smoothing out digital harshness?

[Tronam]

Many of the "most analogue sounding" synths around just have oscillators that produce very mathematic waveforms and at the end of the signal line go through some kind of "warming" mechanism that produces the audio equivelent of a very nice D/A converter (see: powercore virus, Karnage). Sure, some may have some sort of anti-aliasing mechanism for an accurate sound which is done AFTER the signal has already left the aliasing oscillators (see: vangaurd, Pro-53 and Asynth, If i'm not mistaken) and some simply do both (see: ImpOSCar, MiniMoog).

You're wrong about the impOSCar.

Wrong in all cases. Very strange statements.

I love it when people call something wrong and then leave no evidence, oppinion or ANYTHING on why they would claim so.

I posted only I've heard straight from developers.

But come to think of it, Imposcar simply uses sampled waveforms and a FAT filter for its great sound, right?

Perhaps he didn't feel the need to provide you with evidence or opinions since he developed those filters.

-Tronam

[fritzman]

Correct me I'f I'm wrong:

Most anti-aliasing is done by internally generating the signal that is leaving the oscillator [we'll call this oscillator "oscillator A"] at a very high sample rate with a nyquist frequency well above human hearing with another seperate generator [which we will call "Oscillator AA"], and then taking the real-time inverse of that high-rez "AA" signal and mixing it with the original oscillator's "A" signal (with a sample rate of whatever the host is set to) so all you get is the pure artifacts of aliasing after phase cancellation [which we will call the "PA signal"], and then inversing that new, "PA" signal in order to mix it another seperate, identicle "A" signal, cancelling out the "PA" signal from the "A" signal, giving you an anti-aliased signal, right? If im wrong here then I'm wrong (plus I suck balls at explaining things).

Hi Chase,

if you already have a hi quality osc signal available why don't you use it then? Why all the hassle with using it to cancel some aliasing out of a mediocre osc?
Typical antialising is done by upsampling - LP filtering shortly below nyquist freq - downsampling. That's what I heard them say.

The audio equivalent to a "nice" DA converter is silence. Nothing. What you put in is what you will get out. This is the best DA converter available. So when you're talking about good sounding converters while comparing them with some kinda distortion (warming is adding overtones to the signal and the technical word for that is distortion) then this is wrong.

Then you misinterpreted "nice". I mean they go through a stage that mimmicks the after effects of a typical hardware D/A converter - usually some kind of noise and subtle compression.

What "typical hardware D/A converter" are you talking about? I never heard of that behaviour of a DA converter. Such things are done before the converter.

And what is a FAT filter?

umm, the opposite of a thin one? Compare the "kjaerhus auto filter" or "frohmage" to THIS or THIS. I really can't explain the physics of what makes them sound better to me as I don't know the technical details.

Haha, sorry. I was off there. You meant fat as in phat, right? I just didn't get it. Sorry for that!

P.S. If you've heard other things from some "developers" please tell what they said and who they are. That would be interesting.

when I say 'heard from developers' I mean what I picked up from companies' native forums and the company forums here.

Yeah, cool. I'm not a great coder but I was hanging out with some great coders of this industry on a daily basis for several years (read: job) and I had lotsa good discussions with them about all this stuff. That's my basis for my comments. What I said wasn't meant personally in any way. Sorry if that came across.


All the best, FRitz

[g_worroll]

To get this more on topic, the last statement is contradictory to my advice to the OP which would be to forget the fx and do something about the sound sources. I saw the gear list in another thread and it struck me as being rather ill-suited to sounding "analog." Of course it might have other merits but... Not what I would pick if I was trying to get old analog synth sounds, except maybe the MModularV.

I realize the gear isn't perfect for sounding analog...

But it can come close enough for my ear, even without effects(though it often takes quite a bit of precise tweaking). I'd prefer closer though, hence the thread. As I said in my OP, I'm not expecting miracles. Expecting digital plugins to make a digital synth, that is recorded and played back on a digital medium, to sound exactly like analog is foolish at best. I'm only trying to get a bit closer, if its just noticeably closer to an analog-like sound, thats enough..