chk071 wrote:No offense Dasheesh, but that's about the most ridiculous thing i've read here for quite a while now.Dasheesh wrote:I'm not sure where you guys are getting spire as the benchmark for "alive". The thing suffers terminally from lower quality audio rates due to catering to the EDM crowd.
So, why do i feel like Spire sounds alive? Well, it doesn't suffer from the typical soft synth niggles, like sounding as if it came from a tin, not sounding very wide with unison, not having any bottom end, or "bang" when you close the filter with fast decay times, not lacking top end. It also doesn't get dull and boring with many sounds, or is restricted to "this use only", like, you can only do basses with it, or only leads, because anything else sounds crap. The latter is the most important thing for an "alive" feeling, that it doesn't get dull and boring with some sounds, but does a broad palette of different sounds very good. The only other synth i would say does that as good, or even better, is Largo. ANYTHING else i tried suffered from the described problems.
The problem with this topic will be that there are different interpretations of what is an "alive" sound though. For some, it's probably just that the synth distorts, or detunes like mad, like the old machines everyone seems so keen on using. It may add to the "alive" feeling, yes, but it's surely not everything. Retrologue for example has a lot of drive in the filter, even without distortion, yet, it doesn't feel very alive to me, rather softsynthie. I think soft synth development still has a long way to go, and the biggest obstacle IMO is the different interpretations, views, perferences, and "ears" of the developers. IMO, there are really few who really nail the sound. At least the sound i'm after.
It's in the modulation rates buddy. lots of stepping and phasing and distortions going on. All you gotta do is put it up to a higher audio rate instrument (one that you DON"T have to layer) to see for your self.