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3 limitations to creating 'Ambient' music with the Deluge

7
WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

I'm into Ambient/Drone/Atmospheric music.
I'd been busily preparing my own custom sounds for the Deluge (mainly in Omnisphere), in anticipation of this 2.1 Multi-sampling update. Sadly, I've come to realize that I have to go back and create all new samples, because of a few quite serious limitations I've encountered:

1) I've had to recreate synth samples which are much, much longer (up to almost a minute per note), because thus far, I haven't seen any capabilities to define loops (for the sustain portion of the ADSR) within uploaded samples

2) I've had to redo my sound samples to include long attacks, as the envelopes are extremely short on the Deluge. In some cases, I'm having to create multiple versions of the same sound source - one with a shorter attack, one with a much longer one, (so I'll have options which are not available from hardware adjustments)
I was originally thrilled to see hardware access (knobs) fo the Attack/Release parameters for realtime use, but frankly, these have very little range and application.
Frankly, I don't remember ever working on any synth with such limited ADSR times.

3) FX limitations. For example, It would be really helpful for the reverb effects knob/setting to be able to go from a mix value of 0%, to 100% wet, so it could be used more dramatically for sound sculpting. I realize that there has already been much discussion of the limitations of the echo/delay settings, etc., so I won't go into detail, but these too need work to be more diverse.

Hoping to see these issues resolved in a future update.

Otherwise, Loving this box!

Comments

  • 0
    Mr_ForkMr_Fork North DakotaPosts: 59

    Hey man. I do a lot of ambient and downtempo myself and I hear what you're saying. It is a great device but I am hopeful for some changes to the fx section to give it more polish. Anyway on your first note about having no way to define a sustained loop section check out the video on version 2.1 regarding being able to view waveforms in the grid display. One of the things mentioned in there is a way to mark loop points in a sample. Hopefully they will be bringing out 2.1 soon.

    On the second point I'm not sure I follow. Going into the synth matrix and setting adsr to no sustain, full decay, full attack, and full release this sound I'm working with goes on for a long time with default mappings. Behaves as I would expect. Add a sustain point and of course it will just keep going. Could you maybe give an example of what you're doing? Maybe I can riddle it out.

  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    Thanks for your comment - SO looking forward to 2.1 (didn't realize that Looping was in the works)
    As far as the ADSR, I find that when I load in a custom sample (haven't spent much time with the synth at this point) and I set the Attack to 50, it's still quite fast. I'm used to a 'slow attack' being upwards of 10 seconds.
    The Release is a bit better (and of course reverb and delay help extending this), but for ambient stuff, I want to bring in sounds very slowly, and this box just doesn't offer that - I can't help thinking it would be quite an easy update.

    Like you, I'm really hopeful that we'll see lots of changes and updates/upgrades. Synthstrom really seems to be good for that (let's face it, I think they only have one product to support, unlike many of their competitors.

    I'm really happy with this thing in most respects. I have a really unusual art project which incorporates sound creation, and it's perfect for that project. Nothing else even comes close to it for an 'all in one box' solution.

    w

  • 0
    Mr_ForkMr_Fork North DakotaPosts: 59

    Yeah that's the reason I went with the deluge. So much functionality in one box and they actively bring in new features and support. There are some things that I would like to see but it does a fair bit. My biggest gripes doing ambient and downtempo on this device is the lack of dry/wet controls and not being able to adjust the decay of the reverb to get those long reverb tails. Again I'm a little new to the device so I might be missing something but so far I haven't been able to get a nice long reverb tail.

    When you get some tracks or videos out let me know. I'd love to see what you're doing with the deluge.

  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @Mr_Fork said:
    Yeah that's the reason I went with the deluge. So much functionality in one box and they actively bring in new features and support. There are some things that I would like to see but it does a fair bit. My biggest gripes doing ambient and downtempo on this device is the lack of dry/wet controls and not being able to adjust the decay of the reverb to get those long reverb tails. Again I'm a little new to the device so I might be missing something but so far I haven't been able to get a nice long reverb tail.

    When you get some tracks or videos out let me know. I'd love to see what you're doing with the deluge.

    I agree, really not possible to get those ultra extended 'bathed in reverb' settings. In case you hadn't noticed, when you press down on the gold effect knob, with the Reverb selected, you get your choice of Small, Medium and Large reverbs. Not very long, and you unfortunately, you can't get a '100% wet' setting.
    But they really seem to be 'on it', so maybe in the future...

    It will be a while until I get my art project finished (basically a rideable Steampunk musical generator - exercise bike with antique bells and a Deluge, + a little sound system - all pedal powered).

    I will upload some video once I get to doing more composition. Right now, I'm primarily building my sound library.

  • 0
    Mr_ForkMr_Fork North DakotaPosts: 59

    @Will said:
    I agree, really not possible to get those ultra extended 'bathed in reverb' settings. In case you hadn't noticed, when you press down on the gold effect knob, with the Reverb selected, you get your choice of Small, Medium and Large reverbs. Not very long, and you unfortunately, you can't get a '100% wet' setting.

    Yeah I noticed it but as you say even the longest setting is pretty short. There is also a way to just sample the reverb output that someone put out a video on but even that is a bit short. For now I think what I'll end up doing is getting everything written and then take all the effects off except for saturation and distortion when I'm done writing. Export the stems from there and just add effects in a daw. The art project you have going on sounds like a lot of fun. I'll be interested to see it.

  • 0
    amiga909amiga909 Central EuropePosts: 1,078

    @Will yeah, post a link when ur project is ready, pedal powered, have to see that 😀

  • 2
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @amiga909 said:
    @Will yeah, post a link when ur project is ready, pedal powered, have to see that 😀

    It's been going through a lot of revisions. It was originally an exercise bike with antique bells I played with mallets when riding. Now I'm adding a generator (hub motor) some speakers and a Deluge.

    Here's a couple of photos and a mock up of the new direction...


  • 0
    EddyEddy Cologne, GermanyBeta Tester Posts: 292

    great work...I like the Kawasaki ZZR rim :D

  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    Very observant

  • 0
    bast525bast525 Virginia Beach, VA, USAPosts: 21

    @Will said:
    2) I've had to redo my sound samples to include long attacks, as the envelopes are extremely short on the Deluge. In some cases, I'm having to create multiple versions of the same sound source - one with a shorter attack, one with a much longer one, (so I'll have options which are not available from hardware adjustments)
    I was originally thrilled to see hardware access (knobs) fo the Attack/Release parameters for realtime use, but frankly, these have very little range and application.
    Frankly, I don't remember ever working on any synth with such limited ADSR times.

    >

    So I kinda sorta found a workaround for this, to get a truly long attack. This is probably not technically the best way to achieve this, I'm pretty new to actual sound design.

    So I started with a fresh synth patch, and go to ENV1 -> Attack and set that to 50. As you said, this still results in a pretty short attack. While 50 is still displayed for the attack value, I press/click the knob to link this parameter to bother control. I then select ENV1, click the knob again, and this time I turn the knob counter clockwise to get a NEGATIVE value. If you set to negative 50, it will have a VERY slow attack, much longer than 10 seconds! But by setting this to around -20 I was getting the nice long attack I wanted for some ambient pads I was trying to create.

    Now, this can have quirks, it can have an unusual peak at the top of the volume curve right before transition into the decay portion, I had to fine tune the decay sound and also link this back to ENV1 in the same manner to smooth this out. Like I said, I'm a noob and not really sure what I'm doing, but I ended up with a very slow building pad sound just as you described wanting. Let me know if this works for you!

  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @bast525 said:

    @Will said:
    2) I've had to redo my sound samples to include long attacks, as the envelopes are extremely short on the Deluge. In some cases, I'm having to create multiple versions of the same sound source - one with a shorter attack, one with a much longer one, (so I'll have options which are not available from hardware adjustments)
    I was originally thrilled to see hardware access (knobs) fo the Attack/Release parameters for realtime use, but frankly, these have very little range and application.
    Frankly, I don't remember ever working on any synth with such limited ADSR times.

    >

    So I kinda sorta found a workaround for this, to get a truly long attack. This is probably not technically the best way to achieve this, I'm pretty new to actual sound design.

    So I started with a fresh synth patch, and go to ENV1 -> Attack and set that to 50. As you said, this still results in a pretty short attack. While 50 is still displayed for the attack value, I press/click the knob to link this parameter to bother control. I then select ENV1, click the knob again, and this time I turn the knob counter clockwise to get a NEGATIVE value. If you set to negative 50, it will have a VERY slow attack, much longer than 10 seconds! But by setting this to around -20 I was getting the nice long attack I wanted for some ambient pads I was trying to create.

    Now, this can have quirks, it can have an unusual peak at the top of the volume curve right before transition into the decay portion, I had to fine tune the decay sound and also link this back to ENV1 in the same manner to smooth this out. Like I said, I'm a noob and not really sure what I'm doing, but I ended up with a very slow building pad sound just as you described wanting. Let me know if this works for you!

    Looking forward to trying this approach. Thanks v much

    w

    ;0)

  • 0
    krunchrkrunchr Mainz, GermanyBeta Tester Posts: 70

    @bast525 Great idea, will try it asap. If this works, I only need a longer reverb decay B) However, using multi samples is a huge step forward when creating ambient tracks. So far I haven't been able to get any decent smooth pads on the Deluge, now I just take multisamples, enriched with a lot of effect sauce from my DAW.

  • 0
    muleskinnermuleskinner Bath, UKModerator Posts: 128

    1) I've had to recreate synth samples which are much, much longer (up to almost a minute per note), because thus far, I haven't seen any capabilities to define loops (for the sustain portion of the ADSR) within uploaded samples

    You probably know this by now (this is an old thread) but 2.1 does read loop points from WAV files.

    Noise, Noodles and Doodles: http://bit.ly/mrjonesthebutcher

  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @muleskinner said:

    1) I've had to recreate synth samples which are much, much longer (up to almost a minute per note), because thus far, I haven't seen any capabilities to define loops (for the sustain portion of the ADSR) within uploaded samples

    You probably know this by now (this is an old thread) but 2.1 does read loop points from WAV files.

    Yes, and I'm THRILLED with the new update - thanks

    w

  • 0
    bast525bast525 Virginia Beach, VA, USAPosts: 21

    @krunchr said:
    @bast525 Great idea, will try it asap. If this works, I only need a longer reverb decay B) However, using multi samples is a huge step forward when creating ambient tracks. So far I haven't been able to get any decent smooth pads on the Deluge, now I just take multisamples, enriched with a lot of effect sauce from my DAW.

    Any luck with the method I gave above? I'm hoping someone more synth-smart than I can figure out that weird amplitude peak before the decay and how to smooth that out.

  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @bast525 said:

    @krunchr said:
    @bast525 Great idea, will try it asap. If this works, I only need a longer reverb decay B) However, using multi samples is a huge step forward when creating ambient tracks. So far I haven't been able to get any decent smooth pads on the Deluge, now I just take multisamples, enriched with a lot of effect sauce from my DAW.

    Any luck with the method I gave above? I'm hoping someone more synth-smart than I can figure out that weird amplitude peak before the decay and how to smooth that out.

    I am in the midst of a big building project, and haven't had time to check it out - it's on my list - thanks v much

  • 0
    EddyEddy Cologne, GermanyBeta Tester Posts: 292

    @bast525 said:

    @krunchr said:
    @bast525 Great idea, will try it asap. If this works, I only need a longer reverb decay B) However, using multi samples is a huge step forward when creating ambient tracks. So far I haven't been able to get any decent smooth pads on the Deluge, now I just take multisamples, enriched with a lot of effect sauce from my DAW.

    Any luck with the method I gave above? I'm hoping someone more synth-smart than I can figure out that weird amplitude peak before the decay and how to smooth that out.

    Yes this method works great....any suggests how to get longer releases as well?

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