Most modern well designed VSTs sound better than the Virus

[AnX]

Virus filters still rock in my opinion. Who cares if they're ancient? They have their own sound, to my ears at least.

When people make reference to filter age they are simply addressing that there has been a lot of improvement in filter technology since. If that's the filter sound that you're after, then obviously that doesn't matter as much to you. However, if someone is trying to have an objective discussion about filter quality, then it's relevant.

Generally people who care about how old the modeling technology is are looking for detailed models. While it's not an absolute barometer of quality, there is a correlation. Older DSP models generally aren't as accurate as newer models given a similar level of skill in their development and available processing resources.

YMMV.

Or... maybe everyone else has only just caught up...

or not.

[db3]

Which speaks to my pet theory that people who came into the scene later cured an appreciation for less accurate filter models. It's like growing up with metal distortion and then not appreciating your dad's tube screamer.

You can appreciate the tone of analogue (hardware and well-modelled) and Virus equally. They may have some similarities in their basic approach to generating sound, but they are different instruments. You either like the sound or you don't.

Interesting article here, where Kemper talks about distortion being a big part of the Virus sound. He also talks about how the profiling amp runs tens of thousands of lines of pure assembler code with the Motorola DSP. The Virus will be much the same, and most likely why we'll never see a true port.

http://www.guitar-muse.com/kemper-profi ... -2949-2949

[ghettosynth]

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[recursive one]

In fact the character is so strong I don't even know how to approach it in a mix yet.(sticks out like a sore thumb in a VSTi mix)

Interesting you should mention this as a friend and I have recently started producing psytrance together and we had the exact same issue when recording some leads from the Virus C, and a Nord Rack 2X. Getting these two to gel alongside Serum, Sylenth and whatever VSTi's we used wasn't immediately straight forward - but a good learning experience

Same here (also psytrance). Therefore I'm either using only or mostly Virus in a track or don't use it at all (but only the Virus tracks actually are getting finished).

Which speaks to my pet theory that people who came into the scene later cured an appreciation for less accurate filter models. It's like growing up with metal distortion and then not appreciating your dad's tube screamer.

Yes, perhaps. I strarted listenting to electronic music (mostly various forms of trance) about 2006 and when I bought Virus a year ago I was very happy to finally hear that sound from 2006 from my speakers (why someone would need the sound of 2006 in 2016 is another story but I believe it is no more weird than dying for the sound of 1976 )

[ghettosynth]

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[Synthman2000]

Notwithstanding subjective responses, synths do similar things each with sonic differences. Some sound not so good so I don't use them, some excel over others for certain types of synthesis. Some have unique qualities.

Some synth parameters, osc/filter/effects etc. seem to marry in an almost alchemical manner which produces nothing short of perceived magic. Results that are greater than sum of their high quality parts.

I suspect sometimes this is not even realized in development.

In technicality and mathematics we can lose a lot. Your ears don't hear maths. Magic, not in the historic meaning of make believe stuff happening in a witch or wizards house at midnight but the joining of multiple aspects to make a whole that simply blows you away. These are human things, human perceptions and words cannot explain them away.

Such things are not limited to sound, we can experience these things through many aspects of life. I suppose you may or may not be sensitive to these things. I adore one song, it does nothing for you and vice versa.

We are all wired/influenced differently so we cannot expect to always experience each others definitions or perceptions of such magic. But we can try.

Hippie !

[db3]

+1

It doesn't bother me what has the most accurately modelled analogue filters. Synths are the sum of many parts. It's just whether it sounds good. And of course, our perception of good is subjective and distorted by the music we enjoy.

[chk071]

Virus filters still rock in my opinion. Who cares if they're ancient? They have their own sound, to my ears at least.

I still use a Virus C live - and the other keyboard player in my band uses a laptop with Sylenth. Which sounds "better" in this scenario is entirely subjective but the Virus certainly has a distinctive "punch" to it and often cuts through the live mix a lot more easily.

Interestingly, i found this thread yesterday, when i googled for the Zebra Virus patches: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=186645

Most of the sound examples are down, but, the ones which aren't show that at least the re-created patches lack a lot of the punch of the original Virus sound.

It is also interesting what Urs stated in that thread:

On the downside: It's easy to create a sound in Zebra that's crap. Happens to me all the time. Doesn't happen that often in the Virus. That's because the Virus has virtual analogue parameter ranges within a virtual analogue flexibility. For the same reason that the Virus pretty much always sounds "good" one can't really dial anything into it that's not virtual analogue (including PPGish). Thus, for the broader range of stuff you get out of Zebra (or Absynth, or Tera, or XYZ) you have to pay the price that there's a lot of crap inbetween the beautiful spots.

Pretty much summarizes my thoughts about many of the soft synths.

[ghettosynth]

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[wagtunes]

Notwithstanding subjective responses, synths do similar things each with sonic differences. Some sound not so good so I don't use them, some excel over others for certain types of synthesis. Some have unique qualities.

No doubt.

In technicality and mathematics we can lose a lot. Your ears don't hear maths.

Yes, but, we can hear the result of different applications of mathematics and then we can easily develop intuition about those features. That's a bit like saying that a guitar player can't hear the model number of a tube. No, of course not, but many can tell the difference between a 6V6 output stage and a 6L6.

I get it, some instruments are absolutely greater than the sum of their parts and I also agree that this isn't always known in development, take the TB-303 as just one example.

However, we have to be careful not to dismiss technology. Virtual analog models are simply better than they were fifteen years ago.

You're absolutely right. 100% on the money. Technology has come a long way.

But people don't make their buying decisions based solely on technology and the "quality" of the sound.

I'm going to give you probably the best example I can give you.

I own pretty much the entire EWQL orchestral collection. I think you will agree that this library, if not the best out there (one could argue that VSL or 8Dio or some other library is better) is certainly better than the early string machines of the 70s and 80s. I owned an ARP Omni 2 and those strings certainly aren't the quality, realism wise, as EWQL. I don't think anybody could even argue that.

But I'm about to start on a prog rock project and, for certain songs, I absolutely need the "fakeness" of the early Mellotron strings and choir. A "real" emulation of strings and choir will not work. Certainly they sound more realistic and the quality is infinitely superior. But for my purposes, in the context of the music, they would sound horrible and totally out of place.

My point is this. Something may not be of the high quality of something else. It may even be, by today's standards, crap. But that doesn't mean that there isn't, not only a use for it, but a superiority in the context of the music we're attempting to do.

The Virus is no different. It has a sound. And whether or not that sound, the filters, or whatever, are up to the specs of today's technology is irrelevant when talking about what the end goal of the musician is. If it's to sound exactly like a Virus TI then nothing else is going to be as good because nothing else is going to sound exactly like a Virus TI.

So yeah, we can talk about specs and how this synth's filter is better designed or more accurate to an analogue emulation than that synth's filter but in the context of making music and what you're trying to get across, who cares?

I certainly don't.

Now, if indeed you are trying to get the most accurate emulation of a certain vintage synth, then yes, of course the specs are probably the only thing that matter. If accuracy is your only goal then the Virus TI won't even come close.

It's all in the context which is why we can argue this all day and night but there is no right and no wrong generically speaking. There is only right and wrong depending on what it is you're trying to accomplish.

And that's going to be different for every person here.

So yeah, right now, I take my Mellotron emulation over realistic strings in a heartbeat.

[Synthman2000]

You hear the results of maths and you are the judge of whether it is good or not. I am not sure where dismissing technology and I assume new technology is implied.

Myself, I am not religious about technology. New does not automatically mean better. New has to prove itself. Complexity and status of being more advanced does not necessarily mean better end results.

Arguably, technology will be the end of us as a species, despite the great discoveries (many of them life extending) along the way.

But that is philosophy and not synthesis.

[recursive one]

For the same reason that the Virus pretty much always sounds "good" one can't really dial anything into it that's not virtual analogue.

I wonder what sounds more virtual analogue - a wavetable with modulated formant shift or a vowel filter over a bitcrushed FM sound.

Actually this "sweet spots between lots of crap" concept doesn't work for me. For static sounds - yes, it may work, but since electronic music (at least the genres which I like the most) relies on heavily modulated sounds, I don't like synths which easily fall apart when tweaked away from the sweet spot. That's not to say that it is impossible to make bad sounds in Virus, but there are lots of directions where you may go from a nice preset and the sound still will remain pleasant

I have the "virus" Zebra patches (not those from that thread but recreations of Virus A factory bank), they may sound nice when fiddling with the preassigned modulations but easily fall apart when you are tweaking something else.

And yes, the punch - whatever it is - this is what they do lack.

[ghettosynth]

You hear the results of maths and you are the judge of whether it is good or not. I am not sure where dismissing technology and I assume new technology is implied.

Of course, but we can measure, and frankly, prove, that the newer filter models better represent their analogue counterparts. By definition, it's a better "model" of a filter.

Myself, I am not religious about technology. New does not automatically mean better. New has to prove itself.

See above. Whether it works for your music is absolutely completely subjective. However, this all comes up in conversation because some people try to argue the genius factor. If the Virus were two decades ahead of its time it would sound a lot better to my ears, not just yours. It does the psy-trance thing fine because it largely IS the psy-trance sound.

[egbert101]

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[chk071]

Actually this "sweet spots between lots of crap" concept doesn't work for me. For static sounds - yes, it may work, but since electronic music (at least the genres which I like the most) relies on heavily modulated sounds, I don't like synths which easily fall apart when tweaked away from the sweet spot.

Exactly that! I guess it has to do with several things. Filter resonance behavior, modulation which doesn't crap out with fast modulations, envelopes which are not weak, and lack punch, oscillators which don't tend to sound harsh, or unpleasant, and so on. As some mentioned that the Virus' advantage is partciularly "the sum of its parts", i guess that points to why it works fine under many circumstances.

And, i can only repeat myself, the same holds true for the Waldorf VA synths. Largo, and also Komplexer simply sound fantastic whatever you throw at them. I really have a hard time making them sound bad, weak, or in any other way unpleasant, like some other soft synths act, when you dial in certain settings, or simply try to experiment, and all you get out of them is "meh".