makers of Tassman make a horrible guitar sim

[kensuguro]

http://www.applied-acoustics.com/strumacoustic.php

Sounds cool on paper: automatically voices the chords for you, does the mutes, cuts etc., bunch of different physical models, etc... Listen to the demo mp3... the results are laughable.

Again.... why? Tassman was cool. Lounge lizard was cool.. but this??

[braincell]

Have you tried Guitar Hero? That's a sim .

[Neutron]

A guitar makes a great guitar sound.
especially when hooked up to a VG-99

[alfonso]

A guitar makes a great guitar sound.
especially when hooked up to a VG-99

Well, but in this case, if the VG 99 is used, it makes the sound. I have a VG88 2.0-upgraded and it does a quite good job, but having recently purchased an hand-wired p2p Ceriatone clone of a 57 Deluxe and owning also a JCM2000 TSL100, it is resting in its bag, waiting just for particular live situations where weird sounds are required.

Man, the 57 Deluxe clone is sweet....

[Neutron]

A guitar makes a great guitar sound.
especially when hooked up to a VG-99

Well, but in this case, if the VG 99 is used, it makes the sound. I have a VG88 2.0-upgraded and it does a quite good job, but having recently purchased an hand-wired p2p Ceriatone clone of a 57 Deluxe and owning also a JCM2000 TSL100, it is resting in its bag, waiting just for particular live situations where weird sounds are required.

Man, the 57 Deluxe clone is sweet....

the VG-99 has much better sound than vg-88 i have the 88. not even worth selling now
its actually working on the guitar sound and not resynthesizing. the guitar to midi in it sucks though.

It is DSP though, and the real thing will always sound better. i dont have space, and dont use the guitar enough or to justify real guitar amps etc though.

Still its better than a PC plugin by a fair bit.

[garyb]

the Dynatube is pretty damn good. use your own pedals/processor and its better than that.

[ReD_MuZe]

you can buy a real guitar for 50$,
learn to play the 4 chords you need in 2 weeks, and forget all these silly emulations.
(or record one of the hundreds of guitar players in your vicinity)

tasman and its bi-products were always too plastic sounding this is not suprising one bit. all this physical modeling frenzy is just a big hot air baloon imho. better get real instruments, and if you are making commercials and want to cut on cost and effort just use samples, used the right way tey can be much more realistic than any physical modeling tool anywhere.

[kensuguro]

great jab from Red.. You're absolutely right. My question is... why in the world would they make such a thing... does it even make business sense? I just don't understand the business behind stuff like this, and there are many. Not limited to bad physmod stuff, but poorly sampled libraries, etc... Why make a crappy product, when it's so apparent they're useless? And no, supporting the plugin with "see how all the drum, pad, and fx parts were done on this synth" type demos isn't an excuse, when the plugin fails miserably to emulate its primary instrument.

[braincell]

Physical modeling of acoustic instruments is bad now but one day it will sound real. A problem though is the input device. It is impossible to simulate many instruments on a keyboard partly because of the physical design of the instrument. Think of your voice as an example. You can get thousands of sounds by shaping your throat and mouth in different ways. It is not possible to shape a sound that way using a keyboard. It's just too simple of an instrument. A piano rompler with multiple velocity switching samples can sound very similar to a real piano because a midi keyboard is the same physical design and a simple one. Once you hit the note, you have no more control over the tone of it. A guitar can make so many different sounds. There are a lot of variables. Sympathetic vibrations are a small part of it. I think that aspect could be modeled. An instrument like a guitar synthesizer could be used in tandem with a physical modeling guitar synthesizer in the future. The Axon guitar is an example of this. It doesn't sound real now but I am sure it will eventually. Why not use a real guitar? With this device you could simulate many styles of guitars and pickups, even make new ones.

[ReD_MuZe]

physical modeling will remain plastic like for the next 20 years. its not about the computer speed, its the lack of knowledge about how the universe works, combined with the utter tone-deaf scientists who conceived it more than 20 years ago (and there have been very little progress since).

however business-wise, it makes sence, as it works on one of the basic human traits - laziness.

why learn to play, or record a pro, when you can do it for free at home yourself ?
why learn music when you can use apple loops?

so as-long as there are tones of lazy people, there will be tones of crappy instrument emulatons.

[braincell]

In the end, the listener doesn't really care. It would be difficult to learn a new instrument, especially if you are not young. It might not have to sound exactly like a guitar to be a useful sound. The rhodes piano sounds nothing like a piano, yet it became an important instrument in jazz. The 808 kick drum sounds nothing like a kick drum, yet it is an important sound in electronic music. The electric guitar sounds nothing like an acoustic guitar!

One thing we know for sure, there are way too many guitarists. Anything we can do to put them out of business would be wonderful. The only person who is less creative than the average engineer is the average guitarist. You say there has been little progress in physical modeling in the past 20 years. That is because all they want to do is model analog synthesizers. I contend there has been very little progress in guitar playing in the past 20 years. I say it is guitarists who don't know how the universe works.

[Shroomz~>]

I think everything has it's place if looked at rationally. As Assaf says though, if you want guitar buy a guitar & record it or record a friend or local musician playing one. I also agree that samples would be the next best option. That said, there is still a place for physical modelling instruments if they can produce interesting & better still, unique sounds. I remember spending hours & hours getting some really unusual & unique sounds out of the old Korg Prophecy when they first came out all those years ago. Sharc & I don't have one anymore, but it was such an interesting instrument that I'd definitely like to get one second hand at some point. They were totally killer when controlled from a PC1600 via realtime system exclusive messages.

[Tau]

Shroomz, I still have the Prophecy, and the main reason is indeed the physically modeled horn sounds - they sound unique, maybe not 100% realistic, but very very nice.

That was really a performance synth - very responsive and quircky. I also have a Z1, which has the same physical models as well as others, but it doesn't sound nearly as good (much better for the VA, I say).

T

[braincell]

To say that Reason sounds bad is an over simplification because you can load samples into it. In fact, one of the main parts of Reason is the drum machine which is a sample player/sequencer. In contrast to the STS series of samplers, it is very easy and quick to use. It is quite ridiculous that the Scope platform doesn't have a decent drum machine such as this. What were they thinking? It almost seems like the Creamware/Scope engineers aren't even musicians.

[sharc]

It is quite ridiculous that the Scope platform doesn't have a decent drum machine such as this.

RD Drum?

[next to nothing]

It is quite ridiculous that the Scope platform doesn't have a decent drum machine such as this.

braincell, you have known about it since 30th september 2004. but its probably not that important to you as you are more fond of "exotic electronic and ethnic sounding drums".

[Shroomz~>]

Scope is far more versatile on the drum synth & sampler front than Reason imo. Scope has never had anyone focus on sequencing to the level that you see in high quality midi/audio sequencers like Cubase, Logic etc, but that's simply because most Scope users already own a good sequencer app, Braincell included (he is a Cubase user). It also would not make good use of Scope's resources imo. It's this simple - If you sequence your midi in an app like Cubase or Logic you have a vastly improved array of options far beyond those available in Reason or similar all-in-one solutions. Both Cubase & Logic have always been at the forefront of midi recording & sequencing technology & their ability to stay at the forefront of that market is clearly down to their abilities in their field, their features & advanced functionality. Now... it IS indeed possible to use one of the many sequencing options in Scope such as those available in CW Modular II & III with the addition of Adern Flexor, Wolf's 32-step sequencer & SpaceF's new sequencers for example. With any of those sequencing options you could be sequencing anything from Scope based VA drum synth modules or synth/modular patches to a ready made ethnic perc Akai patch on one of the simple Akai sample players or STS if you prefer. On top of this you obviously have SpaceF's wonderful 16-bit Wave players available in versions from 5 to 10 parts & with some very cool features to boot. If you add to all this the fact that you can make your own drum synth modules, devices or sample players with the sdk, it just seems to me that some people either look past or don't understand how to make proper use of all these features & the versatile options that Scope provides.

[Shroomz~>]

I really like the Akai sample players. Not STS, although that series are cool and very powerfull, but the simplicity of loading Akai patches into the sample players we've been 'given' is just second to none imo.

[ReD_MuZe]

In the end, the listener doesn't really care. It would be difficult to learn a new instrument, especially if you are not young. It might not have to sound exactly like a guitar to be a useful sound. The rhodes piano sounds nothing like a piano, yet it became an important instrument in jazz. The 808 kick drum sounds nothing like a kick drum, yet it is an important sound in electronic music. The electric guitar sounds nothing like an acoustic guitar!

Well i must really agree with this point here. Some classics have come from being poor imitations, but still sound great. however, this is not because they tried to mimic the sound, but rather mimic its musical behavior. which is something like mimicking a tb303 with a phaser instead of a lowpass filter. it can have the same musical behavior, and will serve the same musical "purpose" but give a different feel and color to it.
This is a good way of thought Imo. however vsti's replacing guitars and so on, really this is only good for jingles imo. finding a guitarist near you is much easer than learning how to operate a new sample. besides all of this solitary studio work is nice for a while, but this solitary way takes its tole.

bringing a musician to record in your studio can be a very educational experience!

I agree with the VA fad, it is imo the same fad of physical modeling sounding realistic.
1) no digital gear can ever sound analog
2) these emulations tend to bring the worst of both worlds as the audio quality will always be as good as your chain. but thats just me.

I think digital has much to offer, and indeed if physical modeling would be treated more as "waveguides" - conceptually ditch the need to imitate perfectly good cheap and abundant instruments - and concentrate on the synthesis capabilities itself, we could see much more interesting progress than we do today (thanx for the idea btw)

and im not talking about tweaking rhodes imitations to sound strange, im talking about real exploration of how to create new useful and interesting sounds. a computer is a wonderful new instrument, but it is rarely treated as such.

i remember being about 11 when i heard a yamaha digital piano. after knowing only fm style absurd imitations, i was sure that this was sounding just like a real piano. i carried on like this till one day, it started to bug me, those cheesy pianos were not sounding so hot anymore. but rather synthetic and unwelcoming. yes, cd era has come, and we have learned to enjoy the sound of a real piano again, after almost a decade of getting used to cassettes hissing, gargling and distorting our sound, through walk-mans that sound worse than the worst mp3 players we have today.

then came logic with its great evp88. i was sure this was it. they finally made it. a year later, this rhodes (with the only model that sounded better than the others suitcase mk1) has polluted every lounge track, disco track, artist sketch and so on. up to a degree that listening to a proper rhodes quickly became great relief even for the tone deaf people.

I heard a sentence i don't remember when that goes something like "nothing gets older quicker than a new sound". the very few sounds that stay fresh till this day (violins, piano, guitar) have gone a vigorous natural selection and evolution process. i doubt any coder alone can beat that.

in the 80's when the first lins were coming out, there were allot of worried drummers. in-fact what has happened instead of loosing their jobs, more music was being done, and more drumming styles have evolved due to electronic music. and indeed drums have not disappeared from the world. if anything drum machines brought the drums to the front of the stage, making them even more indispensable!
This was not because drum machines were used to imitate drummers, but rather to innovate music. and up to this date, even the most detailed sample bank cant match a real drummer's feel (a good one).
it can fool you, yes (provided its buried inside a bloated mix). but it will never be as good. it can always be something different, perhaps sometimes better, but as far as imitations go, you always get a ceiling of how good it can sound, where in innovation there is no limit (and this also goes into using reference tracks for ones music).

i have no problem with the technology itself. actually you have dropped the stick and i shall pick it up gladly (is that how you say it?).

[garyb]

besides, music is by and for musicians and other humans!

use a synthesist for the synth parts!
use a guitar player for the guitar parts!
use a flutist and a pianist too!
use a percussionist!

and pay them for it! everyone needs to make a living!

...or at least when you can!