and not "bi-timbral" as I thought. I was thinking about the extra power this gives as each core has it's own FX I believe, but this doesn't make up for the lack of true bi-timbrality. If you want to morph between the two cores couldn't you use a realtime control somehow to fade between them?

Yes, I felt a bit tricked by this. I assumed that any synth at this level could at least play two different sounds at once.

You could fade volume between the upper and lower tones to morph, but only if they are playing the exact same notes, unless you spend hours mucking around setting it up to use key zones and change oscillator pitches. But then you can't just quickly audition different tones.

It's such an irritatingly stupid limitation for NO good reason, since the hardware is easily powerful enough to do it.

I actually posted about crossfading here: viewtopic.php?t=47655 - even this seems poorly thought out by Roland. It shouldn't require that much setup to easily crossfade between tones.

When you have an upper and lower tone that are each essentially a whole V-Synth, of course you'd want to be able to control them separately, and fade between them. They were marketing the GT as ultimate control, and it is oh so close.

Also you should be able to route one tone into the other for FM, vocoding, etc. But no, you can't... unless you muck around routing to direct out and using a physical cable to get back in. Why??

You can usually get what you want out of the V-Synth with a lot of work, but it just so often seems like that one feature that you need to do what you want without mucking around is missing.

Like I just discovered the other day that you can't use digital-in as an oscillator. But you can sample from digital-in. Why?? So you have to muck around with cables again... And my sound card doesn't have enough analog outputs, so I end up just giving up in frustration on my idea of routing audio out from the PC into a V-Synth oscillator.

I don't know what it is but I always seem to get stymied by some arbitrary limitation with the V-Synth.

Another one is that you can't put an LFO or envelope on sample start... Why?? Apparently you can change it by using midi sysex commands... So again it's up to me to waste time mucking around learning max4live in the hope that I can eventually get it to change sample start for me on the fly.

I guess the positive is that if I ever do work that out, then I should be able to map a knob to fade between upper and lower tone as well. edit: actually maybe this should be pretty easy to do using cc's, probably don't need sysex for osc level, not sure about Tone level.

But it's just more work for something that should have been in the box from the start for a top-end expensive synth.

Maybe I'm expecting too much and that's just how it is with hardware synths, I think I'm going to stick with software synths from now on. Having said that, there are still things the V-Synth does that I can't replace with a soft synth. Alchemy VST came closest, but then it was discontinued on Windows.

I think I'm going to give Reaktor a go because it does seem flexible, I should be able to set up my own custom routings and maybe create something a bit V-Synth-like.

V-Synth is a monster for making weird single tones, but it could have been SO much better with just a few little changes.

It pains me to think about what a trance/EDM monster it could have been with just a few small changes. Instead they went for the "realism" angle with AP-Synthesis, in the most digital of synths!! As if anyone who bought a V-Synth was looking for realism. And then to top it off, they crippled the sounds you can get out of AP-Synthesis. I can get a nice Erhu/saxophone sound, but why can't I turn that oscillator into a trance lead, or something really crazy like morphing sample/synth granular craziness?? Nope, only "realistic" Erhu sounds, or the most basic of synth sounds that I will never use in a track... WTF Roland?? Someone please tell me that I'm missing something here?

Such a great opportunity missed by Roland, they were frustratingly close...

[vsyn7425]

This is a bit off topic but it relates to the multi-timbrality of the standard V-Synth. It is multi-timbral but it is compromised by other timbres being linked to part/channel 1 all the time for FX and Arp etc. Why Roland chose to make the zoning of the V-Synth so powerful yet make the multi-timbrality so weak is beyond me.

The GT is much more powerful than the standard V-Synth but then much can be achieved already by the key zoning in the V-Synth that is similar to the GT's top line. If I were Roland I would have forgot about the keyzoning and concentrated more on the multi-timbrality. If you could edit each part/channel seperately that would have been ultimately more powerful and more easy to understand.

It seems the V-Synth GT duped a lot of people into thinking it was truly bi-timbral but it's not. Close... but no cigar.

As a side note I believe an editor could be created for the standard V-Synth that could edit each part of a multi-timbral setup independantly but the creator would have to deal with around 80,000 parameters.