What is the equivalent to 'Basic Timbre' in Syntronik 2?

[Dark Lane]

Hi All

I'm planning to use Syn2 CS as a learning tool to experiment with all elements of synth sound design; oscillator, filter, LFO, envelopes etc so want to start with the basic building block of a single oscillator (or at least a wave set sample of one)

The old IK training videos for Syn1 (which would really benefit from a facelift to Syn2, IMO) mention using the 'basic timbre' selection filter to identify presets with simple oscillator samples and then tweaking these. Sounds great but of course, for Syn1 presets, it's not possible to access the Edit screen so I can't get into the 'under the hood' tweaking I'd like to.

Selecting Syn2 generation filter on the preset selection as well as the basic timbre filter doesn't return any presets so it seems IK abandoned this tag on Syn2 presets.

Rather than have to browse through all presets to try and find a 'basic' Syn2 preset, is there an alternative filter that would achieve the same result? Any other suggestions how to build a synth patch from scratch in Syn2 and the Edit screen?

Thanks

[Steve-xyz]

It sounds like an interesting approach. Ooops. I forgot that CS presets don't have a variety of Wave Sets to choose from. So I had to delete what I suggested about choosing a Single Oscillator Wave Set.

[Steve-xyz]

So, I found out where I had stored my CS Library, pointed SYN2 to that folder, and rescanned SYN2. After listening to (and playing with several different patches on several instruments), I feel your self-teaching method would work well with any patch.

Turning off preset features in the graphical edit panel and with the hardware-style user interface will teach you some important things. For example, you could start with the CATO Broken Computer Preset and using the hardware style front panel turn Osc 2 off and then change the filter to off.

To further create a "Basic Timbre Preset" you could then switch to the graphical edit panel, turn off Osc 2, turn off drift for Osc 1, change Osc 2 to Empty (no wave set), and then Initialize the Modulation Matrix. You might want to save that with a unique name. I called mine Basic CATO Mono Saw.

That should give you a really basic monophonic saw timbre to work with as a starting point.

You can then go back to the hardware panel and switch it to poly phone to get as Basic CATO Poly Saw.

If these work as basic starting points for you, great!! You can then choose other CS presets and convert them to more basic timbre presets. Doing things like zeroing attacks on the Amp Envelope and the Filter Envelope should be useful. Choosing non-percussive presets might be better to work with.

As I suspect you will be doing, once you have a few starting point presets, play with parameters one section at a time, for example the filter choices in the hardware panel, the filter envelopes in the graphical UI, a single controller or parameter in the mod matrix, etc.

I think using SYN2 is good for your self-learning method because the different instruments have common parameters and controls in both types of panels.

For some of the more complex sounding presets, you might also want to turn off all the Effects.

You can tweak Galaxy's Singing Sine to make as basic preset. To test I cranked up Hold for both the filter and amp envelopes in the graphical panel. I also boosted the Level in Osc. 1.

[Dark Lane]

Thanks Steve.

I'd come to the same conclusion that I'd have to start with a standard patch and strip away the advanced features to come up with a basic oscillator sound and then add them again, layer by layer.

Shame that S2 doesn't have a patch selection filter to pick out some basic patches but I guess most users want to cut straight to the sounds rather than create them from scratch

Cheers