I do like the idea of the Novation X-Station 25, because it would probably fit on my Berg HT322 cab next to my Genz Benz Shuttle 9 head, and if the MIDI bass thing totally doesn't work out I could still play keyboard bass parts...
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MIDI Synth Module Suggestions
- Thread starter DennyOnBass
- Start date
They claim 40ms for a low B. I'll be able to tell ya how it is in a week or two, my order is already in. Just waiting for Sweetwater to get their stock from Sonuus.
I'm a bit skeptical, though. On almost all of the demos, they're all playing in the guitar range. How does playing way up high showcase something made for bass? Why would none of the demos show a passage down low? That has me a tad nervous.
That's exactly what I was thinking too , seeing that video.
Problem with pith to MIDI with bass is that you have to setup a particular bass for it and develop a particular technique.
If you want to do a normal bass groove , in the lower part of the neck , with a bass synth sound , the latency makes it impossible to play tight.
And the glitches of tracking makes it difficult to play "live".
Ok for home recording & and charts because you can do some cleaning afterward , but in a "live" situation , the only thing that works is a dedicated Piccolo bass.
Just sayin' ....
Well, we'll see how the Sonuus does. If their claim of 40ms latency is accurate, that's only 1/25th of a second of latency. That would be fine for live use. It would be a basically imperceptible lag.
Maybe, Roland had it right with the old GR 33b?? Use a special pickup and run it through a beautiful analog synth module--no worries about tracking.
The VB99 sure is expensive, sadly. The Roland Gr 20S also works for bass, now, with Version 2 software. The GR 20S may cost as much as getting a keyboard and a Sonuus, but it also works for guitar and has a whammy pedal.
The VB99 sure is expensive, sadly. The Roland Gr 20S also works for bass, now, with Version 2 software. The GR 20S may cost as much as getting a keyboard and a Sonuus, but it also works for guitar and has a whammy pedal.
I can already play keys. It's an option but not really what I was going for. Based on what I've heard, the Sonuus is not a viable option. Not really a surprise, I guess.
works for slow pad voices. dont try to do some wooten stuff with it. got one and is just for play, can´t imagine use it live.... servus
In terms of the synth to connect to, I'd say you've got a lot of stuff to choose from at insane prices on the second hand market.
Lots of people ditched their 19" rack synths for VSTi's.
I'd look into a Virus of some sort.
I've still got a B and its a beast.
Plus it has external i/o so you can process you bass through the filters and effects etc, as well as triggering it with the pitch/midi stuff.
A Waldorf Blofeld would also be well worth looking into, they are tiny and have a fair few voices of polyphony.
But there are bucket loads of old Akai or E-mu modules etc out there for pennies.
Lots of people ditched their 19" rack synths for VSTi's.
I'd look into a Virus of some sort.
I've still got a B and its a beast.
Plus it has external i/o so you can process you bass through the filters and effects etc, as well as triggering it with the pitch/midi stuff.
A Waldorf Blofeld would also be well worth looking into, they are tiny and have a fair few voices of polyphony.
But there are bucket loads of old Akai or E-mu modules etc out there for pennies.
The Sonuus B2M isn't useful live for normal or fast playing. They've nailed the latency issue with super fast tracking. Velocity tracking seems excellent. However, the pitch tracking is extremely flakey. It will pick wrong notes frequently, and more annoying it has serious ghost/retrigger issues where you'll play a single note but it will trigger a few NOTE ON/OFF sequences quickly. The wrong notes I could probably learn to deal with, but when it sends 3 NOTE ON events for a single note it screws up envelopes and what not.
Note you can hear all of these issues in the YouTube video linked to above. Wrong notes, doubled/trippled notes, all of it.
But they've nailed the latency. It's absolutely playable in that regard.
I was having some good success using the B2M to control effects with Velocity and Note data. I'd set my software, Plogue Bidule as my VST host, and could set a keyboard split (which ghost/retriggers don't affect, though grossly wrong notes would) from the B2M output to do channel switching and toggle effects in real-time, or use Velocity data to control VST parameters as the Velocity output seemed very solid and responsive, though sometimes a little hot so I'd have to use a velocity scaler to keep too many of the notes from peaking at 127.
But using it to trigger VST synth like Massive for awesome electro-dance bass wasn't working at all for me. Way too glitchy.
Related to all of my adventures, free VST audio-to-synth apps like FrettedSynth GuitarSynSE was much, Much, MUCH more usable as it tracks pitch directly, thus no MIDI necessary. It has issues tracking latency properly, so I'd feed it a heavily gated and squashed/controlled input. But the tracking and sounds are excellent, as is latency. Korg Legacy MS-20 tracks pitch as well, though I found that VST overall to be less useful due to the sounds it produces.
Note you can hear all of these issues in the YouTube video linked to above. Wrong notes, doubled/trippled notes, all of it.
But they've nailed the latency. It's absolutely playable in that regard.
I was having some good success using the B2M to control effects with Velocity and Note data. I'd set my software, Plogue Bidule as my VST host, and could set a keyboard split (which ghost/retriggers don't affect, though grossly wrong notes would) from the B2M output to do channel switching and toggle effects in real-time, or use Velocity data to control VST parameters as the Velocity output seemed very solid and responsive, though sometimes a little hot so I'd have to use a velocity scaler to keep too many of the notes from peaking at 127.
But using it to trigger VST synth like Massive for awesome electro-dance bass wasn't working at all for me. Way too glitchy.
Related to all of my adventures, free VST audio-to-synth apps like FrettedSynth GuitarSynSE was much, Much, MUCH more usable as it tracks pitch directly, thus no MIDI necessary. It has issues tracking latency properly, so I'd feed it a heavily gated and squashed/controlled input. But the tracking and sounds are excellent, as is latency. Korg Legacy MS-20 tracks pitch as well, though I found that VST overall to be less useful due to the sounds it produces.
- Jan 20, 2003
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- Disclosures
- Roscoe Guitars-Benavente & LowEnd Basses-SIT Strings-Schroeder Cabs
I personally have a couple different Lakland basses, one with rounds, one with flats. Tried with picks, fingering, always played cleanly and high on the neck. All of the same techniques used with other tracking effects.
I also tried the B2M with pre-processing such as EQ, limiting, etc. I also ran the B2M with a signal processed via VST in my laptop so I could apply the same gating/limiting I used with other software to feed the B2M. I feel I have a significant amount of experience playing with tracking hardware and software to make a well educated conclusion that it's simply too glitchy for live triggering of synths.
For the complete novice it would be even more unusable as they'd lack the knowledge of standard playing techniques for this type of device. Pair it with people trying to run VST synths through standard laptop soundcards that have horrible latency and I can see why it gets absolutely scathing reviews from a lot of users.
I've seen a couple users suggest it's great for triggering pads. I could see that as you're playing really, really slow, and pads typically have a super slow attack which would mask the initial ghost/retriggering issues.
I've discussed some of the issues with Sonuus support. They're very responsive. The conclusion I came to was that in an effort to implement extremely quick, low latency, triggering that it causes it to respond too quickly to really small nuances in the signal. Hence the ghost/retriggers. As to the wrong notes, I can't say it picks wrong notes any more than any other audio-to-MIDI product I've personally tried. There's a free VST called FretKeys that works a little slower than the B2M, thus it can't track fast playing as well, and has a little more latency. But doesn't have the ghost/retrigger issues that the B2M has. I couldn't get FretKeys to work fast enough, but thought it the latency could be reduced it would've been a better solution than the B2M.
That was my real complaint. The ghost/retriggering. The wrong notes don't help any either, though.
Yes, it's a feat of technology considering the $100 price. But the comparatively low price as opposed to an Axon with split pickup doesn't make it a better product that I've described.
I also tried the B2M with pre-processing such as EQ, limiting, etc. I also ran the B2M with a signal processed via VST in my laptop so I could apply the same gating/limiting I used with other software to feed the B2M. I feel I have a significant amount of experience playing with tracking hardware and software to make a well educated conclusion that it's simply too glitchy for live triggering of synths.
For the complete novice it would be even more unusable as they'd lack the knowledge of standard playing techniques for this type of device. Pair it with people trying to run VST synths through standard laptop soundcards that have horrible latency and I can see why it gets absolutely scathing reviews from a lot of users.
I've seen a couple users suggest it's great for triggering pads. I could see that as you're playing really, really slow, and pads typically have a super slow attack which would mask the initial ghost/retriggering issues.
I've discussed some of the issues with Sonuus support. They're very responsive. The conclusion I came to was that in an effort to implement extremely quick, low latency, triggering that it causes it to respond too quickly to really small nuances in the signal. Hence the ghost/retriggers. As to the wrong notes, I can't say it picks wrong notes any more than any other audio-to-MIDI product I've personally tried. There's a free VST called FretKeys that works a little slower than the B2M, thus it can't track fast playing as well, and has a little more latency. But doesn't have the ghost/retrigger issues that the B2M has. I couldn't get FretKeys to work fast enough, but thought it the latency could be reduced it would've been a better solution than the B2M.
That was my real complaint. The ghost/retriggering. The wrong notes don't help any either, though.
Yes, it's a feat of technology considering the $100 price. But the comparatively low price as opposed to an Axon with split pickup doesn't make it a better product that I've described.
I had a GI20 for while and tried an Axon50 wich was not better.What gear were you using? That may also help in this discussion
I threw everything in the garbage and bought a VB99 , no more tracking and latency issues.
BTW ; the pitch to MIDI of the VB99 is almost as bad as the GI20. A little better but you don't buy a VB99 for that !
- Jan 20, 2003
- 382
- 29
- 44
- Disclosures
- Roscoe Guitars-Benavente & LowEnd Basses-SIT Strings-Schroeder Cabs
I had a GI20 for while and tried an Axon50 wich was not better.
I threw everything in the garbage and bought a VB99 , no more tracking and latency issues.
BTW ; the pitch to MIDI of the VB99 is almost as bad as the GI20. A little better but you don't buy a VB99 for that !
ive done a bit of research with the Graph Tech Ghost MIDI setup, paired with the Axon MKII AX100, and people have had good results. They even have some video of Bill Dickens wailing with the system, and it seems pretty solid.
Ive got a bass being fitted with the Ghost system so we'll see how that goes.
http://www.graphtech.com/products.html?CategoryID=2
I know the feeling !Got both the roland gi20 + the midi-pickup and the sonus to run my novation bass-station . Both suck at tracking the lower notes . Now everything is in the geardrawer with the moog murf , the ehx bms , the boss syb3 and a bunch of other pedals
On the video you post , the guy is either just using the piezo sound or he is using a VB99. That kind of triggering latency is impossible with pitch to MIDI.
Don't loose your money on that !!!!!
Go directly for a VB99.
I've read GUITAR PLAYERS who have good results with the Axon 100 but I have yet to read from a bass player with a normal bass , to have good results. And BTW , Axon is out of buisness , maybe you can find a used unit but forget about service.
I have Ghost graphtech kit on two of my basses and it doesn't track any better or faster than the GK3 I go on another bass.
EDIT; and the Ghost graphtech pickup in NOT MIDI. People get confused by the marketing gimmicks of manufacturers. The Ghost is a GK pickup wich has to be fed to a GK compatible processor. Then some of the GK processors will give you MIDI , but not all 'em.
Just as a follow-up, since I was the OP, I gave up on this idea and am saving up for a Little Phatty...
