New Synful has FINALLY Arrived

[rikp]

Check it out!

http://www.synful.com/index.htm

Peace

rikp

[wilx]

Whoo!!!! Time to do some listening...

[Robert Kooijman]

Wow,

especially the string quartet sounds absolutely amazing in my ears. Congratulations Eric )(~

[cmdratz]

The author will evaluate the improvements to the plugin when he has finished rebuilding his family's computer; he wishes to thank Dr. R. Pfenninger for the news and Mister E. Lindemann for the labor behind it.

[jloeb]

From Eric this morning:

Dear Synful Customer,



We are pleased to announce the availability of Synful Orchestra 2.4.0 Beta. Version 2.4.0 is compatible with Mac OSX Universal Binary, Leopard, Logic 8, Windows XP/Vista 32/64, AU, VST, DXi.

This is an important new release for Synful. It includes full string playing modes -- pizzicato, bartok-pizz, collegno, tremolo, harmonics, sul-ponticello, sul-ponticello-tremolo and mute. The string playing modes are the first to use our new synthesis engine which preserves full 24 bit fidelity while still allowing us the flexibility for sound morphing we need for Synful Reconstructive Phrase Modeling (RPM). Achieving hi-fidelity in a sampler is easy when you're just playing back recordings. But if you want to stretch and compress the length of sounds, alter characteristics like bow and breath noise, adjust the levels of individual harmonics in the sounds, and splice sounds together in complex ways, then preserving the fidelity of the of the original recording is much more difficult. We believe we have achieved this with our new synthesis engine. In Synful Orchestra 2.4.0 you can adjust tremolo speed from almost a dead stop to very-very fast without altering the fidelity of the original recording. The bow noise control can continuously adjust a violin tremolo from sharp and jagged to a smeared out shimmer. The new sforzando control stretches and emphasizes the first stroke of a tremolo. Adjusting harmonic tilt, release time, and release noise level, in pizzicato strings can create all kinds of Koto, African Kora, and other-worldly sounds. Synful Orchestra 2.4.0 also adds keyswitching, flexible MIDI control mapping, many new control parameters, an integrated authorization system, and more.



Find out more about version 2.4.0:



http://www.synful.com/WhatsNew.htm



Since version 2.4.0 is a beta release there may still be some problems. The Windows 64 bit platforms are new for us so may be particularly susceptible to installation problems, etc. We hope you download version 2.4.0 soon and that let us know your thoughts – bug reports, general comments, musical examples, your wishes, etc.



Looking forward to hearing from you,



Eric Lindemann

Synful

[dubaifox]

Wow...

Listen to the demos.

The Wagner sounds riduculous!!!!!!!!!!!!

[wilx]

Wow...

Listen to the demos.

The Wagner sounds riduculous!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aren't they the old demos?

[RickD]

Does anyone know the non-upgrade price? Some of those demos are amazing.

[rikp]

This Fred's violin demo sounds pretty darn good to me!)(~

http://www.synful.com/UserDemoSounds/FredProgGH%20NS%201-6-05%2010-41%20PM%20Fred%20Synful%20Violin%20Demo.mp3

Peace

rikp

[ddarwin7]

Aren't they the old demos?

Yes, those definitly sound like the old demos. Wonder when they are going to have some new demos with the update.

Dd

[dubaifox]

Ah, I see.

Are there new demos????

[wilx]

No - all the demos on the site are old.

The new stuff is just the articulations - the 'bread-'n-butter' arco strings sound the same as before. And the sul ponticello strings play like samples - I haven't managed to get any legato from them yet.

It's nice to get new stuff, but after a year of waiting I thought it would be reasonable to expect the core sound/tone of the strings to be improved...

[jloeb]

No - all the demos on the site are old.

The new stuff is just the articulations - the 'bread-'n-butter' arco strings sound the same as before. And the sul ponticello strings play like samples - I haven't managed to get any legato from them yet.

It's nice to get new stuff, but after a year of waiting I thought it would be reasonable to expect the core sound/tone of the strings to be improved...

Not quite. Check out the "Mute" articulation. That's the harbinger of things to come, and, to me, the most exciting aspect of this beta update. Record a nice legato line in Mute articulation, and then turn on DFE. See what you think. Put some EQ on it, boost the highs to taste. It's all there.

Not to downplay the fact that you've got excellent full resolution pizz, collegno, trem, harmonics, sul-pont and sul-pont tremolo on all the strings, and the whole thing is still under 150Mb. I agree though that at the moment, the sul-pont doesn't do legato very well, at least for downward transitions - sliding up seems to work with legato + wheel trigger playing, though it's rapid and not luscious like the mute transitions.

[wilx]

Not quite. Check out the "Mute" articulation. That's the harbinger of things to come, and, to me, the most exciting aspect of this beta update. Record a nice legato line in Mute articulation, and then turn on DFE. See what you think. Put some EQ on it, boost the highs to taste. It's all there.

Not to downplay the fact that you've got excellent full resolution pizz, collegno, trem, harmonics, sul-pont and sul-pont tremolo on all the strings, and the whole thing is still under 150Mb. I agree though that at the moment, the sul-pont doesn't do legato very well, at least for downward transitions - sliding up seems to work with legato + wheel trigger playing, though it's rapid and not luscious like the mute transitions.

Good point - I forgot to mention the 'mute' articulation sounds gorgeous.
I was expecting the normal arco sounds to be upgraded, and I'd like to be able to do proper legato in sul ponticello ('cos I love the sound!), but everything else is great as far as I'm concerned.

And the pizzicatto sounds fab as well.

[julianrojo]

The new synful is great...those CONTROLABLE tremolo sounds very good and original. I didn´t try the sul pont legato, but the thing that doesn´t work is the time spread. It work great if the ensamble is playing the same note, but if there are two notes they play all at the same time. I try it with a clarinet, in a 2 clarinet ensemble. Anyway, synful is the future...

[paynterr]

The new synful is great...those CONTROLABLE tremolo sounds very good and original. I didn´t try the sul pont legato, but the thing that doesn´t work is the time spread. It work great if the ensamble is playing the same note, but if there are two notes they play all at the same time. I try it with a clarinet, in a 2 clarinet ensemble. Anyway, synful is the future...

My suggestion would be to feed that information back directly to Eric; I have always found him a very nice, personable chap who actively listens to feedback from his customers.

Once feature that I find myself using in Cubase, that would be nice to see integrated into Synful, is random 'humanisation'. I use the random midi controls on Cubase to delay the playing of notes, extend/shorten the length my a random amount and randomly adjust the velocity slightly. To have this facility built into the ensemble so that each 'player' could be randomly humanised would be a bonus. This is the power of something like Synful where sounds are synthesised. This can be done. Less easy when you've made a recording of 20 instruments playing together. In this way, it would be nice to control the 'togetherness' of the players... a low value would sound like a school orchestra, a high value would sound like a computer. Presumably the LSO would be somewhere in between?

[wilx]

My suggestion would be to feed that information back directly to Eric; I have always found him a very nice, personable chap who actively listens to feedback from his customers.

Once feature that I find myself using in Cubase, that would be nice to see integrated into Synful, is random 'humanisation'.
...
In this way, it would be nice to control the 'togetherness' of the players... a low value would sound like a school orchestra, a high value would sound like a computer. Presumably the LSO would be somewhere in between?

You can do something similar - It's possible to control how together the players are in terms of timing, modulation, velocity and timing - which is pretty useful.

[paynterr]

You can do something similar - It's possible to control how together the players are in terms of timing, modulation, velocity and timing - which is pretty useful.

Well there you go - I must have fed that back to him already :)

[david robinson]

hi,
same old, same old.
stereo panning is faulty in 2.4.
can't get the cb and vcl aross to the stage right at all.
can see this and hear this.
DR9.

[davecos]

I tried the demo but...well...let's put it this way: I won't be ditching my Vienna SE nor EW Platinum libs anytime soon. :p

[landford]

I also downloaded the demo but can't figure out how to get legato or slurring on strings or any other instrument for that matter, can anybody help with this?

Tom

[wilx]

Synful applies legato transitions based on the MIDI information. Switching 'dfe' on improves this effect slightly.
The sul pont. doesn't have as much sample fragment data than the arcos, so it will be harder to get legato from that articulation.

It should be relatively easy to get legato from the arco strings, just by playing legato on your keyboard. Portamento is done via the pitch wheel.

I emailed Synful and got a reply from Eric yesterday:

The arco strings are unchanged. They will be improved with new recordings, in the tentative order of brass (with mutes) ; winds, arco strings.
There's a chance they may record new stuff in future for the less well used articulations, which would improve legato in sul pont. etc, but the priority is definitely getting the brass, winds and arco strings improved with new recordings.

[david robinson]

hi,
judging by this demo, nothing's changed a lot.
am very underwhelmed by the low strgs.
eric's a nice bloke, maybe he's just in the wrong profession.
would not buy this as is, ever.
DR9.

[Piet De Ridder]

> eric's a nice bloke, maybe he's just in the wrong profession.

That's a most unpleasant and utterly childish thing to say. Mr. Lindemann knows a million times more about his 'profession' than most of us, including you, know about ours. As for 'not buying Synful ever': fair enough, your loss.

The biggest shortcoming in Synful, it seems to me, is that allows people to make uninformed judgements about it, and foolishly burry the software without actually learning first how to use it properly. Synful requires some study, it doesn't offer instant gratification.
Not every sound that Synful produces is pleasing, far from it, and some are even pretty ugly and useless (I would never use Synful to emulate a cello- or doublebass-section), true, but with just a little bit of effort you should soon discover that Synful is also capable of magnificent things which no sample library is capable of. Here's three examples:
- A piece for 6 instruments featuring the Synful clarinet (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Re6Instr__v01.mp3).
- A little waltz for piano, Synful-violin and Synful-clarinet (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReWaltz_Trio.mp3).
- A trio for piano, Westgate-horn and Synful-clarinet (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReTrio_v01.mp3).

I'd like to see you try finding me a sample-based clarinet library that is capable of similar performances, with the same amount of expression and dynamics and totally 'at one' with the composition, down to the smallest detail.

Here's one more example: the Synful woodwinds (clarinet, oboe and some flute) + a Synful horn solo in a mock orchestra setting (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReMarch_L8_v01.mp3).

_

[Coqui]

- A piece for 6 instruments featuring the Synful clarinet (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Re6Instr__v01.mp3).
- A little waltz for piano, Synful-violin and Synful-clarinet (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReWaltz_Trio.mp3).
- A trio for piano, Westgate-horn and Synful-clarinet (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReTrio_v01.mp3).
- the Synful woodwinds (clarinet, oboe and some flute) + a Synful horn solo in a mock orchestra setting (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReMarch_L8_v01.mp3). Interesting renderings!

Did you sketch them in real-time (perhaps using a breath controller?), then turning on DFE in post-production?

The march is all-Synful?

Thanks for sharing.

[wilx]

the Synful woodwinds (clarinet, oboe and some flute) + a Synful horn solo in a mock orchestra setting (http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/ReMarch_L8_v01.mp3).



Interesting renderings.

The march is all-Synful?


The earlier post said it used Synful woodwinds (clarinet, oboe and some flute) + a Synful horn solo. So it isn't all Synful, no.

[Piet De Ridder]

Coqui,

Thanks. It's like Wilx says: only some of the woodwinds and the horn solo in the middle are Synful, the rest is all sample-based. Actually, that is - to me anyway - the best way to use of Synful: only use it for what it's good at and leave the rest wisely to sample-based instruments. Full strings and brass sections are definitely not Synful's forte at the moment.

I completely agree with those who say that Synful isn't capable (yet) to do complete mock-ups (if you're after a pleasing degree of believability anyway). Too many of its sounds still come up short to do that. An ensemble consisting of nothing but Synful tends to sounds very hollow and boxy, as if run through one of the lo-fi presets of AudioEase's Speakerphone ...

But there are no such problems when using musically programmed Synful solo-instruments against a sample-based backdrop or alongside sample-based instruments. In fact, the strength of each is highly beneficial to the other: something of the realism of the samples rubs off on the somewhat artificial sounding Synful-instruments, while Synful's exceptional expressive-ness lifts the surrounding samples to a higher level than what they are, on their own, capable of.

On a technical note: no, I didn't use a breath controller and I didn't use 'Delay For Expression' either. All these Synful-performances were simply recorded in realtime, and the important midi-controller information (cc#7 and cc#11) was tweaked and optimized afterwards in Logic's HyperDraw window. Nothing more.

Thanks again for the appreciation!

_

[jloeb]

I need to withdraw - or rather, modulate - my enthusiasm for the Mute articulation: though it's a 'new' articulation, on closer examination it seems to me that what's being played is just the old Arco output minus some of the peakier details. For some reason this sound seemed to yield cleaner results with hi frequency EQ than arco, but i think my ear was initially fooled. The only truly newly recorded rpm content is the pizz, col, sul pont, tremolos, etc. as far as i can tell.

My initial assessment was done using the section, not solo patches.

It seems I liked the original string section sound of Synful more than I recall!
Haters aside, i still think the Leandro Gardini demos which use the sections are excellent examples of what the Synful strings are capable of, and are in most cases quite realistic. As I've said before, in its current incarnation, it is a poor-man's VSL in expressive possibility if not in detailed sound. Full version VSL is the only competing product i can think of that allows free writing of lyrical, connected lines with strings like Synful does.

[Briody]

The idea of 'realism' with Synful isn't that important to me personally. Synful has an expressive nature to it that works very well for certain pieces.

Synful wouldn't be my first choice if I was tasked to reproduce an accurate string piece, but for just creating music it's one of my favorite tools on the computer.

[dubaifox]

Have those new links been removed?

When I click on them it says they are missing (I think anyway...the message is in German)

[Piet De Ridder]

With all due respect to L. Gardini, but I really do not like any of his demos on Synful's homepage either, and I can't understand for the life of me why Mr. Lindemann has decided put them there, because they do not make a good case for Synful at all. On the contrary: those pieces, despite being programmed with unmistakeable skill, sound more like demonstrations of all the sonic flaws of Synful rather than of the things which make it such an unbelievably powerful instrument: they have a very artificial, plastic-y sound, full of booming, boxy resonances and without any instrumental definition whatsoever ... Very, very strange that. I mean, if one were to look for convincing arguments NOT to buy Synful, he/she need to look no further than those 3 demos.

Dubaifox,

Yes, those new links have been removed. I only put them online for a few hours to illustrate a point I was making. The message is in Dutch (Flemish) by the way, not German.

_

[dubaifox]

sound more like demonstrations of all the sonic flaws of Synful rather than of the things which make it such an unbelievably powerful instrument:

I originally felt bad about my rather terse comment about the Wagner sounding ridiculous, but am glad that I am not the only one.

Why they would post demos of masterworks is beyond me. Maybe create short demos of original music to disguise the flaws of sinful and feature it's strengths, but the classical demos I heard were pretty comical.

(sorry about thinking it was German Piet) :)

[Andrew Aversa]

Symphony 6 was sounding good at first until the slides... very un-convincing, indeed. Putting those aside, it's not awful... but doesn't sound anywhere near as good as QLSO/VSL, and frankly if you know a thing or two about proper Kontakt 2 script usage and are willing to get your hands dirty a bit you can get incredibly realistic legato without the need for any sort of fancy engine.

[wqa]

and frankly if you know a thing or two about proper Kontakt 2 script usage and are willing to get your hands dirty a bit you can get incredibly realistic legato without the need for any sort of fancy engine.
Hi Andrew Aversa,

i would like to listen to this "incredibly realistic legato" ?
do you have any links ?

Thank you

Laurent

[bluejay]

Laurent,

For excellent Kontakt scripted legato you need to look for SIPS. It's a custom script written by some great members of our online community (Big Bob, Nils, etc) and has been incorporated into a couple of pro libraries (SISS and Screaming Trumpet are two I own that use it).

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44408

Hope that helps.

[Andrew Aversa]

Hi Andrew Aversa,

i would like to listen to this "incredibly realistic legato" ?
do you have any links ?

Thank you

Laurent

http://neobustatunez.livejournal.com/2990.html

Here's a basic rundown on better expression control and phrasing using manual K2 programming and scripting. A good starting off point :)