Awesome… thanks very much!
Arturia V collection 9 out now
- Thread starter flampton
- Start date
Awesome… thanks very much!
KerrySmith
Active Member
In lieu of immediate purchase, I updated my v8 software, because when they roll out a new Collection update, they update the Analog Lab instrument, with patches from the new instruments.
So I loaded some of the (effectively teaser) presets from the MS-20, and it's everything I remember the real MS-20 I had access to for years, being. and then some. Granted, you don't have full access to all of the controls in the Analog Lab versions, but it was enough to convince me (and I have had the Korg MS-20 plug for over a decade). I'll probably be buying the upgrade tomorrow.
So I loaded some of the (effectively teaser) presets from the MS-20, and it's everything I remember the real MS-20 I had access to for years, being. and then some. Granted, you don't have full access to all of the controls in the Analog Lab versions, but it was enough to convince me (and I have had the Korg MS-20 plug for over a decade). I'll probably be buying the upgrade tomorrow.
tressie5
The Quest for Balance
Arturia's MS-20 is interesting. I've never played the original, so I can't compare them. What's interesting are the sounds of this demo - rough, gnarly, unrefined, a little hard to tame. I'm guessing the hardware version is like that? I was able to make a silky smooth pad, though. Really impressive filters as is the reverb. The arpeggiator is usable, I suppose.
Per Boysen
Active Member
Regarding V 9, has anyone been able to direct where the samples of Augmented Strings will be stored? I'd like to avoid stuffing my system drive.
charlieclouser
Senior Member
Just got v9 and the Arturia MS-20 is great! Gnarly. I have an original hardware MS-20+MS-50, and the full-size re-issue kit - and I like Arturia better than any of them. Polyphony, sequencer, fx, workflow, sound. It's a winner for sure.
The new Prophet-VS sounds great, but still does not import SysEx files from the hardware like one of the previous versions of Prophet-V used to do. Very annoying. But I'm going to manually recreate the ancient NIN patches in my hardware units one parameter at a time (ugh) and then I will report how close it gets. The older Prophet-V was but a pale simulation of the hardware. Now they need to re-engineer the Matrix-12v like they did with the CS-80 and Prophets!
Not to derail, but G-Force Oddity2 is on sale for $30 at audioplugin.deals. It's awesome as is their OB-8voice.
The new Prophet-VS sounds great, but still does not import SysEx files from the hardware like one of the previous versions of Prophet-V used to do. Very annoying. But I'm going to manually recreate the ancient NIN patches in my hardware units one parameter at a time (ugh) and then I will report how close it gets. The older Prophet-V was but a pale simulation of the hardware. Now they need to re-engineer the Matrix-12v like they did with the CS-80 and Prophets!
Not to derail, but G-Force Oddity2 is on sale for $30 at audioplugin.deals. It's awesome as is their OB-8voice.
Nimrod7
Bill Kastanakis
I am wondering if the Prophet-VS patch format is human readable. The idea that runs in my head is that it might worth writing a converter, assuming that 1:1 parameter mapping sounds the same.
charlieclouser
Senior Member
Parsing SysEx files sounds does not seem like fun... but there really aren't all that many parameters anyway. I've done it before to convert some of my Xpander patches over to Arturia Matrix-12v, and it was relatively painless, but kinda slow. Just gotta sit down and roll through 'em one by one on the hardware. On the Matrix-12v the parameters did not match up exactly, but I got dang close.
I only have a handful of patches that are worth doing that for, and it's mostly just so I can compare the hard to the soft, not to try and recreate critical performance patches or anything.
Thing is, with the natural wobble of the Oberheim hardware, the software needed twice the voices stacked in unison mode to get close to the thickness of the hardware. Now that the re-engineered Arturia synths have those voice-calibration controls, I have high hopes for a re-engineered Matrix-12v and OB-XAv.
dunamisstudio
Senior Member
So would you say it's worth getting to be close enough? For me, Repro costs almost as much as my V9 upgrade price.
charlieclouser
Senior Member
Tough call. I have RePro but rarely use it. MS-20 has more possibilities for gnarly-ness, with dual filters, feedback routing, etc. And it sounds great, but the Mk1 filter mode (the gnarly one) is such a CPU hog that the plugin throws a warning when you switch from Mk2 to Mk1 with unison or poly turned on! And that Mk1 filter mode with unison on maxes out the last core on my ancient Xeon 12-core 2.7ghz Mac Pro cylinder at anything below 256 buffer. So they ain't lying...
KerrySmith
Active Member
Curious. Did you previously import the hardware SysEx into the prior version of the Prophet-V, save them, and the new one won't open or see those patches from the earlier version?
KerrySmith
Active Member
and yes, I think this is my favorite "MS-20" as well. Has everything I want, without the recall pita.
charlieclouser
Senior Member
I did. At one point I had all of my old VS patches in Prophet-V, and I sure as hell didn't delete them. I still have the Prophet-V banks created from that SysEx, in a format with the suffix " .provbank " but those don't import into the current ProphetVS-V.
And ya know what's truly fucked? The older Prophet-V3 (the one with the dual engines from the previous version V-Collection) is now DEAUTHORIZED on my rig. And there appears to be no way to get that synth functioning again, even though I already own it! I do have a bootable clone of an older version of my boot drive, and I'm going to check and see if it contains a version of Prophet-V that is old enough to import SysEx or at least read those " .provbank " files that I made from the SysEx dumps. But I can only imaging that those old " .provbank " files won't read in the current ProphetVS-V.
I even have the original CD-ROMs of the very first version of Prophet-V. I suppose I could attempt to install that on a spare machine and see if I can get the patches back, but I can imagine that it's phone-home-ware and won't install anymore. Also I can't really remember which version of Prophet-V could import SysEx, and at which version it stopped being able to do so. They never warned us that this would happen, they just quietly removed the feature in some update of Prophet-V, and that patch format became incompatible.
Not like I really give a shit, because I have two hardware Prophet VS units, and I can manually rebuild the five patches that matter in a half hour, but if I ever see those French fuckers in person at some NAMM show, I'll give 'em an earful.
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KerrySmith
Active Member
Oh please give them one for me, as well. I'm still fairly cross at them about the original "Analog Laboratory" patched not working in "Analog Lab". I lost some pretty good Minneapolis Funk sounds in that debacle.
But they might respond to a call or email from you...
charlieclouser
Senior Member
I kinda don't think that they would care what I think....
Anyway, I just tried booting from my older Yosemite boot drive clone, and it had Logic v10.2.4 and Prophet-V v3.3.1 on it. I was able to launch that version of Prophet-V and lo and behold - there were all my NIN patches converted from the SysEx files I had dumped from my hardware units. They sounded like they're supposed to (which is to say, basically correct but nowhere near as lively and juicy as the hardware).
I tried using Export Bank for those, and it created files with the suffix " .prox", so maybe those other files with the suffix " .provbank " were Prophet-V banks from an even earlier version? Dunno.
And guess what? Yup. Just like the " .provbank" files, those " .prox " exported banks do not import into the current ProphetVS-V. And since Prophet-V (the old dual-engine version) has now been deprecated and is no longer for sale, there's no way to get those old banks to play. Other than using an ancient boot drive of course. Or simply by NOT buying V-Collection v9. Or v8. Or v7. Or v6. Or however far back the versions on my Yosemite boot drive clone were....
But.... HOLD THE PHONE. On the new ProphetVS-V....
SysEx Import WORKS NOW.
You MUST have the dumps from the hardware in a file with the suffix " .syx " and fortunately I never throw away a file, so I had those files right at hand. You can create .syx files using the trusty and crusty SysExLibrarian software, which is freeware, runs on Monterey, and is available here:
snoize: SysEx Librarian
- - EDIT - -
Although ProphetVS-V does import .syx files created by dumping patches from the hardware, it DOES NOT manage dependencies between those patches and the User Waves in the VS hardware. So if you have patches that use waves 0-31, they will not sound correct when imported into ProphetVS-V. This is a pretty huge issue.
While you can dump the User Waves from the hardware via MIDI, there is no way to import those .syx or .mid files into ProphetVS-V - it can only import WAV files, truncated to 128 samples of 12-bit words. So you'll need a utility that can fetch the User Waves from the hardware as SysEx, and then save them as WAV files, and that doesn't seem to exist. While the hardware can accept MIDI Sample Dump Standard (.sds), there seems to be no way to initiate a dump from the hardware. I'm playing around with Awave Studio in hopes that I can get it to request a dump of a User Wave from the hardware. So far, no luck. Older software like VS Wave Wrangler seems to be gone from the internet.
So it's taking a bit of tomfoolery to comb through all of the patches on my hardware, combine them into a single bank with correct dependencies and the corresponding User Waves, and get that into ProphetVS-V.
The good news is that when the correct waves are all present, ProphetVS-V does sound freakishly close to the hardware - much better than the older Prophet-V engine, which is encouraging. My hardware (keyboard and rack) both still work and still have their patches stored, but they both feel physically fragile. All editing is done with a single data entry slider which gets a workout, and even though I have four spare sliders, two spare joysticks, a pair of replacement OLED displays, and a whole bag of replacement buttons... I can't help but treat the hardware gingerly...
So, yes, it sucks that the patch banks from Arturia's older Prophet-V do not seem to load into ProphetVS-V, but at least old hardware heads like me who have 30-year-old presets can get them into the latest version, with the caveats mentioned above.
I did it, and it works. I'm listening to Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral era VS patches right now in ProphetVS-V. I will drag out the hardware and do some critical listening later (initial results are encouraging).
So, thank you Arturia. And fuck you Arturia. In equal measure.
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KerrySmith
Active Member
Frackin' awesome. I'm glad you were able to look a little deeper. Those sounds were part of why I had been psyched for the original VS-V.I kinda don't think that they would care what I think....
Anyway, I just tried booting from my older Yosemite boot drive clone, and it had Logic v10.2.4 and Prophet-V v3.3.1 on it. I was able to launch that version of Prophet-V and lo and behold - there were all my NIN patches converted from the SysEx files I had dumped from my hardware units. They sounded like they're supposed to (which is to say, basically correct but nowhere near as lively and juicy as the hardware).
I tried using Export Bank for those, and it created files with the suffix " .prox", so maybe those other files with the suffix " .provbank " were Prophet-V banks from an even earlier version? Dunno.
And guess what? Yup. Just like the " .provbank" files, those " .prox " exported banks do not import into the current ProphetVS-V. And since Prophet-V (the old dual-engine version) has now been deprecated and is no longer for sale, there's no way to get those old banks to play. Other than using an ancient boot drive of course. Or simply by NOT buying V-Collection v9. Or v8. Or v7. Or v6. Or however far back the versions on my Yosemite boot drive clone were....
But.... HOLD THE PHONE. On the new ProphetVS-V....
SysEx Import WORKS NOW.
You MUST have the dumps from the hardware in a file with the suffix " .syx " and fortunately I never throw away a file, so I had those files right at hand. You can create .syx files using the trusty and crusty SysExLibrarian software, which is freeware, runs on Monterey, and is available here:
snoize: SysEx Librarian
www.snoize.com
So, yes, it sucks that the patch banks from Arturia's older Prophet-V do not seem to load into ProphetVS-V, but at least old hardware heads like me who have 30-year-old presets can get them into the latest version.
I did it, and it works. I'm listening to Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral era VS patches right now in ProphetVS-V. I will drag out the hardware and do some critical listening later.
So, thank you Arturia. And fuck you Arturia. In equal measure.
charlieclouser
Senior Member
Yeah that was a huge sigh of relief! It's funny, my NIN patch bank from my hardware is about one-third patches created by the randomizer on the hardware (some are playable as musical sounds, many are just wacko noise), about one-third tweaks of factory favorites (the Happiness In Slavery solo sound seems to be based on Volkanik for instance), and about one-third totally original programming. So it's not a goldmine or anything, but it's nice to have them in my current rig just for the sake of continuity and nostalgia.
Another pleasant surprise is that ProphetVS-V can import user samples into the waveforms (!!!). There is a tutorial in the plugin that describes how they will be truncated to 12-bit, 128 samples long. Somewhere I have a massive library of single-cycle waveforms for the Piston Honda that may be in the correct format, and of course you could grab waveforms from all sorts of places and just manually edit them down to size. I'll try it out later tonight. The hardware could also dump the user waves as SysEx, and I actually have a bunch of .syx files of user wave sets from the hardware, but so far no luck getting them to import into ProphetVS-V.
Also interesting is that ProphetVS-V comes with an absolute boatload of waveforms, far beyond what would fit into the 32 user slots in the hardware. On the hardware, waveforms 0-31 could be loaded + saved via SysEx, and you could use external software like VS WaveWrangler to dump waves into those locations. If you didn't have such software, you could still create user waves by creating a mix of any four of the factory waves using the joystick and then "print" that to a user location - I think that's how it worked.
All this also makes me wonder if perhaps the Prophet5-V (the new one), Matrix-12v, and other V-Collection synths might be able to take patch dumps from their hardware counterparts, as long as the dumps are in .syx format. I couldn't find any mention of SysEx import in the documentation for ProphetVS-V, so who knows? You'd think they'd make a bigger deal out of it.
But you better believe I'll be dragging out the Xpander to find out!
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