kakku
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A bit disappointing freebie
I fell for the Computer Music mag's latest temptation. There was a free synth included from Xils labs called Xils 3 cm. I was a bit over enthusiastic about it expecting great sounding presets, but I was let down. Funny sounds yes, great sounds nope. Still the mag staff make a whole feature of the synth. Perhaps with a lot of tweaking it could sound good. But why on earth the sound developers don't make good sounding presets to begin with? Also less funny was that my old laptop failed to read the included dvd. Luckily there was mentioned a place called the vault where it was possible to download the same stuff that was on the dvd.
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Mesh
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 08:41:32
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Generally, I've only heard very disappointing news on these freebies that have a CM after it. There seems to be issues with that particular version. Xils makes some really good synths and I still have a very old Audio Midi deal I got sometime back, but I never really installed it in my new DAW. I do remember the pads were really good/phat sounds, but it was CPU intensive on my old machine. At least kakku, you didn't pay for this. 
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kakku
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 08:55:07
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Actually I got at least one nice synth as mag freebie this way. The Dune cm has a couple of good presets. Somebody who knows how to work the synths probably benefits from this Xils synth too. I paid 12.30 euros for the mag (though I ofc bought it because of the synth)so it was a reasonable price I guess.
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Glyn Barnes
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 09:00:52
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I love my XILS 4. I have not see the CM product but I assume it could be a version of XILS 3 CE. Maybe with a reduce preset set?
Like the EMS synths they are based on they have a lot of peculiarities. You can do some really weird routing and come up with very unusual sounds. They do work as a conventional keyboard driven synth better than the originals but their forte is in complex modulation effects.
They also make interesting effects processors. The full versions have enveloped followers and pitch to voltage converters so in addition to the synth to process your audio, you can use the audio to control your synth. Brian Eno used EMS synths to process sax and guitar in Roxy Music.
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bapu
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 14:04:55
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Disappointed in a freebie? That's almost as bad as being paid to take a product and then complain about it. 
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The Maillard Reaction
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 14:12:30
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I think it's super, super important for a *instrument* to have lots and lots of presets.
Listening to lots and lots of presets makes it so much easier to to recognize which 3 actually sound good.
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kakku
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 14:34:46
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Actually I would be super satisfied if in a synth there was just 3 really good presets.
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kakku
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 14:39:17
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@Glyn: Yes it would seem it has a lot fewer presets than a full xils 3 has. I am actually testing the synth again and for some reason it sounds a bit better now.
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Glyn Barnes
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/12 22:37:49
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Of course the original VCS 3 and Synth A had no presets not even a basic starting patch. That did not stop Pink Floyd and Roxy Music from doing some remarkable things with them.
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Kalle Rantaaho
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/13 06:55:34
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IMO most of the CM studio software is good stuff. Especially U-He Zebra CM and Dune CM.
I think most (all?) of the XilsLab synths are software versions of hardware. So criticising them one should compare them loosely to the hardware. According to the specs Xils 3 emulates Synthi VCS 3 modular synthesizer and the 256 Analog Sequencer. So it's the "same" synth used on, for example, "Won't get Fooled again" by the Who. A legendary instrument, so maybe that's why it was given so much attention. An emulation of 70's hardware surely sounds different than any modern instrument.
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Glyn Barnes
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/13 10:41:08
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Won't get fooled again is a classic case for the VCS3 as an effects processor. The sound was a Lowrey organ being processed by the VCS 3.
Another famous VCS 3 track is Pink Floyd's On the Run from Dark Side of the Moon.
BTW . XILS labs XILS 4 has two XILS 3 engines and audio and modulation signals can be passed between them multiplying the potential.
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kakku
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/13 14:01:21
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Thanks guys for the comments. It seems that the synth is good stuff if you know how to program it. I have been doing some music but not with this synth. I hope I will some day use it in songs.
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sharke
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/14 12:20:00
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Let's face it there are a small number of "workhorse" synth sounds that get used over and over again in songs for a good reason - because they sound pleasing, musical and work well in a mix. I would like to see more synths offer a solid collection of these types of sounds as presets that you can use as raw material for your own tweaking, instead of bombarding us with 500 quirky space age bleeps that you can't ever imagine using in a song. I know they demonstrate what the synth is capable of but it sucks when you have to wade through the nonsense to get the usable sounds.
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Bajan Blue
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/14 12:53:08
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Sharke
Agree with you here - some presets on some synths do sound fabulous on their own, but simply will not fit into a mix, for instance they could have too much reverb mixed in etc.
So shall we start a petition on this!!
Cheers
Nigel
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kakku
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/14 13:48:28
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Bit OT sorry.I have been wondering who on earth would do these strange UFO sounds in the synths. Could it be that sound designers who build these alien sound sets are not earth born at all but aliens instead?!!?? They are aliens that are unhappy with all these nice bread and butter sounds and try to brainwash us using sounds that are out of this earth!! They try to brainwash us into loving the strange sounds making us slowly to morph into hidious, ghastly sounding soundset lovers!! Wake up time people!! We are being invaded sound by sound!! Tomorrow it will be too late!!!
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Glyn Barnes
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Re: A bit disappointing freebie
2014/12/15 23:11:12
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I started another thread on presets in general as it may draw more people into the debate. Of course it would be surprising to find a lot of weird effects on An EMS VCS3 emulation. This is what the original hardware was it was good at. With its volts-per-hertz oscillators as opposed to the more common an musical volts per octave and its rather unstable tuning it was never much of a keyboard synth. The XILS emulations have removed these restrictions so you can be more conventionally musical than owners of the original but preset makers will still include sounds representative of the original hardware.
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