VSTis as good as hardware? Similar to Access Virus Quality?

[martian]

Funnily enough, while Im not a huge fan of its sound, I LOVE the layout of V Station. I can always program well on that synth for some reason.

completely agree that synth is doddle to program, can get good results so quick. sound wise i like it too actually, still a great filter (first i liked in vst), a simple but good fm implementation, and i really appreciate the osc drift control to thicken multi-osc patches, and its unison mode of course.

but while the oscs themselves dont alias, can get quite bad when you do fm or use the filter overdrive or fx distortion. this is common with many synths though, but some more modern ones handle it better or of course enble you to oversample when you get freaky with complex waveforms. also its reverb i find pretty horrible, itd be ok if you could tame the highs at least, but alas i usually use none of the inbuilt fx.

[martian]

My process is as follows...

1) Test the oscillators, no aliasing is to be heard at all, and an FFT analyser is used to confirm that all is looking healthy.
2) Test a 24 db / oct low-pass filter with a single osc at high resonance. During this phase we also see how the filter envelope reacts.
3) Test unison ... I use unison everywhere, and so do most trance producers (judging by the sounds I hear in most tracks).

I also note...
- The GUI
- Featureset
- CPU Usage

I'll post back the results soon. This may seem harsh, but if any synth fails at step 1 or step 2, it is eliminated.



Let the battle begin
Fots

seems odd the synth (virus) that sets your sonic standard would fall at the first hurdle of your test?

i think the trouble with ruling out synths with an objective component test like that is that a synth is the sum of its parts, with the results being subjective. i actually do similar things when testing a new synth but not to 'fail' a synth based on its individual components just instead to understand a little better its sound. then again if you really now what you want...

but a little bit of aliasing may add the subtle character you need for your metalic sync lead. it make the synth really harsh and digital if it offers fm and distortion though, but id take that as part of its character which ulitmately means it cant do everything.

imposcar aliases a little but the filter makes it my favourite synth i own, not really sure if the aliasing helps or not, does bug me on some patches but usually the results i get im very happy with. on the other hand something like blues aliasing is way beyond what i could ever tolerate, but im sure even then there will be some sound id like which i could do nowhere else. i find albino gets pretty bad at osc level too as soon as you touch the symmetry.

[D-Fusion]

Here is a sample of Zero Vector the phatest boy in the block
http://www.4shared.com/file/2830308/1b1 ... ector.html

[The Chase]

Several of the synths you have tried have oversampling options, you do use these options when checking them dont you? Also Have you got readings on the Virus's aliasing, because it does have it, are these synths any worse?
Another point is ocsillator aliasing is only one factor of the sound and to rule synths out based just on this first point before checking the rest of the features out in context is misguided.

I'm testing all synths without oversampling for fairness

call me silly but how is that fair?

[martian]

I'm testing all synths without oversampling for fairness

call me silly but how is that fair?

and here lieth another problem, getting fair comparisons. quite a few times with new synths ive missed settings and jumped to false conclusion.

Stage 2: Filter 24 db (high resonance)

All these samples have their own flavour here. Regardless of the fact that Minimonsta has, what appears to be a very analogue sounding filter, on sweeps, I find it a little worse than the rest. Discovery, had a very fast envelope. Synth1 had a little less character than the others.

depending on your familiarity with minimonster you *may* have missed the 'amount of contor' control to set the filters mapping? set to 0.

Stage 4: Unison test

Minimonsta has an issue with unison, when freezing this take, it appears that osc phase on each of the detunes oscs was set to 0 to begin with, which is why we end up with the flanger sound towards the start of the clip. The only way around this seems to be recording some dummy notes before a song starts. Still, it sounds good after the flange clears.

minimonster has some defalt osc instability. ie. with all osc tunings set to zero and same waveshape when pressed they will gradually flange. may be responsible for what you hear with the unison?

[fgimian]

soundpalace.

what was wrong with the oscs in zeta?

theres no aliasing, and you have variations of each wave type like saws/sq/etc with different harmonic balance, pwm all 60 waveforms, shaper for each osc, rig mod, fm, pm, hard sync, 8 voice multi oscs, etc. cant think what you wouldnt like for trance?

also for testing, be sure to set rendering to 'high', and for filter testing be sure to fully send an osc to only 1 filter, so make the osc bus control fully up or down.

regards,

hey, yes, I should take my words back, I only discovered high quality mode yesterday and they are indeed alias free. I'll be giving that synth a good look again. I've just got to understand how it all works.

Fots

[fgimian]

Several of the synths you have tried have oversampling options, you do use these options when checking them dont you? Also Have you got readings on the Virus's aliasing, because it does have it, are these synths any worse?
Another point is ocsillator aliasing is only one factor of the sound and to rule synths out based just on this first point before checking the rest of the features out in context is misguided.

I'm testing all synths without oversampling for fairness

call me silly but how is that fair?

The way I see it, is that oversampling should not be required for an alias free oscillator. Similar to EQs, oversampling shouldn't be required to obtain proper bell curves at the Nyquist frequency (good example is AirEQ). Either way, the synths that had oversampling really didn't need it, I found the oscs sounded just fine without it turned on. If Albino or Toxic had oversamling, I would definitely have tried it to see if the oscs sounded better, but to my knowledge they do not offer this feature.

Also martian, thanks for your feedback too.

Guys, I never really knew that the Virus had aliasing in the oscs, I definitely wouldn't have expected it, which is exactly why had started this topic, I wanted to get ideas from people who use a Virus as to whether or not it is miles ahead of VSTis. If it aliases, then it's a little behind VSTis

Cheers
Fots

[martian]

hey, yes, I should take my words back, I only discovered high quality mode yesterday and they are indeed alias free. I'll be giving that synth a good look again. I've just got to understand how it all works.

Fots

they are actually alias free in all modes you just loose higher freq content with lower settings, since its like a samplerate selector, and the waveforms are bandlimited to prevent aliasing. its a useful setting when you have a sound with few high freqs so you can lower the cpu usage with no audible effect. theres also oversampling in the options but thats only really any use when you use the distortion and fm/pm etc, since everything is so alias free already.

also if you havent found it yet, you can reset the current patch with 'init' in the progam menu (note. will also take the render quality down).

zeta can be a bit difficult to opperate at first, but workflow becomes quite quick since you amazingly (given the amount) have all synth parameters on one page, and only tabbed at component level. but itll still always be slower than simpler hardwired synth.

[Algorythm]

Funnily enough, while Im not a huge fan of its sound, I LOVE the layout of V Station. I can always program well on that synth for some reason.

completely agree that synth is doddle to program, can get good results so quick. sound wise i like it too actually, still a great filter (first i liked in vst), a simple but good fm implementation, and i really appreciate the osc drift control to thicken multi-osc patches, and its unison mode of course.

but while the oscs themselves dont alias, can get quite bad when you do fm or use the filter overdrive or fx distortion. this is common with many synths though, but some more modern ones handle it better or of course enble you to oversample when you get freaky with complex waveforms. also its reverb i find pretty horrible, itd be ok if you could tame the highs at least, but alas i usually use none of the inbuilt fx.

I looove my V-Station and K-Station. I don't think they have a good filter, but they have character and very good quality and they offer so many features for a very reasonable price.Novation is my favourite VA company.Affordable and good sounding.The only thing i didn't liked was the quality of their Remote controllers (cheap plastic with very fragile knobs. Clavia and Access sells its name and the quality of the leds that put to their synths... Come on, they are still digital emulations and certainly not a new technology!Why do we have to pay them like real analogs? 1200 euros for NL2x is tooo much!I prefer Discovery (same sound about 99,5%)

[bryanf]

tony tony, here's a copy of the virus arp sequence done note for note.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?a ... FA4BBCA38E

[bryanf]

Hi sound palace,

Can you explain why Albino got knocked out because of aliasing? What in the waveform should I be looking for? What in the sound should I be detecting? Frankly ALL raw saw and square waves hurt my ears

B

[oblagon]

1200 euros for NL2x is tooo much!I prefer Discovery (same sound about 99,5%)

Clavia would sue DiscoDSP and suppress Discovery if that was true. The similarity factor is in fact something like %30. Discovery sounds sort of like NL2. That's all.

[fgimian]

Hi sound palace,

Can you explain why Albino got knocked out because of aliasing? What in the waveform should I be looking for? What in the sound should I be detecting? Frankly ALL raw saw and square waves hurt my ears

B

hey man, the sort of thing to listen for is smoothness and clarity. You will notice that several of the notes have do not sound smooth. Best way to see what I'm saying is compare to Disocvery.

Some notes on Albino sound good, and some don't. If you have ever tried Reason's Subtractor at 44.1 khz, turn the cutoff frequency all the way up and walk through some notes. The aliasing you hear on the Subtractor is a more extreme version of the aliasing I hear on Albino

Hope that made sense

Fots

[projectdan]

The way I see it, is that oversampling should not be required for an alias free oscillator. Similar to EQs, oversampling shouldn't be required to obtain proper bell curves at the Nyquist frequency (good example is AirEQ)...

Cheers
Fots

I dont see why oversampling shouldnt be required? Depending on how the synths coded it might be required, theres nothing wrong with that. Some synths are oversampled but dont give you the option of changing the setting, Zero Vector for one, its supposed to have 4 times oversampling internally.
I also dont think Tera alaises much, I cant hear it. Maybe your not setting it up properly to test, just route the oscillator straight to the amp and not through anything else that may distort the signal. It sounds very good to me, very clean sounding even very high notes, better than most other synths Ive heard.

[vvanrij]

1200 euros for NL2x is tooo much!I prefer Discovery (same sound about 99,5%)

Clavia would sue DiscoDSP and suppress Discovery if that was true. The similarity factor is in fact something like %30. Discovery sounds sort of like NL2. That's all.

Tested with both a real NL and Discovery with same patch (which discovery can load ), the sound WAY more than 30% alike