Diva vs Reaktor - which one sounds the most analog?

[IncarnateX]

Some have suggested that people who want "analog sound" should get an analog synth. While this may have sounded elitist and narrow minded to me just five years ago, it makes sense now. Lots of cheap analog gear around. The Volcas go for about 148 € or less second hand, Doepfer Dark Engergy II 400 €, Dreadbox Hades 500 € and so forth...and not at least Minilogue 600€, which seems to be a gamechanger. No interpretation towards elitism is needed here, it is just a simple fact that analog sound isn't an expensive rarity anymore. People may have other reasons for preferring VSTis to the real thing, but price and availability are not sensible reasons now a day.

....unless...what the op mean by analog sound is which vstis can make the best analogish patches as close as possible to some specific and very expensive synths like the Jupiter 8 or orginal minimoog. In this case, I think it can be doubted whether you can emulate mimimog more accurately on a minilogue rather than Diva or Reaktor. In this case, op should have specified which synths he would emulate....

...unless...the op is just trolling with another variation of the same lame question that usually fuels the fire. In that case I am all in. Have loads of popcorn...and a baseball bat, in case I like to join the venture

[Daags]

1] make a patch on analog that you can't reasonably recreate with software.

How about make a patch on software that you can't reasonably recreate with analog ?
No ?
Just because it will be unfair to analog ?

are you being ridiculous or disingenuous ? ... we're talking about software that's emulating analog here, so the condition of the testing is clear. or at least, it should be so long as you are participating in sincerity.

And comparing obvious strenghts and weaknesses is pointless.
Software will lose in tactile control.
Software will win in the number of instances you can spawn if your CPU is powerful enough.

Which is why I specifically disregarded the peripheral strengths/weaknesses
(and I was even, rather generously, willing to presume it would be a well controlled experiment - which it is highly unlikely to be.)

I just wasted 1 minute on saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun...

Compare the sound, because the sound is what is really important.

Yes, you wasted your time alright... and you didn't address the flaws I highlighted in your asinine 'experiment'. And the flaws are related to the same goal, the creation of music. They are not existing in some hypothetical scenario with no bearing on real world usage.

[Mutant]

I'll tell you why most of the analog vs digital success stories come from replicating simple, most often used in music sounds like for example JP8 preset #31 (you can check it there).
1. Because the sound is beautiful enough for many people to actually try replicating it.
2. Because it is fairly simple to set all the necessary parameters right.

People who say that digital can't touch analog when analog is pushed to the extreme fail to see that these extreme sounds are first most often way too ugly to majority of synth enthusiasts for them to try replicating them and second they require much more work and very detailed info about the construction of the patch to set everything right.

I could try replicating your analog extreme sound, but you would have to lend me the analog synth or offer every possible assistance i would ask for, like recording different parts of the sound, with other parts muted, or disabled (for example filter fully open to better hear and see how oscillators behave).

BTW This sound by J.Ruegg is what i consider extreme:
https://soundcloud.com/jruegg/xhip-bass-test-gain
And no i wouldn't be able to replicate it just by ear even though i use Xhip almost every day since good few years.
If you can do something like that on your analog, you are good.

Swans success with replicating OB8 sounds on Diva came mainly from him actually owning the OB8.

[pdxindy]

2. Because it is fairly simple to set all the necessary parameters right.

Many extreme sounds are not complex and it is just as easy to set the necessary parameters... its just that as you get into those settings, the sound of the softsynth begins to fall apart compared to the analog synth

[pdxindy]

I could try replicating your analog extreme sound...

and you would fail...

[Mutant]

I could try replicating your analog extreme sound...

and you would fail...

Maybe.
I am not a miracle maker, i am sure he would make sure to supply a sound at very hard difficulty level, a sound which even other analogs would not be able to do.
And as i said, first i would have to even like the sound enough to spend time trying to copy it.

[Doug1978]

Diva.

(though actually I prefer the sound of synthmaster).

[zerocrossing]

Some have suggested that people who want "analog sound" should get an analog synth. While this may have sounded elitist and narrow minded to me just five years ago, it makes sense now. Lots of cheap analog gear around. The Volcas go for about 148 € or less second hand, Doepfer Dark Engergy II 400 €, Dreadbox Hades 500 € and so forth...and not at least Minilogue 600€, which seems to be a gamechanger. No interpretation towards elitism is needed here, it is just a simple fact that analog sound isn't an expensive rarity anymore. People may have other reasons for preferring VSTis to the real thing, but price and availability are not sensible reasons now a day.

....unless...what the op mean by analog sound is which vstis can make the best analogish patches as close as possible to some specific and very expensive synths like the Jupiter 8 or orginal minimoog. In this case, I think it can be doubted whether you can emulate mimimog more accurately on a minilogue rather than Diva or Reaktor. In this case, op should have specified which synths he would emulate....

...unless...the op is just trolling with another variation of the same lame question that usually fuels the fire. In that case I am all in. Have loads of popcorn...and a baseball bat, in case I like to join the venture

Nicely put. If you dig in my past posts there are plenty where I say, "emulations are plenty good to me." They still are, but the $500 I spent on a used ATC-1 opened my eyes for the price of a cheapish guitar. It actually made me a bit more sensitive to the differences between emulations and plug ins, and the differences aren't always better/worse like a lot of hardware only people would have you believe. It's just a different vibe. If you want that vibe, fine. If not, fine too. There are plenty of people who feel the Access Virus is the be-all-end-all synth and nothing else is needed. That's fine too.

I do personally feel like Reatkor does a better emulation of an analog mono than Diva, by a decent margin. This could simply be because of how Urs tunes things to his own liking which could be different than mine. I also think that the System 100 and SH2 plug ins are possibly the best analog emulations to date, but I just heard someone on GearSlutz talking about them as if they were poop. That said, I didn't sell off all my analogs when I got the System 100 plug in. (I do have a Neptune 2 for sale though... )

[incubus]

It's funny. After 12 years, it's the same ol'

Guys, I get it. But it's worse than rap. It's a subject that has regurgitated everything so many times and is so completely the same it's a beige liquid silt

[Urs]

I could try replicating your analog extreme sound...

and you would fail...

Thing is, Daags (or anyone) would fail equally as badly recreating the same extreme sound on the same analogue synth from scratch the next day.

Those AB tests are ultimately flawed with the preconception that the software needs to beat the hardware. It's the wrong way to look at it.

[stillshaded]

I don't go for "analog" when I'm using soft synths anymore, it's too dissapointing. I feel like theoretically it should work.. But it never really gets there.

There are a kot of synths that for me have some aspect of the analog sound, but none of em nail it entirely.

That said, Diva comes closest IMO. I recreated some akai AX60 patches I made with DIVA and was shocked how close I got. Especially considering that thr ax60 has filter fm.

But like daags said, a static sound is one thing, tweaking a sound is another. This is where software sounds different to me.

This is where many people will tell me that it's the knobs tricking my brain. The problem with this is that I have a Roland mks-50 that I edit via software, and it's still the case.

With my analog synths, I have that "this is impossible to make sound bad!" experience. I never have that with digital. Usually I start with a sound that has problems to my ears, and I attempt to solve those problems.

Even with Diva, I end up using little programming tricks that a soft synth affords me to compensate for a lack of magic dust.

To me the difference is most obvious with my old ms-20. The idea of recreating that thing with software is insane to me. I admire urs for attenpting it, he came up with a cool soft synth I the process for sure.

But nowadays I use my analog stuff as much as possible because it sounds beautiful and I don't have to fart around as mud and I can focus on making music

[pdxindy]

I could try replicating your analog extreme sound...

and you would fail...

Thing is, Daags (or anyone) would fail equally as badly recreating the same extreme sound on the same analogue synth from scratch the next day.

Those AB tests are ultimately flawed with the preconception that the software needs to beat the hardware. It's the wrong way to look at it.

I agree such A/B tests are flawed... but for a different reason. I think the device doing the emulating is at such a disadvantage that it kinda makes the test meaningless if the object is to exactly match a specific sound.

Anyway, I'm not all that interested in exactly duplicating a specific sound. My interest is in the general character of the sound itself. Analog sounds different because it has no sample rate. My analog synths all sound different in the highest octaves compared to digital synths. There is something clean about them right up past the limits of hearing. Digital synths, even at 96khz I can always hear some 'digital-ness' in the highest octaves. This has nothing to do with how accurate the emulation. It is more general than that.

Same with fast modulations and live tweaking. The difference is obvious once I learned what to listen for. Put an analog and a digital synth each in identical controller boxes and within a minute or two I could tell which is which. That has nothing to do with the accuracy of an emulation as such. It is simply that there are still characteristics of analog that digital does not mimic...

I'm impressed with RePro. I think it is the best emulation I have tried to date. It's fun to play!

[hakey]

The correct answer is Tonewood.

[malachy5]

There is only one way to settle this argument for once and for all - Synth Battle at the Necropolis!

https://youtu.be/WXgNo5Smino

[zerocrossing]

I could try replicating your analog extreme sound...

and you would fail...

Thing is, Daags (or anyone) would fail equally as badly recreating the same extreme sound on the same analogue synth from scratch the next day.

Those AB tests are ultimately flawed with the preconception that the software needs to beat the hardware. It's the wrong way to look at it.

I agree such A/B tests are flawed... but for a different reason. I think the device doing the emulating is at such a disadvantage that it kinda makes the test meaningless if the object is to exactly match a specific sound.

Anyway, I'm not all that interested in exactly duplicating a specific sound. My interest is in the general character of the sound itself. Analog sounds different because it has no sample rate. My analog synths all sound different in the highest octaves compared to digital synths. There is something clean about them right up past the limits of hearing. Digital synths, even at 96khz I can always hear some 'digital-ness' in the highest octaves. This has nothing to do with how accurate the emulation. It is more general than that.

Same with fast modulations and live tweaking. The difference is obvious once I learned what to listen for. Put an analog and a digital synth each in identical controller boxes and within a minute or two I could tell which is which. That has nothing to do with the accuracy of an emulation as such. It is simply that there are still characteristics of analog that digital does not mimic...

I'm impressed with RePro. I think it is the best emulation I have tried to date. It's fun to play!

Indeed! I think once the full commercial version comes out and we have access to (I'm assuming) osc drift and other things, this is going to cause quite a kerfuffle. (if it hasn't already)