MPowerSynth | Melda Productions

I'm surprised at the > $300 price tag, which puts it well above other versatile synths such as U-he products. I hope he reconsiders and prices it about half that.
 
It's gonna be a good one, though.

mike_mccue

How does one make the best sounding oscillators on the market sound better than, let's say for an example an oscillator?
 

Maybe he uses high quality ones and zeros! 😉

Mike, as an engineer you're thinking of oscillators in the classic sense, e.g. sine/square/triangle/sawtooth regenerative feedback circuits. Soft synths don't actually have oscillators, as I'm sure you know. The term has merely been carried over from the hardware world out of convenience.
 
Some software synths are able to generate waveforms of far greater complexity than anything Bob Moog ever envisioned. For example, much of Zebra's strength is in the "oscillators", which can morph smoothly between any set of source waveforms. Melda takes a similar approach to LFOs used as modulators in various products, so I'm guessing the new synth's oscillators are based on similar principles.
 
Creating such waveforms isn't a simple process. You're generating very complex harmonic series that have to be band-constrained to avoid aliasing and intermodulation distortion. That can't be accomplished with a simple filter. It requires constraining harmonics at the generation phase itself. It's black-belt coding, for sure.
 
Bear in mind that I have no inside information about this. I'm only thinking how I would approach it.

Thanks Bit, That's some good food for thought.

mike_mccue
Thanks Bit, That's some good food for thought.

Yep. Good info for sure.

Well, I am not going to pretend I know how to code, but knowing what I do know, I think bit may have something there.

My understanding is that the way to code something is not like the original equipment it's mimicking. The results will be the same (emulation), but not the actual process.

IOW, there is code, processing info, that results in an emulation of an Oscillator.

And Mike I know your smart about this stuff, and I'm just trying to offer a simple explanation.

On another site the maker posted a comparison between his synth and some popular ones(which he didn't name). In the comparison you could see there was less alaising and the harmonics looked clearer than the others.
 
After having tried it, I do think it sounds good, but it's a bit hard to program. I'm hoping I can make 25 presets and win a free copy because that price is pretty steep.

Why not make a collection of 25 presets and sell them for 50% off of $10 instead of trading them for the hope of getting a free $150 synth.
 
Let's say you sell 30 collections of presets for $5.00... the rest is gravy.
 
:-)

The last three synths I purchased don't have any presets, they just have knobs. I'll be buying more of that kind cause it's lots of fun to twist it out.

Yes, but as you say you spent hours tweaking a 4 voice synth that wasn't yours. It might have only taken a few moments if it was yours and you had experience using it.
 
I wonder how many presets people routinely use out of the 1000's of presets they get with a new synth? A dozen? Two Dozen? 27?
 
How often is all the exactitude practiced in selecting a preset vested in to playing a couple of notes, or maybe a few chords?

Of course you don't have to use all the presets, if just a couple are useful and make a good song, that's often money well spent IMO.

S.L.I.P.
Presets can be fun, and very rewarding. There are times when I don't have anything I want to record, and I'll sit back and go through presets. While most are not going to be ever used, occasionally you find that one preset that you get lost in, sometimes playing for hours, and sometimes this becomes the beginning of a song. 

Yep!

The extra oscillators may have bashed the CPU. I was surprised, when I was reading the product page, that we we are advised to use a 256+ sample buffer. My DAW lives at 64 and I wish my gear would run at 32. I don't see how I could go backwards and enjoy it.

Sanderexpander, your comment got me thinking about oscillators, and what you might need lots of 'em for.
 
More than 3 of these particular oscillators would probably be too CPU-intensive for most machines. Even Zebra, which is pretty efficient, seriously gobbles up CPU cycles when more than two oscillators are employed. Fortunately, my favorite patches need only one or two. I've played with SynthMaster in its massive multi-oscillator mode, and my computer just rolls over and dies.
 
6+ oscillators serves just two purposes, as near as I can tell: emulating Hammond sounds and building up EDM supersaws. No general-purpose synthesizer nails Hammond sounds anyway (you'd need 96 oscillators to do that) and I hate supersaws, which grate on my ears.
 
So I'm not impressed by synths that advertise many oscillators. It's easy enough for any developer to add any number of oscillators - it's literally cut 'n paste. Most devs don't bother, because it's what each oscillator can do, rather than how many times you do it in parallel.
 
You have to ask yourself why multiple oscillators are used in the first place. The answer is spectral modulation. The Minimoog sounded great because its oscillators were inherently unstable. As they slowly drifted in pitch they modulated one another's harmonics in a crude simulation of what happens when acoustical instruments play together. The Micromoog emulated that in an even cruder way, with pulse-width modulation. But there are diminishing returns when adding more oscillators.
 
My favorite new synth right now is OBXD, a free Oberheim emulation. Like the original Oberheim Expander Module, it has just two basic oscillators.

The price has already been lowered after howls of protest on kvr. New price will be $256. Still too high, IMO, to be competitive with comparable products. Though I'm sure Vojtech would say that there are no comparable products, and he'd be mostly right.
 
Unfortunately, part of the "incomparable" claim is because it's missing a few things people have come to expect from advanced synthesizers. Being able to pan each oscillator independently, for example. And of course the Melda UI philosophy does take some getting used to. Anyone who's been using synths for a long time will likely initially look at it and go "huh?".
 
However, I expect to see many improvements made to it over the coming year. And if you just listen to it rather than examining every knob and feature, it does sound pretty darn good.