Emulations - Architecture vs. real emulation

[jens]

You are (for some reasons) not the person, who is able to demoralize me.

you're doing that on your own pretty well...

[saulc12]

I don't want to get drawn into any arguments and I am not making any comments about the technology or the physics involved, but I am pretty sure, even with component modelling (ie modelling each electronic component of a circuit), that there is no such thing as a perfect emulation of a piece of analog kit, especially given the tendency of real physical electronics to 'drift' over time. I don't go in for emulation myself (and before anybody tries to slag me off for retro-gs01, it is not an emulation, nor do I claim that it is, I refer to it as a sound alike, but only because it can create similar sounds). I actually think that high end emulations may offer a more affordable alternative to vintage hardware, even if they are not a perfect copy. I don't think that SE, Reaktor or SM are really up to this level of 'simulation', but still believe they can produce very effective softsynths and effects that are worthy of being judged on their own merit.

If you are looking for a software emulation of a moog modular, then maybe the place to look is Arturia's website, they did a good if not perfect job. But if you are looking for a synth that sounds great and will work well in your music, look everywhere and try everything if you can, because this way you might just find the perfect vst for what you want to do.

It is worth remembering that while a vst cannot perfectly recreate a piece of analog kit, there are a vast number of things that software can do, that no piece of hardware can do too.

It is a shame when creativity becomes a slave to technicality.

[Zamson]

Hello folks,

I just want to say few words about this
software vs hardware debate.

I agree that VA hardware are nothing but software
in decicated boxes, so what is the difference?
OK, Superwave8 and JP8000 are both software
then, but why JP8000 sounds INDEED much better?
Answer is.. way better coding, better sound engineers
did make it..

So that is the only thing what counts..and so far
Most of digital hardware sounds way better than
most of software, just becosue they are made
by people who know more about what they are doing.

One single guy can make little nice vst, but how
can he compete against some bigger company who
can afford to pu 10 experienced sound coding engineers to develope algroritms to new synth?

Question is not, if hardware have some mystical
things what are better than soft..forget about adda
converters, good soundcard have also good converters,
its all about quality of algoritmns,..(how do you spell that right anyways..?)
My conculisison is that :

so far VA hardarea still sounds better becosue
of those more skilled makers..when makers
of softtsynths get their level softsynths start
sounding as neat.

Also practically there is one more dimension
in this game..the character of the synth.
As mentioned synths with same kind of arcitecture
do not have to sound similar at all.
The character..and I could choose whatever
10 synths in both soft and hardware marker:
I think I would choose about 80% hardware,
becosue ..I think they have way more interesting
and original character




Some of better softsynths:

Absynth 3
Virus Powercore (virus b)
Reaktor 5
Z3ta
Albino
Vanguard

Some of better hardware synths:

Nord LEad 3
Kurzweil k2660
Jp8000
Korg Prophecy/Z1
Virus Ti


Only reaktor 5 can clearly compete against
k2661, albino is nice little synth with nice
smooth characeter..but Virus TI is still
like rolsroyce compared to it.. Jp8000 is way nicer
than some..Vanguard..infact look for some
hiquality mp3s from net of jp8000..it is SOOO
smooth. I dont know..

Final word.. get the best of both worlds..
At the moment I dont have single hardware synths,
but I am lusting waaayy more to them than softsynths.
I have some good softsynths, and they do theyr job
sometimes very good, but still..
Kingdom for nordlead3 or K2661
(I will though buy reaktor 5 before them,
due its price..)


Best Regards..

your long time lurker..

Zamson

(started make music 88/89 with amiga
and soundtracker with st-01 stuff..hehe)

[blümchen]

Amen.

[droolmaster0]

Hello folks,

I just want to say few words about this
software vs hardware debate.

I agree that VA hardware are nothing but software
in decicated boxes, so what is the difference?
OK, Superwave8 and JP8000 are both software
then, but why JP8000 sounds INDEED much better?
Answer is.. way better coding, better sound engineers
did make it..

So that is the only thing what counts..and so far
Most of digital hardware sounds way better than
most of software, just becosue they are made
by people who know more about what they are doing.

One single guy can make little nice vst, but how
can he compete against some bigger company who
can afford to pu 10 experienced sound coding engineers to develope algroritms to new synth?

Question is not, if hardware have some mystical
things what are better than soft..forget about adda
converters, good soundcard have also good converters,
its all about quality of algoritmns,..(how do you spell that right anyways..?)
My conculisison is that :

so far VA hardarea still sounds better becosue
of those more skilled makers..when makers
of softtsynths get their level softsynths start
sounding as neat.

Also practically there is one more dimension
in this game..the character of the synth.
As mentioned synths with same kind of arcitecture
do not have to sound similar at all.
The character..and I could choose whatever
10 synths in both soft and hardware marker:
I think I would choose about 80% hardware,
becosue ..I think they have way more interesting
and original character




Some of better softsynths:

Absynth 3
Virus Powercore (virus b)
Reaktor 5
Z3ta
Albino
Vanguard

Some of better hardware synths:

Nord LEad 3
Kurzweil k2660
Jp8000
Korg Prophecy/Z1
Virus Ti


Only reaktor 5 can clearly compete against
k2661, albino is nice little synth with nice
smooth characeter..but Virus TI is still
like rolsroyce compared to it.. Jp8000 is way nicer
than some..Vanguard..infact look for some
hiquality mp3s from net of jp8000..it is SOOO
smooth. I dont know..

Final word.. get the best of both worlds..
At the moment I dont have single hardware synths,
but I am lusting waaayy more to them than softsynths.
I have some good softsynths, and they do theyr job
sometimes very good, but still..
Kingdom for nordlead3 or K2661
(I will though buy reaktor 5 before them,
due its price..)


Best Regards..

your long time lurker..

Zamson

(started make music 88/89 with amiga
and soundtracker with st-01 stuff..hehe)

jp8000 sucked. Many soft synths sound a lot better. I have a vsynth. The va on it sounds pretty good, but not as good as a lot of stuff I run on my computer with a good sound card.

Of course, my opinions are subjective. So are the opinions of people who claim that the VIRUS sounds so much better than everything else. Damn - I'd much rather run Vaz Modular or even Tera, personally, and I prefer the sound of some others to the Virus. But Access sure knows how to program that sound that will be POPULAR. But it's just f**king software.

[droolmaster0]

duplicate/sorry

[droolmaster0]

duplicate: sorry

[deleted]

DELETED

[tomg]

Just think of an analog synthesizer recorded on a 44.1 kHz audio CD. Is ist buzzy? Yes! Does it sound 'analog'? Of course!

So what counts is oversampling and the creativity of the developers to find quality algorithms for the non-linearities in analog circuits.

Oh No!! You'll never settle this argument with that one because it has never and will never end. Some people can tell a huge difference. (me)

It's the Vinyl vs CD war all over again. It's not the same. It will never be the same. It has no chance of being the same... Why? Because they are different.

So what do you do.... Use both. Just stop trying to say one is best or that they are somehow equal. They will never sound the same because they are different. Some will say one sounds best, that may be true for them. I can't stand some CDs. My wife has no problem but to me it's like nails on the blackboard.

The industry knows the problem and has been trying to fix the 44.1 kHz screw-up for years. I could expand on that but I'll just quote Andy.

The basic CD sampling rate is 44.1kHz, which of course means that the Nyquist frequency is at 22.05kHz and images of the transmitted signal are reflected about that frequency and multiples of it (check out sampling theory). This is regarded as noise and early on in the history of CD manufacturers used “brickwall” analogue filters to cut off as much of that noise as possible. The filters had to be very sharp indeed (hence the term brickwall”) because the Nyquist frequency is so close to the top extreme of the audio band. Those filters were very complex and were deemed to affect sound quality. As digital processing became cheaper the technology became available to resample the 44.1kHz sampled audio at a higher sampling rate (usually an integer multiple) and then filter in the digital domain. The noise is shifted to a higher frequency because the Nyquist frequency has been multiplied by the oversampling rate. This technique lessened the demands placed upon the analogue filters so simpler types could be used.

Nowadays digital processing technology is so cheap that even in a commercial product the oversampling frequency need not be an integer multiple of the original rate. Techniques such as polyphase filtering mean that the incoming and outgoing sampling frequencies of the digital filter block can be totally unrelated. This brings sample rate converters into the picture. Generally when the higher frequency sampling rate is a direct multiple of the original incoming sample rate it is referred to as oversampling, when it is not a direct multiple and is derived from a different clock it is referred to as upsampling. Upsampling is attractive to engineers because it promises to eliminate jitter. (remember that with upsampling the input and output clock frequencies are derived from different sources).

It is not all sunshine and roses for the digital filtering guys because the filter algorithms used tend to completely screw up the transient response of the system. An FIR digital brickwall (using sinc function, this is the type most commonly used) has a symmetrical in time transient response which means a signal has ringing before it arrives, a kind of pre-echo. Totally unnatural. FIR algorithms are poor, discrete in time analogues of analogue filters and are actually worse in performance than the analogue prototype. Another BIG problem, especially with complex algorithms like polyphase filtering is that during the calculation numbers will be generated which are way larger than the available bit length of the DSP block. Therefore there will be truncation errors aplenty.

Therefore, using logic:
When a set of samples is passed through a digital filter, what you get out won’t be an interpolated superset of the input samples, which is the fundamental premise of the whole technology, they will be an entirely new set of samples.

Therefore philosophically there is something wrong with digital filtering and this is proven in practical listening tests. Hence we do not oversample the input signal or digitally tamper with it at all. Hence 1x oversampling (not oversampled). And this also precludes the use of bitstream and delta sigma DACs, which rely on processing. Therefore we only use resistor ladder type DACs.

The output of most resistor ladder DAC chips is in the form of a current rather than a voltage. There are many ways to convert the current into a voltage but the most commonly used system is that of an op-amp connected as an I to V converter. This system requires the use of a high degree of feedback, and as a result there are problems associated with it. One of those is internal slew rate limiting of the op-amp itself. The rate of change of current at the output of even an audio DAC is very fast indeed. Even modern fast op-amps will slew limit internally and that affects sound quality. Some engineers have found that using extremely fast op-amps improves the sound quality, but we have completely sidestepped the issue by using a transformer I/V system. The transformer not only provides an I to V function but the way it is used in our latest DACs transfers maximum energy from the DAC chip itself. This in itself reduces overshoot and ringing and because the system is slightly overdamped the rise time is reduced to an acceptable rate as well.

Even a carefully chosen resistor used as an I/V converter can be successful if executed properly but the transformer system is sonically superior for the reasons of energy transfer outlined above.

The output from the I/V is fed into an amplifying stage, of course using valves. This can be a simple single valve stage up to a specialized line driver as found in the M3 to M8 preamps.

Andy Grove - AudioNote design engineer

Regards

[McLilith]

Funny in here

back to the topic: The whole discussion about slew rates is a rather theoretical one. Please remember that human perception ends at some 20 or 22 kHz.

There was nothing theoretical about the slew rate discussion, if by theoretical, you mean it is some sort of unproven theory. The slew rate discussion was simply a red herring. It simply isn't that important to the larger debate, but there was nothing theoretical about it.

For anti-aliasing and headroom for stuff like crossmodulation you need of course some internal oversampling, but the 'external' rate can stay at 44 or 48 kHz.

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps TomG wasn't necessarily thinking of the "external" sample rate (as you call it) when he broached the idea that modern softsynths are doomed to failure from a lack of speed? Did you ever think that it might be precisely this need for performing some internal operations at great speed, that prompted Tom to say some of the things he did?

Just think of an analog synthesizer recorded on a 44.1 kHz audio CD. Is ist buzzy? Yes! Does it sound 'analog'? Of course!

Not really. If you want to be able to demo a Prophet 5 (or whatever) alongside a 44.1 kHz CD recording of that same Prophet 5, there are audible differences. Going to 96 kHz results in a more "analog" sound, for reasons not entirely related to Nyquist.

You seem to be obsessed with 44.1 kHz, the Nyquist frequency, and the near-religious belief that all human hearing instantly ceases at frequencies above 20 kHz. Focusing exclusively on those ideas throws this debate off-course and bogs everthing down in a horrible quagmire. There is far more to whether a soft synth sounds like an analog hardware synth, than just considering those concepts alone.


take care,
McLilith

[McLilith]

Point?

A synth can sound amazing, but does it matter? The best are those that fit with other gear and need minimal tweaking to do so...

Unless you are perhaps interested in a captivating instrument to perform a solo on!

Nearly all instruments are prone to have parts of their sound carved away during modern recording session. Should all the instruments be constructed in such a way, as to have big parts of their spectrum taken away, just so they can play well with other instruments? If so, which other instruments? It makes a big difference. Also, for which style of music? That also makes a huge difference.

Why not just build all the instruments to sound as good as possible in a solo setting, and let the people doing the composing, arranging, and recording processes sort out the best way to make the instruments sound good with each other? If you are going to compose, arrange, or record music using multiple instruments, that's just part of the skill package required to do a good job.

All this fuss about "what sits well in a mix" only goes so far. Remember, what sits well in one person's mix, often sounds horrible in another person's mix. It makes a huge, difference what type of music you are making, what the other instruments in use are, and what one's personal tastes are.


take care,
McLilith

[jmh]

"What sits well in a mix" - how did I just happened to mention that 'argument' in that other thread relating to this topic...

It's one of those comments that get thrown out so often... and is about as relevant as a banana is to measuring frequency response

Regards,

JMH

[kybernaut]

Funny in here

back to the topic: The whole discussion about slew rates is a rather theoretical one. Please remember that human perception ends at some 20 or 22 kHz.

There was nothing theoretical about the slew rate discussion, if by theoretical, you mean it is some sort of unproven theory. The slew rate discussion was simply a red herring. It simply isn't that important to the larger debate, but there was nothing theoretical about it.

That was probably more directed to tomg. I suppose you know that the slew rate (or rise time) of a waveform is directly connected to its spectral content. So why exactly would we need infinite slew rates when we practically consider the properties of human hearing?

For anti-aliasing and headroom for stuff like crossmodulation you need of course some internal oversampling, but the 'external' rate can stay at 44 or 48 kHz.

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps TomG wasn't necessarily thinking of the "external" sample rate (as you call it) when he broached the idea that modern softsynths are doomed to failure from a lack of speed? Did you ever think that it might be precisely this need for performing some internal operations at great speed, that prompted Tom to say some of the things he did?

Yeah sure, I was aware of this. Just wanted to throw in a new aspect (the one that follows next)...

Just think of an analog synthesizer recorded on a 44.1 kHz audio CD. Is ist buzzy? Yes! Does it sound 'analog'? Of course!

Not really. If you want to be able to demo a Prophet 5 (or whatever) alongside a 44.1 kHz CD recording of that same Prophet 5, there are audible differences. Going to 96 kHz results in a more "analog" sound, for reasons not entirely related to Nyquist.

I have nothing against 96 kHz. But I wanted to point out that there are a lot of things that need more attention when talking analog emulation than the final playback sampling rate. For example, there is no sense in rendering a crappy vsti at 96 kHz in the hope that it sounds more analog then. It's first and foremost the quality of the algorithm that counts. On the other hand, most of the character of a real analog synth can be preserved at 44.1.

You seem to be obsessed with 44.1 kHz, the Nyquist frequency, and the near-religious belief that all human hearing instantly ceases at frequencies above 20 kHz.

No, I'm not. I know of the shortcomings. But there is much more important stuff that need to be talked about than the final playback rate.

There is far more to whether a soft synth sounds like an analog hardware synth, than just considering those concepts alone.

Exactly...



kybernaut

[kybernaut]

jp8000 sucked.

I have to second this. It's not per se a good virtual analog. It may have some apealing sounds for a certain target group, but thats about it.

A good virtual analog, in the sense that it models every minute detail of its analog counterpart and makes no compromise in sound quality, is creamware's minimax, as I said before...

[blümchen]

I watched a video that came with FM last month, the guy (Wizard of Deekline&Wizard) showed them round the studio, got to the Virus, and was like
"yeah thats the virus, gotta have one of them, they make nice sounds but they don't fit in tracks without turning of most of the stuff" (same for the Novation SuperNova II) He strangly like the Juno 106 (Which I like too)

Point?

A synth can sound amazing, but does it matter? The best are those that fit with other gear and need minimal tweaking to do so...

Well.
That guy did probably not understand, that the VIRUS is not a "preset box" like most other synthesizers. I guess, he is one of those mens, who expect all the time "well siting presets" on demand ...

The Virus is actually a box, where you have allot of knobs to do even that: EDIT the sounds (and also save it for next time).

And: It's natural, that the *factory* presets are made to demonstrate the solistic features of the Virus. They (the "showcase-like" presets) are probably not intended to "sit well" inside any mix.

Althought there are specialized soundsets out.

So what is actually your point?

The Virus does sound very good inside a mix for some reasons (mayby not on demand for any music style...). But and because of it's sonic qualities, sound architecture and entire variousity, it exceeds the limit of nearly all the currently available VSTi VAs. (That of couse is merely discoverable, if you have one...

... and ssuming you are able to tweak the knobs right and are not such a dumb ass ...

.