nostalgic gen

That's great news. This is an excellent synth, though it's well beyond my pcs capabilities and the UI is a bit naff. Even so, I've been waiting a long time for a VST version, almost to the point where I was going to try and do it myself!

audacity has a cool envelope tool. It brings a whole new meaning to "riding the faders!" Last version I used, you couldn't preview effects before implementing them, which kinda made them useless

I think I have a synth that allows you to so-called pwm all waveforms. It might be the z3ta+ in fact. I don't know what it's actually doing, but I presume it's made possible due to the way pwm is implentated on wavetable synths. If a synth creates pulse width modulation of a square wave by applying an algorithm to the wavetable itself then clearly if you load a new sample into the wavetable it too will be affected in the same way by that modulation. I discovered this freeware synth from NI today. I'll share it here for anyone who's interested.

There's a work in process forum. Just link your tune to a thread in there and ask for feedback.

Always look forward to hearing new stuff from Gray. The first 1:37 of this has a real Vangelis feel about it, especially when the melody kicks in. If you have it Gray, check out "Wait for Me" in the Bladrunner ost and you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm really not too keen on the transition at 1:37. That cymbal sounds like it's trying to mask the change to me. Really liked the percussion from about 2:20 to 3:00 (the part of the track I most attributed to arabic music) but again, the cymbal hits didn't really do it for me. I think the transition might have been smoother without them. Aside from that I thought it was excellent. Lots of really nice touches in it.

Pd and jMax have to get a mention in there somewhere. Not only are they free, released under the GNU general public liscence, but they're also developed from the MAX/MSP software for Mac. Unlike MAX/MSP they unfortunately have no rewire support, since they're not commercial, but having evolved from MAX they could be consider superior in a number of ways. jMax is a java implementation of MAX/MSP and uses the java language to provide a much nicer looking user interface. Pd is a project developed by the same man who wrote MAX, which he was unhappy with for various reasons. Pd overcomes some of the limitations in MAX and is supposed to be more efficient. In fact, the MSP part of MAX/MSP was developed from pd. As you can see, the three programs are closely related and there's some information on the background of the programs here. Both jMax and pd are well supported in linux but have limitations under windows (incentive enough to warrent a closer look at linux for audio methinks). Jmax has an installer for windows but, as of yet, only the beta version is available in binary form. For later versions you have to compile the code from source. Pd, on the other hand, is quite well supported and has a dedicated community following at www.pure-data.org What's nice about pd is that it can be used as a vst host, so you can use your vst synths and effects seemlessly with it. What's not so nice is that it's much harder to use pd as a vst plugin itself, although I did find (but not yet test) a version of pd designed for this task here. I should point out that, although the software is very powerful, pd, at any rate, has a pretty steep learning curve and you're going to get your hands dirty if you really want to utilise it to its full potential. If you're new to concept of synthesis you're in for a lot of late night reading. However, if you're willing to learn about the meat and veg of digital audio (and there are some online resources to help you do this) then the sky is the limit. Not to mention you'll now be an audio guru. I've not used jMax at all so I can't really say much about it. From what I can gather its user interface is a lot similar to pd's although it looks much nicer. I suspect, however, that programming the two synths is quite different, although I think jMax ought to be easier owing to its modular nature. I'm sticking with pd, though. It's fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it and seems to be more actively supported by the community at large. Both are an exciting prospect though, particularly for those who like the idea of using their computer as a musical instrument. They're worth checking out.

Ah, cool stuff. It's nice to see that OCR has grown outside of fruity loops finally. Whether intentional or not, the off-notes add bags of character and atmosphere to the tune and (perhaps luckily) really compliment the eerie style well. I'm glad the judges let this one through because, although there's undoubtedly room for improvement, this tune is the essence of what OCR is about for me.

it's a shame it's just in 128kbps cos it doesn't really do the tune justice. All the same, a lovely piano arrangement. Look forward to hearing further submissions

I don't think I've been particularly negative about anything I've commented on recently. I certainly didn't say I hated this piece: I said it sounds nice, which it does. But, while this piece sounds good I feel that it's working well inside its limits, playing it safe. There's nothing here that stands out and makes me want to hit the repeat button. If other people think it's great then that's wonderful. My comment is just one of many so I don't really see how it matters one way or t'other. Different people respond to music in different ways. This is my honest reaction to the tune. I can't offer any more than that.

are you the remixer's girlfriend, or something?

I agree with TO. It was nice, but nothing really special though.

Well, it's not really to do with the speakers - they'll keep going until they tear themselves apart - but the amplifier. There's a limit to what the amplifer can take and once this is passed the signal starts to clip. This analogy can be applied to digital clipping as well. With both analogue and digital systems compression is often used as a means to prevent clipping. I know everyone likes to talk about a compressor making things louder but I think this is misleading. A compressor literally compresses a signal (which would indicate it gets quieter) then, after compression, a seperate amplifier is used to boost the amplitude back to a desirable level if required. This may be the same as it was at the input or it may be lower. Occasionally it may be higher. Usually one simply tries to return the signal level to what it was at the input (normalisation). What's important to realise here is that what we perceive as loudness and the actual amplitude of the signal in question is not necessarily the same thing. Sure, if you increase amplification you increase loudness but if you introduce a compressor into the chain then you can increase perceived loudness without additional amplification at all. A look back over this thread, on the rest of the forum and on the internet in general should explain why this is the case.

I don't think I can be so positive about this one. Technically it's excellent and quite stylistic (I'm tempted to call the guitar clichéd and I know others would say the same about the synth bells) but it seems an odd marriage between the tense, shouting electric guitar and the soft ambient background. I can't say it particularly works for me. If these were two seperate tracks then I'd love them both. Put together like this they seem to be fighting for attention. It's an interesting project, to use these two contrasting styles but it's not a success for me, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, it's great to finally see more people submitting stuff that's not generic techno. Keep it up

concretefx released a couple of new vsts the other day. A tape delay with some quite nice looking features (including saturation) and a pad machine as well.

Discovered this today, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~thman/VST/vst-alleff.htm