Some synths will have filters to cope with certain rates accordingly, some wont. You will hear differences but that dosnt mean better or more accurate.

I always work at 44.1, 32 bit, and infinitely prefer to have oversampling options on a per-plugin basis inside each synth/FX.

I couldn't even think about upping the sample rate at the end of a composition, because if tiny things sounded different in an arbitrary way (i.e. some things improved, others were just different) it would drive me crazy. I tend to build up music in a way that's very responsive to the sounds, and if they change even subtly, it can throw the whole thing off.

I know technically you "shouldn't" do mixing, sound design and composition, all at once, but to me, they are simply the same thing in different time domains, and they all are inter-related and inform eachother.

So basically, long story short, an "Insane" mode in Diva would be most welcome, because I can test it out as I compose and know what the difference is going to be beforehand, then put it back on Divine or Excellent when the CPU starts taking pain.

please please please include a insane goodness setting.. its optional!!! please!!!!

I'd be extremely happy with an "insane goodness" mode for rendering. One of the reasons I started using VSTs was because they're so convenient to use compared to environments like CSound, but one thing I loved (still love, I guess) about CSound is that you can render at basically any quality level desired, if you're willing to be patient for the output. All my professors would tell me that "back in the day," they'd have sounds rendering for hours, overnight, for sometimes even short sounds. Surely we can be patient rendering top-quality tracks overnight every now and then, for something as nice as Diva?

Urs, I would say the demand is very high it seems for the Insane goodness render level...could we put a poll to see how many ppl are interested? This topic isn't even titled "Better rendering option" or something like that but it's still gotten a lot of response... something to think about

I vote for insane goodness as well as the possibility to set master default realtime and render quality settings.

+1 for insane goodness

i'm pretty sure at 384kHz it would sound twice as better

This thread reminded me of an article by the ogg vorbis folks in regards to 192kHz Apple audio:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

As always with these things, the answer is 'it depends'

Some plugins you barely notice a difference at higher rates. Some plugins there's a significant improvement, some plugins can actually sound too different or worse! at a higher sample rate as it simply wasn't designed for it.

Reverb plugins in particular can change a lot at 88/96, tend to sound brighter with longer tail offs, not always in a pleasing manner though. Thats why at least one reverb plugin I know of works at a fixed internal sample rate regardless of what the host is set to. (not sure if thats public knowledge or meant to be so not mentioning the name just in case).

From what I can tell, Diva already incorporates a hell of a lot of processing to ensure it sounds damn good even @44/48k. You won't get a signifcant jump to 88/96 as you would with say D-Cam Synth Squad, either upping the DAW rate or Synth Squads internal oversampling option, which radically changes the LPF filter response.

The plugins I tend to find benefit the most though are much older ones. Like Albino 3, 88/96khz makes a HUGE difference when using the saturation knob in the filter, clears up an aweful lot of aliasing.

Thank you for the informative post!

Great article, but isn't digitally sampling analogue audio a completely different kettle of fish to generating samples directly via computer based synthesis? Not that I'm saying running at 96kHz is necessarily going to sound better. Most soft-synths already oversample internally, don't they?

Synth1 is a good example if you're looking for a synth that clearly sounds different at higher sampling rates though. Play right up into the ultra-high range with high filter resonance and your project running at 44.1k. Vile aliasing rubbish. Switch to 96k. Hugely diminished, but still pretty vile and decidedly different sounding aliasing rubbish. Things get even worse when you add FM. Note that I'm on 1.06 here and later versions may have sorted this.

+1 for insane goodness
if it's optional why not.i can handle 9-12 insatnces of Diva on a 3+ year old cpu...bring it on if it's only 4x times more intensive.


btw oversampling other softsynth synths which do not have 0 delay feedback filters makes a huge difference cos oversampling the synth would effectively narrow the feedback delay espeonentially....but with diva the difference shouldn't be so huge.
i guess it would just remove a little of that aliasing on super fast modulations and FM (which is allready well antialiased at 44.1)

I have to be honest here. I have never worked at anything other than 44.1K or 48K. The reason for this is twofold. First, when I was working in hardware, they all used a either 44.1 or 48, so I didn't see how bumping to 96 could provide information that didn't exist in the original sound. The other reason is that until last year, I didn't have a computer which could handle 96k let alone 192k.

Given how many people here have spoken if favor of the higher rates, I was wondering if anyone could provide x/y samples of music at say 48k, 96k and 192k. I am very curious about it and would like to see what others have been able to do.

Thanks.

u r completely missiing the point and your post is completely irrelevant.

the higher sampler rate helps plugins perform their computations in more efficient manner....providing more accurate results.
it's got nothing to do with just audio playback.