Given that there are so many virtual instruments available in every conceivable genre, you spend your whole time looking for the point of difference. Why is any 3 oscillator virtual analogue different to the other billion or so virtual analogues that you’ve already binned? Perhaps I’m a slave to novelty, where I really should be feeling the raw thrill of the sound, but there is some sense on my side – with hardware you have a point where there’s no more physical space. With virtual instruments you have to develop a conceptual space in which these objects are arranged by their particular ability – I need to make this sound, and so I reach for this object which specialises in this sound. No two objects should overlap in this conceptual man cave if possible.
For me, Dune 3 is not an exceptional instrument in most of its features. It’s like the Virus (which it is obviously styled to resemble) in making solid dependable ‘stadium EDM’ noises that sell dance party tickets. The main point of interest is the Differential UnisoN Engine which can reach over 8 thousand oscillators. At that scale they become a cloud or a swarm, and take on interesting inharmonious textures that remind me of Chowning’s early experiments with FM. No shit.
A typical Dune thing to do is have a hazy swarm of oscillators resolve down to one very tight note over time. Think of the THX sound logo, although that’s actually only 80 oscillators. This goes up to 8000. Yeah.
How often do I need to make a swarm of oscillators? Not all the time, but sometimes you do.
And to be honest there’s times when you need a simple single screen virtual analogue that makes a big boom boom. That’s why the Virus has done so well, being apparently shallow but with more stuff hidden there when you need it. Dune can also edit and replay wavetables which is better than most instruments that can only import them, but you really want to look at Serum if that’s your priority. As for Serum, it has multiple oscillators but they are tucked away in the shame of the general settings.
Unusually for me I think the presets in Dune 3 are instructive, particularly the oddball ones. There’s some that’s clever moments.
I just like it. Sounds good and I like the UI a lot. It’s been updated with sample capability now.
Shifted focus to Dune 3. Making/converting WTs right now. Probably waited too long actually to decide.
This reminds me that I got the Noise Engineering Sinc Vereor and Virt Vereor oscillators as AU/VSTs on my system.
They were free, not sure if they still are. Very oddball user interface.
At first I was excited, then I realized It’s just a raw OSC with a few fun controls to modify the wave.
So how do I make this interesting?
I open MIDI Environment in Logic and virtually cable up a dozen OSCs to the first track’s MIDI.
This many sound sources requires me to do some gain staging.
But now I can make small changes on the first OSC and they are copied to the others. I play a note all the others play. I can tweak an individual OSC and it’s barely noticed. But do it to all of them and they start to sound more like a crowd of tones than one tone. I have a couple filters I can use to control the sound, but it seems anachronistic to use an MS20 or Moog filter here. Better to use something like Eventide Ultrachannel with it’s de-essing, microshift, EQ and compression.
Doesn’t even need reverb.