the new STS

[Zer]

http://www.hgf-synthesizer.de/se/STS/STS.html

[Mr Arkadin]

If only there was a new STS. i really think that SC should farm it off to a third party developer an update this potentially great instrument.

[braincell]

That would be a great idea but nobody would want it because the customer base is too small. It's a chicken or egg problem.

[darkrezin]

Personally I think that Kontakt killed the market long ago. There's very little market even for other native samplers. It's a real shame IMHO but that's life.

I'd like to see some kind of 'anti-Kontakt' device for Scope... something like an MPC or Guru, centred around creative sampling and mangling (and maybe sequencing as well). Something like this would be creative and interesting, and really benefit from low DSP latency instead of block-based native processing.

[dawman]

Excellent idea.
I've had STS for years and never even opened it until I got the XITE-1.
I just didn't need it.
When Emulators were the thing we made our own samples and anxiously awaited those rare EMU treats. But since Gigastudio the need for a hardware sampler wasn't important.
But I realize even Gigastudio lacked the big sound and various colors hardware samplers offer.
The S770's were the best sounding sampler for accurate big sound I ever used.
Oberheim DPX players were convenient for their fast loading, but the converted libraries lost thir original depth and color.
Akai has some great samplers too. Their 8 bit samplers can mangle and add grit better than anything I have ever heard.
Just a drum kit through an old 8bit Akai is proof of that. You run those sounds into a console alongside of these sample playback devices and you'll notice that sound cannot be achieved except on that machine only.
Anti-Kontakt.........
Gotta love that.

[valis]

Personally I think that Kontakt killed the market long ago. There's very little market even for other native samplers. It's a real shame IMHO but that's life.

I'd like to see some kind of 'anti-Kontakt' device for Scope... something like an MPC or Guru, centred around creative sampling and mangling (and maybe sequencing as well). Something like this would be creative and interesting, and really benefit from low DSP latency instead of block-based native processing.

I'm with you on this actually. I don't need yet another zillion preset multigigabyte sampler just to use Scope's filters on the outputs, but some interesting sample manipulation tools that leveraged scope's realtime environment would complement say an Ableton Live set rather well imo (throw in some interesting ways to quantize & modulate sample start and realtime loop capture & you're on your way imo.)

Also having those modules available AND STABLE in the Mod shell(s) would just be...lovely.

[netguyjoel]

+1 I am a big user of samples & would love a good, stable and flexible Scope sampler device (that I could load more than 3 in XITE)...

[siriusbliss]

I liked being able to run various formats in STS.

Kontakt is tolerable because there are some good 3rd party libraries.
Independence is good also.

An update to STS that builds in the key mappings and scripting is possible I believe.
Then you can do all the mangling and triggering if so desired.

Having a hardware sampler that's also a long-play audio sequencer (essentially an intelligent tracker) would rule. Perhaps just merge VDAT and STS and essentially turn the whole thing into a big audio production/editor.

Greg

[astroman]

Having a hardware sampler that's also a long-play audio sequencer (essentially an intelligent tracker) would rule. ...

Greg, wanna buy my old Roland SP808 ?

cheers, Tom

[siriusbliss]

Having a hardware sampler that's also a long-play audio sequencer (essentially an intelligent tracker) would rule. ...

Greg, wanna buy my old Roland SP808 ?

cheers, Tom

no

I'm good to go...

G

[braincell]

Valis, I think it would be possible to go beyond just using their filters. I would like to see resynthesis used and a sort of sampler/synthesizer hybrid but all this would be a major undertaking. The STS was intended to be a copy of the Akai series samplers and nothing more. No one module was ever the primary focus. Since I never owned an Akai, I didn't find the STS easy to use. It's tedious because of the tiny size of it and because the hardware design wasn't intended to be used with a mouse and keyboard. I always thought that the platform was engineered to sound good and look cool but not for ease of use. I could care less what it looks like but maybe that is a selling point to someone who doesn't know anything about it. Patch cables make sense for the modular but are a hindrance when just using single module synthesizers. VST synthesizers in Cubase seem easier and quicker to use. I also like being able to make a synthesizer full screen. It's not hardware so why does it have to look like hardware? That concept is just stupid.

[doktorfuture]

Kontakt is pretty amazing. But it's been years since I was really into it.

It's just a bit 'static' for me and for sound design it's mainly positional glitching and reverbs/weird IR. The scripting is a start. I wish it was more standard, like ECMA javascript like you can use in MAX.

I'd like to see the platform add some harmonizing, and maybe a hermode tuning plugin (maybe it has one?).

BTW, I realllllly like the Hermode tuning option in Logic. I'll PAY someone to come up with a MIDI device for Scope that does Hermode tuning on incoming MIDI data. Seriously. I have a few devices I'd like someone to make. One would be a MIDI Mixer (like an audio mixer, but just MIDI), with sends where you can vary the velocity, insert arpeggiators, etc...

I'm still trying to figure out these STS samplers in Scope. Seem like a lot of trouble.

P

[valis]

Valis, I think it would be possible to go beyond just using their filters. I would like to see resynthesis used and a sort of sampler/synthesizer hybrid but all this would be a major undertaking. The STS was intended to be a copy of the Akai series samplers and nothing more. No one module was ever the primary focus. Since I never owned an Akai, I didn't find the STS easy to use. It's tedious because of the tiny size of it and because the hardware design wasn't intended to be used with a mouse and keyboard. I always thought that the platform was engineered to sound good and look cool but not for ease of use. I could care less what it looks like but maybe that is a selling point to someone who doesn't know anything about it. Patch cables make sense for the modular but are a hindrance when just using single module synthesizers. VST synthesizers in Cubase seem easier and quicker to use. I also like being able to make a synthesizer full screen. It's not hardware so why does it have to look like hardware? That concept is just stupid.

I wasn't talking about easy to use for vst kiddies, I was talking about stable multisample components in Scope Mod that go well beyond what is available now. Scope might not interest you but its Modular environment seems to be one of the things that many find interesting in Scope, at least judging by what I know about Flexor's sales over the years (and certainly not every mod owner has Flexor.) Giving Scope some of the sample mangling power of Reaktor or Max/MSP would open up a significant new arena to explore in combination with the stuff we already have with Scope Mod.

The STS-5000 does do some resynthesis by the way. There are several controls related to pitch & time and while it's not Melodyne but it works well enough for what it is and is inside the greater Scope environment. I don't see a huge reason to pick it instead of something software but that's not due to the sound quality. In fact there are a few tricks I could use specifically it for, so there have been occasions where I've used it.

I'm with you on the UI being somewhat daunting at first, and the odd separation in the way things are laid out. You're right about them attempting to copy the Akai workflow & "feel" in the UI, but I think you might misunderstand why (not that I can read minds either.) When the STS stuff was first coming out along with the native (vst) samplers like Halion/Vsampler and many others were also trying to copy the Akai S series multi-program arrangement and having various degrees of success at pulling it off in their software. These tools have given way to modern engines with much slicker UI's like Omnisphere, Kontakt, Alchemy etc. I don't see any reason why the UI for Scope's samplers can't be improved if they wanted to as well. In fact compare the original Creamware synths & devices to our current Scope environment and I would have to say it has matured indeed, and so has the quality of devices even in terms of their sound.

What I'm not sure about is a Scope-based device to do large-sample library playback & multi-gig 'resynthesized' samples (contining to follow the software sampler paradigm.) Perhaps possible but it never seemed Scope's strength. I do seem to recall somewhere someone mentioned that X-ite has onboard memory now, or at least the capacity for it. But there's no native storage so to stream multiGiB-sized sample libs you'd still have the bottleneck of PCIe & the system bus to the drive system or you'd need perhaps an SSD as well inside X-ite.

The ideas put forth in this thread about unique device to mangle and/or sequence audio, slicing, resynthesising, I personally like all of this. MaxMSP like capabilities for samples? (in Mod?) Great!

[braincell]

Pitch and time shift is nice but I was thinking someone ought to do something more innovative with samplers.

[valis]

What an innovative idea! It's a shame noone else thought of that in this thread.

[Fluxpod]

Imo....Samplers in general are a waste of development time for sfp.There are so many options that are way way better then the sts samplers.Focus on synths and more mastering-soundshaping and synths would be better,thats where scope shines.

[siriusbliss]

Imo....Samplers in general are a waste of development time for sfp.There are so many options that are way way better then the sts samplers.Focus on synths and more mastering-soundshaping and synths would be better,thats where scope shines.

I tend to agree.

Greg

[valis]

I certainly don't see much point in attempting to replicate what's already available in software just for the sake of it. (...If that's somehow not evident in my lengthy posts...)

[braincell]

I don't think samplers are a waste of time. There is just a lack of imagination in software engineers. Samples are the most powerful way to create waveforms. The problem is, once you have created the waveform, there are not enough options of what to do with it and furthermore synthesis doesn't seem to be progressing because everyone simply copies previous types of synthesis! They are very good at working out how to do what has already been done before but not at making new devices.

One thing that music engineers could do differently is use the concept of rendering. I would be willing to wait for an effect and achieve a sound which is more complex than my CPU could create on the fly. This is a concept I have seen in computer graphics but not so much in music. We think of music as a live thing. It does not have to be. Another example of limited thinking.

[Mr Arkadin]

Surely as a half-way house someone outside SC could be given the STS5000 and make a comletely new interface for it? OK the guts would be the same but at least it would get past that Akai paradigm interface and might renew some interest in it (or at least making it easier to use for the rest of us). Like others i don't think SC should use up time on it though, which it seems they already decided as it's never been updated even from the CW days.