Hi, this is a subject I've been working on for a while: how to make a (traditional A-grade) studio signal path, which , just like with good recordings, enhances or completes the Kurzweil sound. It is my firm opinion that his rather un-communicated idea is at least somewhat done justice by my current (very complex) FFT-based processing, and that indeed this subject uniquely is present with the Kurweil machines.

The processing in essence does two big things: it analyzes/created and mixes the sort of standard mid-low tube effect track, and the averaged mid-frequency track, and in addition to various possible (but in this case rather minimal) eqs I compare 8 (2/3 oct) frequency bands of FFT-processed signal with the non-FFT-processed signal, and process those 8 sub-bands (from about 100-2000 HZ) such that they gate-on when there's significant content in that subband, and so that all the subband meter show interesting meter-activity, depending on the difference created by the FFT (expansion and compression). The summed result of those subbands is mixed in via a sort of tube-like effect chain (with among others gating).

Playing some of the (unedited) ROM patches through this all sounds like this (the PC3 is connected to a analog 24bits/192 kHz input of the computer, the output of the Jack/Ladspa processing chain is down converted live to 44.1/16bit and recorded into mp3):

http://www.theover.org/Kurz/pc3test3.mp3 256 kbps mp3 stereo 44.1kHz, 13 MB.

Is that better ? The computer to run this all is a 4.5 GHz 12 core I7 extreme with 2100MHz memory on a X79 motherboard, and this power is needed to combine all the signal processing I mentioned (around the"jamin" FFTw-library based mastering program on Linux (Fedora 18/64bit, all Open Source)), and a general purpose 32 band analyzer with decent frequency filters in 32 bits float per channel and 192 kHz sample frequency.. Thus far I needed to do one part of the processing, record the result, and do the second half. Anyhow tomorrow I shall try the whole idea live on my monitors (I did this by K271 headphones), which is cool, but thought maybe you guys want to hear this idea too.

Theo V.