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Comments
Couldn't agree more. Although I do like the wavefolding in Intellijel's µFold a lot. It's not the same as Buchla wavefolding but it's light years ahead of a lot of other stuff out there. I'd put it in the same league as the wavefolders in the Sputnik Dual Osc and Endorphin.es Furthrrrr. All capture the essence of Buchla wavefolding, even if their not facsimiles.
On the subject of wavefolders, there's a great Muffwiggler thread where a bunch of modular options are compared.
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=196074&start=all&postdays=0&postorder=asc
I don't think it is as cut and dried as you imply. Maybe because of variations in actual VCS3s?
There were a couple of pretty extensive comparisons posted by someone with a VCS3 and iVCS3. He was pretty impressed. I don't really know VCS3s. So,I can't judge.
Yeah my guess is that VCS3s would vary a lot. I saw a video a while back where a tech took one apart. British engineering at it's best (anyone remember Lucas Industries). Also various people have said in practice that you couldn't get the same sound out of one two days in a row, which again would kind of fit with the shoddy engineering.
Yeah but to accurately model something you need the thing itself and a bunch of lab equipment. Schematics only get you so far. You also have to tune it. Of course you can also tune it by ear, and that's led to some really nice digital filters that are analog in 'style', but not emulating real hardware. Or of course you could just create a ladder filter that sounds different to a Moog (which has led to excellent results in hardware synths over the years).
The Moog filter is the most analyzed synthesis 'thing' ever. Plus it's fairly easy to get hold of a Moog filter if you want to analyze it yourself. Neither of these things are true for the Buchla unfortunately. The Low Pass Gate is also quite hard to emulate accurately, though I think I've found a good paper on it that I might try and implement for SuperCollider if I ever find some time. I love low pass gates - the one in Brambos's Percolator makes me so happy...
My loose understanding is that the Buchla is an imperfect wavefolder, and it's those imperfections that give it's distinctive sound. However any form of wavefolder is pretty difficult to implement as you get really bad aliasing, and they're not very CPU friendly anyway (branch prediction is a pain). I did some experiments a while back on fairly simple wavefolders, and I think 16x oversampling was the point at which I got 'good' sounds. CPU wise that's pretty expensive.
They don't vary as much as some say (I've been exposed to three different VCS3's through my work with Ferry/Roxy Music). But the tuning stability is what can make them seem to sound so different.
A definite benefit of any digital emulation.
AFAIK iVCS3 is based off a CSound core. Unless things have since been updated. I'm sure @Max23 will know.
https://www.apesoft.it/Download/iVCS3 Paper_DEF_01.pdf
I remember your complaints on this forum. But he changed it
That's a really interesting paper. Thanks Jon. I guess I should investigate CSound again. Less modelling than I thought. Interesting. Though I guess given the light CPU load of the thing I should have guessed.
Whether on Buchla or Verbos & Make Noise wavefolding I never liked the sound of it being swept through. I think that's kind of missing the beauty in it, the millions of timbral possibilities that exist in the travel. Modulating with random voltage gives a nice spectral dance, further enhanced if that modulation is mult'd to a panning module.
I think a lot of people do sweeps on it and say yeah whatever, can get similar sounds on an Odyssey... which is kind of true.
@BroCoast @Max23 I think you're both right in different ways. I sweep the Intellijel µFold a lot, but I tend to send random voltages into the Buchla 259e as it responds really well with that 'spectral dance' as described above.
I put this patch together for an art installation as the client wanted 60 minutes of abstract audio without any repeating sections. The whole thing is a feedback loop of sorts with the 4MS SMR standing in for the Buchla 296e on one level (audio out for both odd and even harmonics) but the SMR has a nifty trick of it's own (a constantly revolving/evolving set of voltages based on scales - an Indian Pentatonic in this instance).
Apologies that the video is a screen shot of the patch with audio - my screen capture software couldn't keep up with the processing demands of the patch itself when attempting to capture it in Ableton. But I've made sure all the patching is visible in the screenshot so it should be reasonable easy to grok what's going on. Be sure to manually set the video to 1080p to ensure the audio doesn't suffer too much YT compression (don't worry if you can't see the a preview in the embed, it's a private video so you see nothing until you interact with the video).
Video says it's unavailable @jonmoore - might have to link to it? Not sure.
Apologies, just updated the link.> @cian said:
@BroCoast @Max23
Apologies, just updated the link and you should be able to view it now.
Cool sound. I need to revive my waveshaping code. Maybe it was closer to a Buchla than I thought.
I'd be very interested to hear it. And maybe through an iOS module!
I think there's something in that. But I also think Low Pass Gates are a natural partner to waveshaping. That soft vactrol response curve tames wave shaped timbres in a symbiotic manner that's harder to achieve with typical low pass filtering.
One of the things that I like about the VCS3 is that the filter design (adapted from the Moog design to avoid the patent) is effectively the same filter design as the 303. It has that same squelchy wetness. Paired with the built in ring modulator the VCS3/Synthi can sound incredibly close to a modded Devilfish 303 - but far better, as the VCS3/Synthi is capable of far greater timbral richness than the 303!
It's what Dave Ball used on Memorabilia (Soft Cell) back in 1981, long before the release of the 303.
Source of the info on the VCS3 filter design:
https://ask.audio/articles/synthesis-essentials-know-your-filters
Don't mind me furiously writing notes at the back here. You guys just keep on talking...
Read the NI tech guru's white papers about digital modeling techniques to approximate Buchla and Serge wavefolding.
I don't believe there is a simple magic item (like filtering) to Buchla's design. There was constant tinkering guided by his ear rather than some technical objective. One of the interesting things about his design is that even as the folding is cranked up and harmonics are added, the harmonic density doesn't just increase as it goes with a lot of other wavefolders. And the harmonics that get emphasized are interesting, too. These are clear when looking at spectrograms of timbre sweeps and not obvious when looking at an oscilloscope.
As I understand it, it was Daniel Millers Synthi that was used on that 12" mix of Memorabilia. I used to have a studio in the same building of Dave Ball and Richard Norris in West London (when they were working together in a post acid house band called The Grid). I'm going on beer o'clock war stories, so I could be wrong (but I think I'm right)!
@espiegel123
Do you mean Julian Parker? Yeah his stuff is good - what I can follow of it anyway
My guess is that the saturation is non-linear due to the components that were used, and as you say he tuned it by ear.
Low Pass gates are amazing - we need more of them.
@cian This is what I think @espiegel123 was referring too.
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=350246
Don't worry about it being KVR link, it's just were the ebook is hosted. The ZDF filter model described in this ebook is pretty much the foundation for most of the leading virtual analog synths on the market.
Vadim Zavalishin, the chap that wrote and continually updates the book, is still a lead engineer at Native Instruments but he shares his DSP knowledge with the community.
Edit:
My bad, I didn't read @espiegel123 post properly. He wasn't talking about the ZDF book.
You should ask Alessandro to change the filter model to a Diode Ladder Filter much like that in the original VCS3 and 303. I think it could be one of the missing ingredients.
Also of note, there's now a couple of folk sharing ZDF dsp for CSound.