SY 300 Chord issue

[Brak(E)man]

I have a problem with more " complex" chords ,
With chords like m9 , maj 7 ( I know both are the same apart from the root ) , sus 2 sus 4  , G/ A etc all works fine, but with 13-9 , min maj 9+5  etc etc and  some close voicings as well  , the chord grains into mush and one can't really hear the chord anymore , this doesn't seem to be so much a sound/ patch correlated problem , it seems to be more or less the same on all sounds , so I'm wondering , has anybody else encountered this problem and could it be a input setting issue of some sorts. 

[Rhcole]

It is the result of it not having a 13 pin input. It has a difficult time separating out the pitches of complex chords and intervals. The issue is especially noticeable when using Osc intervals and pitch shifts. I have a number of work-arounds that I use, but the core technology is simply limited in that way.

[Brak(E)man]

I think it also has to do with the osc sort of distortion , if using clean guitar in the mix you can hear the chords in the guitar but the osc turns some chords into mush.

I mean if you use à guitar in the osc waveform area, that should use the same sort of pitch recognition ,
but I might be wrong, anyw it's a disappointment

[polar]

I'd say that this has been kind of obvious from the first demos... Instantly recognizing something as complex as, for example, six-string A7-9 chord from just one signal is very difficult task (if feasible at all), so if they ever achieved this, they would surely be trumpeting about it everywhere, loud. But all I saw and heard in numerous SY-300 review videos were lead and bass sounds (more or less crappy), totally unnecessary sequencer patterns, and sometimes, not very often though – carefully played simple chords, along with statements that the thing is polyphonic. And I've yet to hear just simple chord arpeggio played into SY-300 and coming out of it sounding clearly and pronounced with a synth sound. That said, I think the SY-300 is okay, I guess one can surely come up with something exciting on it (I myself haven't had an opportunity to play with it). What irritates me is companies marketing garbage which leads to misconceptions and confuses people.

[Bill Ruppert]

This is a new instrument and we must edited what we play to match this instrument.
Sometimes the artist is the most creative when given limits to work with in.
I have the SY-300 and cant wait to dig into this.
Warts and all!

[Kevin M]

Sometimes the artist is the most creative when given limits to work with in.

Well said!  I previously heard the great drummer, Gavin Harrison, echoing this sentiment in one of his drum clinics.

[Rhcole]

I agree with Bill. The SY-300 does have limitations, but if you can work with them it is a terrific box. I'm a complex chord kinda' guy myself, so I have empathy with frustrations over how the SY processes them. But, I have managed workarounds for most of these issues or play to the strengths of the various settings and patches.

[radio]

I agree with Polar : I think the whole campaign about a revolutionary "polyphonic" synth is a big lie;
there's nothing really new about this, it's just an interesting multi-Fx box, which is not bad after all.
A lot of people could be disapointed , having expected a sort of "easy" synth-guitar box without the dreadful 13 pin cable/GK3 installation.

[Rhcole]

In fairness though, even EHX's HOG 2, Pitch Fork, C9, etc. all barf on your shoes if you play chords through them that are too complex. Those products are also advertised as being polyphonic. The SY-300 certainly doesn't track any worse than these other products and is subject to the same issues as they have. Play root-fifth-octave and everybody smiles. Start throwing in 7th's, 9th, dim, min etc. and they get confused. This also applies to Eventide, Strymon, and every other non-hex pitch system I have tried.

I have owned them all.

[szilard]

Back to the OP. I initialized a patch, set OSC 1 to sin and enabled OSC 2 and set it to sin as well. This sounds pretty close to my guitar. Using a Godin LGXT SA I played some Maj13th chords and those sounded fine to me. I also tried flattening the 5th on a couple voicings and they seemed fine as well. Maj11, min11, and 11ths all sound fine. I'm using BTS and selected Thru/RTN which allows me to switch between direct and synth so I can A/B. It all sounds good to me.

[Brak(E)man]

Limitations can be good , them can force you to go in a different direction but not if the limitations are so severe that they obstruct a creative process , which I feel is the case, I can't use allt the chordal material I want to, and it's not a truly polyphonic synth as advertised.

The chords referred to above is not very complex, they might be big , but Maj 13 is just fourths and a major third or 2 if you use # 11 , min 11 fourths and min third and a fifth ,
It's going into cluster chords or poly chordal when the unit goes off target completely ,
It really doesn't matter it's all semantics but point being that it can't hack it pitch recognition wise all the way , and that's a dissapointment


That being said, I like the unit but would have preferred it with  a hex mic

[szilard]

I tried some close voicings using open strings
F# G D# E
C# D A# B
G# A F# G

I would say there is some graininess with these, but with four note chords it was still distinguishable as a chord (using sin waves). I recorded both the guitar and the synth (on separate tracks) and applied melodyne and it recognized the notes, although it had a hard time with a 1/2 step. With both guitar and synth it seemed to fluctuate between the root and minor 2nd.

[Brak(E)man]

I tried some close voicings using open strings
F# G D# E
C# D A# B
G# A F# G

I would say there is some graininess with these, but with four note chords it was still distinguishable as a chord (using sin waves). I recorded both the guitar and the synth (on separate tracks) and applied melodyne and it recognized the notes, although it had a hard time with a 1/2 step. With both guitar and synth it seemed to fluctuate between the root and minor 2nd.

Ok
What about other waveforms ?
The guitar waveform ( whatever that means ) works fine with all the chords I've used so far.
But the saw wave etc 
I can still hear that there's more than 2 notes so I can hear its a chord
But normally I can hear the intervals  but not with the SY 300,
and I can use 6 voice chords with all the VGs and the GP 10 ,
So in my view , why sacrifice a working interface for one that doesnt fully cut it.

[szilard]

Ok
What about other waveforms ?

I'll try some other waveforms and get back.

The guitar waveform ( whatever that means ) works fine with all the chords I've used so far.

In my post guitar is referring to direct thru the SY-300 - I'm A/B the synth sound and the guitar.

I can still hear that there's more than 2 notes so I can hear its a chord
But normally I can hear the intervals  but not with the SY 300,
and I can use 6 voice chords with all the VGs and the GP 10 ,
So in my view , why sacrifice a working interface for one that doesnt fully cut it.

I can understand the business case for it, but I would like to see the same approach or a more high end approach applied to hex PUps.

[Brak(E)man]

I'll try some other waveforms and get back.

In my post guitar is referring to direct thru the SY-300 - I'm A/B the synth sound and the guitar.

I can understand the business case for it, but I would like to see the same approach or a more high end approach applied to hex PUps.

Great thanx I'm hoping I'm missing something in the settings or whatever.

I'm comparing the guitar waveform , ( not guitar direct thru ) with other waveforms
The guitar waveform at least when not distorted works MUCH better recognizing the chords , no graininess or turning the chords into mush.

I mean if you use à guitar in the osc waveform area, that should use the same sort of pitch recognition ,
but I might be wrong, anyw it's a disappointment

And I can see the business side of it 2 but when it's not hacking it , I beleive they are biting themselves in their foot ( old proverb) since many user will be off the regular guitar paths not playing only power chords , I like the idea to be able to use any of my way too many guitars both electric and acoustic , but as said , to make it work first, should be first priororty

[szilard]

Before trying other waveforms I tried intervals. Given two adjacent strings I would drone one and slide up and down the other. E/A, A/D, didn't seem to have any problems, but D/G, G/B, B/E did. It gets a little weird in the 2nd and minor 2nd intervals and the weirdness increases as the strings get higher.

On to the other waveforms - I went through triangle, square, and saw. Each got increasingly worse, as I would expect, since that is like distorting a guitar signal. Triangle was a little worse and with square trying the 4 note chords as before I couldn't distinguish the intervals. Since there are even more harmonics with the saw tooth that was the worst. I then applied a low pass filter to the two OSCs and lowered the cutoff to around 36. I then worked my way back through the waveforms - saw, square, triangle, and sin. For the most part everything was good. Since I can filter the waveforms back to sin waves and they sound OK it seems that the pitch recognition is fine. The fundamental frequency is fine.

I'll have to think about this a bit, right now I'm thinking it may just be that the upper level harmonics aren't playing nice with each other. Like distortion. I put an fx box on the direct out and used OD/DS, Muff Fuzz, Drive 60, Tone 0, Lvl 50, Bottom 0, Direct Lvl 0, Solo off, Amp off, and NS off and that's pretty close to a square wave. What happens with the droning is really similar to the square wave; the 4 note chords sound like mush, etc.

Brak(E)man wrote "I'm comparing the guitar waveform , ( not guitar direct thru ) with other waveforms
The guitar waveform at least when not distorted works MUCH better recognizing the chords , no graininess or turning the chords into mush. "

If you're talking about the Input setting for the OSC I'm not sure it's treated the same. You can't change the pitch, fine tune it, sync, ring modulate, sequence or "layer" that signal.

[Brak(E)man]

Before trying other waveforms I tried intervals. Given two adjacent strings I would drone one and slide up and down the other. E/A, A/D, didn't seem to have any problems, but D/G, G/B, B/E did. It gets a little weird in the 2nd and minor 2nd intervals and the weirdness increases as the strings get higher.

On to the other waveforms - I went through triangle, square, and saw. Each got increasingly worse, as I would expect, since that is like distorting a guitar signal. Triangle was a little worse and with square trying the 4 note chords as before I couldn't distinguish the intervals. Since there are even more harmonics with the saw tooth that was the worst. I then applied a low pass filter to the two OSCs and lowered the cutoff to around 36. I then worked my way back through the waveforms - saw, square, triangle, and sin. For the most part everything was good. Since I can filter the waveforms back to sin waves and they sound OK it seems that the pitch recognition is fine. The fundamental frequency is fine.

I'll have to think about this a bit, right now I'm thinking it may just be that the upper level harmonics aren't playing nice with each other. Like distortion. I put an fx box on the direct out and used OD/DS, Muff Fuzz, Drive 60, Tone 0, Lvl 50, Bottom 0, Direct Lvl 0, Solo off, Amp off, and NS off and that's pretty close to a square wave. What happens with the droning is really similar to the square wave; the 4 note chords sound like mush, etc.

Brak(E)man wrote "I'm comparing the guitar waveform , ( not guitar direct thru ) with other waveforms
The guitar waveform at least when not distorted works MUCH better recognizing the chords , no graininess or turning the chords into mush. "

If you're talking about the Input setting for the OSC I'm not sure it's treated the same. You can't change the pitch, fine tune it, sync, ring modulate, sequence or "layer" that signal.

That's about what I figured, since there's no hex prossesing there'll be intermodal distortion, and I'm talking about the settings for the guitar , not the guitar wvwform
But I guess that the main issue pitch recog works in a way and that should be the same with guitar waveform as well as the other, the problem is the graininess of the waveforms and most likely that it's not " poly distortion ". it's a huge dissapointment as such , the machine itself is great , but with absence of hex
all the vgs and gr300 are better in this aspect.

All input to work 'round the problem is welcome

[szilard]

That's about what I figured, since there's no hex prossesing there'll be intermodal distortion, and I'm talking about the settings for the guitar , not the guitar wvwform
But I guess that the main issue pitch recog works in a way and that should be the same with guitar waveform as well as the other, the problem is the graininess of the waveforms and most likely that it's not " poly distortion ". it's a huge dissapointment as such , the machine itself is great , but with absence of hex
all the vgs and gr300 are better in this aspect.

All input to work 'round the problem is welcome

I wouldn't call it intermodal distortion. I would call it the physics of sound. Program a keyboard synth for one osc, make it a square wave, don't filter it, and then play any of the 4 note chords I listed in a previous post. They will all sound like mush. I don't know of any work arounds for the laws of physics. It's possible that if we live in a multiverse one of the alternate universes may have different laws of physics that will suit you 

[Brak(E)man]

I wouldn't call it intermodal distortion. I would call it the physics of sound. Program a keyboard synth for one osc, make it a square wave, don't filter it, and then play any of the 4 note chords I listed in a previous post. They will all sound like mush. I don't know of any work arounds for the laws of physics. It's possible that if we live in a multiverse one of the alternate universes may have different laws of physics that will suit you 

I might find that wormhole one day

I might be completely wrong
But the same chords played on
A gr300 or the vg99 emulation of a gr300
Sawtooth waveform produce a chord thats audible and
doesn't turn to mush
My guess is that's due to the hex.

[szilard]

It's hard to say. What are the filter settings? Whether or not you like the sound or consider it mush is some what subjective. Also the gr300 has an unusual sawtooth wave. Although most analog synths don't have true square or sawtooth waveforms, which is part of what gives them their sound, the gr300 is pretty unique. And of course in music everything is dependent on context, does it work in the context? You can take a sawtooth wave, filter it back to a sin and then start letting the filter out and find the point at which it "no long works", back off and then determine if that is bright enough.

Assuming you want the intervals distinguishable in a chord it's not so much a question of what waveforms you can use as how much you'll need to filter certain waveforms based on the chords you're using. In synthesis there is a lot of interaction between the waveforms, the filters, the intervals in the chords, and the number of notes in a chord.

[Brak(E)man]

You might be right I'm not disagreeing.

But I still say 3 things based upon  almost 20 y of VG and 30 of synths with guitars ,
40 years with synths , etd.
the pitch recog is not working 100 , the osc has a graininess that doesn't help and there's no hex prossesing .

[thebrushwithin]

he pitch recog is not working 100 , the osc has a graininess that doesn't help and there's no hex prossesing .

Couldn't agree more, which is why I bailed out on it. However, I think it would be much more interesting to run a keyboard synth into it, and see if that helps, for whatever reason. I just couldn't accept the "dirty" sound, in my few days of experimentation with guitar and harmonized vocals.

[szilard]

I tried the VG-99 GR-300 Solo preset. I enabled only a single instance and turned the compressor off and was able to play F# G D# E without any problems. Trying to filter a sawtooth wave on the SY-300, the sound lost it's "edge" and still had problems.

The two waveforms are shown below. The top pair are the VG-99 GR-300 Solo and the bottom pair are the SY-300 Sawtooth that's been filtered. They really aren't similar. I like the properties of the GR-300 waveform!