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 Hartmann Music Neuron VS At a Glance  
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arrowReleased:  arrowVersion: 0.00
arrowRated: 5.6/10arrow User reviews: (5)
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J.R. writes:
Since its debut at winter NAMM 2002, the Neuron has been only a dream for many musicians around the globe. Typical of innovations in technology the initial introductions are expensive. In the case of the Neuron no compromises were made including the fascinating neural network technology seemlessly integrated into a complete synthesizer keyboard. And equipped with a plethora of novel ergonomic control elements resting in an elegant casing.

Now with Neuron VS every musician can integrate the Neuron sound engine into their recording setup without sacrificing the most characteristic Hartmann control element - the stickcontroller. Neuron VS ships complete with , the hardware controller box.

Neuron VS is a full-blown Neuron synthesizer. The sound engine is based upon the intelligent recognition and resynthesis of sound. This technology allows for the detection of sound specific parameters. Typically when replaying a sample, minimal sonic changes can be made. Not so with neural synthesis. When extracting the Neuron basic sound creating material called "models"a sample is being analyzed and rendered as a "photorealistic" image of the sound. The model sounds exactly the same as the sample it came from.

While analyzing the sample, the neural networks are detecting sonic peculiarities of a sound that are then getting transformed into "parameter sets". Each and every model comes equipped with 12 detected parameters. Stephan Bernsee, the creator of this technology has programmed his detection algorithms in a way, that only "real world" parameters are created. This is why you can drive parameters like "woodiness," "size", or "damping" of a sound, "speed" or "tonality" of a loop or "shape" and "material" of an instrument's body with the Nuke stickcontroller. This is just a few examples out of 50 sound attributes.

Good Points
Tweaking and experimenting is very intuitive, however going for exact sound manipulations is more difficult. Software installed easily. Extremely easy to get great sounds out of it. Manual is good. Presets aren't the strong points, but with a little tweaking you then open the sonic wonderland! ModelMaker docs needs to be more detailed. ModelMaker opens up unlimited potential! For a soft synth, it's very expressive, mainly due it's hardware controller, the NUKE. The price is steep, but there's nothing else like it. The closest thing I've seen is the Roland V-synth, or obviously the Neuron keyboard. Reaktor is great, but not as intuitive (from my experience). I love the new sounds this can make, and the Nuke is awesome. Luckily it's never crashed on me, but can be a CPU hog. Wish some of the documents for the VS and ModelMaker were more in-depth/detailed. Even with the complaints, I still love it, and await more updates to the software! Two forums for the VS: http://forum.hartmann-music.com/ http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Hartmann_Neuron_VS/
Bad Points
Manual is good, sometimes could be more detailed. Presets aren't the strong points, but with a little tweaking you then open the sonic wonderland! Polyphony is up to your computer, and the VS is pretty demanding. But you can always lay down tracks in multiple takes. Sometimes it sounds distorted, but my Virus would do that too. I also run the output through a tube emulator basically as a compressor/limiter because some of the patches are too loud (digital clipping).
 

 Hartmann Music Neuron VS Specifications:

 Neuron VS Links


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