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Absynth 3.0 microtuning support

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

1/6/2005 11:02:53 AM

Thought I'd throw this out there: the latest version of Native Instruments Absynth (3.0) looks to have pretty good microtuning support. From a review:

"Absynth might well be a microtonalist's dream! While the initial release showed a glimmer of promise, tuning was restricted to a collection of preset factory tunings. Since version 2.0 Absynth has been fully tuneable. This means that every one of the 128 possible MIDI notes can be individually tuned, with a theoretical precision of at least one millionth of a cent! Repeating, equal tempered scales can also be easily programmed. To understand how simple but revolutionary this tuning system is, consider that the majority of other instruments (both hardware and software) limit their microtuning to repeating octaves. Even those with "full keyboard" tuning often constrain the detuning of each note to 50 or 100 cents from its nominal pitch. The final frustration is that many of these instruments have tuning precision coarser than one cent. Not so Absynth! I'm recommending it to my microtonalist friends, even the fussy ones.

There is, however, one "gotcha" that is neither covered in the manual nor revealed by my poking around. - there seems to be no way to create a user scale based on an existing factory scale. In other words, supposing you wanted to tweak a few notes in the Harrison 16 scale and resave it as a variation. No can do. Every user scale has to be created either from 12-tone equal tempered or from another user scale. You aren't even permitted to view the intervals of a scale you'd like to emulate!"

The full review, by Richard Zvonar, can be found here:
http://www.audiomidi.com/aboutus/reviews/zvonar_absynth.cfm?CPID=867

Alas, NI is either behind or negligent, and they don't have a demo version for trial, which might be important on a $270.00 purchase...

Cheers,
Jon