Hardware vs software synths take infinity : topic initial focus Andromeda A6

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These sounds is from a soft synth.
There is no fx or samples involved in any of the patches.

Pad1
Pad2
Bell
___The Jepptunes___
"Accept All the Good"

Sound design for SQ8L and Alchemy

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tehlord wrote:
TheoM wrote:
So i am asking in all seriousness... if plugins are as good, why have i NEVER heard ANY plugin that can sound as good? In terms of raw tone and emotion.. playing pads on that thing literally had my entire body in shivers, i almost started crying at one point!

Because they're not. Fact.

If you want to, you can make a plugin sound like an analogue/hardware synth in isolation and in a mix it arguably matters even less.

But as you rightly pointed out if you actually sit down and don't take a single snapshot as cast iron proof then you realise the nuance of hardware runs deep. And that's missing in ALL plugins.
^This.

I was all hardware VA and wavetable for a long time, then transitioned out of that into ITB and was happy. I still am, in a sense. Much magic can happen ITB. It's easy to forget that the music is far more important than the sounds we use to make it. Would Sgt. Pepper's be a better album if they recorded it today? No.

Then I bit from the tree of analog synth knowledge. :dog: At first I'd enter these threads with the stance that the differences I was hearing were not significant and definitely not worth the money or disruption to my ITB workflow. But, I kept hearing thing that suggested the state of the art plug ins I owned were not always the best solutions for the sounds I was trying to create. It was that livingsounds guy. He's no longer active here or on Gearslutz as far as I can tell, but it was one of his simple mixes that convinced me to dip my toe in that world. I must confess that even at first I thought, "Oh, I like this synth (MoPho) but it's just a different flavor. Not better, just different." It was suggested that I try a Studio Electronics ATC-1 and when I found one locally going for a reasonable price, I snagged it. I pretty much instantly took to it. It was more of what I was starting to appreciate in the MoPho.

Anyway, no one needs an analog synth to make good music, or even good sounding music. Don't tell me that plug in emulations are "as good as" or "the same in a mix" because that is wrong. I was relying on software analog emulations a lot for pads and I always felt there was some kind of graininess to the sound. Not as evident when playing single note parts, but pretty clear when doing pads. Again, not bad and nothing most people would object to in their music, but it was kind of annoying to me. Some plug ins are a little better than others at this, but then fail in other ways. Most have characteristics that can make them really great for many things, but if you want that pure, honest, subtle kind of tone that something like the A6 can do effortlessly, you'll have to get one because no software has gotten that far yet. I couldn't bring myself to spend the money to get an A6, but I did buy a Prophet 6, and I love, love, love it. Worth every penny.

So, I still love and use software all the time. It can do tricks that my hardware can not. If I had to give my hardware up, I'd be sad but move on. I'm glad I don't have to give it up. One thing I'm pretty clear about is that native software can be as good as most DSP based instruments like the Virus or Ultranova, though the Solaris is pretty great. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the algorithms are awesome and the hardware is as well. It runs internally at 96 khz. You might be able to get something like that running Reaktor at 96 khz, but it would be super taxing on your CPU if you want similar voice counts.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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The A6 came out at a weird time. All the big companies were pushing digital/workstations. I played one a few times in the store. Sounded great, but was really expensive. Dont see them for sale much these days....

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olepro wrote:These sounds is from a soft synth.
There is no fx or samples involved in any of the patches.

Pad1
Pad2
Bell
That's not too shabby. Is that one of its presets? If it is, let me know which one and I'll try to replicate it with an analog and see what happens. I love stuff like this. I tried replicating a Modulus (a synth I seriously G.A.S. for) .002 in software and I could never quite get it even though I had the patch parameters right in front of me. I came to the conclusion that there was just something about those filters that isn't easily replicated.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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AnX wrote:The A6 came out at a weird time. All the big companies were pushing digital/workstations. I played one a few times in the store. Sounded great, but was really expensive. Dont see them for sale much these days....
They also failed before you got them out of the box. You couldn't just buy the synth. You had to buy it, then repair it, before it could even be played. Cheap Chinese parts. :hihi:

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I haven't got time to read the thread but the andromeda pad sounds put me in mind of Oddity2 which i bought last night and the first thing i did was run some pads and polyrhythms through sound toys and it sounded fantastic.

It's one of the best synths for pads i've heard, a real organic and emotive quality to it. So how do you analog guys think it compares?

The music i produce makes heavy use of analog style sounds and some of the sound design is (to my ears) stunning and i've been trying synths recently to find the tone and character these synth have and Oddity2 has been the closest.

I don't hear it much in discussion for the best software emus so just wanted to give it a mention, been really impressed with it.
Latest release and Socials: https://linktr.ee/ph.i.ltr3

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zerocrossing wrote:
olepro wrote:These sounds is from a soft synth.
There is no fx or samples involved in any of the patches.

Pad1
Pad2
Bell
That's not too shabby. Is that one of its presets? If it is, let me know which one and I'll try to replicate it with an analog and see what happens. I love stuff like this. I tried replicating a Modulus (a synth I seriously G.A.S. for) .002 in software and I could never quite get it even though I had the patch parameters right in front of me. I came to the conclusion that there was just something about those filters that isn't easily replicated.
These are not presets from the synth, i made them.
They are from ZynAddSubFX, one of the best sounding soft synths i know of.
Sounds stupid, but it really has that sound of analog :)
___The Jepptunes___
"Accept All the Good"

Sound design for SQ8L and Alchemy

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^Cool, didn't expect it to be freeware. :)
Latest release and Socials: https://linktr.ee/ph.i.ltr3

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olepro wrote:
zerocrossing wrote:
olepro wrote:These sounds is from a soft synth.
There is no fx or samples involved in any of the patches.

Pad1
Pad2
Bell
That's not too shabby. Is that one of its presets? If it is, let me know which one and I'll try to replicate it with an analog and see what happens. I love stuff like this. I tried replicating a Modulus (a synth I seriously G.A.S. for) .002 in software and I could never quite get it even though I had the patch parameters right in front of me. I came to the conclusion that there was just something about those filters that isn't easily replicated.
These are not presets from the synth, i made them.
They are from ZynAddSubFX, one of the best sounding soft synths i know of.
Sounds stupid, but it really has that sound of analog :)
I thought it was Zyn.. stunning bit of code really. It has it's 'own' very agreeable character which is super rare for a softsynth imo.
Mastering from £30 per track \\\
Facebook \\\ #masteredbyloz

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Dasheesh wrote:
AnX wrote:The A6 came out at a weird time. All the big companies were pushing digital/workstations. I played one a few times in the store. Sounded great, but was really expensive. Dont see them for sale much these days....
They also failed before you got them out of the box. You couldn't just buy the synth. You had to buy it, then repair it, before it could even be played. Cheap Chinese parts. :hihi:
Actually, the initial production run was pretty good. Later units had quality issues. Thankfully, my A6 has always been pretty good, except for one minor issue with one voice. Fortunately, I can just disable that voice and have a 15 voice synth instead.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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At points like this, it's very valuable to get a sense of exactly what your end goal with all of this great technology actually is.

Obsessing over subtleties of sound quality is totally cool. It's not the same thing as actually creating a finished piece of music that someone else can experience, however. These are not mutually exclusive things, of course, but neither does one necessarily lead to the other.

There is TOTALLY nothing wrong with playing a musical instrument strictly on one's own personal time, for enjoyment at that time, and without the end goal of creating something that someone else will experience.

What can be a problem, though, is wanting to create a finished work that other people can hear, but getting so caught up in the comparisons of minute details that we don't allow ourselves to actually leave those details alone at a certain point.

Again: not mutually exclusive pursuits, and not any better or worse than the other. But sometimes it's valuable to do a reality check as to what it is we really want to do, and the extent to which our endeavors may or may not be facilitating that goal.

Not a dis to anyone, and this is all stuff I remind myself of very frequently.

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deastman wrote:
Dasheesh wrote:
AnX wrote:The A6 came out at a weird time. All the big companies were pushing digital/workstations. I played one a few times in the store. Sounded great, but was really expensive. Dont see them for sale much these days....
They also failed before you got them out of the box. You couldn't just buy the synth. You had to buy it, then repair it, before it could even be played. Cheap Chinese parts. :hihi:
Actually, the initial production run was pretty good. Later units had quality issues. Thankfully, my A6 has always been pretty good, except for one minor issue with one voice. Fortunately, I can just disable that voice and have a 15 voice synth instead.
Maybe the initial run was o.k. but subsequent runs you had to wait in a cue and everyone I knew who got one was faulty from a start. Whatever, doesn't matter now. Thanks fro the reassurances from alesis.

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andrelafosse wrote:At points like this, it's very valuable to get a sense of exactly what your end goal with all of this great technology actually is.

Obsessing over subtleties of sound quality is totally cool. It's not the same thing as actually creating a finished piece of music that someone else can experience, however. These are not mutually exclusive things, of course, but neither does one necessarily lead to the other.

There is TOTALLY nothing wrong with playing a musical instrument strictly on one's own personal time, for enjoyment at that time, and without the end goal of creating something that someone else will experience.

What can be a problem, though, is wanting to create a finished work that other people can hear, but getting so caught up in the comparisons of minute details that we don't allow ourselves to actually leave those details alone at a certain point.

Again: not mutually exclusive pursuits, and not any better or worse than the other. But sometimes it's valuable to do a reality check as to what it is we really want to do, and the extent to which our endeavors may or may not be facilitating that goal.

Not a dis to anyone, and this is all stuff I remind myself of very frequently.
Very well said :tu:

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olepro wrote:
These are not presets from the synth, i made them.
They are from ZynAddSubFX, one of the best sounding soft synths i know of.
You're not wrong there, the sound is impressive. Good stuff :tu:

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Zyn has always been like: WTF is this!!?? Where is this hardware keyboard I am really playing!?

In the top 5 free synths ever made, for sure.
"The educated person is one who knows how to find out what he does not know" - George Simmel
“It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.” - John Wooden

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