Integer is King? - the challenge

[nollock]

Sure. I absolutely love the sound of Christina Aguilera's "Stripped" album. It's probably horribly overproduced to your taste, but there you go.

Most pop & modern rock is way to overproduced for my taste.

But then most of it needs to be or else it'd be a damn sign more obvious how shit it is.

There are too many factors involved to make a 1-1 comparison, but the results with outboard are (for pop/rock music) most of the time substantially better.

*Outboard analog*. Im sure compression and eq still benefit from some kind of analog magic doesnt yet seem to be in plugin form. And certainly i would never DI my guitar, i always mic up my amp.

Outboard digital, it's irelivant. If the fx unit is digital you may as well do it all inside the pc imo.

You can argue that a specific digital fx you have is yet to be equaled in software but what you are really arguing is that you havnt found an equivelant plugin for a personal favourite.

There are probably just as many people with favourite plugins that cant be found or bettered in hardware.

As for the FM synths: Do a comparison for yourself. I tried Sytrus once again yesterday just to be sure. The difference to a TG77 (FM part only) is as big as it was the last time.

Thats like picking a random 3 osc VA VSTi and comparing it to a MiniMoog no? If you pick the best of a generation then almost everything you compare to it will fail.

You can just as well say find me an analog synth that sounds as good as a waldorf wave. That proves digital is better.

Of find me an FM synth that can do a better piano than a modern multi gigabyte sampler. That proves samplers are best.

It doesnt really prove anything other than that each thing has its own strengths and weaknesses. And whether X is better than Y depends entirely on what you want them to do.

[nollock]

So, instead of putting somebody down, no matter how silly the argument is, a more gentle approach may yield a far more pleasant overall feeling of the thread, which did start out excellent until mudslinging began (and no, living sounds definitely didn't start it). Another approach is to simply say: "dude, I think you are completely wrong but hey, that's just me" and leave it at that.

Ooiii cuntface! What makes you think i want to be pleasant??



Actually i kept out the thread pretty much cause it had 'UBX waiting to go off' plastered all over it, but i lost the battle with my inner troll this morning and well.. there it is.

IM A TROLL!

Lets 'av it you c**ts!

[living sounds]

I picked Sytrus because that's what people are raving about most of the time, it seemingly being the best FM synth ever... I used it as an example to start comparing anything in a controlled way. I know I find every single FM plugin to be inferior to the hardware (that's why I re-bought the thing again after all) but that's irrelevant to you unless there are audio examples. If this was science I'd think of a way to (dis)prove my assumptions, but with "good sound" being rather subjective this is actually quite difficult...

Thats like picking a random 3 osc VA VSTi and comparing it to a MiniMoog no? If you pick the best of a generation then almost everything you compare to it will fail.

[JCJR]

The TG77 is fancier (more tonal variety, and cleaner sound) than earlier Yamaha 6op FM synths.

I have an ancient TX416 (4 TF-1 modules in a rack) that I'd never sell. It isn't as clean/flexible as the TG77, but a lot of fun.

The TX416 is a more limited sound universe than TG77, but what it can do, it does very well.

The DX7, TX7, TF-1's, even the simpler 4-op incarnations like TX81Z, are unusually musically responsive to velocity and controllers, which often overcomes the limitation of sound palette. Very musically expressive axes, even compared to many modern synths.

The MIDI latency isn't too bad, especially for that era. About 3.5 ms as best I recall from long-ago testing.

[thorkz]

Greeeeaaaate Party !!!! I quess thats board style.

Thank you very much for all this Christian. I cant wait to listen to the EQ and will do it right away.
Sorry for beeing away.

Also that your able to provide mesurements and graphs. Its great to see knowned people hanging themselfs into this topic.

Aciddose? that mp3 in the other threat? Is that your integer synth? Sound very round to me. Also musically. I like it a lot.

have u ever tweaked a plugin becoming more & more perked and wide eyed with every change thinking to yourself by god i;ve done it, this sounds much punchier , heavier , sweeter, tighter...

..only to discover when u go to freeze the track it wasnt even turned on...

Anti--hero. That happens to me a lot. And I hate it when it happens. I feel stupid all the rest of the day.
My ears adapt to everything all the time , levels, fequencys, roomsound, bass.... And also to what I'm wishing to hear. And having to deal with all that, plus with people/clients/friends that are not aware of this nature of the uman hearing, thats a big part of why audio people are different. I think.

..and a big part of the climate on audio boards.


OK. I'm very curious now. Will talk to you later, peepz.

Again thanks to everybody

thorK

[jens]

I picked Sytrus because that's what people are raving about most of the time, it seemingly being the best FM synth ever... I used it as an example to start comparing anything in a controlled way. I know I find every single FM plugin to be inferior to the hardware (that's why I re-bought the thing again after all) but that's irrelevant to you unless there are audio examples. If this was science I'd think of a way to (dis)prove my assumptions, but with "good sound" being rather subjective this is actually quite difficult...

Thats like picking a random 3 osc VA VSTi and comparing it to a MiniMoog no? If you pick the best of a generation then almost everything you compare to it will fail.

Personally I don't like Sytrus' sound but that's just a matter of taste - but I think feature-wise you should have rather used Rhino for a proper comparison.

E.g. here's a quote from the manual:

The LIN button at the top left of the matrix is used to select a linear FM scaling model. When disabled, the scaling of FM values is exponential, like in the classic Yamaha FM synthesizers.

afaik Sytrus has just linear scaling...

[living sounds]

Ok, I'll try Rhino again.

[MadBrain]

As for the FM synths: Do a comparison for yourself. I tried Sytrus once again yesterday just to be sure. The difference to a TG77 (FM part only) is as big as it was the last time.

Well, first of all, the SYs are roughly yamaha's best FM synths over like 10 years of FM synths. Of course they're going to be pretty hard to beat. Second, you're using performance on certain very specific patches. If you don't recreate the same patches exactly, they're going to sound different (DUH!). Also, the exact feature set varies from FM synth to FM synth, so of course the sound will vary there - but if you have a synth that has every feauture of another synth, then you can import the patches and they will sound 100% identical. FM synths can be emulated 100% if you get every detail right (which is quite difficult of course, although not impossible!), since they're, after all, digital. Hardware vs software has no effect here (unless you count the cheap 80s DACs).

In general, the shortcomings you're coming up with are differences in the patches, not in the synths! This makes your argument hard to believe.

[living sounds]

I can only speak from my personal experience. But I've stepped through hundreds of patches on several FM VSTi (must be more than half a dozen) in recent years and never found a single one that hooked me like many of the ones I load into the TG77 do. Thin, nasal, weak, unpleasantly aggressive in the high end is what comes to mind.
I'm a pianist and can play for hours with an FM Rhodes from the hardware. The velocity sensitivity makes it feel like a real instrument. The best VSTi Piano I found kept me playing for a couple minutes.

Like I said in another thread, to my ears the 4-OP soundchip of the old soundcards sounded more interesting. If this is really about Yamahas implimentation only they must be geniuses there. Only the fact that I have the same impression of sonic shortcomings with so many other plugins of various types makes it look like a general flaw to me.

As for the FM synths: Do a comparison for yourself. I tried Sytrus once again yesterday just to be sure. The difference to a TG77 (FM part only) is as big as it was the last time.

Well, first of all, the SYs are roughly yamaha's best FM synths over like 10 years of FM synths. Of course they're going to be pretty hard to beat. Second, you're using performance on certain very specific patches. If you don't recreate the same patches exactly, they're going to sound different (DUH!). Also, the exact feature set varies from FM synth to FM synth, so of course the sound will vary there - but if you have a synth that has every feauture of another synth, then you can import the patches and they will sound 100% identical. FM synths can be emulated 100% if you get every detail right (which is quite difficult of course, although not impossible!), since they're, after all, digital. Hardware vs software has no effect here (unless you count the cheap 80s DACs).

In general, the shortcomings you're coming up with are differences in the patches, not in the synths! This makes your argument hard to believe.

[z15]

living sounds, what kind of soundcard / converters do you have by the way?

[MadBrain]

I can only speak from my personal experience. But I've stepped through hundreds of patches on several FM VSTi (must be more than half a dozen) in recent years and never found a single one that hooked me like many of the ones I load into the TG77 do. Thin, nasal, weak, unpleasantly aggressive in the high end is what comes to mind.
I'm a pianist and can play for hours with an FM Rhodes from the hardware. The velocity sensitivity makes it feel like a real instrument. The best VSTi Piano I found kept me playing for a couple minutes.

Like I said in another thread, to my ears the 4-OP soundchip of the old soundcards sounded more interesting. If this is really about Yamahas implimentation only they must be geniuses there. Only the fact that I have the same impression of sonic shortcomings with so many other plugins of various types makes it look like a general flaw to me.

Have you checked that said "4-OP soundchip" recently? Consider that it's 99% probably an OPL3, which is almost never used in 4-op mode (always in 2-op instead), and that most midi drivers' patch sets suck. Of course, there's probably a lot of ratty FM plugins out there that do elementary design mistakes such as linear enveloppes, and thus end up sounding less interesting than crappy opl3 midi playback (this includes most buzz FM synths). But any competantly programmed FM synth can beat that - probably both FM7 and Sytrus, simply because those opl3 midi drivers use such limited fm synthesis.

So imho it's an issue of competant design vs incompetant design, not hardware vs software. And to be fair, Yamaha has done it's share of design errors when making those FM synths. (the biggest one being no waveform selection in early fm synths)

[Meffy]

Hurrah for topic drift! This and the original thread both have truly floating points.

[seinfeld] NTTAWWT. [/seinfeld] Lots of interesting side alleys along the way.

[living sounds]

I'm using a modded EMU 1820m. Best converters for the buck by far. The difference to my old Multiface was huge and the difference stock to modded was equally stunning. The low end sounded like another octave was added and the high end detail can be overwhelming. Now I bought Adams last week - my upper listening boundary got extended by 2000hz. Listening at only moderate volumes was painful on those things...
After more than a week the sound has relaxed a bit (or my ears have taken damage). I really like what I'm hearing.

But: The differences I hear between hardware, plugins etc. are very audible under non-ideal listening conditions as well. You might argue they're even more obvious because bad converters and crappy speakers don't give you a lot of "punch" and the like from the start.

living sounds, what kind of soundcard / converters do you have by the way?

[vonRed]

Some of the Yamaha FM chips used by older computers/video games have been emulated to perfection (that is, bit identical output) for use in the likes of MAME. While it's pretty amazing what some the composers did within the fairly extreme limitations, if you think those sound better than the current FM VSTis, I want some of what you're smoking.

If you want to have a closer look, the YM2151 chip is the most powerful by far (8 channels with 4 operators each).

[living sounds]

Well, I wrote "sounded". My memory might be mistaken. But I distinctly remember this raw, aggressive low-mid sounds which I don't think I've heard from a VSTi. It's probably easy to recreate patches like that but noone has bothered.