Keboard : String sounds

[charic]

Any idea what is making the string sounds here cut through? I've got some amazing sounds on my keyboard (Kronos 2) but I can't seem to make it cut through quite like this. Any ideas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Ys_W7ySkM

[chriswareham]

Probably just a decent mix, since there's nothing remarkable about the keyboard sounds themselves - they're just bog standard polysynth string sounds. What I find helps though, is if the synth has a high pass filter. The presets on a lot of gear tend to be very "full" sounding so they sound good in the shop. For recording I tend to drop a lot of the lower frequencies out to make pad sounds cut through without overwhelming everything else. In the absence of a high pass filter, try upping the octave on any oscillators that are lower than the highest one in a patch, or turn off the sub-oscillator if there is one. This is all assuming you can you can edit the sounds, and that it's based on subtractive synthesis. If it's a fully preset keyboard, then it's a graphic equaliser to drop out some of the bottom end or boost the higher frequencies.

[charic]

[quote name='chriswareham' timestamp='1470593376' post='3106973']
Probably just a decent mix, since there's nothing remarkable about the keyboard sounds themselves - they're just bog standard polysynth string sounds. What I find helps though, is if the synth has a high pass filter. The presets on a lot of gear tend to be very "full" sounding so they sound good in the shop. For recording I tend to drop a lot of the lower frequencies out to make pad sounds cut through without overwhelming everything else. In the absence of a high pass filter, try upping the octave on any oscillators that are lower than the highest one in a patch, or turn off the sub-oscillator if there is one. This is all assuming you can you can edit the sounds, and that it's based on subtractive synthesis. If it's a fully preset keyboard, then it's a graphic equaliser to drop out some of the bottom end or boost the higher frequencies.
[/quote]

I'll have a look and see what I can find! The amount of options on the Kronos is a tad overwhelming. Although I mostly look at sample based sounds at the moment and hadn't really thought to look at the synth based sounds. So much tweaking to play with! I've created some new patches reducing the attack dramatically so now it smacks you in the face a bit