About saxophone voices quality

[Jeff Hollande]

Hey Bogdan :

Being a guitar player, I have a similar experience with the guitar sound quality of an arranger.
In the past some members were not happy with the Yamaha's arranger's piano sound.

Compared to the past, the guitar sound quality of the arranger has been improved a lot though.
Now I have the impression the arranger works well for a limited number of octaves.
If the sound quality is acceptable then I can live with it whilst there is no alternative for the time being, I guess.

Maybe in the near future the arranger manufacturers will be able to improve this particular problem again but ...
will it ever be solved ... hard to believe ... but ... who knows ?

IMHO Yamaha's arranger's overall sound quality is OK but nothing is perfect and never will be.
Maybe we expect too much ?

Sometimes we have to say : " it is what it is ".

Take care, JH

[icatalin42]

Some s.art samples on sx600 are bad, there is no mistake, sax s.art sample is bad, i feel it,i hear it, no mistake about it. It may be related to the electronics of the device or just sampling bad. My opinion. Should be further investigated. My ears are not mistaken.

[pjd]

That voice dates all the way back to Tyros 2: 2005.

The world and waveform memory size have moved on since then. 

So I went into style editor, played the offended D0 note that's intentionally a looping sample of a vinyl record, then deleted the note from the style, and voila, no crackling vinyl sound.

ROFL. I thought this was a scream!  I love that vinyl noise and use it on everything -- like Nando's hot sauce.

-- pj

[Amwilburn]

Bogdan: how do I know this was during playing, not recording? Because I've heard it in person from a sax player (no recordings, just playing there in front of me) and e the same thing happens on the other keyboards; on some saxes they either didn't notice the spit take notes, or intentionally wanted that 'speaker crackling' sound (I can't imagine why). Like I said, it happens on a couple of the saxes on the new Pa5x. I wouldn't have even known to look for the spitty sax sounds if you hadn't pointed it out though.

PJD yes this sample is from T2 circa 2005. But I doubt it was a lack of memory issue; the fact that it takes a while before the spitty sound kicks in means they recorded a fairly long sample before looping! (By comparison, as I mentioned, on a couple of the PA5x saxes, it's *very* short, and I can actually hear the loop repeating... which I really shouldn't, if the looping points are chosen correctly. I'll just chalk that up to them having to cram *so* many sounds into their boards (Yamaha and Korg) that a lot of the time, something gets overlooped.

Chris: it's awesome that they could shorten the pre-loop portion to remove the spitty take that comes in right before the loop point, but alas, I doubt they will. It took 18 years, and Bogdan is the first one I've heard of to catch this! But it would be nice if they did.

What they'll probably do, if enough people complain, is just rename the voice "soft spitty sax"

Bogdan did you try the registration bypass for the S.Art sax I emailed you?

Mark

[BogdanH]

hi Mark,
I think, that the thing about "how that noise came into voice" will remain our friendly disagreement -and that's just fine  .
Before I forget.. In regard of registration, no, as far I remember, I didn't receive any mail from you lately -I hope I didn't deleted it by mistake...

...the fact that it takes a while before the spitty sound kicks in means they recorded a fairly long sample before looping!...

Hmmm.. if you record C4 audio sample on keyboard and load it into audio editor, then you can see that spitty sound starts to become more noticeable after about 2 seconds. That is, at the point where looping starts. And because the loop is only about 0.35sec long, the whole sample is no longer than about 2.4sec. I would say that's quite short sample -but longer sample actually isn't needed. Btw. I wish to point out, that in my opinion, spitty sound isn't because of looping.

Now.. how do "I know" that the spitty sound isn't natural? Because if you observe wav sample in editor, you can see that complete sample (from start!) contains vibrato. I'm not a sax player, but I think a real sax player can only make sound start to vibrate after certain time (when sax loudness stabilizes). In this case that would be after about 2 seconds and not at the very beginning. Or (if I'm wrong), it's hard to expect that vibrato at the beginning would have exactly the same time as the loop 2 sec's later.
Again, consider this as a friendly discussion.. because at the end, it's impossible to prove any of this (which isn't my intention anyway). Darn spitty sound 



Greetings,
Bogdan

[Amwilburn]

In fact, you *can* apply the vibrato immediately with sax. It's not like a brass instrument, which as you say, would need to stabilize first. You actually generate vibrato by going "doy-oy-oy-oy" as you blow (I'm not kidding). But usually, they won't add the vibrato the second they start blowing. But they *can*.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CqueJSqf9g

Yes, I considered 2 seconds pretty long for a pre loop sample; I meant they could have started looping the sample *before* the condensation kicked in. I've heard sax sounds across various keyboards where they definitely started looping sooner!

No the spitty sound isn't because of looping. It usually happens about a second or 2 after the initial soft blow due to condensation. My suggestion was I wish they had *shortened* the initial sample to loop *before* the spitty condensation comes in.

I'll resend you the registration then!

Mark

[Amwilburn]

Ok, check your email again. Also, I'd mentioned most of the non-articulated sax samples don't have a noticeably spitty legato take, but if none of them has the right feel, you could always try downloading the Greetings from Italy v2 pack; the italian saxes sound very good, but you'll likely need to remove the delay (echo). And again, they're not articulated, but the Soft Italian Sax has such a gentle attack, that it shouldn't matter

[BogdanH]

Thank you Mark, I received the mail.. will try it out tomorrow 

Bogdan