issue07

EMUSIC-L Digest                                       Volume 34,Issue 07

This issue's topics: Roland JD-800 Reviews and Opinions
	
	jd800 etc (6 messages)


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Date:         Fri, 8 Nov 1991 10:55:45 EST
From:         ronin 
Subject:      jd800 etc

well, i finally got around to auditioning some equipment recently.
herewith, my reactions...

the roland d-series was the synth that specifically realized the goal
of a lot of 'serious' synthesis... the complex layering of independent
tones or to produce fuller sonic events. the dx7, of course, did this
to some degree, by allowing envelope-controlled modulation between
fm 'stacks', but the d-series was the one that really put together
completely different dynamic and static tonal structures in a
single small package, so that guitar plucks could be put in the front
of those damned shakuhachi. i remember, when we bought one here, i played
it for a professor who i'd been working with for a while in midi
applications, and his first reaction was 'so what... sounds like a midi
stack'. which was, of course, the point. since then, most of the niftier
new boxes have gone this route, prompting craig anderton to coin a
formal term for all these things that give you some combination of
sampled and looped sound sources: sampling plus synthesis (s&s).
what's been the trick for each of these machines is how to provide
dynamic control over the timbral changes. i decided to play with the two
that seemed most attractive to me (for lots of reasons): the jd800, and
a couple of vector synths.
the jd800 provides over 100 tone sources, ranging from classic old
analog style waveforms to neo-classic chiffs and plucks, to a couple
nice percussion tones and some oddballs for variety. it seems that all
of these tones are generated by looped wave memory. everything sounds
odd at low pitch. but it's an odd i like. slow bells always turned me
on. a patch consists of one of these tones passed through a standard
synthesus block, with a filter, amp, some effects, mods, and so on.
the envelopes for the variant modules are multi-stage and point-level
variable, so basically anything can move anywhere. four of these
synthesis modules are assembled to make a voice, so you can do some pretty
complex stuff with the thing. so what specifically did i love about it?
first, of course... the sliders. i'm an old analog hand, and having direct
access to all those parameters made it really easy for me to sit down
and start *programming*. at the same time, the classic voice architecture
made what i was doing almost completely intuitive. the loop between conception
and realization of an idea was shorter than it's been in a long time.
so i liked the idea of this thing. it matched by biases. one interesting
note... the filter can be selected to be lowpass, hipass, or bandpass.
and the hipass is *resonant*. hoohah. that was a well-appreciated touch.
so what might i say against it? besides the price? well.. the architecture,
while wonderful for my particular programming approach, was of course limited.
still can't reroute anything in these machines, you know. no interesting
modulations available.
oh damn... gotta go. next installment later today.

-------------< Extremism in the Pursuit of Good Noise is no Vice >-------
Eric Harnden (Ronin)
 or 
The American University Physics Dept.
Washington, D.C

------------------------------

Date:         Mon, 11 Nov 1991 10:59:01 EST
From:         ronin 
Subject:      jd800 etc cont'd

anyway, so there i was, shakuhachi on all sides....

i took the extra time afforded me by the weekend and took another look
at the jd800, and my foremost concern was born out, unfortunately: the
modulation options really are limited. ya got an lfo, and that's about
it. now, it's a nice lfo... plenty of useful waveforms. but it's subaudio
only. no exponential fm on this baby. no routing of the signal oscillators
as modulation sources, like on the prophet. no am anywhere (not that there's
been any anywhere for years, right?). so what does that make this thing?
basically, it's the final version of their whole J-series concept... the
juno made good. straight-ahead subtractive synthesis architecture, taken to
the limit made possible by dsp hardware. the 4-tone per voice/24 voice poly-
phonic/6 patch multitimbral biz sort of does make it the last one i'll want.
can't imagine needing any more of that damn sound, you know? but i do like
that sound a lot, and like i said, i've grown quite accustomed to the
orientation engendered by that linear architecture. terrible for acoustic
emulation, of course, but of course that's not what i play synthesizers for,
now is it?
as to the vector doohickeys... this will take some convincing, yet. on the
surface level, i appreciated the factory sounds on the korg version more
than on the yamaha. in general they seemed richer... more complex even in
the steady state. on the next level, i found the yamaha's controls easier
to access, and more flexible. there were more front panel buttons, providing
instant access to functions, where on the korg you had to go through layers
of menu, with cursors and a dial being the main entry mechanism. also, on the
yamaha, i got the impression that i had more tones on the joystick. just on
the quick pass, it seemed that i had four tones on the yamaha, with one
at each pole, and only two (?) on the korg, where two of the poles were
even mix points. this doesn't sound right, so i would appreciate feedback from
anyone who has more in depth experience with the korg.
so what about vector control? it was cute. i got tired of it quickly. i
immediately saw the interest in executing dynamic timbral controls without
having to go through envelope editing, but i have to say that i'd really
rather just have envelopes with sliders, like on the roland. for example...
when i build a dynamic event, i may do some tweaking and finally get the
decay-fade between two partials just right, and then need to go back and work
on their attacks. with the joystick, i get the impression that i have to work
on the entire trajectory on every pass. frankly, i don't feel that
coordinated. now, certainly, this is easier than going through the ridiculous
contortions now demanded by most digital synthesizers in order to control
their dynamics. modern multi-part variable level envelopes have upwards of
a dozen parameters! but hell... give me knobs, and i'll do just fine, thanks.
also, there's this immediate tendency to overuse the joystick...
to set up wildly different tones and go swoop-bong-zztt-foosh on every
event. yucch. given some time, i can see some more subtle approaches,
like placing slightly different timbres at each pole of the joystick,
or even simliar tones with different formant envelopes. this could be
cool. but i'm not comfortable with it yet. maybe i'll get one for the lab,
and play with it for a while.
why can't i find a waldorf to audition?

-------------------< Cognitive Dissonance is an Art Form >---------------
Eric Harnden (Ronin)
 or 
The American University Physics Dept.
Washington, D.C

------------------------------

Date:         Mon, 11 Nov 1991 16:02:28 EST
From:         Jon Crystal 
Subject:      Re: jd800 etc cont'd

You make some good points regarding the limitations of vector synthesis, but I
have found it an interesting expansion (not replacement) of envelope structures
.  One application where they excel is in realtime performance - try to dupli-
cate that with four knobs at once. Another is to use the vector stick as an
external controller for another module. The Yamaha TG33 sends vector movement
as controllers 16 and 17: some experimenting here can also open new horizons.So
I agree it may be over-rated, but nonetheless adds something to a system.

------------------------------

Date:         Wed, 13 Nov 1991 10:57:47 +0000
From:         Nick Rothwell 
Subject:      Re: jd800 etc cont'd

[Second attempt at posting...]

>anyway, so there i was, shakuhachi on all sides....

I've been there.

>no am anywhere (not that there's
>been any anywhere for years, right?).

am == Amplitude Modulation? Oh, I thought the JD had LFO routing to pitch,
filter cutoff and amplitude cutoff. I also thought it had two LFO's.
Otherwise, it seems to be a simpler, easy-access U-50. (Whoops, sorry,
D-70.)

>so what does that make this thing?
>basically, it's the final version of their whole J-series concept...

Yup. The lack of PWM or anything like it is a shame, though. The layering
of high/bandpass-filtered resonated tones is nice though - it's nice on the
D-70 anyway.

>this will take some convincing, yet. on the
>surface level, i appreciated the factory sounds on the korg version more
>than on the yamaha. in general they seemed richer... more complex even in
>the steady state.

I appreciated the Wavestation factory sounds for about as long as it took
me to wipe them all. I've never looked back.

>on the next level, i found the yamaha's controls easier
>to access, and more flexible. there were more front panel buttons, providing
>instant access to functions, where on the korg you had to go through layers
>of menu, with cursors and a dial being the main entry mechanism.

The WS actually has a very nice user interface for what it's providing.
There are a lot worse, even with dedicated buttons and controls (the D-70 -
again..)

>also, on the
>yamaha, i got the impression that i had more tones on the joystick. just on
>the quick pass, it seemed that i had four tones on the yamaha, with one
>at each pole, and only two (?) on the korg, where two of the poles were
>even mix points.

The WS has 1-, 2- and 4-tone patches. In 2-tone you get a 1-dimensional
mixing.

>so what about vector control? it was cute. i got tired of it quickly.

It's not as flashy and gosh-wow as some people make out, but it's fairly
central and important nonetheless. Getting a convincing mix of sounds takes
practice, but the results are worth it.

>with the joystick, i get the impression that i have to work
>on the entire trajectory on every pass.

Yes, fair comment. I use the joystick for the major timbral changes and the
individual amp. envelopes for subsidiary alterations (like attack and
decay).

>why can't i find a waldorf to audition?

'cos Team Metlay is buying them all (We have three or four between us).

        Nick.

------------------------------

Date:         Wed, 13 Nov 1991 23:16:28 MST
From:         Adam Schabtach 
Subject:      Re: jd800 etc cont'd

> >why can't i find a waldorf to audition?
>
> 'cos Team Metlay is buying them all (We have three or four between us).

Unfortunately, even if you do find one, you probably won't be able to
get a good feel for what it can do. The factory presets are mostly
quite dull, and do little to demonstrate the interesting aspects of
the machine. As Nick has pointed out, one good way to audition the
Waldorf is to listen to Tangerine Dream's album "Exit". Most of the
sounds on that album (apart from the sampled drums) can be recreated
with the Waldorf.

--Adam

------------------------------

Date:         Thu, 14 Nov 1991 09:30:14 EST
From:         eric harnden 
Subject:      Re: jd800 etc cont'd

>
>am == Amplitude Modulation? Oh, I thought the JD had LFO routing to pitch,
>filter cutoff and amplitude cutoff. I also thought it had two LFO's.
>Otherwise, it seems to be a simpler, easy-access U-50. (Whoops, sorry,
>D-70.)
>

oops, sorry... i conventionally refer to audio rate modulation events
by their basic terms, and explicitly append the modifier 'sub-audio'
when referring to such. by 'no am', i meant to indicate that audio-rate
amplitude modulation (sideband generation for pitch ornamentation) was
not supported.

>
>>also, on the
>>yamaha, i got the impression that i had more tones on the joystick. just on
>>the quick pass, it seemed that i had four tones on the yamaha, with one
>>at each pole, and only two (?) on the korg, where two of the poles were
>>even mix points.
>
>The WS has 1-, 2- and 4-tone patches. In 2-tone you get a 1-dimensional
>mixing.
>

yeah... i went and did some more checking. i must have just landed on
a few odd patches when i tried tweaking.

>>why can't i find a waldorf to audition?
>
>'cos Team Metlay is buying them all (We have three or four between us).
>

well, cough some of those babies up!
hey... do you folks tour? maybe if you hit DC i can see these thingies.

-------------------< Cognitive Dissonance is an Art Form >---------------
Eric Harnden (Ronin)
 or 
The American University Physics Dept.
Washington, D.C

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End of the EMUSIC-L Digest
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