Subharmonic Synthesizers

[wezloop]

Has anyone had any experience with using Subharmonic Synthesizers in a live environment?

If so, what was your experience? What's good and what's not? Any unexpected obstacles encountered in its use?

I'm quite interested in a unit like the Peavey Kosmos or similar on vocals, but have had no exposure to this type of gear.

[andybutler]

What do you want to achieve?
Bigger kicks for your beatboxing beatboxing?

Or this do the stuff you want?

www.ehx.com/products/voice-box

[wezloop]

Right first time. Monster kick sounds is my intent.

Generally I use a virtual looping setup in Bidule. In my vocal percussion effects chain I use MDA's excellent vst Subsynth for this purpose.

I'm currently putting together a hardware set up and am trying to replicate the earthshaking bass that Subsynth provides.

[andybutler]

:-) you really should checkout
www.mathons.com/chopitch.htm
for your Bidule setup.

In terms of hardware, I've used the Behringer units only.
An old Ultrabass Pro did a nice job on a guitar track (with percusive kick sounds ) that I remixed for someone...although I
had to use it on an FX send.
....but I never tried beatboxing with the Kosmos,
it *should* work of course.


What about the other method the MDA Subsynth uses?
Generating a thump using an oscillator.

[wezloop]

Thanks for the response Andy.

I have checked out Chopitch once before. It worked well actually; nice and fast. Lag's always such a problem with pitch shifting hey.

Good to hear about you experience using the Ultrabass Pro. I've been looking for it's like to turn up on eBay since Behringer finished up making them.
The Kosmos seems to review well and I'm keen to hear one in action, but such things are rarely seen in the antipodes.

I hadn't considered your suggestion of generating a thump using an oscillator before. How would you go about that in a hardware set up?

[andybutler]

If you're still looking for the UltraBass Pro you can always make me an offer for mine, it's no longer used. (though I expect shipping costs would make that unrealistic).

To create the oscillator thump live you'd need a sampler or synth that can be audio triggered.
If you can find a synth which does that (tricky), or a sampler intended for drum replacement (though I don't know if that would necessarily have storage after power off).

I wonder if a filter with high resonance at a suitable lo-freq would do it? May try later with my Moogerfooger( can't now ...to early in the morning)

[wezloop]

Thanks for the offer on the Behringer, but beyond the shipping; I doubt the exchange rate would do either of us any favours.

Okay, I get what you mean on the oscillator idea. I'd have to try it out. I've generally found synth triggering to be a bit unpredictable with vocals. You've got to get your pitch, vowel sounds, and plosives just right or you get all sorts of crazy things going on. Getting a suitable low frequency (as you say) would be key I imagine.

Storage after power off would not be a problem though, as I never store anything.

If you do happen to try the Moogerfooger though, I'd be interested in hearing about the results.

[andybutler]

Mar 27, 2010 14:33:31 GMT wezloop said:

Storage after power off would not be a problem though, as I never store anything.

If the device has storage then you can use your studio/pc to create the perfect thump and then take it to gigs.
...but I prefer "all live" too ;-)

Mar 27, 2010 14:33:31 GMT wezloop said:

If you do happen to try the Moogerfooger though, I'd be interested in hearing about the results.

Well, it does work. The resonance control has to be set *very* finely though. Problem is that the thump gets quieter as it gets shorter.
I guess it's worth trying if you already have a filter, even if it's one that won't fully oscillate.

Hang on a minute.......
the MF-101 lets me patch it's envelope output to control resonance.
...let's try....
Now it works exceptionally well!
Only oscillates when there's an incoming signal.
Plenty of variation by using the "Amount" control to send
the envelope to the filter pitch.
..and there's 2 speed settings on the envelope one for a quick
thump, and the other for a bit more decay.
The Mix control now mixes between the dry signal, and the thump.

So.. if you can find an MF-101 in AU, and can afford it, it's possibly a good solution for you.
Of course, there's no way I can be sure it nails exactly the sound you want.



If you gate find a gate with an external key input, like this one
www.behringer.com/EN/Products/XR2000.aspx
then you'd need some way of generating a continuous low freq tone (synth).
...but again, that's discontinued gear :-(

[wezloop]

That sounds very promising, I'm keen to try it out.

The MF-101 seems very reasonably priced (and dead cool) so I might look into getting one.

I'll be offline for the next week or so, but I'm looking forward to continuing the discussion when I get back. Thanks for your efforts.

Cheers!