Questions about Accoustic Sound Packs
The price of the sound packs is no big deal to me. However I would like to know which acoustic instruments are actual samples of instruments and which are physically modeled. I’m particularly interested in the keyboard (piano and electric piano), guitars and sax. Regarding the latter, is it tenor, alto, etc.? Unrelated: Is the keyboard velocity sensitive? It wasn’t in NS1. I need to know this before I purchase the app. BTW, congratulations on the launch and wishing you much success with the app.
Comments
Although patches react to velocity, the onscreen keyboard is not velocity sensitive as in say GarageBand. (How they really achieved this?).
Can be touch velocity sensitive in the sense that adjusts the velocity depending where in the key area you touch your finger.
Lower part is loudy and upper is whispery.. or sum.
No clue about the packs.
Tap arrow on top right of keyboard then set velocity to ‘touch’
This activates the velocity sensitivity where you get a different velocity based on where you touch on the key or pad. There is no accelerometer based sensitivity like in Garageband.
Personally, while the fact that GarageBand has screen velocity sensitivity is impressive in concept, I always end up turning it off. It seems like 4 of the notes are way too soft, and then every 5th one or so is full volume.
I like your idea of a location-based velocity sensitivity. However, I’ve noticed that the on-screen keyboard seems to be split into two. The upper part plays only black keys, the lower only hits white keys. In my experience, anyway.
To have wide range of control, Matt would probably have to make the full, individual length and width of the key strikeable, as they are in GarageBand.
Nah, It’s not my idea. It’s already there. I was just pointing it out.
Definitely not the real deal but helps to add some variation to note characteristics when you don’t have a keyboard handy. Additionally you can overcome the zone cross fade, as you put it by using the bigger key setup.
The sax patches in Acoutic 1 and Acoustic 2 IAP's are probably more in the alto/baritone.
There is also a good "funk" style sax patch in Hip Hop & Trap 2.
The way the patches were constructed were more towards giving the user maximum control over sound characteristics rather than a 'one-trick pony' type of instrument. This was done with clever sample looping, filters, subtle synthesis and so forth while keeping the file sizes lower than what the sound suggests.
That means most instruments should probably be adjustable to produce a different effect.
In terms of the sax patches, you could consider sending the signal into a subtle formant filter at any filter stage (probably most easily done at the global filter) and possibly be able to generate a more alto/tenor sound with that kind of technique.
The bottom line is these are meant as a solid base level for you to easily tweak away and customize with hopefully little effort.
Hope that helps!
In addition to the above answer just want to point out that physical modeling was kept to a minimum. There are only a handful of patches which feature it as a cornerstone (see ACModelHybrid in the FREE pack for an example which uses small samples just for the pick sound and modeling for the tone).
Again, there's some combination synthesis here and there but it's usually subtle in order to produce a more fluid/full sound to the base samples used.
Thanks for the responses. Position velocity is better than none. Here’s my big interest in the acoustic instruments, particularly woodwinds, brass and piano. The best sax instruments I’ve found in an iOS app are those in SampleTank. I’d really like an alternative because every so often IKM shoots an annoying add in the app and the last time they did it it cause the app to crash when one tried to adjust any instrument parameter. Took them almost 2 months to fix it. I am a bit perplexed about the response stating that the sax might be alto/ baritone and that the sample had some synthesis mixed in. Don’t know how that can affect the timbre of the sample since it is unique to each instrument. In terms of brass instruments and keys I have the same desire to move away from the IKM apps.