Synclavier Regen // The 7 stages of ownership 

i saw the Synclavier at the Frankfurt Musik Messe in the late 80s in a closed area. They played the whole song from Sting "Straight from my heart" inc. multi track of Stings voice... it was jaw dropping.. the whole song from one instrument. never will forget this.

@@iSirTaki crazy that I saw the machine it was recorded on and you actually heard the file. That's insane. The other 2 times I saw one was at a studio in NYC called Planet Sound and at New England Digital's NYC offices for a demo. I just said why not, called them and went to a demo. They played Stevie Wonder's Skeleton, a Go West Record, King Of Wishful Thinking if my memory serves me correctly and Swing Out Sister's Break Out

Thanks… nice of you to comment. 😀

Right! Depending on the purpose of the audio you're creating, you need to un-digitize the Synclavier somewhat. It offers sufficient tools for that, but an analog filter or a (Strymon El Capistan) tape delay pedal will do just fine!

@@agerven Great Tip Thank you!

I'm running mine mono into the Arp 2600m when i want some grit. Anthony Marinelli used to run the synclavier into his Roland System 100 modular to add a Little bit of grit. To be honest, the Synclavier Regen sounds great as It is but "playing" with some analog effects Is cool

I agree. It's its own thing... just showing off my knowledge of apostrophe usage!

Hi 5!@@StarskyCarr

Having used the Synclavier V plugin, I was going to make the same point! Frames are pretty much the main way you get timbral changes over time in the original, I believe.

Nah… sit back, relax and go with it - loads of inspirational stuff will pop out.

That would be good - possible if the USB3 power port could be used in some manner. Personally, I'll seriously consider the overpriced Synclavier knob as well. I think that slider would drive me nuts. :D

Took me soooo long to figure it out.

@@StarskyCarr I can only imagine! It sounds absolutely infuriating - I would have definitely written to customer support. . .highly doubt I could have figured that out on my own.

Years of fun! 🤩

Cheers. The screen gives loads of information and is well thought out, but of course a big screen with loads of knobs will always give more. I’ve not found it too small as you only normally work with a parameter at a time - like the original, but yeah a huge screen with all the info is always better. I like using editors with a lot of my analog stuff just because I can quickly see everything that’s going on in a patch. On this that would still be a challenge 😂😵‍💫

thanks for your reply @@StarskyCarr ! - Do you think there's any scope for the screen output to go to a computer monitor via usb or something?

That's not technically possible on Regen I'm afraid. HMDI mirror out was briefly considered, but to do that you have to register with the HDMI standards and pay a subscription, and we assumed only a handful of people would use it this way. Also, it would only be the same screen, only bigger (some people might prefer a bigger screen because it could show more information at one time) What we did instead was source a high-resolution high-contrast OLED screen that is crisp and clear. We were careful with every pixel we used, too.One nicety we added, on Loopop's suggestion, was that when you alter a parameter, its value on the display momentarily zooms. That helps a lot.@@rekindle

You can connect an USB Interface and get individual outs through that :)

Yeah you can get individual outs via a usb interface, I recorded some stuff but it didn’t make the final cut. It doesn’t work as USB to your DAW yet .. it’s in the works, but you can use an interface to send the audio to separate outputs in the interface that you can send to a mixer/fx etc. for live.

Its so much faster to use than my knobladen synths, to create complex additive/FM/samplebased sounds this interface is perfect! It gets into your musclememory very quickly,

Agreed, got one for mine and VESA is the way to go.

Why do you think you need more than 24 harmonics? In most cases, the upper harmonics exceed the upper frequency of your hearing anyway. i should add, however, that when you introduce phase changes in the higher harmonics they can affect some of the lower harmonics and become relevant.

@@agerven We only had 8 voices, so the workaround was to use harmonics for polyphony. Thus, the bottom 7 harmonics are not always particularly useful.

You may want to try a Hydrasynth Deluxe first. I do not own one but found it to be quite impressively built.

83 voices 😉

I have the Arturia one. Haven't used it for a while but I don't think it does resynthesis. That's a major point in Regen's favour.

A partial is like 1 oscillator voice. Each one can be detuned as you wish. But, if you mean each harmonic in an additive partial, no. You alter the coefficient and phase for each harmonic and this builds a waveform.

Thx, so no envelopes for pitch and level per harmonic, sadly. Would it be possible for upcoming updates? I'm always hoping that someone builds something that could replicate the (real) additive synthesis engine of the Kurzweil K150. Many real instruments have inharmonicities in their spectra, so detuning (and even detuning over time) of harmonics would be mandatory for convincing additive bell- or plucked-type sounds...

I believe that you can change the carrierpitch in semitones and fine for each frame, so that will alter pitch over time, and you can also turn of pitchtrack for each partial. I dont know if further pitchchanges are available in the modulation matrix but I do think you can modulate a lot of things with the LFOs from there, maybe also with the envelopes? @@tihinter

I think it was on the back of ‘Bring on the Night’ - a live album i absolutely loved because of the musicianship of the band - where he talks about The Russians and songwriting being like recipes… ‘a little more salt perhaps’.. was the quote. I guess he can be a matter of taste himself 🤢. Theres a touch of David Brent in there.

@@StarskyCarr yes, because I believe it was from a Keyboard interview from about that time.

You're best off asking Synclavier directly for most of those questions - they're very responsive. The one I can answer is the sample length. It says the final sample is 511 as the first sample is sample 0 - so thats 512 in total. I often get confused when doing similar things with patch numbers and wave numbers on wavetables! When you're trying to compare them and the numbering system is different it can be a headwrecker!

@@StarskyCarr Cheers for the reply! My point was that it says "length 511" on the actual screen, though :) I think someone did a simple subtraction and forgot to add 1.

- No desktop app...yet. We are working on something that might allow for that. If you have the Synclavier V app, you can edit sounds there and then import them to Regen. I wouldn't say the editing is easier there per se, just different, but it would be quicker if you're used to it. Another "concession" is that Regen supports SoundFonts, so if multi-sample patches is your thing, you can create them on a desktop editor like Polyphone and then import to Regen. - Yes it does. Full details here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZDvfJKdUrK0.html - We made it so there's always an additional cue not just colour -- typically a symbol on the screen or something. So colour is never the only determiner. Also, we chose red and blue for the dual mode buttons,, because red/green is the more common colour blindness. - The envelopes are far from steppy. I think the effect you can hear is more from the fact different envelopes were used on different partials. - Some commenters on youtube that have never played with a Regen claim to hate the UI. In fact, we get customers every week emailing us with compliments on the UI. Maybe this hate is coming from people more used to subtractive synthesis and they'd like every synth they buy to look and act the same? I don't know. We certainly felt if we were going to develop a product it would have to have our DNA in it and not be a clone of something else. We're very happy with the way it turned out and very happy with the feedback we continue to receive. Edit: and 511 is the first sample not played. A bit weird maybe, but that's how it's displayed

As a Regen user myself I agree about the UI, it should win a price, its the first complex synth that makes it so easy to edit parameters in layers in an intuitive way! It gets into your musclememory very quickly!

@@Synclavier Thanks so much for the detailed replies! Glad to know microtonalism is supported - I'll watch that video shortly. Congratulations on this achievement, it's an amazing instrument! P. S. Yes, I do have Synclavier V, so I'll bear that in mind if I think about purchasing. Cheers!

I got the impression that changing things on the interface was far quicker than anyone could manage with a pointing device, despite the lack of knobs. I know what you mean, though. It would have been great to see a full-size keyboard version, but I'm guessing it would be super expensive.

It has two balanced XLRs and two unbalanced, and, you can connect a USB sounddevice and get individual outs through that.

You get TRS Din adaptors in the box, so it’s there.

@@StarskyCarr I didn't even knew such adaptors existed. You're never to old to learn :)

Haha that’d be 144 of them! It’d end up the size of the original. I like that’s its proudly digital … but that’s prob because I’ve got a studio full of analogs. I like that this is different.. definitely its own thing.

@@StarskyCarr yeah mate it looks like you have a subscription to Analogue solutions.

@@randydarklighthaha… I’ve got a couple, but those massive ones are only here for a couple of weeks. … I wonder if they’ll do a subscription 🤔 nice idea 😂

@@StarskyCarr off topic: Do you already know when you will get the Mantis? I'm sure you'll get it months earlier than us. 🙂

Dumbest thing to say no app is close to the feel of this

Congrats!

I will eat pizza!

​@@AlchemicalAudioLiar.

@@zackcolbourne6921 are you feeling jealous I didn’t invite you? You can come next pizza, don’t worry!

It's a synthesizer so yeah the sounds are kind of the whole thing.

the sound quality is more detailed compared to the MPC61.. I have both

Akai doesn’t support MPE as of this writing.

I really hope not tbh. It’s a small company… but as it’s digital the IP is in the processing, so it would be different business model than the analog replicas which they’ve got nailed down after years of cloning etc.

@@StarskyCarrwell Arturia beat them to it. I like programming the Arturia version with the large screen showing all the partials.

@@crhkrebsarturia’s version is in partnership with Synclavier which is cool.

@@StarskyCarr I like the Arturia plugin as well. I don't think it can do resynthesis though. That looks like a very nice feature.

Well there is a VESA mount on the back

No… I keep telling you it’s not as bad as others say it is. It’s actually quite easy once it clicks.. but if you pick it up and play for 19 minutes you’ll be utterly confused most likely.

@deadmanwalking6342 Are you going to post the same comment on every Regen video? At least you change the year each time. It was 1983 on Loopop's video, so we've gained 5 years in 1 ;-)

The UI is actually perfect for very quickly making complex sounds.. Everything ends up in the musclememory after a short while. Im faster at making complex sounds on this than any other complex synth I have tried. Faster to work with than my Waldorf M for instance.

@@henrikstolpe Yes, the myth of the so called muscle memory and its apologoists.

@@deadmanwalking6342it works when I play guitar, im quite sure it works when using a synth. Its called motorlearning and takes place in the cerebellum part of the brain.

@@henrikstolpe Lots of famous musicians dont have a celebrium part in their brain and can only handle knobs, these famous musicians makes great music but most motorlearning musicians makes crap music thats why they are not famous.😅 Example DX7 a famous synth that didnt have knobs so every famous musicians used yamahahaha factory E-piano preset sound and got very famous and made lots a money!

??

@@StarskyCarr Ohh .. sorry Starsky .. the machine .. not you 😉

And as soon as you leave the store with the laptop, resale value if you want to sell for an upgrade goes out the window.

cool story.

No its actually perfect for how the workflow is designed for the Regen. Everything ends up in the musclememory very quickly! Im faster at making complex sounds on this than any other complex synth I have tried. Faster to work with than my Waldorf M for instance.