Guy here, who programmed the C++ implementation of Operator: It was a pleasure to build the instrument together with Robert, and I learned a ton from him.
In the 2009 upgrade I replaced the aliasing wavetables with bandlimited ones, generated using IFFT, one per octave. With 2x oversampling, it became aliasing-free as long as you didn’t use FM. When adding the IFFT, the feature of drawing harmonics also became obvious.
Fun fact: The four oscillators were calculated in parallel using SSE intrinsics. It’s the only time I’ve ever been able to improve the performance of something using that particular technology.
For me personally, Operator is a pinnacle of my engineering career - It is one of the most-used synthesizers in the world, though of course, there are much better ones out there.
Ableton is an epitome of software design innovation. I think few people understand how groundbreaking the Session View vs Arrangement View design was to advance the workflow of both produced and live music. Subcomponents like Operator created design patterns that are widely adopted by most VSTs today. Kudos to the Ableton team for crafting a product that is so beloved.
Session View (aka "clip launching") represents more than just a workflow - it represents an idea of what music is.
Some people might want to spend their time arguing over whether or how much or when that idea is correct. I'd prefer to note that in the 25 or so years since its debut, the idea has reshaped so much contemporary music whether it is correct or not.
The idea that you build up music out of sections that potentially repeat, then move on to another section ... it all seems so obvious to us techno-centric geeks. It actually isn't how most of the world has traditionally conceived of music, but the language that has been traditionally used has often had a structure that has made it easy to strip out the complexities, and the result is ... Ableton Live's Session View.
Yes, 22 years ago. And while they’ve expanded some plugin features, astonishingly little has changed/improved about the base Live since then. Even minor quality-of-life features like setting a default audio interface is not even on the roadmap for 22 years.
I think part of that is probably the clientele, musicians aren’t exactly famous for asking for more from their tools. Maybe I’m a grump for not thinking that “session view vs arrangement view” (which is really a bare minimum digital mimicry of the popular music making interfaces of the 20th century: the magnetic tape and a vinyl loop) is enough as the dominant paradigm for music making in a world now driven by global, recursive, abstract navigation of/ negotiation with interconnected, automated logic processes…
But I don't wanna be sarcastic.
The interesting thing about that is that no one in my (limited) experience uses the session view as it was intended to be used for music composition. After trying it for a bit, everyone seems to revert back to using the linear Arrangement view. Session view is still useful in some performance cases, but it makes me wonder if it would make sense to have it as an optional view, and not as the default view for all sessions.
Very interesting. When my buddies and I started playing in Ableton after years in Adobe Audition (circa 2010?), we immersed ourselves in Session view for writing and piecing everything together, building songs top-down instead of left-to-right. It completely changed our entire workflows, and that seemed like the point.
I'm only ever in arrangement view when I'm finalizing the order of the sections before final mix down.
It’s trivially easy to make arrangement view your default view. You simply hit tab to switch the view to arrangement and then overwrite your default template in the ‘File’ menu. Now you’re set.
Same here, everyone I've introduced to Live has been completely stumped by session view and preferred linear arrangement. I don't understand why it's the default view other than hanging on to the idea that this software is first a live looping tool and DAW second.
I use the session view for vocal recording. Recording multiple takes to new clips in session view, then copied into the arranger, it lets me comp several takes without messing up the final arrangement, and is great for project organisation.
I wish... Live is the only reason I have a windows partition anymore. I just can't quite get it to work in wine/emulation...
When I'm forced to upgrade to windows 11 I simply won't have Live anymore, because I won't be doing that, and so I haven't purchased the latest version and am starting to experiment with the alternatives. Makes me sad though, it'd be so great to have on Linux.
Oh I love FM synths! I'm working on a customisable one in my spare time lately for the kids' school, as the music teacher was complaining that the students have been using all the same samples over and over. Feel free to have a peek! Desktop only. Source code is hopefully nice and clean too: https://chrishulbert.github.io/you-synth
Ah Operator. This synth is so deep. Not only is it a fantastic FM synth, but it does subtractive synthesis well too. Also, it really is impressive how the UI manages to fit all those parameters. I mostly use it for cool synth leads. Here's one of my favorite videos on Operator https://youtu.be/rfeY0_k1ctk?si=s68Lr033cHf34a4M by Robert Henke himself.
FM is one of the most "naturally digital" synthesis method to implement, it's trivial once you have an accumulator and sin table working. The simplest form (and arguably the easiest to sound musical), can be expressed with a one-liner formula:
If you're interested in the qualitative distinction between subtractive and additive synthesis this is a fun practical example of why you might use the latter that I like a lot (implemented in operator no less :) )
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In the 2009 upgrade I replaced the aliasing wavetables with bandlimited ones, generated using IFFT, one per octave. With 2x oversampling, it became aliasing-free as long as you didn’t use FM. When adding the IFFT, the feature of drawing harmonics also became obvious.
Fun fact: The four oscillators were calculated in parallel using SSE intrinsics. It’s the only time I’ve ever been able to improve the performance of something using that particular technology.
For me personally, Operator is a pinnacle of my engineering career - It is one of the most-used synthesizers in the world, though of course, there are much better ones out there.
Session View (aka "clip launching") represents more than just a workflow - it represents an idea of what music is.
Some people might want to spend their time arguing over whether or how much or when that idea is correct. I'd prefer to note that in the 25 or so years since its debut, the idea has reshaped so much contemporary music whether it is correct or not.
The idea that you build up music out of sections that potentially repeat, then move on to another section ... it all seems so obvious to us techno-centric geeks. It actually isn't how most of the world has traditionally conceived of music, but the language that has been traditionally used has often had a structure that has made it easy to strip out the complexities, and the result is ... Ableton Live's Session View.
You will not have that bad experience with Ableton!
I'm only ever in arrangement view when I'm finalizing the order of the sections before final mix down.
It’s trivially easy to make arrangement view your default view. You simply hit tab to switch the view to arrangement and then overwrite your default template in the ‘File’ menu. Now you’re set.
When I'm forced to upgrade to windows 11 I simply won't have Live anymore, because I won't be doing that, and so I haven't purchased the latest version and am starting to experiment with the alternatives. Makes me sad though, it'd be so great to have on Linux.
Also woaah, the randomize is amazing.
Proposal: make z and x change octave.
Ableton tutorial features an excellent (and completely free) FM synth in-browser: https://learningsynths.ableton.com/en/playground
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/fjp9psrcqb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYVsS_X17bM