[HN Gopher] Casio VZ-1 Algorithms
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Casio VZ-1 Algorithms
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-08-05 19:07 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jacobvosmaer.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jacobvosmaer.nl)
| fxj wrote:
| These is a digital replica of the original synthesizer Casio CZ-1
| from the 1980s by Arturia. It has a very distinct sound. Some
| demos are here to show how it sounds like:
|
| https://www.arturia.com/products/software-instruments/cz-v/o...
| bezkom wrote:
| The CZ-1 and VZ-1 uses completely different algorithms (Phase
| Distortion vs Phase Modulation)
| fxj wrote:
| Just to be correct:
|
| The VZ-1 takes a hybrid approach to its sound generation.
| Where the CZ line used Phase Distortion Synthesis and the
| Yamaha DX line used Phase Modulation (incorrectly advertised
| as FM), the VZ-1 uses Phase Distortion for ring modulation
| and waveform generation but true Frequency Modulation
| Synthesis to generate harmonics.
|
| https://www.vintagesynth.com/casio/vz-1
|
| also see the former blogpost of the OP:
|
| Casio is lying to us
|
| Is my VZ-1 broken? Have I discovered an implementation quirk
| that nobody on the internet has ever complained about? No and
| no. My VZ-1 is not broken and on closer inspection at least 1
| person on the internet is aware of this problem, and they
| figured it out for me! Digital synthesis expert acreil got
| roped into a Gearspace thread about the VZ-1 back in 2021.
| The discussion starts off not being very interesting until
| acreil shows up, who then repeatedly gets contradicted by
| someone who loudly says things that are wrong, and then to
| put that all to rest acreil finds the relevant Casio patent
| for the VZ series and drops the bomb that the VZ's don't do
| phase modulation at all. They do wave shaping.
|
| Excuse me what now? Yes, pedantically wave shaping is phase
| modulation with a carrier frequency of 0Hz, but why would you
| call that phase modulation?
|
| https://blog.jacobvosmaer.nl/0028-mysterious-vz-1/
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Disclaimer: I make electronic musical instruments and audio gear,
| some of which you may have right in front of you right now, and
| have a strong opinion on the subject based on decades of
| interacting with engineers, designers, and most importantly of
| all: end users.
|
| >Casio made such a confusing mess of things with the always-on
| exciters, the exciter conduits and the wave shapers whose
| frequencies can be edited in the UI but not in the engine. It is
| almost a case study in what goes wrong when you lie to the user
| about what goes on inside the machine. Lying is a harsh word to
| use but when "disable" does not mean disable then I don't know
| what else to call that.
|
| Other manufacturers such as Yamaha are guilty of the same kind of
| interface obfuscation - they have a wonderful engine, but a
| terrible user interface, and their development teams _never_ get
| the budget they need to make the user interface problem as viable
| as it needs to be. You can see this in many of their products -
| one of the most infamous being the FS1R, which has unaccessible
| yet _amazing_ features if you can pry under the hood and play
| with them.
|
| Too often, the UI is bolted on at the end of the project and not
| considered important - or, indeed, used to cover up failings of
| the underlying engine architecture. Another fantastic example was
| the Hartmann Neuron, which was an extraordinarily powerful
| synthesizer engine with an interface designed by one of the
| industry's worst violators of user intelligence, simply to 'cover
| up' how the algorithm worked - because, in the designers words,
| "musicians don't care how it works, they just want to play". This
| is why the machines don't sell, people: you insult the user
| intelligence when you just throw knobs and menus at the problem
| and call it a day.
|
| And this statement is used throughout the industry to justify
| half-assed, lame attempts at UI. Most of the synthesizers on the
| market today have UI's which are very little more than a washing
| machine interface, applied to sound.
|
| A big part of the problem is that the UI is considered a section
| of the entire BOM where savings can be made - a cheap LCD
| interface instead of an OLED, "should suffice, since musicians
| don't care about how things are generated, they just want to
| play".
|
| There are companies out there that recognize this issue with the
| market, such as 1010music and others. However, it is still a
| major problem - too often, menu diving is considered the "only
| way" to represent all of the parameters, without doing something
| truly innovative, such as actually investing in a ground-breaking
| interface paradigm. And, those that attempt such paradigm leaps,
| are too often managed into the ground by managers, whose lives as
| failed rock stars precludes any sensibilities that would allow
| them to shave margins sufficient to the task of boosting the
| parts budget.
|
| It is a long-term problem. The VZ1, from 1988, is but one example
| of many, many products in this market segment with absolutely
| dreadful user interfaces. The market is ripe for a truly
| innovative design team to come along and fix it - just as long as
| they stay away from the mind-melting idiocy of the management
| class which currently rules the musical instrument industry.
| fxj wrote:
| What do you think about Behringer who announced a re/issue of
| the CZ-1 as a small module. I personally have many of the
| replicas that Behringer made of old synthesizers and I love
| them dearly. Finally I can aford the synths of the 70s and 80s
| that were unreachable for me at that time. Of course a lot of
| them are monophonic analog machines which have a rich UI with
| one knob per function, but I also like the digital ones like
| the Brains or Victor which are much harder to program, but
| still have a very easy to use UI. Same is true for Korg with
| their volca line. The Volce FM is just great, even though I
| have to program the DX7 sound on a PC.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| I think Behringer are doing awesome things, its absolutely
| fun to see them release designs based on barely-available
| synths and letting the kids get access to it all - and I
| don't share the ire that most, working in this industry, have
| for Behringers' pricing pressure, as this industry has long
| been exploitative when it comes to charging exorbitant prices
| for exotic hardware.
|
| That said, they're not pushing the UI paradigms forward
| nearly fast enough for my purposes - which is, actually, a
| good thing: because it leaves a lot of room for big
| innovation to come from other exotic manufacturers. I just
| wish it were happening fast enough, but it seems that the
| maxim is true: "Musicians don't care about the interface,
| they just want to make noise .."
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| This is all valid (former FS1R owner here, made nice coin for
| that on eBay...) but in reality these manufacturers were
| selling the 95% of users who just wanted "piano" or "violin"
| sounds and rarely did much more than slightly modifying the
| presets. And their instrument divisions were often dominated by
| "traditional" music instrument folk, too.
|
| The other people like you and I who want to sculpt sound, or
| worked in studios... they figured we could deal with it.
|
| Or hook up our Atari STs and use a more powerful editor etc. Or
| SoundDiver (RIP) etc.
|
| Most of these instruments were made before the huge waves of
| "electronic music" popularity from the mid-90s on. What we want
| from them is quite different from what the majority of
| traditional musicians wanted. DX Pianos, some strings, some
| Solid/Lately Bass, and move along.
| fxj wrote:
| But isnt this where PureData, Max and Supercollider shine? It
| is possible to create very exotic interfaces with them and
| many people use it for that purpose. The user communities of
| the 3 tools is small but very knowledgable.
| jacobvosmaer wrote:
| > Other manufacturers such as Yamaha are guilty of the same
| kind of interface obfuscation
|
| Everybody agrees the FS1R is a confusing mess although there
| too I think it's not just the interface but it goes deeper down
| to them not knowing enough themselves about what can be done
| with the capabilities of the engine.
|
| In defense of Yamaha, if you read that retrospective I linked
| in the post [1], you do see that they spent years whittling
| down their engine to arrive at the DX7 and I think it shows.
| They did not spend that kind of effort on the FS1R nor did
| Casio on the VZ-1.
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150912075333/http://usa.yamaha...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The reality is the oddities of Yamaha's (& Casio's) way of
| modeling FM (various pre-set "algorithms" with preset
| routings of phase modulations) are silly once you have a
| proper modern interface where you can just draw out whatever
| "routings" you want.
|
| And chained modulations itself is just a poor unintuitive
| optimization for just running multiple modulations in
| parallel additively rather than chaining them in sequence.
| The Yamaha way of doing this is an optimization for old
| hardware, and is needlessly confusing.
|
| I had fun writing this:
| https://github.com/rdaum/sidebands_vst but haven't had a time
| to go back and finish it (or rewrite in Rust)
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| For MIDI-controlled instruments, you are thankfully not
| constrained by the original user interface; someone else can
| make a better one without needing the help or permission of the
| manufacturer. Yamaha, to their credit, provide comprehensive,
| detailed information on the MIDI implementations of their
| products even today, a time where this has become
| unfashionable.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Did Casio make things a bit weird on purpose to circumvent the
| Stanford/Chowning/Yamaha patent(s) on FM synthesis?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| yes
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