how do i get this synth sound?

i feel like i may have asked this on a thread before, but i can't find it and i'm trying again. there's a very specific synth sound that i hear all over the place, and it's eluded me so far. examples:

1:40 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSxD3KO91rI

The main keyboard sound here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Ymw_dOI6

The chords that start coming in about 4:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjc-KbCsIvQ

The chords that pop in and out around :40 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjc-KbCsIvQ

anything to point me in the right direction would be helpful. i've gotten the closest by messing around with a Prophet 5 emulator, but it's not right (and i haven't been able to get the vibrato). is it FM synthesis?

/startrekman

it sounds like a multiplied saw wave a.k.a. "supersaw" which is a bunch of saw wave oscillators linked together and each one slightly detuned from the rest. should be doable on a lot of analog synths.

it sounds like the FM synth on sonic the hedgehog and streets of rage. the music format for megadrive/genesis games are probably less
documented than for NES, but there's probably stuff out there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_JP-8000#The_Supersaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTboU4iOejs&feature=related

This is a tracker that apparently makes MD/genesis compatible music.
If it's like most trackers, there's probably codes for adding vibrato.

thanks, i'll play around with it. the trick is not to make it sound like a cheesy trance synth.

xp

it's pretty much the same sound as the cheesy trance synth, just used differently

The first one justs sounds like a straight one osc saw wave, with a little bit of top end filtered off and some portamento. Possibly it might be chord memory or oscs tuned to a chord to play the chord from one note

Second I couln't get to play.

Third one, one osc saw wave, fast shallow vibrato, slow attack time, fast release

Fourth one I couldn't really tell.

None of them sounded like supersaw wave to me, more like straight sawtooth.

more to chew on from an engineer friend:

sounds like lots of saws and square waves to me. Probably no filtering whatsoever, or perhaps just a little bit of high-pass to roll the bottom off. A lot of times in sounds like this, the 'vibrato' effect is actually coming from pulse-width modulation of a square wave tone (the 'width' of the top of the pulse moving back and forth). When you start stacking a non-PWM square wave with a LFO-controlled PWM square wave, you get a thicker, chorus-y vibrato feeling.

something along the lines of:

-two square/pwm waves detuned like 8 or 10 cents apart
-pitch envelope with a gradual decay so when you play a note it kinda slides in
-light lfo controlling amp so you get that vibrato effect. add a slight delay to the lfo depth so that the vibrato gradually builds the longer you hold the key
-slow lfo controlling the pitch so you get that kinda sea-sick pitch effect (you could also set say note velocity to control the speed, the harder you hit a key the faster the lfo will run)
-keep the filter pretty much completely open
-turn off your sequencer's auto quantize and play live

as long as you have a synth w/ a decent mod matrix you should have n trouble getting these sounds. 99% of the time these kinda dudes are using NI's Massive

"should have no trouble", that should read

you could also modulate the speed of the lfo controlling amp vibrato with key position so the higher up the keys you play the faster the vibrato or vice versa

or you could set the mod wheel to control the depth of the lfo controlling pitch to get that sea-sick thing

also try setting one of the oscillators to 5ths or 7ths for nice chords

i just quickly dialled in a passable attempt on ES2, if you have Logic I could send you the patch as a starting point ?

actually def tune one of the osc to 7ths. it makes every chord you play sound like stevie

thanks for the offer (& the tips) but i'm on cubase.

i had some pretty decent results with this last night, just using saws + detuning + setting the lfo to osc1 pulse width modulation for some additional vibrato. i'll keep playing around with it for sure.

what soft synths ya got? would be fun to make you a patch

cubase prologue, arturia prophet v, basic 64, a couple others (i've been messing around with the native instruments stuff but only through the free kore player). if you make one for a different free vst, i will download it!

recently started using massive and i've gotten somewhat closer to this sound, but i wouldn't hate it if one of y'all still wanted to try a ksd patch.