Minimoog Softsynth Shootout: Diva MiniV3 Monark Legend Minimonsta vs Model D

[fluffy_little_something]

Amazing how Fluffy Little Something always finds new stuff to complain about in certain synths.

I tried to poit that out in my post above. If you think that a certain synth has a similar volume in all octaves you might check if you use a kind of Limiter, eihter external or a built-in one. Using a Limiter will drastically change the observed volume behavior.

Where was I complaining about anything?! Since I am into R&B, I like a good bass. I only mentioned Diva because I have the demo on my computer and because people keep mentioning its bottom end. I don't know if the other Minimoog emulations show the same behavior, I never tested them.

But, I like to know why things are the way they are. If you and the other clown are superficial enough not to care about reasons, that is not my problem.
If you don't have anything meaningful to say, just ignore my comments the way I ignore most of the irrelevant, repetitive babble the two of you clutter this board with...

[wagtunes]

Amazing how Fluffy Little Something always finds new stuff to complain about in certain synths.

I tried to poit that out in my post above. If you think that a certain synth has a similar volume in all octaves you might check if you use a kind of Limiter, eihter external or a built-in one. Using a Limiter will drastically change the observed volume behavior.

Where was I complaining about anything?! Since I am into R&B, I like a good bass. I only mentioned Diva because I have the demo on my computer and because people keep mentioning its bottom end. I don't know if the other Minimoog emulations show the same behavior, I never tested them.

But, I like to know why things are the way they are. If you and the other clown are superficial enough not to care about reasons, that is not my problem.
If you don't have anything meaningful to say, just ignore my comments the way I ignore most of the irrelevant, repetitive babble the two of you clutter this board with...

Talk about calling somebody a clown. You're the most negative complaining person here. I don't recall you ever saying ONE nice thing about ANY synth other than Sylenth1 since you've been here. Hell, out of your OWN mouth you said you don't love any synth. I still, for the life of me, have no clue why you even come here unless it's just to complain about stuff.

Wanna call me a clown? Don't expect me to just sit back and take it

[fluffy_little_something]

Diva seems to employ some internal equalization

Nope, doesn't.

(It may *seem* so, but it's just the interaction of the parts found in those synths. What I'm saying is, we didn't model the synth and then add an EQ to make it sound better. It sounds like it does because of the accuracy of the models)

OK. So why is it like that on the original? On purpose?
With polyphonic synths I totally understand it as the left hand often plays only one note at a time, while the right hand plays chords. So it makes sense to make low notes louder in order to achieve a certain balance.
Maybe that's why the difference seems much greater in the Jupiter 8 mode of your synth than in the Minimoog mode.

[Ingonator]

Amazing how Fluffy Little Something always finds new stuff to complain about in certain synths.

I tried to poit that out in my post above. If you think that a certain synth has a similar volume in all octaves you might check if you use a kind of Limiter, eihter external or a built-in one. Using a Limiter will drastically change the observed volume behavior.

Where was I complaining about anything?! Since I am into R&B, I like a good bass. I only mentioned Diva because I have the demo on my computer and because people keep mentioning its bottom end. I don't know if the other Minimoog emulations show the same behavior, I never tested them.

But, I like to know why things are the way they are. If you and the other clown are superficial enough not to care about reasons, that is not my problem.
If you don't have anything meaningful to say, just ignore my comments the way I ignore most of the irrelevant, repetitive babble the two of you clutter this board with...

Just because your favorite synth might have a different behavior it does not mean that all others that act differently are "buggy".

As i mentioned more than one time now if you want to have a comparable loudess at all octaves you might use a Limiter.

Besides that that volume behavior you complain about is normal for a Minimoog (both hardware and emulations) and many other synths, esecially analog or analog modeled ones.
This also depends on how big the low end of that synth is. A bigger low end is a matter of timbre and/or frequency content but not of volume differences between the octaves. On the other hand boosting low frequencies with an EQ will also boost the overall volume and as low octaves include more low frequencies those will then also be louder than the higher octaves (whiel the EQ has an effect on all octaves).

Anyway Urs already mentioned that no "hidden" EQ is used to boost the low end in Diva. Same is true with real analog synths that often have a big low end.
On the other hand if you look for an extreme low end using an EQ with Diva might make sense too and same is true with real analog synths.
I know you would call this "cheating" but what counts is the result, not if a synth is capable of this without any external processing or not.

[fluffy_little_something]

Talk about calling somebody a clown. You're the most negative complaining person here. I don't recall you ever saying ONE nice thing about ANY synth other than Sylenth1 since you've been here. Hell, out of your OWN mouth you said you don't love any synth. I still, for the life of me, have no clue why you even come here unless it's just to complain about stuff.

Wanna call me a clown? Don't expect me to just sit back and take it

Sure, I am not a fanboy of anything, I don't buy zillions of synths the way you do because indeed I lack that fascination with synths many people here seem to have. I do like a couple of synths (e.g. Sylenth1, Imposcar2), although not unconditionally. That's enough in my view, both in terms of quality and quantity. I prefer to learn one or two synths inside out, which enables me to get the overwhelming majority of the sounds I need.

[fluffy_little_something]

Just because your favorite synth might have a different behavior it does not mean that all others that act differently are "buggy".

As i mentioned more than one time now if you want to have a comparable loudess at all octaves you might use a Limiter.

Besides that that volume behavior you complain about is normal for a Minimoog (both hardware and emulations) and many other synths, esecially analog or analog modeled ones.
This also depends on how big the low end of that synth is. A bigger low end is a matter of timbre and/or frequency content but not of volume differences between the octaves. On the other hand boosting low frequencies with an EQ will also boost the overall volume and as low octaves include more low frequencies those will then also be louder than the higher octaves (whiel the EQ has an effect on all octaves).

Anyway Urs already mentioned that no "hidden" EQ is used to boost the low end in Diva. Same is true with real analog synths that often have a big low end.
On the other hand if you look for an extreme low end using an EQ with Diva might make sense too and same is true with real analog synths.
I know you would call this "cheating" but what counts is the result, not if a synth is capable of this without any external processing or not.

No idea where you got the term buggy from, I don't remember having used it. You are putting words into my mouth again...
I was not even "complaining" about that behavior. All I am saying is that one can emulate that strong bottom end with an equalizer in any synth. When people say this or that synth has a great bottom end, what they mean is that it has great bass "out of the box" whereas with other synths you might have to turn on the equalizer and set it up correctly.

[Urs]

Diva seems to employ some internal equalization

Nope, doesn't.

(It may *seem* so, but it's just the interaction of the parts found in those synths. What I'm saying is, we didn't model the synth and then add an EQ to make it sound better. It sounds like it does because of the accuracy of the models)

OK. So why is it like that on the original? On purpose?
With polyphonic synths I totally understand it as the left hand often plays only one note at a time, while the right hand plays chords. So it makes sense to make low notes louder in order to achieve a certain balance.
Maybe that's why the difference seems much greater in the Jupiter 8 mode of your synth than in the Minimoog mode.

The asymmetric sawtooth is due to a DC blocking filter in the signal path. It creates a higher peak value on lower frequencies even if the RMS value is the same at higher frequencies. Simple physics.

The bass boost of the Minimoog stems from various aspects, one of which is a DC blocking highpass filter in the feedback of the filter section. When resonance cancels out the low frequencies, it does only do so down to the lower mids, but not below about 150Hz. So sub bass is pronounced. There's another reason or two, but those are hard to explain.

It's simple fact really. I can only speculate as to whether these specific parameters were introduced on purpose or not. I only measured the effects in the specific circuit and built a model upon them.

[Ingonator]

Another thing has to be considered concerning the filter, a Lowpass filter like in a Minimoog to be precise. If you set it to maximum Cutoff the difference between low and high octaves might be small as all (or better most) frequencies are allowed to pass.

At a low Cutoff frequency the difference might be much bigger. Using a Lowpass filter In high octaves a low Cutoff frequency settiing cuts out most of the frequencies of the notes played there and the low frequencies are much less there anyway which overall could make higher octaves sounding more quiet.

In low octaves where you got lots of low frequency content and not so many high frequencies the Lowpass filter cuts out much less from the frequency spectrum of the raw/original waveform which overall could increase the volume of notes played there in relation to high octaves.

With a Highpass or Bandpass filter the situation might be different. Especially with a Bandpass the result also depends on the slope where 24dB has a bigger impact.

[fluffy_little_something]

The asymmetric sawtooth is due to a DC blocking filter in the signal path. It creates a higher peak value on lower frequencies even if the RMS value is the same at higher frequencies. Simple physics.

The bass boost of the Minimoog stems from various aspects, one of which is a DC blocking highpass filter in the feedback of the filter section. When resonance cancels out the low frequencies, it does only do so down to the lower mids, but not below about 150Hz. So sub bass is pronounced. There's another reason or two, but those are hard to explain.

It's simple fact really. I can only speculate as to whether these specific parameters were introduced on purpose or not. I only measured the effects in the specific circuit and built a model upon them.

Thanks for the explanation. The 150 Hz you mention is more or less note D3, just 3 notes away from the note I thought, namely A2.

Regarding resonance, it seems that like many synths Diva also loses volume when turning up resonance, except when getting close to self-oscillation.

[chk071]

I'd be happy about the extra beef. We hear so damn bad in the lower registers. Actually, in Spire and Largo, i usually activate the integrated bass boost (in Spire it is applied by default with the "Warm" algo in the master section. Something i found out after about a year or so of using it... Always wondered about the sine like bottom part of the sawtooth waveform visible on the oscilloscope. ).

[Ingonator]

Regarding resonance, it seems that like many synths Diva also loses volume when turning up resonance, except when getting close to self-oscillation.

Synths with a transistor ladder filter like a Minimoog could lose low frequencies and/or low end at high Resonance amounts and the loss in the low end could also reduce the overall peak level.
This is comparable to what i tried to explain about the impact of the Cutoff frequency in my last post above.

FWIW the loss of low end seems to be qiute high with e.g. Repro-1. Be sure to switch off FXs in Repro-1, especially the JAWS one, when testing this. JAWS could have a big impact on the resulting sound. Just did a test in Repro-1 and the peak level difference between using 50% Resonance and 0% Resonance is up to 5dB in that specific example (other parameters at similar values).
With a comparable test in The Legend the difference is around 4dB at 50% Resonance amount and 6dB at 70% Resonance.
Those tests were done at a low octave with the note C1 at the keyboard.

On the other hand a state variable filter like in the Oberheim SEM or a diode ladder filter might keep the low end also at high Resomanance amounts or even incease the low end there (which also incraeses the overall peak level). On the other hand such filter designs often do not self-oscillate but this is no rule.
I could notice such difference when uisng e.g. the Acid filter (= diode ladder filter) instead of the "Classic" 24dB LPF (= transistor ladder filter) in my Novation Bass Station II.

[Chris-S]

Peak level display has little to do with loudness.

Loudness of the patch Jupe-8 (mix knob to VCO1) measured with youlean:

Note C2: -10.8 LUFS
Note C7: -5.9 LUFS

So, the high note is actually louder than the low note.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

You should hear the differences in volume between the low and high notes on a piano, or an electric piano for that matter too. Or a guitar. Or tons of other instruments. Never occurred to me these might be bugs.

[wagtunes]

You should hear the differences in volume between the low and high notes on a piano, or an electric piano for that matter too. Or a guitar. Or tons of other instruments. Never occurred to me these might be bugs.

And that makes sense. Look at the strings on a piano. The low strings are long and thick while the high strings are short and thin. So of course the low strings are going to make a louder sound.

[Chris-S]

That's the reason a piano has three strings per note for the high notes, and only one for the bass.