Firstly, well done, you are an excellent sound designer!

Secondly I think this shows the difference nicely. In many other patches I'm sure the difference could be more pronounced but they do sound quite similar here. The difference is that the DIVA clip (the second one i could tell immediately), has that extra body that you don't often find in soft synths. The DIVA clip sounds sounds like hardware, the Saurus clip sounds like a very good VA soft synth.

What's interesting to me is that people focus so much on the filter. Perhaps I'm wrong but I have to believe that the oscillator modelling has a great deal to do with the differences. I would say the tone2 filters are well on the same level as the u-he ones. They are both excellent. Although I prefer the u-he feedback and drive I think). However I feel where DIVA really shines is the oscillator modelling which have a lot more body, and this really shows in Bass patches and the mid range range depth of some pads and pads. I just don't think, when you get down to the nitty gritty detail, that saurus quite gets there as much. But for the lower cpu usage it does quite well. It does have a fair bit more cpu than ElectraX though I was surprised to see in some Saurus patches. And I really think you can get most of these sounds from ElectraX too.

But when it comes down to it, as someone said way earlier in this thread, we are awash in great soft synths these days and people need to figure out that the value of a synth isn't in features or necessarily particular characteristics like Analog authenticity, but how inspiring it is. I find tone2 synths are fairly inspiring so I have to give them credit for that. I still say the saurus sound is remarkably similar to gladiator and ElectraX VA capabilities, and I find to sound rather digital personally (with a nice modern warm sound though) but one of the biggest ways I judge a synth is like the old hardware design paradigm: How much variety is possible with the least amount of controls. In this regards I think Saurus does quite well. I wish they would figure out how to have a tie in an arp though.

No, just click on the red LED to jump directly to a particular value.

hmmm I am sure I tried that.......let me try again....although I tried it on the mac not the pc.
rsp


edit: Frantz that doesn't work on my mac, are you on mac or pc?
rsp

It works on my PC.

I didnt' try on the PC, but it sure doesn't work on the mac.
rsp

Since Diva is too demanding for my aging PC, I had very high hopes for Saurus. While it is a perfectly good synth, it doesn't sound especially analog to me. Saurus can definitely get into the analog zone but it can also be too bright, harsh, and fatiguing. If you crank up the resonance it sounds bad to me, possibly aliasing.

My favorite low CPU analog-ish VST is still the Korg Polysix. The Polysix is lofi and incredibly basic but it almost always sounds analog to my ears.

I've tried the demo on both Mac and pc. Worked on pc, but not on Mac.

doesn't work for me either on the Mac...

No, you could directly click on the "LED" (below or above the corresponding symbol) for the waveform you like, same for the filter modes and others like LFO and Unison mode.
After you clicked on the corresponding "LED" the name of the current waveform, filter etc. is shown in the display, below the preset name.

From the manual (which is in the installation folder):
"There are two types of toggle buttons in Saurus, one where clicking a button cycles between all options available, a good example of this are the OSC1 oscillator waveform selectors where clicking on the OSC1 button will cycle through its waveforms.
The other type is the toggle on/off buttons used for the Sync or Drift options, clicking on these will either enable or disable the feature.
To speed up the selection process options can also be switched-to directly by clicking on the light above or below. Active selections are clearly shown as 'glowing' as if illuminated by a lamp."

BTW with the "PW" and "Tone" knobs you could adjust the tone of the waveforms further. Those knobs seem to work for all waveforms.

Here is the part of the manual about the waveforms and the corrsponding PW knob:
"1. Saw - PW morphs to double saw
2. Square - PW morphs to Pulse and Peek
3. Trianguloid - A 4step Triangle-style waveform where PW morphs to 4-step Saw
4. Sinoid - A sinoid waveform; PW morphs to Square
5. Double square - Sounds similar to the PWM Sawtooth wave of the Alpha Juno. PW morphs to Double pulse
6. Comb - Sounds similar to the Comb wave of the Alpha Juno. Good for vocaloid sounds; PW morphs the vocal
7. Organ-stack - Several stacked waves which sound similar to the analog Farsivar Organs. PW morphs to double saw
8. Double pulse - PW morphs to square wave"

This feature is quite unique and sets it apart from most other VA synths.

About the "Tone" knob:
"TONE - Adjusts the tone control for this oscillator, which basically makes the sound for that oscillator darker or brighter which can give the oscillator more bite or control the higher harmonics for frequency modulation."


Ingo
Last edited by Ingonator on Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:15 am; edited 7 times in total

Okay, downloaded and tried Saurus...

There are some decent sounds, but it so easily sounds harsh and digital to me... but I am wondering if it is buggy or something. There is no straight noise control. Each oscillator has a noise knob but it can sound harsh or crackly turning it up loud enough to get an obvious noise... Sometimes the noise drops out when turning it up higher which surely seems like a bug.

It is hard to test anything consistently cause it times out so fast and it takes a while to get back to where I was then it times out again.

In many cases the filter feedback is really unpleasant sounding. The filter drive mostly just sounds mushy. Forgetting drive, feedback and the filter sounds nice, but turn up those controls and it easily sounds awful.

Okay, now it has stopped working altogether even if I put in a new instance... I had to quit Live to get it to work again.

I don't care for the GUI... Having to click 3 times to switch between 12 and 24db lowpass filter types is ridiculous. Other than the filter env there are no modulation controls visible so there is no modulation feedback at all. Massive has nice feedback around the knobs. Zebra does not have that sort of feedback but most of the usual mod targets have dedicated mod knobs so you can see common stuff like cutoff. In Saurus you have to look at the mod matrix for everything and it is not easy to see at a glance. In order to see what is modulating the cutoff, one has to click through 3 pages of mod matrix.

Knobs do not return to default with a double click so one has to carefully drag a knob back to zero. It is tedious to drag the amount slider in the mod matrix back to zero.

Seems there is no midi learn...

I found no way to modulate LFO depth so one cannot bring the lfo in with aftertouch or modwheel for vibrato. And since there is no lfo delay parameter the lfo is just on all the time.

I see no way to make the lfo global or per voice

The osc tune knob is strange. It has lots of hash marks but only a few states so you can drag it a couple marks without it doing anything. Then you really only have crude control over tuning. There are only 4 options per octave. Maybe that is a Tone2 thing, but I am used to being able to tune osc's freely instead of just a few discreet steps.

All controls (both knobs and mod matrix) can be set to their default value by clicking on them while pressing CTRL.




Assign the LFO to OSC Pitch in the mod matrix and set the value to zero.
On the next free slot assign MW or AT to the previous slot and set the amount of modulation required.

Example:

LFO1+- 0 OSC Pitch
Mod Wheel 5 Matrix1



Try to use these controls with moderate settings in order to introduce small variations to the sound. The extreme settings with these controls can produce extreme results, obiouvsly (and this is something that make sense in some circumstances).
Last edited by MaxSynths on Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:09 am; edited 1 time in total

Thanks for the lfo mod...

The parameter reset is not working consistently on the Mac

EDIT: I think the parameter reset works with control as long as you click close to zero area... I cannot check cause Saurus has stopped working again and I do not want to restart Live cause I am in the middle of working...
Last edited by pdxindy on Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:12 am; edited 1 time in total

then it is a bug on the Mac version cause it aint workin

Mmmm maybe it's a bug or a different combination of keys is required on Mac (?)

EDIT:



I'll send the report to Bastiaan.