KVR Audio

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Fri May 11, 2018 10:24 pm

And anyone intimating that a piano piece by Bartok is anything less than masculine is not only wrong (not to mention politically incorrect), they also need to clean the s**t out of their ears.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Fri May 11, 2018 10:41 pm

https://youtu.be/Q3NQvDTpbqw

cron · Post by **cron** » Fri May 11, 2018 11:32 pm

It's impossible to answer the question unless we know which hardware analog synth and which software synth we're talking about. Hardware analog vs software VA is so broad as to be meaningless. There are just as many (more?) shitty sounding hardware analogs as exceptional ones. Are we talking a beautifully maintained Model D vs Synth 1 or a beaten up Davolisint vs Diva?

goldenanalog · Post by **goldenanalog** » Sat May 12, 2018 12:22 am

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Tue May 15, 2018 5:11 pm

There are very few hardware synths that I would bother using. I've got a few gadgets that are fun for jamming, but otherwise software does everything I need and then some.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue May 15, 2018 5:21 pm

I still think that hardware sounds 1,72 % better than software. It is also scientifically proven. I am convinced of that fact.

Tj Shredder · Post by **Tj Shredder** » Wed May 16, 2018 7:05 am

chk071 wrote:I still think that hardware sounds 1,72 % better than software. It is also scientifically proven. I am convinced of that fact.

You scrambled the decimals, at best its 1,27 %.

The flexibility of software though excells linearly with the power of your computer up to 127 times better. But if you need a solo, the orchestra doesn't help...

Tj Shredder · Post by **Tj Shredder** » Wed May 16, 2018 7:06 am

Double post

Kiiryu · Post by **Kiiryu** » Tue May 22, 2018 12:28 am

Depends if you see hardware quarks as ideal, and if you're willing to put in the extra work to emulate hardware, I suppose. I know that with guitar amps for example, the extra steps involved in getting a good sound take you a long way, and there's a reason why there are Vsts for every step of the hardware process, it's a lot of interactions.

Where I may look at a tape vsts and say "oh cool, I can get tape distortion!", someone who used tapes might look at a sterile vst and think "oh thank god, it's finally clean!"

Biome_Digital · Post by **Biome_Digital** » Wed May 30, 2018 8:42 pm

Much prefer some soft synths like Massive, Spire, Serum, Repro's, Diva and Monark and a few others, Zebra.

Mea Thrills · Post by **Mea Thrills** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 12:06 pm

It's nearly impossible to tell the difference now with all those analog emulations and a heavy processing in a mix. Hardware still sounds better but in most cases but you can make digital sound like analog.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 12:50 pm

Difficult thing. While i don't think anything in software can beat the sound of a real analog, and hands on is a great thing, i'd think i would sorely miss the VST workflow.

engineer · Post by **engineer** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:41 pm

I did detailled research on the option to model analog behaviour with software in both DSP/PC-CPU and FPGA/GPU in order to find out, what we need to simulate RADAR and LIDAR electronics effectively.

I cannot post these results because they are done for a customer but you can see some conclusion here in this article:
https://www.mikrocontroller.net/article ... erformance

See the last two tables and get an impression what you can really simulate in realtime appropriately enough with some 500.000kHz and what you need for to do it.

Result: It is not even possible to calculate one single transistor in real time using the 3D model we nowadays have. The equations cover 4 sheets of DIN A4 and require a large number of iterations to convolute.

If you see any software pretending to perform analog modelling, then it uses simplified equations. The more linear and easy they are, the less calculations hve to be done to find the current and voltage for a specific node in the circuit. Have of the nodes require square root of half of the itarations, a third of calculations steps and also less oversampling. Now it becomes clear, why one can calulate a linear amplifier in real time with a Intel I7 multicore.

But THIS has pretty nothing to do with the real behaviuor

theorize · Post by **theorize** » Wed Jul 11, 2018 1:22 am

I rarely throw my hat in this ring, but this IS a valid question still, I hate when people act like no one should ever ask this question. Here's my humble opinion: for me it's how much time do you want to spend tweeking sounds? Yes software sounds excellent nowadays, but you have to spend a bit more time getting great sounds. I have owned some hardware, I definitely went through that phase, and it does sound good, but now I only have a commodore 64 in hardware and an obscure toy keyboard that will be gone as soon as I sample it. I do miss creating sounds on my Electribe 2, almost every twist of the knobs yielded something that sounded good. I'm not an expert but I don't think it's the D/A converters that made it sound that way, I think Korg just made a great sounding VA synth engine. I find VSTi's generally more fiddly but honestly by the time you deal with sampling/recording/editing hooking things up dealing with everything that comes with hardware you've probably spent more time on it. I went from VST to hardware and after a couple years of having fun but not getting much done due to space issues (hardware takes up room that I generally don't have to make a good workflow) I've sold all my hardware and getting back into software, but also I've gotten more into the digital sound as well so it's kind of a natural step for me. I've watched a lot of those comparison videos on youtube between hardware and their software counterparts, and my ears do tell a lot of what people say about people say about the high frequency content, but honestly... who cares? Do these people that care about that kind of thing not use hihats? What I'm saying is in a mix I don't think it matters. Also those are just patch to patch comparison... I seem to get plenty of HF content out of VSTi's. I bought several plugins recently that I'm happy with for the price of a low end keyboard. And I don't care what anyone says I love the sound of Element, and it's such a joy to program... ahh but I'm getting off topic now. I hope my opinion helps.

perpetual3 · Post by **perpetual3** » Wed Jul 11, 2018 3:10 am

If I had the money I would be all over hardware. But being hat I don’t have the money, I make due with software.

And I realized something the other day. Way back when, me and nearly everyone I know was all about “beefing” up the ITB sounds. I remember when PSP Vintage Warmer came out - it was my first effect plugin. Now, I’m cutting a lot from my ITB synths, not as much from samples. I still use VM and the like, but nowhere near as heavy handed as I did.

I’ve got to say, I much prefer this essentially subtractive process, and sound wise software can sound just as good, and nearly identical in some cases, although not exactly the same.

Now PLAYING an instrument is a different story. I love programming and playing my V-Synth (my last hardware synth). I loathe programming VSTs and i never got on with generic hardware controllers, it’s just not the same as a dedicated synth. Considering a Push 2, since I’m probably not going to leave Ableton.

Hardware vs Software, sound quality differences is that still a thing ?