Kurzweil VA-1 synthesis engine

[teceem]

Originally Posted by BaconTastesGood

I see so much discussion about the relative merits of the algorithms used by Clavia, Access, Alesis, and Waldorf, but Kurzweil never comes up in those discussions (and the Kurzweils are generally newer and should thus have more powerful hardware under the hood)

Probably because they have a more inviting user interface

[golden beers]

stunning compared to an MKS-50 or Mopho isnt really saying that much...


...stunning compared to an MKS80 or PRO1.. NOW i'm listening!

[kpsiegel]

+1 on the interface comment. To me Kurzweil's are the most undervalued used keyboards around and it is explicitly cause of the menu diving interface and steep learning curve. I love my 2600SX but it is just such a beast there is really not a lot of joy in programming it for me.

[BaconTastesGood]

Again, I haven't looked at the interface, but there are plenty of well regarded synths with horrible interfaces that people still talk about (Tetra, Blofeld). But there is literally _zero_ talk about the VA-1 synthesis engine, and this is GS, where people pick apart EVERYTHING =)

[steelyfan]

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by BaconTastesGood

Are my ears just really bad?

No, they work fine. Your simply not a victim of the placebo effect to where since it's not analog, it simply CAN'T sound this good. LOL! Enjoy your new magic box of sounds.

BTW - here's a link to a couple of videos I've just made showing some of the features and sounds of the machine.

Kurzweil PC3 - Custom Setup - YouTube

cheers
steely

[BaconTastesGood]

Originally Posted by steelyfan

Your simply not a victim of the placebo effect to where since it's not analog, it simply CAN'T sound this good. LOL! Enjoy your new magic box of sounds.

I'll be honest, I bought it to be a general multitimbral rompler to round out the rest of my gear, but expected to rely on my MKS-50 and Mopho for analog sounds.

But while just scrolling through presets on the PC361 I'd stop on some of the analog ones and they'd sound great -- enough so that I originally figured they were samples, and then through investigation I discovered they were based on the "VA-1" engine which I had never heard about until then.

Anyway, I just assumed my ears were being fooled either by samples or just the on board effects. Since no one else has been singing the praises of the VA-1 sound I just figure I have no taste =)

Nice vid btw!

[shponglefan]

Originally Posted by BaconTastesGood

Again, I haven't looked at the interface, but there are plenty of well regarded synths with horrible interfaces that people still talk about (Tetra, Blofeld).

Blofeld doesn't have a horrible interface, imho. Menu-divvy yes, but it's easy to get around in.

[joonebug]

Originally Posted by BaconTastesGood

I'm finding that the VA presets on my PC361 sound absolutely stunning, even compared to my MKS-50 or Mopho. Are my ears just really bad?

I too have the mopho and loves it, but they are times even my Kawai K4r sounded better at certain sounds as well. Then again depends on the musical context.

[kpsiegel]

Originally Posted by shponglefan

Blofeld doesn't have a horrible interface, imho. Menu-divvy yes, but it's easy to get around in.

I completely agree. There is absolutely no comparison between Blofeld menu structures and getting into the Kurzweil menus. I have no issues getting around with my Blofeld.

[cdog]

What about using something like BCR2000 or Novation SL to open up the Kurzweil interface and giving it some hands on control? I never considered this for some reason when I owned a K2500, long since sold.

[EvilDragon]

Yep, there are some people doing just that.

PC3 Nerd: PK3 Mugg

[synthdood]

I love analog gear as much as the next guy but I am amazed how people often piss on VA gear. I love my VA gear as much as the analog gear.

The other day for example I stumbled across a really great bass patch on the Prophecy that blows most of my analog gear out of the water. Every instrument has its merits be it analog or VA.

I have been contemplating replacing my K2000 with a PC3K6.

[bug2342]

Happy owner of a pc3x here.

I think one of the reasons that the Pc3 series is not discussed this much as a VA is that the VA sounds are well hidden somewhere between all the other sounds and rather bread and butter. There is no Synth category and no (well, very few) show off sounds. The other reason is probably that many users of this forum are more interested in easy access to sound design than in the best sounding/most powerful synth. Remember, most guys here are probably musicians first and geeks second (or maybe not at all). That being said, let´s proof my geekiness.

For me the Pc3 is a mixed bag for VA sounds. It is a lot harder to build a great VA sound from scratch than with my favorite VAs (Accelerator, An1x, Pluggiator). On the other hand it can sound better than many other VAs.

Lets get down to details:

- The (new) anti-aliased oscillators are great. I still slightly prefer the sound of the sonic core/creamware oscillators at high pitches, but otherwise they do a nice job. They tend to stay on the musical side. Really screaming sync sounds, super mushy super saws and general nastiness are not necessarily the strong points. Obviously it´s sad that there is no audio rate FM (with the VA oscillators).

- Filters are nice, especially the slightly odd ones, e.g. the resonant bass boost thingie. Once again: No FM, me sad... On the plus side the huge flexibility and selection of modules is cool. Very few other synths allow you to have a couple of parallel sweeping bandpasses or a modulation of EQs with envelopes.

- There is a lot of modulation and routing is powerful and flexible. The bad news: Envelopes and LFOs are both rather slow. Not terrible, but definitely not super punchy.

- Mixing several sources to a common layer for processing is very veRY VERY painful. Dear Kurzweil, please solve this for future synths.

- The FX sound great and are quite powerful. The way they are managed tends to give me a headache. I hate that I can´t directly select an FX algorithm, but have to pick a preset and go from there. This is made more annoying by the fact, that the presets are only semi-ordered.

- The interface is actually quite a bit better than most people think. The most important parameters of a layer can be all seen at the same time, assigning modulations is rather straight forward, etc. The one thing I really don´t like is having all of your approx. 200 modulation sources (most of them MIDI controllers) in one big list. So you have to either scroll through a huge list or memorize a couple of modulator numbers so you can at least jump to a point in the list close to the modulator you need.

- I have to mention the cool FM + ringmodualtor modules. Since I have to add a complaint: The Kurzweil naming for both of them is ...not smart. The FM thingie is called saw+shaper (or some shortcut of this). This is technically correct (well it adds a saw to the input and passes it through a sine shaper), but most people will have a hard time recognizing that this is actually an FM operator. The ringmodulator is of course named +sine! Sometimes I think Kurzweil wants to annoy people.

Thats it for now. Very cool synth. For 1000$ it´s a steal and probably the best synth you can get for this kind of money. One day there will be a rom expansion...

[BaconTastesGood]

One day there will be a rom expansion...

I don't know if that's the case now, since the PC3 is being discounted so heavily. Have they said anything about this lately?

Is programming the PC3 a lot easier with an external editor of some kind? I just picked up a Missing Link and I'm tempted to put together a TBMIDI editor template for the PC3.

[EvilDragon]

ROM for PC3 series is definitely on the way.

FM operator was named differently because at the time of K2000 Yamaha still held its FM patents. The name wasn't changed because of legacy purposes.

[poserp]

Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I'm sort of a fan of VA (and beyond) programming on the PC3 -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...6&feature=plcp

So far in that series of videos I've covered VA, FM, wave sequencing, and I'm currently doing physical modeling (finally found my cheat sheet of instrument formants, which means pt 2 is on its way in the near future...). More is coming, including a series on drum synthesis.

The VA stuff in the PC3 is really cool, but where things get more fun is going beyond what's currently being done. Formants plus FM is relatively recent (Yamaha's FS1R being the prime example) but still largely unexplored, especially in ways that only the PC3 can currently do. Heck, you can roll your own anti-aliasing oscillators (I have a video showing how to do that with SHAPED SAW. I'll bet there are more available that haven't been discovered yet) that extend what's already available in interesting and useful ways.

[zerocrossing]

Originally Posted by BaconTastesGood

Again, I haven't looked at the interface, but there are plenty of well regarded synths with horrible interfaces that people still talk about (Tetra, Blofeld). But there is literally _zero_ talk about the VA-1 synthesis engine, and this is GS, where people pick apart EVERYTHING =)

Putting the Tetra in there is unfair as it's basically a low priced interfaceless alternative to the Prophet 08. The only reason you buy a Tetra is because you don't have a problem using a software editor or have a MoPho keyboard to use as an editor.

[Bumply]

Originally Posted by poserp

Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I'm sort of a fan of VA (and beyond) programming on the PC3 -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...6&feature=plcp

So far in that series of videos I've covered VA, FM, wave sequencing, and I'm currently doing physical modeling (finally found my cheat sheet of instrument formants, which means pt 2 is on its way in the near future...). More is coming, including a series on drum synthesis.

The VA stuff in the PC3 is really cool, but where things get more fun is going beyond what's currently being done. Formants plus FM is relatively recent (Yamaha's FS1R being the prime example) but still largely unexplored, especially in ways that only the PC3 can currently do. Heck, you can roll your own anti-aliasing oscillators (I have a video showing how to do that with SHAPED SAW. I'll bet there are more available that haven't been discovered yet) that extend what's already available in interesting and useful ways.

Great videos. Toot away, I appreciate your contributions to the VAST community.

[BaconTastesGood]

Originally Posted by poserp

Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I'm sort of a fan of VA (and beyond) programming on the PC3 -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...6&feature=plcp

So far in that series of videos I've covered VA, FM, wave sequencing, and I'm currently doing physical modeling (finally found my cheat sheet of instrument formants, which means pt 2 is on its way in the near future...). More is coming, including a series on drum synthesis.

The VA stuff in the PC3 is really cool, but where things get more fun is going beyond what's currently being done. Formants plus FM is relatively recent (Yamaha's FS1R being the prime example) but still largely unexplored, especially in ways that only the PC3 can currently do. Heck, you can roll your own anti-aliasing oscillators (I have a video showing how to do that with SHAPED SAW. I'll bet there are more available that haven't been discovered yet) that extend what's already available in interesting and useful ways.

Ah, cool that you're on here, I was watching your vids the other night. IIRC you mentioned that the oscillators aliased, and it sounded pretty bad -- I don't recall the context, is it just certain ones or certain conditions?

[poserp]

Yes, some alias and some don't. For instance, the single block SAW aliases, but the dual block SAW does not. Certain dsp almost always causes aliasing -- SHAPER, for instance -- regardless of whether or not the source aliases. Generally speaking, the larger dsp oscillators don't exhibit aliasing.

[Ruudman]

Lack of time has made me use my PC3 more as a rompler/ preset machine.
I just have to give props to poserp's NEXT 1.0. It's a great tool for learning something about the Kurzweil engine.