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Author Topic: Project ST-01: The instruments behind the historic ST-01 sample disk revealed  (Read 94340 times)

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haji_da_musician

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A few months after my reply, I got Full Bucket Music's "Fury800" (emulates the Korg Poly-800) Audio Unit on my 2015 MacBook Air (that I got in used condition sometime in December 2022.) I compared ST-01:HallBrass to the Poly800 patch "Muted Brass" sampled at a C5 note, and noticed that they sounded strikingly similar. I also compared ST-01 KorgDoi (at an 8363Hz sample rate, it was hard to compare when it was 16574Hz) to the Poly800 patch "Wet Ones" at (I think) a C3 note (I recorded samples of these sounds using FBM's [full bucket music's] Fury800 Audio Unit plugin in GarageBand) and they sounded pretty similar. Except, the KorgDoi sample seemed a bit slower, so I recorded Wet Ones at C4, slowed that recording down 1 octave to C3, and found that it sounded a bit more like KorgDoi. (forgot to include the slowed down example here, OOPS!) Slightly slower than KorgDoi, but overall, almost the same. I have attached a compressed ZIP folder of my audio (alongside ST-01:HallBrass and KorgDoi) in this reply.
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haji_da_musician

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I think I just found a slightly longer version of ST-01:Shaker!!! I was just messing around with the samples in SLL's song "collision" (i couldn't find this song on the Mod Archive, but I did find it on Modland) and then I clicked on sample 15 (or sample 0F if you're using an Amiga!). The sample was titled "shaker3", and when I played it back, I thought it sounded kind-of familiar, so I compared it with ST-01:Shaker, and realized that this was a longer version of ST-01:Shaker! I have the two files attached to this post here, along with a sample of a Yamaha RX17 shaker (thank you so much, KB6!) with reverb (Voxengo OldSkoolVerb "Smooth Reverb" preset.) this RX17 sample sounds nothing like ST-01:Shaker (even when slowed down an octave) but I added it for good measure, since the ST-01:Claps1 sample is just a Yamaha RX (unsure what RX model) clap sound, but with some reverb (as dr_mabuse noted here: https://modarchive.org/forums/index.php?topic=1587.msg6259#msg6259 in 2008.). dr_mabuse also said (here: https://modarchive.org/forums/index.php?topic=1577.msg6200#msg6200) that ST-01:PopSnare2 is a LinnDrum snare with reverb. Attached in this folder (same folder as the shaker and clap samples) are my attempts to recreate that sound. I have tried many different reverb sounds (with Voxengo OldSkoolVerb, and also Audacity's Built-in Reverb Effect) on a Boss DR-220A snare, (I got that sound from a sample pack from drumkito.com) a Linn 9000 snare drum, (taken from Thijs van der Vossen's 1994 "SampleSource" sample pack [the drums pack specifically]) a Yamaha RX-5 drum machine, (sound taken from samples.kb6.de. Thanks KB6!) and even Deniece Williams 1984 track "Let's Hear It For The Boy". (yes, you read that correctly!) I even added a click sound to one of the DR-220A reverb examples (because ST-01:PopSnare2, and even the original Dynamic Drums "Snare4" version of it have a click sound at the beginning.) I thought some of the DR-220A reverbs sounded kind-of similar to PopSnare2, but they're not exactly the same. This is also the case with the Let's Hear It For The Boy snare, and I feel like that one sounds the closest to PopSnare2. The Linn9000 and Yamaha RX-5 reverb samples sound completely different. Also, I noticed that in the longer "Snare4" from Dynamic Drums (or Dynamic Studio, as both programs had the same samples, and were both released by New Wave Software in 1987), the end of the sample has kind of a deep, bassy sound to it, and I haven't been able to recreate that when trying to recreate the reverb with anything, so maybe they used some sort of drum machine with reverb, but I'm also starting to think that maybe, just maybe, they might have sampled a real snare drum. I don't have any way of knowing though, because (as of April 22nd, 2023) I don't have any drum machines or acoustic drum kits. I think we need some further, more thorough analysis of the drum samples. Thanks!
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haji_da_musician

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Sorry about the double post - I had to do this because the forums wouldn't let me upload anything larger than 2 megabytes.
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sherekhan

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Re longer versions of ST-01 samples showing up elsewhere: I have another example.

I noticed this back in the day when dissecting Moongazer by Dr. Awesome. There was this sample, snare5, that sounded awfully familiar. So I compared it to popsnare2. Popsnare2 is exactly 4000 bytes long in the original form, but the sample from Moongazer was a bit longer. So I cut it down to 4000 bytes, and there was no doubt: The 4000 first bytes of snare5 was identical to the full popsnare2.

I have not been able to find a version of popsnare2 that is longer than 4000 bytes, so my guess is that this sample is simply Bjørn Lynne adding some reverb to the existing sample.

You can compare the two samples yourself here:

popsnare2:
https://modsamplemaster.thegang.nu/sample.php?sha1=effa87803189158c9e4f7541e4e85d3998cb7dc6

snare5:
https://modsamplemaster.thegang.nu/sample.php?sha1=7e68f602188efc89aad234a7055cb242c3afeb70
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haji_da_musician

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Good analysis! But, there is just ONE problem. You see, in 1987, a very obscure software company called New Wave Software released 2 programs for the Amiga, called Dynamic Drums, and Dynamic Studio. Dynamic Drums (and Studio) have a lot of drum samples, including one very interesting "Snare4" sample. "Snare4" is longer than PopSnare2, and very slightly longer than the "SNARE5" in Dr. Awesome's 1990 release "Moongazer". And, (as we all know,) a short version of Snare4, called "PopSnare2" was put into ST-01, a sample disk included with Karsten Obarski's 1987 "The Ultimate Soundtracker". Also, I checked the "Soundfiles" folder's file dates in Dynamic Drums program data disk (disk 2), using Crashdisk's ADF-Workshop tool (Thanks Crashdisk!) and I saw that all the samples (and most of the other files) have a file date of November 6th, 1986. So, this longer version of PopSnare2 actually originated from Dynamic Drums. Some parts of this whole Dynamic Drums thing were mentioned back in the start of this thread in 2008 (which was 15 years ago!).
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Krik_iddqd

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I once made a table for ST samples (primarily for ST-01 and ST-02). Something is not included, but something, on the contrary, has not yet been met anywhere.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UUUFC-ixr7fwZmGker4GYo8cPltDDnOE6t8pQy4vfnQ/
If someone has something to add on it - I will always be glad.
Ideally, the table should look like with a bunch of links to samples and examples, but I'm just too lazy to do it. =P

I did not include completely speculative examples in the table, when the instruments are similar only in names, but the phases and timbres are radically different. This, of course, may be due to emulation flaws, but it still requires confirmation. Something is left out because I can't check it (for example, DX21 presets that use the synth's built-in envelope).
In addition, I will add that some comparisons in the topic are not true. For example "DigiDug" is not "Solid Bass" from DX21 ("SolBass" on FB-01), but "RubberBand" ("RubBass" on FB-01).
« Last Edit: May 21, 2023, 20:20:13 by Krik_iddqd »
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sherekhan

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Good analysis! But, there is just ONE problem. You see, in 1987, a very obscure software company called New Wave Software released 2 programs for the Amiga, called Dynamic Drums, and Dynamic Studio. Dynamic Drums (and Studio) have a lot of drum samples, including one very interesting "Snare4" sample.

[snip]

Ah, I must have missed that part. I never even heard about those programs. But I am checking it out now, and seems you are right. A quick test by loading the samples into OctaMED reveals that more samples from ST-01 must originate from this, such as BassDrum2 (Bass11), Claves (Clave), Conga (Conga) and HiHat2 (HighHat2).
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Krik_iddqd

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ST-01 "Marimba" is "MARIMBA2" from the Fairlight CMI.
I have no idea how a sample from an expensive $30k device could end up on Karsten Obarski's home computer, lol. But it's certainly worth checking out the rest of the Fairlight CMI samples.

haji_da_musician

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Yeah, I noticed that about the Marimba sample. I also figured that out a few months ago, but forgot to mention it.
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haji_da_musician

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I'm not 100% sure if I'm correct, but it seems very likely that Karsten might have gotten that Fairlight Marimba sound from a songs or scores disk for Aegis Sonix or Deluxe Music Construction Kit, as a lot of those music disks' instruments were sampled from stuff like Fairlight CMIs, and (probably) Yamaha DX-series synths (or at least FM synths in general), and he probably stumbled upon one of those disks, the disk probably happened to have that Marimba sound, and he might have decided to rip the sound from the disk and put it in ST-01. This seems especially likely to me, because a lot of early mods (especially ones from 1988-89) that had non ST-01 samples usually took the sounds from these Sonix or DMCS song disks, and the drum sounds were usually some of Dynamic Drums' other sounds (besides the ones ripped and used in ST-01). Ok, I know that Dynamic Drums detail wasn't entirely relevant here, but I'm not really sure where else to mention that. Anyways, back to the Marimba sound. I saw a module called "soundfx module" (yes, that's the title. isn't that creative?) and I downloaded it. I was looking through the samples and it had ST-01:Marimba. But something about this version of the sample was different. It sounded a bit...higher quality. I compared it to the normal version of ST-01:Marimba that shows up in most versions of ST-01, and..yep. This version of the sample was indeed higher quality. I then compared both samples again, but this time, at the lower notes, to see if this was just resampled. It wasn't resampled. It was actually at a higher sample rate! So, I think this is a higher quality version of ST-01:Marimba! But, this mod was made by a mod musician by the name of Fermix. I checked this person's demo history on demozoo, and the oldest song of theirs that is on demozoo is from December 1992. (a song called "ana".) But ST-01 is from 1987. So, did this person find the original Fairlight CMI sample set, or did they happen to have a different (possibly the original) version of ST-01 (or at least the Marimba sample)? I don't know! I have attached the two samples on this post.
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