Albert Graef wrote: Ideally the synth should use some kind of priority mechanism when stealing voices. Killing the oldest one is not the best way. For example some kind of psychoacoustic algorithm could be used to find voices that are masked out by the other voices playing at louder levels. Some voices may have decayed to inaudible levels or their pitch may be close enough to the new note to be played. Best regards, Hannu

Fons Adriaensen wrote: This "was" a very good mechanism at the times when the first synth were able to play different sounds for different MIDI channels, but tone generators were to expensive, because of technical limits, in the 80ies there were no DSP chips, 4MB RAM were very expensive :D etc., I still have got a 40 MB hard disk, that was more expensive than the complete dual core PC I've today. It's easy to understand that your AMS II is gathering dust :). I had to dust my Oberheim ;). It would be suspect if somebody would write to the list, that e.g his Linux synth don't have enough voices. I often wonder why a lot of synth emulation don't sound as good as the original synth, even if comparing a held note sounds identical to an original synth. They differ in their behaviour, when playing a song, but not by comparing single held notes. To limit the polyphony today seems to be more important for some usage, than thinking about not having enough voices :). Cheers, Ralf

Fons Adriaensen wrote: E.g. as a function of legato or staccato played notes to restart or continue the envelope?

Fons Adriaensen wrote: Aha, in an extreme case e.g.: - if the envelope was at point x, then trigger the LFO - else if it was at point y, then send a program change to an external effect processor ?

Voice allocation really depends on what you want the virtual synth to do. If you want it to sound like the original then it should use a similar algorithm, if you want something that sounds better than or like the original then for something like an Oberheim, it will probably not be the voice allocation that is lacking on the emulator, more likely the overall quality of the sound that will prevent the emulator from being as good: whatever you do with voice allocation, if the emulator does not have Oberheim filters and oscillators it will not sound like an Oberheim. The algorithm was also different between synths, many used a FIFO buffer: if the voices were all allocated then the oldest voice was stolen. Some would steal the lowest note pressed, some would steal the highest note. You will eventually notice which algorithm it uses based on what you are playing - each algorithm has its defects. Siel did have an allocation algorithm that was supposed to be superior in that stealing voices was not that noticible. Never seen the code but it apparantly stole a note from somewhere in the middle so the player never lost either extremes of the scale. I've tried this as well and the results are a noticable improvement on FIFO. Pure FIFO stealing is a cheap algorithm however it perhaps does have the most noticable flaws when being played. VIrtual synths can easily improve on this, emulators can't, really, and still be something that approaches the original. If you want an virtual synth to sound like an OB-X the it will have to steal notes in the same way. Regards, nick. "we have to make sure the old choice [Windows] doesn't disappear”. Jim Wong, president of IT products, Acer _________________________________________________________________ With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos. http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/products/photo-gall…

Nick Copeland wrote: PS: And there's no need to sound identically. Even if a programme should program something absolutely new, not an emulation, the 'Prophet *5*'-'Matrix *6*'-Effect of having less voices, could add some charm. Btw. I never used the Alsa modular synth, but even an intelligent way like Fons described, might be fine for my needs, if it's possible to reduce the polyphony to 6, 5 or less voices.

Paul Davis wrote: I guess life he still plays old songs sometimes (I should google if he is giving concerts?). For Zawinul I know that he don't use old synth any more or maybe not all the time and it didn't sound as good as old recordings, resp. concert recordings.

Jens M Andreasen wrote: For the pad sound I played yesterday the Oberheim restarted the envelope. I guess this behaviour should be controllable by the way of playing, for monophonic synth legato sometimes continues the envelope, while for staccato the envelop will be restarted. For this issue I often remember Peter Gabriel, left hand octave bass + right hand 3-voice-chords, but yes, sometimes a 4-voice-chord is needed. Listen to old Weather Report recordings, when Zawinul played the Prophet 5. Today Zawinul often plays new synth, with the same sounds, but anyway it sounds disgusting today and he's a good keyboarder, able to compensate it a little bit, by the kind of playing. I'm a guitarist and glad if I get what I wish to have, when playing the keyboard, I'm not able to compensate anything by changing my playing technique. I'm babbling ;), it's because I'm a fan of some Prophet 5 revisions, unfortunately I don't have any Prophet 5.

Dennis Schulmeister wrote: Yes, but the synth he played in the last years were not as fine as the oldish synth. Btw. I only know two keyboard geniuses in terms of playing techniques for popular electronic music. Zawinul and Worrell. That does not mean that other musicians make less good music or that they are less virtuosic, but only those two had and one still has got deep impact to popular electronic music playing techniques. Can't find the right words on English, e.g. Kraftwerk are not less important, but in another way.