[linux-audio-user] bristol 0.9.5-66 (was Re: ANN: bristol 0.9.5-60)

[Sylvain Robitaille]

On Sun, 1 Oct 2006, Nick Copeland wrote:

>> Funnily enough I uploaded -66 yesterday night. ...

Well, that definitely fixes the pitch-bend controller response, and
to some extent the mod-wheel response as well.  With that one, I find
(at least with most of the default patches) that either the mod-wheel
reacts too much, or it isn't affecting the sound in a way that I expect.
This may be just something relevant to the patches themselves, though.
I haven't investigated this enough to be able to provide a better report,
I'm afraid.


On Mon, 2 Oct 2006, I replied:

> Will try that (hopefully this evening).

Done.  I even tried it with the guitar-to-MIDI converter: that's a
non-starter, though.  The tracking with Bristol is extremely uneven, and
in fact with the guitar-controller Bristol does not play in tune at all
(either with the guitar itself, or with other keyboards which are indeed
tuned to each other), while it's mostly fine with the keyboard controllers
(and the keyboard synths track fine with the guitar controller).

Interestingly, though, it seems to me that the B3 plays a semitone (or so)
sharp (compared to my piano).  I checked that at both 48KHz and 44.1KHz.
No way to tune the B3?  I see (heard!) what you mean about being careful
with the gain option and the B3!  :-)  I don't understand, though,
why that emulation is so much louder than the others.

>> The other things that was broken is keyboard assigment and release -
>> note on/off can intermittently be lost.

This indeed may have been what was causing the behaviour I discussed
earlier.  -66 doesn't seem to exhibit that behaviour on my system (or at
least I have to play purposely sloppily, or with the guitar-controller
for it to happen).

I tried experimenting with some of the synthesizer emulations (primarily
the Prophet-5 and the PolySix).  It's been a very long time since I had
my hands on hardware versions of these, but I'm having trouble wrapping
my head around the emulations on Bristol.  I'll probably need to refer
to readme.synths _while_ tweaking sounds, to be sure I'm adjusting what
I _think_ I'm adjusting.

Thank you, by the way, for readme.synths.  I've spotted a few typos in
that file, that if I can find the time (and you don't mind) I'd like to
submit corrections for.  That file is an interesting read above and
beyond its description of the controls available for each emulation.
:-)

-- 
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Sylvain Robitaille                              syl at alcor.concordia.ca

Major in Electroacoustic Studies                  Concordia University
Faculty of Fine Arts / Music Department       Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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