@Yoad Nevo - I'd be delighted to get in touch and answer your questions regarding CLAP - your users will love Parameter Modulation, which works wonderfully for effects as well. And of course we have put a lot of effort in ensuring stability, e.g. through the clear threading model.
I actually like the look of those orange retro computer buttons on the Nina. I have no idea how they feel, though. I hope they're sturdy. The automated knobs are a wonderful idea. I hope they hold up long-term. Seems like they'd be the most satisfying on a synth that is 100% knob-per-function.
I was surprised to understand that the Nina is not just a synth with motorized potentiometers, they are in fact "Haptic Feedback Encoders" so its actually act like endless encoder and the motor can be set to mimic "analog like" potentiometer end-points and even the physical resistant can be set by the user. It can actually be set per value to act like a pot/encoder, smooth or fine stepping (like with destinations parameters) or even act as a switch, all by the motor force.
I like those big orange buttons on NINA. They look sturdy like the mechanical switches on old computer keyboards. It's also a joy to use them on other machines.. I can't understand the point of Rich. Is it about the colour? Big protruding buttons and knobs are what I liked most on old synthesizer interfaces. I hate shallow buttons with no "claaank" sound.
I really don’t need this. It is a cool product and I see why people like it but I suspect these motorized pots are gonna be prone to failure. I’d like to be proven wrong but mechanical parts are more often then not the first to fail.
@@PWMaarten It may be much more reliable then high quality pototonitmeters, Brushless drones motors can work 10K Hours before they show signs of failure and this is tested at 5000 RPM, up to 3 Billion rotations! Usually the failure is from water, dirt or heat, not a concern here, so it's possible this type of "encoders" are much more resilient than typical high quality encoder/pototonitmeter (that are "mechanical" too) Maybe the claim of zero-wear is not so exaggerated...
From a software developer perspective CLAP-adoption would be great. Open standards is the way to go! VST format is held hostage by a single company and hasn't really evolved in the latest years. Many of the plugins have had to implement a lot of overlapping functionality of DAWs because the VST-interface has been too simplistic.
I like to be optimistic about the Nina .The Australian dollar will go further . About 70 cents US dollar .Some one has the fortitude to explore a new way of music production .Soundgrid would have more appeal if it incorporated all plugin types and not just waves .
I went to NAMM 2022 in Anaheim, CA all 3 days and had an absolute blast - so much fun! There is no substitute for meeting people face to face from all over the world who share a passion for music, musical instruments & music technology. Plus, getting some “hands on” time with all the new wonderful gear is like being a kid in a candy store. NAMM returns to Anaheim April 13-15 in 2023 and I’ll definitely be there! 😁
No you did not! Have you taken the obligatory Fausti waxx? Did you wear a tripple leyer mask? Remember to vote democrats next election or else no more synth for you! You own nothing and you will be happy!
I'm no expert with coding in the visual 3D world but what I do know is that GPU's are designed to perform specific mathematic operations to push large amounts of data around in a dedicated way. Essentially 3D is generated in a render loop as many times in a second as it can and involves complex mathematics such as matrices transformations and so on. Anyone who does work in the visual domain knows that if the software is designed to detect and use a GPU it should and will do so and the performance measured against CPU's is orders of magnitude higher. In some respects the idea of offloading operations to other processing chips in a computer system is not new. The Amiga for example did this by having dedicated chips for audio and video etc. They also built a dedicated pipeline bus to allow 'fast' memory to access these chips directly. In short adding extra memory accessible on the bus dramatically increased performance without upgrading the primary CPU. The idea of using GPU's for audio has been a long time coming and it's interesting to me the strategic timing of this announcement. Quite cleverly it has been done with a mature product set, something that can actually be demonstrated. It's also been done at a time to capture enough licensing footprint for those developers that want a quicker entry into this space than building there own implementations. Best to capture your customers now before someone else inevitably does it for you. Therein lies the rub. Developers will have to assess the costs of licensing and potentially a quicker product delivery against doing their own implementations. There is also the issue of the tolerance end users have with regard to accepting an upgrade cost to plugins their already use and may not consider the downstream benefits, personally that would be a little short sighted given the obvious creative things developers can do with their products with all this extra performance on tap. If the idea sticks it will become ubiquitous for developers sooner rather than later. It will also become entirely ubiquitous for developers to implement some form of GPU usage in their products as it is to build and compile the products themselves in the same way plugin format support is routinely expected now. As this evolves there could be other simpler implementations along the basic lines of "add this class to your plugin build, it detects a GPU and it wraps your processing functions to use it...". Ultimately I am largely an end user and there are plugins from some developers that I really want to use more of IF they can take advantage of the obvious performance benefits of using a GPU. As a member of that extremely large group of people we will determine if this idea succeeds or fails, I sincerely hope it succeeds. As for GPU Audio, well done to them for the very significant step they have made for us. Just don't cock it up.
As always a great show, thank y‘all! And if I may make a humble suggestion to Nick: I know it’s your holiday but please go and visit Rick at Barcelona!! And if you could manage to do a small rig rundown on the equipment he is using on stage that would be so much appreciated!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼 You know, as a working pianist I am interested in these kind of things… But if not, I can totally get why. Have a nice holiday and all the best to your daughter. 🎉
46:04 That was very interesting. My own takeaway from the Superbooth - NAMM marathon is the lack of interesting new synthesizers being introduced to the market. Apart from the East Beast / West Pest which were sort of interesting to me and the Oberheim, but the Oberheim is so pricey I'm never going to buy one anyway. More a sort of Holy Grail that exists to marvel at, not actually an attainable goal. The Nina is a case in point, same thing with the SOMA Labs Terra. Yes, Vlad is a genius and he's done brilliant stuff in the past, but come on, a digital preset synth disguised as a tree stump. I'm sorry but that's just a gimmick. And with the Nina. Yeah, endless encoders and LED rings or displays do the job fine. For me that's another gimmick. Looks cool, gets boring after a week, and then it's just a regular synth, except you paid a lot more money for it because there are engines in it. After the 2nd analogue golden age, the age of the classics clones, and the return of FM and the digital synthesizer, we're now at a point where there's so much variety and choice available on the market that releasing ever more instruments yields diminishing returns with each cycle. Good luck trying to stand out in a market where all known forms of synthesis are available in all formats. It's a bit of a shame to see this trend. I'm moving more and more out of the box, so software development just doesn't interest me a lot. I am interested when new interesting approaches that impact sound design in hardware synths are introduced, like the hybrid Minilogue XD when it came out, or more recently the ASM Hydrasynth. And there have been many other examples over the last decade, just not this year. I thought it had to do with a lull in R&D due to Covid restrictions impacting on this years cycle, but the point Yoad makes is probably more accurate. Hope we get back to seeing new great synths again soon though. This UI and processor load stuff is vaguely interesting background noise to me, and not really exciting me in terms of what it could mean for me as a musician.
Yeah, I hear you. I have a Virus and a Tempest, and I don't think I could ever want for any more really. I'm still waiting for something to topple the Virus (there are options but pure wavetable.synthesis I find quite clinical) and the Tempest has such gorgeous oscillators which are great for bass and keys - overcoming the voice limit by tracking synth lines separate to the drums in a production environment is super cool. Was hoping this year was the 'year of the analogue drum machine' but it hasn't happened (Syntakt notwithstanding). Maybe next year!
@@Claidheambmor I forgot about the Syntakt. It's not for me at the moment, but that thing looks like a great groovebox. I'm not that much of an impulse buyer, I am usually quite picky in what I need to add to my setup to begin with, so in a year like this when there's not much stuff that's getting me excited, I revert to looking at the stuff I already researched earlier. I'm probably going to buy a Hydrasynth at some point, and I'm still weighing options between several analogue synths to add to my mostly digital setup (apart from a minibrute and a volca keys). Wavetable synthesis very much depends on the design I think. I'm not very interested in the PPG reboot for instance, as I mostly find the PPG sound to be glassy and unmusical. No criticism of the instrument, I just don't click with the overall character personally. But I have a micro Q, and the timbral possibilities with wavetables, FM, Ringmod, Sync and VA-oscillators are pretty endless. I wouldn't recommend it as a first synth, or as a centre piece to a synth setup, but as a swiss armyknife for those sounds your other synths just can't make, it really opens up possibilities. And, weirdly, a single sawtooth or square through its 12db Lowpass filter is the closest approximation to a 303 I have in my arsenal, believe it or not. I think the Hydrasynth would fulfil the same role for me, but on steroids. Plus the MPE keybed would probably be useful to add to my setup.
...but there is already an alternative to these motorized knobs.. led encoders (like on Nord Lead 3)...why didn't you talk about them? Are they more expensive?
NAMM in January was always iconic... everyone said the summer one sucked sadly (and Dave's passing just before made it feel very meh according to ppl I spoke to)
Nick (and team) thinking aloud here, but a topic which may be one to get the people chattering is the one of not being able to get "hands on"/demo time with some manufacturers/products. UK situation is quite dire, with Denmark St pretty much a dead/ghost-town/guitars only location now (Roland's new shop may help a bit for them), but trying to get hands on time with products from behringer for example is next to impossible (bar ordering one from Amazon and sending it back if you don't like it/get on with it). For their low cost products (Pro-1/Crave etc) word of mouth is usually okay, but I know I'm not alone in thinking that if I'm going to stump up >£1K for a new synth, I'd like to try it first. Case in point, I recently bought a System-8 after trying one in London (2 hours from me, nearest place that had one on display). I was looking at the Jupiter-X and a few others too, but nobosy had them to try, so my £££ went on the 8 (no regrets, amazing synth)
@Yoad Nevo - I'd be delighted to get in touch and answer your questions regarding CLAP - your users will love Parameter Modulation, which works wonderfully for effects as well. And of course we have put a lot of effort in ensuring stability, e.g. through the clear threading model.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 ^^^^^^ U-He himself over here folks! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I actually like the look of those orange retro computer buttons on the Nina. I have no idea how they feel, though. I hope they're sturdy. The automated knobs are a wonderful idea. I hope they hold up long-term. Seems like they'd be the most satisfying on a synth that is 100% knob-per-function.
I was surprised to understand that the Nina is not just a synth with motorized potentiometers, they are in fact "Haptic Feedback Encoders" so its actually act like endless encoder and the motor can be set to mimic "analog like" potentiometer end-points and even the physical resistant can be set by the user. It can actually be set per value to act like a pot/encoder, smooth or fine stepping (like with destinations parameters) or even act as a switch, all by the motor force.
I like those big orange buttons on NINA. They look sturdy like the mechanical switches on old computer keyboards. It's also a joy to use them on other machines.. I can't understand the point of Rich. Is it about the colour? Big protruding buttons and knobs are what I liked most on old synthesizer interfaces. I hate shallow buttons with no "claaank" sound.
I don't understand most of Rich points :)
No CV control of wavefolding on Mavis is odd.
9:20 The motorised knobs is outstanding. That is going to be the new standard on all synth.
I really don’t need this. It is a cool product and I see why people like it but I suspect these motorized pots are gonna be prone to failure. I’d like to be proven wrong but mechanical parts are more often then not the first to fail.
Maybe so, eventually.
@@PWMaarten It may be much more reliable then high quality pototonitmeters,
Brushless drones motors can work 10K Hours before they show signs of failure and this is tested at 5000 RPM, up to 3 Billion rotations! Usually the failure is from water, dirt or heat, not a concern here, so it's possible this type of "encoders" are much more resilient than typical high quality encoder/pototonitmeter (that are "mechanical" too) Maybe the claim of zero-wear is not so exaggerated...
Having worked on synth design and dev for 20 years, I will respectfully agree to disagree
@@NickHowesAstro Do not forget where you first read it.😉
From a software developer perspective CLAP-adoption would be great. Open standards is the way to go! VST format is held hostage by a single company and hasn't really evolved in the latest years. Many of the plugins have had to implement a lot of overlapping functionality of DAWs because the VST-interface has been too simplistic.
Yeah, but don’t name it after a nickname for a venereal disease…
@@notsure1135 D16's SH101ter comes to mind.
Can’t survive without sonic weekly podcast 😔
Pls make sure to have something next week
I like to be optimistic about the Nina .The Australian dollar will go further . About 70 cents US dollar .Some one has the fortitude to explore a new way of music production .Soundgrid would have more appeal if it incorporated all plugin types and not just waves .
I went to NAMM 2022 in Anaheim, CA all 3 days and had an absolute blast - so much fun! There is no substitute for meeting people face to face from all over the world who share a passion for music, musical instruments & music technology. Plus, getting some “hands on” time with all the new wonderful gear is like being a kid in a candy store. NAMM returns to Anaheim April 13-15 in 2023 and I’ll definitely be there! 😁
No you did not! Have you taken the obligatory Fausti waxx? Did you wear a tripple leyer mask? Remember to vote democrats next election or else no more synth for you! You own nothing and you will be happy!
I'm no expert with coding in the visual 3D world but what I do know is that GPU's are designed to perform specific mathematic operations to push large amounts of data around in a dedicated way. Essentially 3D is generated in a render loop as many times in a second as it can and involves complex mathematics such as matrices transformations and so on. Anyone who does work in the visual domain knows that if the software is designed to detect and use a GPU it should and will do so and the performance measured against CPU's is orders of magnitude higher. In some respects the idea of offloading operations to other processing chips in a computer system is not new. The Amiga for example did this by having dedicated chips for audio and video etc. They also built a dedicated pipeline bus to allow 'fast' memory to access these chips directly. In short adding extra memory accessible on the bus dramatically increased performance without upgrading the primary CPU. The idea of using GPU's for audio has been a long time coming and it's interesting to me the strategic timing of this announcement. Quite cleverly it has been done with a mature product set, something that can actually be demonstrated. It's also been done at a time to capture enough licensing footprint for those developers that want a quicker entry into this space than building there own implementations. Best to capture your customers now before someone else inevitably does it for you. Therein lies the rub. Developers will have to assess the costs of licensing and potentially a quicker product delivery against doing their own implementations. There is also the issue of the tolerance end users have with regard to accepting an upgrade cost to plugins their already use and may not consider the downstream benefits, personally that would be a little short sighted given the obvious creative things developers can do with their products with all this extra performance on tap. If the idea sticks it will become ubiquitous for developers sooner rather than later. It will also become entirely ubiquitous for developers to implement some form of GPU usage in their products as it is to build and compile the products themselves in the same way plugin format support is routinely expected now. As this evolves there could be other simpler implementations along the basic lines of "add this class to your plugin build, it detects a GPU and it wraps your processing functions to use it...". Ultimately I am largely an end user and there are plugins from some developers that I really want to use more of IF they can take advantage of the obvious performance benefits of using a GPU. As a member of that extremely large group of people we will determine if this idea succeeds or fails, I sincerely hope it succeeds. As for GPU Audio, well done to them for the very significant step they have made for us. Just don't cock it up.
Thank you Nick for your wonderful and clearly heartfelt tribute to Dave ...nice one
the only thing I like about that motor knob synth are the red buttons hah.
CLAP looks good. It seems the best bits are per note modulation and being able to make a plugin which can also host plugins?
If you guys mentioned the new Moog you should be mentioning they're workers are on strike atm
As always a great show, thank y‘all! And if I may make a humble suggestion to Nick:
I know it’s your holiday but please go and visit Rick at Barcelona!!
And if you could manage to do a small rig rundown on the equipment he is using on stage that would be so much appreciated!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼
You know, as a working pianist I am interested in these kind of things…
But if not, I can totally get why. Have a nice holiday and all the best to your daughter. 🎉
Thanks for the show.
moog mavis segment - no image of it?
ahh 53:27 we actually get to see it ..phew!
Super chat. Have a great holiday Nick and great shows Rich!
46:04 That was very interesting. My own takeaway from the Superbooth - NAMM marathon is the lack of interesting new synthesizers being introduced to the market. Apart from the East Beast / West Pest which were sort of interesting to me and the Oberheim, but the Oberheim is so pricey I'm never going to buy one anyway. More a sort of Holy Grail that exists to marvel at, not actually an attainable goal.
The Nina is a case in point, same thing with the SOMA Labs Terra. Yes, Vlad is a genius and he's done brilliant stuff in the past, but come on, a digital preset synth disguised as a tree stump. I'm sorry but that's just a gimmick. And with the Nina. Yeah, endless encoders and LED rings or displays do the job fine. For me that's another gimmick. Looks cool, gets boring after a week, and then it's just a regular synth, except you paid a lot more money for it because there are engines in it. After the 2nd analogue golden age, the age of the classics clones, and the return of FM and the digital synthesizer, we're now at a point where there's so much variety and choice available on the market that releasing ever more instruments yields diminishing returns with each cycle. Good luck trying to stand out in a market where all known forms of synthesis are available in all formats.
It's a bit of a shame to see this trend. I'm moving more and more out of the box, so software development just doesn't interest me a lot. I am interested when new interesting approaches that impact sound design in hardware synths are introduced, like the hybrid Minilogue XD when it came out, or more recently the ASM Hydrasynth. And there have been many other examples over the last decade, just not this year. I thought it had to do with a lull in R&D due to Covid restrictions impacting on this years cycle, but the point Yoad makes is probably more accurate. Hope we get back to seeing new great synths again soon though. This UI and processor load stuff is vaguely interesting background noise to me, and not really exciting me in terms of what it could mean for me as a musician.
Yeah, I hear you. I have a Virus and a Tempest, and I don't think I could ever want for any more really. I'm still waiting for something to topple the Virus (there are options but pure wavetable.synthesis I find quite clinical) and the Tempest has such gorgeous oscillators which are great for bass and keys - overcoming the voice limit by tracking synth lines separate to the drums in a production environment is super cool. Was hoping this year was the 'year of the analogue drum machine' but it hasn't happened (Syntakt notwithstanding). Maybe next year!
@@Claidheambmor I forgot about the Syntakt. It's not for me at the moment, but that thing looks like a great groovebox.
I'm not that much of an impulse buyer, I am usually quite picky in what I need to add to my setup to begin with, so in a year like this when there's not much stuff that's getting me excited, I revert to looking at the stuff I already researched earlier. I'm probably going to buy a Hydrasynth at some point, and I'm still weighing options between several analogue synths to add to my mostly digital setup (apart from a minibrute and a volca keys).
Wavetable synthesis very much depends on the design I think. I'm not very interested in the PPG reboot for instance, as I mostly find the PPG sound to be glassy and unmusical. No criticism of the instrument, I just don't click with the overall character personally.
But I have a micro Q, and the timbral possibilities with wavetables, FM, Ringmod, Sync and VA-oscillators are pretty endless. I wouldn't recommend it as a first synth, or as a centre piece to a synth setup, but as a swiss armyknife for those sounds your other synths just can't make, it really opens up possibilities. And, weirdly, a single sawtooth or square through its 12db Lowpass filter is the closest approximation to a 303 I have in my arsenal, believe it or not.
I think the Hydrasynth would fulfil the same role for me, but on steroids. Plus the MPE keybed would probably be useful to add to my setup.
...but there is already an alternative to these motorized knobs.. led encoders (like on Nord Lead 3)...why didn't you talk about them? Are they more expensive?
NAMM in January was always iconic... everyone said the summer one sucked sadly (and Dave's passing just before made it feel very meh according to ppl I spoke to)
Nick (and team) thinking aloud here, but a topic which may be one to get the people chattering is the one of not being able to get "hands on"/demo time with some manufacturers/products. UK situation is quite dire, with Denmark St pretty much a dead/ghost-town/guitars only location now (Roland's new shop may help a bit for them), but trying to get hands on time with products from behringer for example is next to impossible (bar ordering one from Amazon and sending it back if you don't like it/get on with it). For their low cost products (Pro-1/Crave etc) word of mouth is usually okay, but I know I'm not alone in thinking that if I'm going to stump up >£1K for a new synth, I'd like to try it first. Case in point, I recently bought a System-8 after trying one in London (2 hours from me, nearest place that had one on display). I was looking at the Jupiter-X and a few others too, but nobosy had them to try, so my £££ went on the 8 (no regrets, amazing synth)
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 ^^^^^^ U-He himself over here folks! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Great show. Moog 'Mavis', hmmm... not a great name. 😊
Maven would have been a much cooler name.
Mono again = crap
Rubbish