Oasys - microtonal scaling - details

Hello Graham and all,

The Electonic Musician OCT 2000

Re: OASYS sound card

"For each patch, you set number of voices, voice allocation
method, overall tuning, and other parameters. You can also
set up microtonal scaling and key or velocity splits.

I can mail you the full article if interested.
or visit
http://www.korg.com/

Please clarify:

Some SoftSynths and SoftSamplers have tuning tables
Is "tunng tables" the key phrase?
If the softsynth has tuning tables, regardless
of one soundcard, they have micrtuning capability?

So what makes a sound card
microtunable is the software?

Is the Pulsar l and ll microtunable?
Does its software provide for microtuning?

Sorry for all the questions.
I have been out of the music making for a while!

Does GigaStudio softSampler have "tunng tables"?

So it seems that Reaktor will be my only choice.

I am building a new PC midi studio and have to
make some decisions soon.
I must have software with tuning tabels.
I does not seem very promiising even if
my scales are 12 tone or less?
Does this help any?

One additional problem I have is that I need high
polyphony, lets say over 100 mono notes.
Ido not beleive that I can build a fast enough
computer to occomplish this.

Need help soon.
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Vas

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Vas Gardiakos" <vas@a...> wrote:
> Hello Graham and all,
>
> The Electonic Musician OCT 2000
>
> Re: OASYS sound card
>
> "For each patch, you set number of voices, voice allocation
> method, overall tuning, and other parameters. You can also
> set up microtonal scaling and key or velocity splits.
>
> I can mail you the full article if interested.
> or visit
> http://www.korg.com/

Yowsers! Go to <http://www.korg.com/oasyspci_manuals.htm> and
download the Users Guide. Page 110 (by the numbering at the bottom of
the page, 114 by the PDF file's numbering) shows the tuning
capability. It works!

I can't copy and paste from the PDF file, probably a security thing.
But this is beautiful! 1 cent resolution, full keyboard scales.
"Scales are text files." Format is like:

d2 E3 +100 D2 becomes F3.

A bit of tweaking and Scala could churn these out! If not, a trivial
little Python script.

> Please clarify:
>
> Some SoftSynths and SoftSamplers have tuning tables
> Is "tunng tables" the key phrase?
> If the softsynth has tuning tables, regardless
> of one soundcard, they have micrtuning capability?

Yes, "tuning tables" are what you want. Specifically "user tuning
tables" because some digital pianos only give you preset tables.

Any sampler can be made microtonal by using a sample for each note,
and lying about the pitch. It means a lot of work, but some people
do it.

> So what makes a sound card
> microtunable is the software?

Ultimately, everything with digital synthesis is software.
Unfortunately, with hardware synths, you aren't allowed to change the
software, so if the manufacturer decided not to give you tuning tables
you don't get tuning tables. With a soundcard you could, in theory,
write your own driver. Creative Labs cards use the same chips as Emu
synthesizers, so there's no reason why they shouldn't have the same
microtonal capabilities. I'm assuming the tuning is set by the
driver, rather than an extra chip on the card. If the card you're
interested in has Free Linux drivers, you could check by downloading
the source code and looking for anything that looks like a list of 12
frequencies. You don't need to know C for this. You could even alter
that table to get a soundcard that's jammed into, say, Werckmeister
instead of 12-equal. But you're unlikely to get the source code to
the Windows or Macintosh drivers, and writing them from scratch will
be very difficult.

> Is the Pulsar l and ll microtunable?
> Does its software provide for microtuning?

If it isn't on the list, assume it doesn't.

> Sorry for all the questions.
> I have been out of the music making for a while!
>
> Does GigaStudio softSampler have "tunng tables"?

If you mean GigaSampler, I don't know, and would still like to. The
website is <http://www.nemesysmusic.com/products/gigasamp.html>.

> So it seems that Reaktor will be my only choice.

No. There's CSound if you don't need real-time, the AudioComposer
that was mentioned after you wrote that, and the Unity DS-1 I found
out about by searching through my own posts. See
<http://www.bitheadz.com/>.

> I am building a new PC midi studio and have to
> make some decisions soon.
> I must have software with tuning tabels.
> I does not seem very promiising even if
> my scales are 12 tone or less?
> Does this help any?

If the "microtonal scaling" is what I think it is, a 12 note scale
would be harder to get working than 24-equal or 88-CET. But the Unity
DS-1 looks like a good sampler, and does have 12-note octave tables.
So the software does exist.

If you think GigaSampler would suit you, one option would be to
contact them and say "you can have my $300 for the Full Edition if you
give me tuning tables." If enough people do that, they'll add the
feature.

> One additional problem I have is that I need high
> polyphony, lets say over 100 mono notes.
> Ido not beleive that I can build a fast enough
> computer to occomplish this.

This is a lot. A standard Kyma system can only get 60 notes, so I'd
be surprised if a soft synth could do much better. They might do a
bit better if they're only reading samples from the hard disk, and not
doing much to them. GigaSampler only promises 64 notes, but that must
be hardware dependent. So you'll either need to use CSound in
non-real time mode, find a soundcard that suits, or get an external
synth. Kyma could do it with a couple of expansion cards, but we're
talking about $5000. You can get a hardware sampler with octave
tuning tables for less than that.

Of course, PCs are getting faster all the time, and the Kyma hardware
is getting out date now, so perhaps I'm being pessimistic.

So a lot depends on your budget. You may well find it's easier to
multitrack soft synths to the hard disc, than expect everything to
play in real time. For that you'll need an audio sequencer like
Logic, Cubase or Cakewalk, and Kyma can also do it.

However, now it seems that Oasys does do everything you need, you
won't need much from a soft synth in addition.

Graham