Portamento

I want to create with some of my synths portamento, glide or slide (whatever people know it as) sound. Does SHS allow portamento on any soft synth be it one of the bundles (groove synth or Dimension LE etc) or is it down to the characteristics of each individual soft synth/vsti?
 
I havn't found a global option for portamento in SHS or its soft synths yet. Perhaps its because there isn't one? I have a few instruments in Kore Player which have a 'Glide' option but as far as I can see this does not allow you to change to length/duration of the glide.
 
If it is down to individual vstis then does anyone have any recommendations for any soft synths with good portamento? The Oddity comes to mind.... or I might dust off my Korg MS-10 which definitely has portamento!
 
Thanks

I was thinking more Billy Currie and his famous streaching synth solos with Ultravox but yeah same idea. So from what your saying the portamento only can be found with certain soft synths. I will have another look at the TTS...

I don't use portamento, but this seemed like an interesting question, so I figured I'd offer what I have, in the hopes that it might help.

I have a few softsynths that offer portamento/glide. Many are of the "freeware" variety (Hades XT, Triangle II, Osiris 3 SoundFont player, Sinthecyza!2.6 etc.) with a few bigger names in there.

• IK Multimedia's Philharmonik offers adjustable "Glissando" in addition to Legato mode. This has the same effect.
• IK's SampleTank 2.5 offers adjustable portamento in its free player and demo sounds.
• Ditto for IK's Sonik Synth and its free player.
• Absynth 5 has it, though it appears to be on a patch-by-patch basis.
• Proteus VX 1 can receive portamento information via MIDI, but I haven't seen what you can do with it.
• UVI Workstation has a free player that offers adjustable glide.
• Independence Free has a LOT of easily accessible features and options, and offers "glide", though again, it's on a patch-by-patch basis.
• Plugsound Free has it. (Geez...doesn't this guy pay for anything?!?)

I'm sure there are many more that are beyond my current musical instrument monthly budget of $0. Most of the ones I checked offered it, though, so your chances of finding it (even on a good-sounding free synth) are pretty good.

Happy hunting!

Steve

Wow! Great shopping list Steve! I will check these out once 1. I can sort out my Dropout issues and 2. we get back from a short break.
 

Hi Steve
 
Finally had a chance to look at some of your suggestions. Downloaded Proteus VX and Independence Free. Havn't had a chance to use the latter but tried to run Proteus but had some problems running the sound bank i.e. nothing there to load. I'm probably doing something stupid but will look at this again later. However, I found an arp emulator which is awesome and has a great portamento! http://freemusicsoftware.org/566 just what I was looking for....
 
The other issues are now gone as changed the machine to Win7 64 bit PC with 4gb RAM. So far everything is working, even the Kinetic software I bought which I was about to ditch...
 
Martin

Hi Steve
 
I have had another attempt on Proteus. I get this error message:
 
The file C:\Program Files (x86)\Creative Professional\E-MU Sound Central\Proteus X Composer v2.0.1.exb\Proteus X Composer v2.0.1.exb
is not a valid EOS or Emulator X bank file.
 
I also think this is the only exb file that I have.
 
Martin

The Proteus .exb file could be corrupt. What's the file size (in bytes)? I have two (since I have two different versions of the Proteus player installed); one is 14,624 KB and one (to which I've added other sounds) is 14,814 KB.

As far as Independence Free, you might need to uninstall and re-install it. It's a large collection of files (more than 2 GB), and when I installed it, I had to unzip the individual .ZIP files, put all that into one folder, and then run the installer from that folder. (Yes, they could have made it easier, but it's free, so I can't complain much!)

If you run SONAR's Plug-in Manager and have it scan your VST directory, does it see the .DLL? If not, you might want to uninstall and re-install it and see if it works that time. When you re-install, make sure it goes into your "active" VST folder. (I created my own, which is not the one Cakewalk created for me when I first installed it. As such, I have to point installations to it.)

I'm sorry you're having such problems with these--I do hope you get them working soon, since I'd like to hear your opinion.

Good luck!

Steve

Yes, I'd make sure all of Independence Free was installed, even though SONAR should see the .DLL.

Did you have any problems during the installation? Whether you did or didn't, it might be worth the 5 minutes (or so) that it takes to un-install and reinstall the program.

How did you install Proteus? Did it come with your sound card, or did you download the new, free version?

Steve