ProTone vs real Pro-One

Man-Machine · Post by **Man-Machine** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:23 pm

On 2005-04-19 12:38, proximo wrote:

It was really difficult to make them sound exactly the same, and sometimes had a 30% discripancy in knobs position...)
I guess 2 Pro Ones won't also sound the same at the exact same knob position ..

[ This Message was edited by: proximo on 2005-04-19 17:31 ]

John Bowen mentioned a while back that you can't compare knob positions. A german magazine tried that but couldn't match sounds. The filter range of software is wider than the hardware. I think that was his explanation. I'l try to upload my own patches later...

steffensen · Post by **steffensen** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:24 pm

good topic.
i actually made 2 banks for proTone and Profit5 before, heavily vince clarke inspired. i got the yazoo sounds 100% right and all, but everything got lost in a crash of mine and i'm not that keen on putting down all that effort in remaking them again! (it's impossible to remake them anyway..

)
i did however make new banks for proTone/Profit5 that is still very vince clarke'ish, tho its not as many presets in it, but well.. its quite synthish/experimental.
i'll get it up any day soon if anyone wants it.

[ This Message was edited by: steffensen on 2005-04-22 17:27 ]

proximo · Post by **proximo** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:51 pm

You can achieve probably deeper sound bass with the ProTone.
But that was not the point.

As I said I used the patches from the Unease web site which were the ones that Vince Clarke used on that famous Yazoo track.
It's a PWM bass with a sine wave added on OSC B.

The knob position is not an issue; I just thought I could store my patches and preview them with the ProTone first.
It just came as a bad surprise, but it is not a issue when it comes to emulate the Pro-One.... the position are just different.
But I guess that is normal.
As I said, that would also be the case with 2 different Pro-Ones, but I don’t think with such a big discrepancy … but who knows.

I first did the patches on the Pro One and then tweak the ProTone to get as close as I could,
And I TOOK THE TIME.

I worked on that little tracks for many days to be sure no extra parameters would make that test irrelevant and I did many recording/adjustment before posting it.

There is no trick there and nothing magic.
I have been designing sound on synths for many years (15 years).

I did it just for you guys for info purpose, not to start a polemic or whatever...

If you don't believe this test is relevant then just don't download the tracks.

I am not actually that surprised that the original synth which is actually a legend itself and that is made of real circuitry sounds better to my ears that a copy that is made of lines of code of software.
There is nothing wrong with that.

Now, I was pleasantly surprised by Creamware ProTone which is the most punchy VA synth I have with MINIMAX.

I consider ProTone as a real success by CWA like most of the things they do.
I would not have spent 6000€ in CWA stuff the past 4 years otherwise …

I just posted that test for your curiosity,
I may have failed but I really did my best ... trust me.

Cheers,

Post by **hubird** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:19 pm

you did a good job, and I'm sure everyone will agree, no sorrows man

Post by **garyb** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:09 pm

yes, sorry for sounding flip. it was an interesting exercise, i just can't really come to any conclusion from it. thank you for posting that and again, i'm sorry if i bellitled your good work.

Man-Machine · Post by **Man-Machine** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 1:09 am

I actually think that my current Pro-One sounds extremely close to the old one I used to have. Do they all have Curtis chips or do the early ones had SSM chips like the Prophet? I think mine is a Rev 1 whatever that means...

proximo · Post by **proximo** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:02 am

Yo hubird and garyb, thanks a lot for your msgs ...

@Man-Machine : I don't know, but that is an interesting question.
Mine is a Model 100, with a rev 1.2 board and all with curtis chips (3 CEM3340 VCO, 2 CEM3310 EG, 1 CEM3320 VCF).

I think having knobs is so great ! And I find those CWA Authentic Sound Box tempting !?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:53 am

good job, proximo

it's a matter of taste, but I agree with your perception of the analog original.
The emulation sounds a bit 'woody' (that's the best association that entered my mind), but I'm rather convinced that it is heavily influenced by parameter passing - it kind of misses the sweet spot.

I've had a very similiar issue with Wavelength's OP8 recently, where an alomst closed filter made a gorgeous sound. -1 the sound was off, +2 that filter effect vanished - a knob zoom would have been great, but of course this is not analog and parameters can't be arbitrarily strectched.
I'm sure Stephen wouldn't have left that bass out, if possible at all

I'd guess that your analog model is from the different 'chip type' than the emulation - the's a noticable deviation in sound character between the two (imho).
Not to be messed with the quality argument explained above.

cheers, Tom

proximo · Post by **proximo** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 8:31 am

@Tom
"the sound was off, +2 that filter effect vanished - a knob zoom would have been great..." : ho man, tell me about it, that's why it was such a pain ! even with a midi controller .. forget the mouse !

Cheers,

valis · Post by **valis** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 9:04 am

Just a note for those that have forgotten, keyboard arrow keys should achieve a much higher resolution than a mouse or midi controller can when it comes to fine tuning knobs and sliders in Scope software.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 3:56 pm

yeah Valis, good point - fortunately I knew about those keys (which I discovered once by accident and not by rtfm

)
yet the filter in question could use much more detailed increments/decrements in that range, which is probably not supported by the underlaying module.
btw my Yamaha DX200 has pots which deliver rather grainy midi controller values, but whenever you touch one, it's controller is also mapped to the endless dial for highest possible resolution.
A very handy approach which could also be applied to software controls

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-04-23 16:57 ]

johnbowen · Post by **johnbowen** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:15 pm

On 2005-04-23 02:09, Man-Machine wrote:
I actually think that my current Pro-One sounds extremely close to the old one I used to have. Do they all have Curtis chips or do the early ones had SSM chips like the Prophet? I think mine is a Rev 1 whatever that means...

All the Pro 1's used CEM parts; we were finished with SSM by then. (Actually, SSM caused us a couple of serious delays by not being able to provide chips for us in a timely manner, and we lost some Prophet 5 sales because of it. This was an additional reason Dave switched to the Curtis design...)

_________________
john bowen
zarg music

[ This Message was edited by: johnbowen on 2005-04-23 18:16 ]

johnbowen · Post by **johnbowen** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:29 pm

On 2005-04-23 16:56, astroman wrote:
yeah Valis, good point - fortunately I knew about those keys (which I discovered once by accident and not by rtfm )
yet the filter in question could use much more detailed increments/decrements in that range, which is probably not supported by the underlaying module.
btw my Yamaha DX200 has pots which deliver rather grainy midi controller values, but whenever you touch one, it's controller is also mapped to the endless dial for highest possible resolution.
A very handy approach which could also be applied to software controls

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-04-23 16:57 ]

A Scope DP designer (or free SDK'er) can set the knob taper in a number of different ways, so that you can "zoom in" on the sweet spot area. I've done this with most all of my designs. Most sensitive to the lack of resolution are frequency controls, since the ear is extremely "picky" in that regard. For the filter frequency, the designer can also adjust things to make the crucial area more responsive, but with MIDI control values, it's not much better, since there's only 127 values anyway. Even with my adjusting the taper of the knobs, I still often use the arrow keys to 'hone in' on a desired value. The display usually won't even reflect the change, but this is because of the limited width of the displayed values usually.
The Scope system works on values of +/- 2147483647, so a very fine resolution is available, but it's nearly impossible to do it with any mouse (or even arrow) control. Often designers have to type in a specific number via the keypad, if the display is set to handle such. I'm sure Stephen (wavelength) could rework the tapers of the knobs if you had specific needs....if he has time, that is (his music career as 'subtractiveLAD' is taking off nicely, but I hope he can stay involved around here as well).

Oh, also Tom....there's no provision for a rotory encoder (endless dial) in the Scope software!

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Apr 24, 2005 4:35 am

then how about a virtual one ?
clicking it once interprets mouse-dial movements as increment/decrement of smaller units (than the screen can represent and as is already used by the mouse-dial) ?

and thanks for explaining, John - I'll try to find the patch back and forward it to Stephen. Not that I'm in particular need for a modification, but imho the OP8 would benefit quit a bit from improved tweaking in that range

addition: oops, I was a little too fast with my conclusion - that filter effect isn't the filter alone, but heavily depending on other modulation settings.
With appropriate tweaking the filter range gets extended as well, so it better stays as it is...

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-04-24 14:40 ]

johnbowen · Post by **johnbowen** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:10 am

On 2005-04-24 05:35, astroman wrote:
then how about a virtual one ?
clicking it once interprets mouse-dial movements as increment/decrement of smaller units (than the screen can represent and as is already used by the mouse-dial) ?

cheers, Tom

/font>

I don't know how I would do this - sounds like something that the Scope system would have to "know" to do, which we 3rd parties have no control over.

_________________
john bowen
zarg music

[ This Message was edited by: johnbowen on 2005-04-25 01:11 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:54 am

well, it's like regular mouse-tracking with just a different scaling.
It should be possible, since many devices show hi-res decimals, while the screen control is moved in integer increments.
Say each tick of the mouse dial increments the value by 0.1 while the screen representation is updated 1 pixel after 10 ticks. Or any other value pair appropriate.

The same should apply to the regular mouse pointer, but is a fairly inconvenient way of dragging the rodent

Since the dial automatically locks to the control and behaves like a mouse-drag (unless configured differently) the process should be totally transparent for the program.
I probably expressed it too complicated in the post above (with click and switch mode etc)

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-04-25 02:55 ]