astralprojection

i wanna agree to MFG - project genesis. thats one hell of an album... theres a number of great storylines there, and many adventures to go on sunshine and Why is just really great sounding... So many layers of sound happening all at once yet there seems to be no frequency conflicts anywhere, and the kick comes thru as punchy and has nice compression.. its really clean for the 90s!

@AstralSphinx you make an excellent point. sound quality is relative to the timeframe when it was released. Cypress hill temples of boom for example, is one of the best albums i know in that genre, and it is to me a great example of a timeless album. And subsequent "lofi" stuff that is very popular today. Yes its only a matter of time before this ungodly cleanliness we have gotten ourself into over the years, a "fad", will sort of die down. I think. hope. And that has absolutely nothing to do with being clean technically; aligning phase- proper timing - what have you - but its rather about the sounds themselves; being too clean (and it hurts my ears). yes someone should make a 90s mackie emulation ^^

its good to read everyones thoughts on this, as difference of opinion is important - and very much a good thing. about vinyl vs cd; i meant it only as a reference to that we do love a little dirt on the signal path. I too prefer digital audio files; vinyl is just way too expensive; and cumbersome, and as you say Mikro; it degrades over time and thats just how it is.. But there is no denying that a record without scratch and dirt, on a properly set-up turntable with a decent amplfiication stage - sounds better than a CD can. I dont mean to sound like a purist or audiophile cause i really am not; but I also dont deny that the music sounds more alive on vinyl and more pleasant to the ears. I dont agree what is said about serum; that it is not good for Basslines; on the contrary i think its the perfect synth for basslines since the envelopes can be Exact; sloppy; snappy; slow, whatever you like - and the waveform can; too. So i dont see the logic behind that one, but agree to disagree. (For example you can set decay time of the envelope to be exactly 1/16 without first calculating it into ms, and you can draw your own custom envelope shapes. So in that regard it is really on top. And the ability to dirty-fy your waveforms via either FFT (select exactly what harmonics you want) or via whatever modulation you like - makes it extremely versatile too; specially creating "analog-like" sounds) also strongly disagree on Electric Universe I think his stuff has become borderline unlistenable over the years ^^

theyre few and far between.. for example the only ones i can say honestly are timeless to me; are the hallucinogen stuff (lone deranger to me is slightly better overall; but there is some slightly more interesting music on twisted - so they both go hand in hand), and perhaps blue planet corporation; and maybe something else that i fail to recall atm. (im thinking Synergy might be another) in that, even after all these years, theres nothing wrong about it. For example the Pleaidains stuff sounds a bit harsh and unpleasant at times (still love it); the dimension 5 stuff sounds a bit, almost "software-like" (how that can be possible? still love it), and the astral projection stuff while very close to timeless (dancing galaxy lp) still has some slight issues here and there, and will sound very dated for a newcomer for example; talking about sound "quality" only - not the music itself. (which is also an important distinction to be made) - just like fine wine, not many people use it to get drunk, but maybe a glass or two. So to that likeness many people dont listen to music because of the sound quality - they listen because of the music. In this context however, to be able to age like fine wine, the sound quality is most definitely just as important as the music - and in that regard only a few albums really hit home. very few! so to me the question really boils down to; are there any perfect albums? i think personally only hallucinogen have that, from my perspective. Maybe koxbox- dragontales for those who grew up on that (i missed that one until much later, for example, but it is very good) but thats the old school, in the new school i think theres a few; maybe filteria - daze is one of those that will age like fine wine. Probably will still enjoy that one just as much in 30 years.

well most of those psytrance producers who have the cleanest (most soul-less) sound - knew about this stuff in early 10s. But its now become popular media and everyone does it. The technique itself, has lost its soul. I think its only a matter of time before we get back to our roots of analog - and dirt - and realise that sounds more pleasant - than being sonically raped by these ultra-clean tones and waveforms. Its great to try to be clean, and to phase-align your knb ofc; but in the process dont forget yorue not a robot or alien, youre a human. Vinyl sounds better than CD.

audioz, eh?

Ive always thought of it like this. Psychedelic Trance is the mother genre, then we have goatrance as one sub and also psytrance as another. Yes that becomes a bit confusing since both share the same name; but they are indeed two different things. for example goa is like astral while psy is like infected. Of course thats just how i have looked at it personally for all these years. I dont remember anyone even calling it "psytrance" until a bit later, early 2000s i think. But maybe we did call some stuff "psy" even earlier than that... Hard to remember. Anyway i think "psytrance" as a genre is mother to sub-genres like dark, forest, tech, etc. While Goa and "Psy" has always been slightly distinct flavors under the matriarch; "Psychedelic Trance". makes sense to me at least

indeed, ive only really used single-cycle wavetables with these custom waveforms. ive no real use for a massive wavetable to cycle thru when i really just want a specific Saw sound. and drawing a waveform with the pencil is some of the most fun ive had in a while. and you learn pretty much immediately what part of the waveform "do what", and how to customize it exactly to what you want from the sound. im a little late to the game though, serum's been around a while now. dune 3 like astral mentioned is really fat sounding, has tons of modulation and fx. i feel Spire gets easily outclassed these days by either synthesis - or sound. but for leads i still use spire alot cause thats really where it shines. 303, virus/nord like, 101, etc, it really makes it extremely quick to dial in a lead sound you want. i dont think spire sounds great for psy basses, it doesnt have the filter + envelope action you really want.... imo.. serum i would go for a custom sound, where i want the waveform specific (like a psy bass; ive found this type of saw sounding really fat, its from a juno i believe): i also like to draw in some distortions here and there. really game changer for me at least, when youre really specifically after a certain tone. i.e: which sounds alot like the above one but its slightly off centered and even fatter.

if you really wanna buy a good synth, then imho id probably buy serum, cause you can draw/import/customize your wavetables to emulate pretty much any synth + signal path youd like and incorporate that onto the waveform itself. theres even (for example) jd-800 waveforms avaliable online and serum lets you import these, customize them, and make them to your liking; while also sounding great in the proces. that is really amazing to me, so to answer your question i would recommend serum

and hard to do by ear! an oscilloscope is probably almost necessary. besides the synths already mentioned i use retrologue alot, since im a cubase user, and it has a great analog-like sound with snappy filters and envelopes, and kinda sylenth1 like modulation options. + an arp. so im pretty happy with it =)

That one was amazing!

Dream creator! Sublime. this one sounds just like if BPC and california sunshine/nasha had a baby.

Lol whoops exactly! yes youre right a set budget would be better, i mean theres no way in hell i would actually pay 50k for a tube compressor. and just imagine something breaks, thats just one big bummer then. and with all those components, its likely to have to be serviced from time to time. adding much more cost; for something that in the very end - is only slightly better than software. well okay in this case its a bit more than slightly.

Okay cool, that makes me like these tracks even more now

Room treatment and acoustics is definitely on my list too, that can never be perfect enough. The UAD package would be dream.. But it's a freaking cash grab.. If you buy the cheapest, that's still very expensive you can run like 2-3 plugins at most. Then the dsp is exhausted. So you really gotta spend like, alot, to make it worth while. And then, would it really be worth it? Would it really sound that much better than stock/fabfilter/brainworx stuff? Maybe. Probably.

Is that the same mikro makro as on here? Sounds nice!

Yes that's the sound. Three really great tracks. I got stuck on vibraspheres catalog though, and unfortunately missed out on alot of other really great prog. So I can't really bring much to the topic that's outside that catalog. But the genre is wonderful, it's always a happy feeling to it. Even darker prog has a positive outlook. You, who have a finger on the pulse of current modern psy, is this genre still prevalent? What years are the tracks you posted from? I like all three alot. But if like to contribute with one of the older vibra tracks and one of the "newer". But it's funny you said everyone knows about vibra and atmos and here I go posting vibra and atmos

Congratulations man, that's really awesome.

this is fire

@Trolsk not negative, more like cautious. but you and padi opened my eyes a bit. and i now think maybe it could work (and the studies prove that it does, i suppose).

If you have pure mdma, the comedown is not nearly as bad as if you take a pill with lots of shit in it, that's for sure. So I guess it could be a very truthful experience. I'm not just sure it will last. Even if you have the best experience in the world it is highly likely you would just consider it as a manufactured high, few days later. Whereas on mushrooms there's no such feeling, and the effects could be felt years and years later, simply cause of the mechanism. I still remember my mushroom trips but the mdma I'd more than be happy to forget, given the option to do that... They just blend together as a bad chemical romance.

Sure. I can definitely see the effect of mdma being very positive and helpful, in the moment, but I worry when the comedown comes, which it always does, that they will only feel like they were fooled by a chemical, and it wasn't real. The risk of feeling worse than when you started feels very imminent.

couldnt agree more.

its not great, i think you can do better with logics native stuff =) but it was very interesting to hear all those drastic differences, from the same manufacturer, with the same name- and 20 something years later. but still sounds worse than the orignial.

i wouldnt want mdma to be a medicine; i think it doesnt have any use. the effect feels very "chemical" and "fake" and the comedown would probably spiral these people down even further. edit: i think psilocybin would be a better bet for a true medicine. it doesnt feel fake at all, has a very natural "mother earth" type of feel to it - where you can really find progress. and no comedowns. no obvious alterations to normal brain function (neurotransmitters) ofc i wouldnt want it to be freely avaliable, it can do damage on its own in terms of panic/anxiety (which id still say is rare) - but i think this could be researched further and if done in a very controlled setting could have much more use for these PTSD patients, then say MDMA that has a very distinct feel and its pretty much completely useless. you just feel like shit afterwards and you didnt learn anything.