Question on Gaia

[bluehonour]

Hello Gaia forum

I am a Fantom G owner, thinking of buying a Gaia to have an analog like synthesizer. One question I have is... the preset patches of Gaia. Are those sample based patches or also analog synthesized patches? In other words, can we choose a preset patch and actually synthesize it using the oscillator, filter etc of Gaia? I am asking because some of the preset patches are very sophisticated. I was wondering if Gaia has such sophisticated synthesis ability. Thank you.

[huggles]

Hi bluehonour

I stand to be corrected, but I believe that the underlying wave forms for the oscillators (saw, sine, square) are sample based, but the square can be modulated to give a nice pulse width modulation, which I cant do on my other rompler, a JunoG.

You are fully capable of using up to 3 oscillators (3 separate virtual analogue sound engines) to create a patch, and so I guess that the patch at it's heart is sample based, but to your point, yes you do get to use oscillators, and all the usual subtractive synth tools like filters, envelope generators etc to craft your sounds.

Hope that helps

[bluehonour]

Thanks huggles. Maybe I should rephrase my question: Suppose we initialize a patch. Can we then tweak this initialized patch and finally end up sounding like the preset sounds?

[huggles]

Suppose we initialize a patch. Can we then tweak this initialized patch and finally end up sounding like the preset sounds?

Yes you can. The workflow is very standard in that respect.

You start with patch initialisation.

You can then choose the number of tones that you want for your sound, max is 3 tones.

You assign oscillators (Waveform and Pitch) to each of your tones

You assign LFO to each of your tones

You then apply filters

You then set up the envelope

Finally you can add effects.

In fact if you take a magazine like Computer music and work through the sound design tutorials they have each month, there is nothing that the GAIA can not emulate. Obviously some will be better than others, but the machine is very flexible for sound design.