
DM48 Digital Chromatic Harmonica - troydavis
https://www.lekholminstruments.com/
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elihu
I noticed a Yamaha vl-70m in the first video. That's a very interesting
synthesizer that (if I remember correctly) was in continuous production for
about twenty years. It does physical modeling of various acoustic instruments.
They're fairly rare, but they're popular with those who play midi wind
controllers because they allow for more realistic expression control than a
more typical "play pre-recorded sample when someone hits a note" digital
rompler synth.

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shams93
Yeah if this thing does MPE its going to be easier to use with an ipad or
running a DAW that has MPE compatible plugins like bitwig, logix prox or
cubase. Those hardware were hard to find in the 90s when they were new,
compared to the dx7 this module only ever say small production runs.

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jpm_sd
Cool project! But, as with other electric instruments, not quite the same as
the traditional equivalent:

"Compared to an acoustic harmonica, the DM48 is less expressive in many ways,
as mouth geometry, hands, and classical bending/overblows cannot be used to
modulate the sound. [...] the DM48 cannot in any way replace or convincingly
emulate an acoustic harmonica."

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RBerenguel
Also,not sure you'd overblow or bend a chromatic harmonica (I only have
diatonics, so, not sure if it's done for colour)

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jascii
I play both (badly) and while it is possible, I find it a lot harder and often
miss the specific pitch I'm trying to bend too (with quite unpleasant
results!). I am not sure why this is, but I suspect the slide mechanism and
the larger volume make it harder to load the reed just right..

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RBerenguel
That was my assumption, although I have never been close enough to a chromatic
to try (also, I can barely bend on the diatonic yet, I haven't been playing
for long). I just looked up more information on bending on chromatics (the
harmonica.com forums) and indeed, doable, but not supposed to sound as good as
the chromatic on its own. Interesting to know, and thanks for your answer :)

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ebj73
A nice idea, but it sounds as if they're not quite able to get the input
latency low enough. It needs to be around 3-4ms or less. Here it seems as if
it's more in the 10-20ms range, judging from the demonstration videos. It's
enough to throw a performance off, and to make everything sound just slightly
behind.

It could be that it's not the input latency itself, but rather the tapered
nature of the wind instrument attack curve. If a tapered attack curve is used
to set of the playback of a sample, that could in itself also introduce extra
input latency. It's not entirely clear what's happening here.

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davidhyde
Its a pity that its tethered like that. Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) is low
latency and perfect for this use case.

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calibas
"Low latency" is still like 10-20ms, which is very noticeable for a
professional musician.

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jascii
Then again, mechanical instruments can have quite a bit of latency themselves,
for instance: It takes a while for the reed in a harmonica to settle into a
specific vibration when activated, especially when bending notes. Same for a
string in a bowed string instrument. I find it interesting to see that that
mechanical latency is something that a good musician learns to use and becomes
part of an instruments "character" and "expressiveness" while digital latency
is almost universally considered a bad thing.

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anbop
oof, not comparable at all. The increased mechanical latency from a cello,
compared to a violin, is an incredible source of tonal and musical complexity.
First of all, the latency can be felt by the musician, so I don't lose control
of the feedback loop. Second, the latency isn't a hard start/stop, but you can
feel and hear the string first displacing under the bow and then starting to
move. There is zero latency in terms of the physical universe... there is just
some more latency between when you start an action and when the note reaches
its full steady state.

The comparison is like the difference between driving a truck and a car
compared to driving a car with a 500ms delay on its inputs.

