The Fight for FM

[living sounds]

Are you sure you ain't mistaking the crappy DA converter + your mixer/sound card input as the problem? A yamaha DX7 does sound different to sytrus/FM7/whatever, no matter how hard you try to match the sound. If we'd have digital outputs on the old things then I'm pretty sure it could be 100% the same. However, most people run their old FM synths through a mixer first then to the sound card of their choice. This alone, already affects the sound. Are you sure this is not what you are hearing? If so, run your soft synths on a laptop, buy some really crappy sound card and bounce it back to your DAW. Voila.. you get the "conversion" of the 80's.

Cheers!
bManic

You would be amazed how good some converters of the 80s actually sound. Not accurate, not noise free, but good. But I had a TG77 twice, which has much better converters than the TX7 (at least on paper, 22bit I think) and it's the same in regards to FM plugins. I still prefer the overall sound of the TX7, that's why I sold the TG77 (again). But VOPM has this clarity and tighness without any converters involved (it sounds clearer and tighter than the TX7 could ever sound) - but alas it's very limited in terms of synthesis - so it's definitely not converter-related.

[tony tony chopper]

Not accurate, not noise free, but good.

I think this is the problem in general. I really fail to understand why a musician would want this. A listener, maybe, but wouldn't a musician want full control over what he does? That is, if he asks something to a machine, does he want exactly what he asked, and not something (subjectively) better, thus different?

IMHO a musician should only want accuracy, because the 'good' can be done using the right tools, that you do control (& understand).

[Lotuzia]

Not accurate, not noise free, but good.

I think this is the problem in general. I really fail to understand why a musician would want this. A listener, maybe, but wouldn't a musician want full control over what he does? That is, if he asks something to a machine, does he want exactly what he asked, and not something (subjectively) better, thus different?

IMHO a musician should only want accuracy, because the 'good' can be done using the right tools, that you do control (& understand).

Well, in my book, musicians just want instruments that rock, and don't bother too much about what's under the hood, such things like only we, the geekheads at Kvr, seem to have an infinite pleasure to debate.

Would a Rhodes or Hammond player be concerned about the converters specs or the Leslie technical details, or a violin player bother to understand why Stradivarius sound better than other violins over centuries ? They could, but for most of them, they care very few. Music instruments are made to play music, and it's only in places like Kvr that you'll find a majority (??) of musicians whose aim is to design their own instruments before playing with them.

Though composing might be more closely associated with sound design in some modern musical genres than it used to be in the past, it will remain true that people will prefer rocking synths with rocking presets, even if they do have some minor defaults embedded, than supposed perfect synthesis monsters with poor libraries or non intuitive ways of crafting (or at least adapting-customising) your own instruments.

The best synth is worth nothing for the majority of people if it doesn't come loaded with brilliant and fully usable patches imho.

I could be wrong, of course ......

LtZ

Note : As for Zebra 2 as an FM synth, its true it can be effective on FM. It "only" ....... lacks algorythms, 4 more Oscs and minor things like that to be fully ready for the FM "battle' (refering to the thread's name .....)

[living sounds]

I think this is the problem in general. I really fail to understand why a musician would want this. A listener, maybe, but wouldn't a musician want full control over what he does? That is, if he asks something to a machine, does he want exactly what he asked, and not something (subjectively) better, thus different?

IMHO a musician should only want accuracy, because the 'good' can be done using the right tools, that you do control (& understand).

When it comes to converters there's no such thing as an accurate one. Not even a Lavry Gold will give you this. There are several kinds of signal degradation and the wise musician will choose the one (he can afford) that has the least overall bad effect on the final outcome. I had an early 90s high end CD player a few years ago, only 16bit, 96db S/N and I very much preferred it to any low-midrange audio interface out there. The really good stuff from the 80s had great analog stages, and that's what makes them more pleasing to the ear to your average 00s converter. A lot of those devices come from a time when musical gear was generally build with quality in mind and cost only a second thought. Quality gear like this is still build today, but it's even more expensive since the market (for this type of gear) has gotten much smaller.

[wrench45us]

since I dug my old TX-7 out of the basement to take on vacation last fall, I haven't returned to practicing on soft synth e-piano patches.
there's the convenience factor of having to turn 2 switches on, instead of boot computer, load program, etc.
but while most of the old DX7/TX7 patches aren't worth listening to, there's an occasional e-piano patch that has a sparkle on the high end and some real thump in the low end that makes playing on it a different experience than any soft synth emulation.

I used to believe that fm software should actually be better than what I remembered as a buzzy, thin hardware, until I started playing on it again. So I guess I'm a believer in that magic pixie dust.
TX-7's are routinely available on e-Bay for about $200 if I remember -- comparable to a decent software synth.

[bmanic]

Not accurate, not noise free, but good.

I think this is the problem in general. I really fail to understand why a musician would want this. A listener, maybe, but wouldn't a musician want full control over what he does? That is, if he asks something to a machine, does he want exactly what he asked, and not something (subjectively) better, thus different?

IMHO a musician should only want accuracy, because the 'good' can be done using the right tools, that you do control (& understand).

What you just described is an "engineer". A musician only cares about how the tool affects his emotions and thus his music. How a tool works or any of it's limitations are completely irrelevant.

This is perhaps why people coding plugins/hardware manufacturers sometimes have a hard time dialing in algorithms and interfaces that actually click with a majority of musicians, simply because they "think too much" and can't get in the mind-set of musicians. I'm more of the "engineer" type and want total control over everything whereas my good friend and business partner is the opposite. Lately he has been much more productive with far better results.. this has made me sit down and think a bit about my own approach to things.

Same can be seen in movies: Somebody who is extremely technically talented and knows all the tricks in the book is most likely the last candidate to create a great film.

Of course there are exceptions to this but I'm pretty sure that emotion and creativity in art is completely disjointed from technical/"understanding what's under the hood and how to manipulate it" mentality.

You can see this being divided in some mastering engineering circles. There are the ones that are extremely technically savvy and understand exactly what they are doing (for instance Bob Katz) and then there are people who simply twist knobs and go with their gut feeling when buying gear for the tasks at hand (some of the Bob's). Both can create great results and neither is better than the other or more "right" than the other. It's just different approaches.

EDIT: just read through all my babble and had a hard time understanding myself.. you, the reader, might too. Sorry!

Cheers!
bManic

[tony tony chopper]

When it comes to converters there's no such thing as an accurate one. Not even a Lavry Gold will give you this. There are several kinds of signal degradation and the wise musician will choose the one (he can afford) that has the least overall bad effect on the final outcome.

I never ever heard any difference between soundcards. The difference between 2 pairs of speakers or headphones is huge, no 2 are the same. But DAC's? If crap DAC's still exist, I suppose I've been lucky?

or a violin player bother to understand why Stradivarius sound better than other violins over centuries ?

No & that's the problem. I've watched a doc about Stadivarious, they were wondering why his instrument sounded so good. They checked everything, the trees, the weather at that time (to know specificities of the wood), the varnish, etc. They found nothing. Then they wondered that maybe it was the wrong question, that the first question should have been 'do Stradivarius sound better'? They did blind tests with experts & the answer was clearly no.
A stradivarius sounds better simply because it costs a lot, meaning that it most likely won't be in the wrong hangs, it will be played well.

There's nothing wrong for a musician to believe bullcrap, but then don't complain when someone sells you a $2000 EQ that has nothing special, you're the guilty one for thinking it sounds better.

What you just described is an "engineer".

I'm quite sure that most of the musicians in this forum are their own engineer (even just because they can't afford one), plus there are a lot of music genres that are based on sound more than originality & score, so they're clearly the job of engineers, and that's what a musician has to be if he's into those genres.

[H.Noury]

I have done my own FM synths. The old Onyx FM sounds like the DX7. The Modeliser integrates FM capabilities into a physical modeling synth. Each of them proposes to create the algorythm easily during programming. So I do not need anything else. (They are freewares).

[ew]

FM8 uses very little cpu. Maybe NI can make an update with an ultra mode like Massive. Would that do something sound wise?

how much power do you think you need to process the same simple algo that a chip of the late 80's was using?

I did think of that... But from your perspective the algo's are the same already so a moot point.

I was contemplating that as far as maximizing FM8 sound quality, not emulating an old synth.

Go to your FM8 options and enable high resolution mode...

ew

[pdxindy]

or a violin player bother to understand why Stradivarius sound better than other violins over centuries ?

No & that's the problem. I've watched a doc about Stadivarious, they were wondering why his instrument sounded so good. They checked everything, the trees, the weather at that time (to know specificities of the wood), the varnish, etc. They found nothing. Then they wondered that maybe it was the wrong question, that the first question should have been 'do Stradivarius sound better'? They did blind tests with experts & the answer was clearly no.
A stradivarius sounds better simply because it costs a lot, meaning that it most likely won't be in the wrong hangs, it will be played well.

They still entirely missed the point cause they are freaking scientists... Certain instruments feel better to play. Even a particular instrument of the same model will have subtle resonances that others of the same model do not.

It is the player and their experience that matters, not some outside measured bullshit by some tech-heads who wouldn't know what feel means if it hit them in the head.

[tony tony chopper]

They still entirely missed the point cause they are freaking scientists...

They did a blind test with purists of course. Those who claim they'd recognize a Stradivarius, couldn't.

who wouldn't know what feel means if it hit them in the head.

You can debate about feeling & religion, but it's always dangerous to mix this with science.
You'd surely have a different feeling if you KNOW it's a Stradivarius (even if it isn't), but that's not the subject.

[pdxindy]

who wouldn't know what feel means if it hit them in the head.

You can debate about feeling & religion, but it's always dangerous to mix this with science.
You'd surely have a different feeling if you KNOW it's a Stradivarius (even if it isn't), but that's not the subject.

You got it backwards. It is dangerous to mix science with feeling (please don't bring religion in). Science is the newcomer trying to take over everything because it is incapable of admitting that it is not best suited for everything. Talk about hubris!

[tony tony chopper]

So you're actually debating in a forum about your feelings? I don't see the point.
I thought that musicians would want to know better about the technical side, because afterall the creativity isn't to be debated, and feeling/perception is very personal. So if you like old FM hardware for sentimental reasons, fine, but that won't make then sound any better for the end listener.

[z15]

So you're actually debating in a forum about your feelings? I don't see the point. I thought that musicians would want to know better about the technical side, because afterall the creativity isn't to be debated, and feeling/perception is very personal. So if you like old FM hardware for sentimental reasons, fine, but that won't make then sound any better for the end listener.

The point is that making music (at least to me and most musicians I know) IS about feeling. It isn't a process of thinking how to get from point a to point b and getting a certain kind of end product to hypothetical listeners (unless you are professional engineer who has to make tailor-made music for ads and videos on a tight schedule for example). It's a process where you feel something and let that out using the means you have. For that, you can have a tool that gives you ability to adjust dozens of parameters, has pristine sound quality and is technically advanced measured by some parameter or another... or you can have something that's beaten up, noisy, vibey, but gives an emotional response and inspires you. Or any combination of those.

It may be a real difference noticeable by listening and measuring, it may be about the chosen parameters and their ranges and other usability-related issues, or it may be purely psychological (hey, this one with wooden end cheeks sounds better than the plastic one even though they have the same algorithms and DAC). When talking about science, quantifiable things, whether some difference is real, yours is a valid argument - but when talking about someone who loves instrument x and makes music with it because it just sounds and feels so damn awesome, it's purely subjective. That's why debating about relative merits of different instruments isn't always too fruitful - people have different tastes as musicians as well as listeners.

Even forgetting 100% psychological differences, I don't think it's about "not caring about how things work", but rather about using tools that make you want to make and continue making music. For example, I do care about how things work, can tweak synths and effects and toy with algorithms endlessly, but when I'm in the "music creation" mode I get out of the "thinking and analyzing" mode and choose something that gives some kind of emotional response and feels good.

I think debating about accuracy in conversion in something like a musical instrument is missing the point. The point in an instrument isn't reproducing the mathematical processes as sound in perfect accuracy, it's enabling you to make music with sounds that come out of it - and if you love the sounds you can create with it, you'll probably have more inspiration to actually make music. It's the difference of having a fine tool that you can program / adjust to make some type of sound you have in mind, and an instrument that you are itching to pick up and start making music. I don't think those two things rule either out, and I don't think the separation between an "engineer" and a "musician" is as simple thing. If you are talking about monitoring what the end result of music making / mixing / engineering is, then obviously there are way more arguments for accurate reproduction. A lot less when talking about which methods and instruments the song is actually made with.

The point often isn't about making something sound better to the end listener, it's making something feel and sound better to you so it's easier to achieve the end result you want to and be happy with it. And that a technically great tool doesn't necessarily equal a creativity-inducing instrument - it's a matter of preferences and taste.

[z15]

Oh, and viz sound design and its importance in many music genres, back to the original argument:

I think this is the problem in general. I really fail to understand why a musician would want this. A listener, maybe, but wouldn't a musician want full control over what he does? That is, if he asks something to a machine, does he want exactly what he asked, and not something (subjectively) better, thus different?

The thing is, that even in sound design, the end result is judged subjectively - it isn't about "now I can hear that there are six clean saw waves in unison, this is what the listener wants and this is what will fit in this context perfectly, mission accomplished" but more like "hey whoah, I did it and this sounds GREAT". What I mean, that even if I have a specific goal in mind when starting to sculpt a certain sound, I don't feel I have failed if I manage to come up with something even better sounding (to my ears) or something that pleases me yet is different from some kind of idea I had about a sound before actually creating it. Of course, you need to know how things work to be able to do something else than flick presets. However, the work itself is still not a meticulous and analytical process, but something based on feeling and freeform experimentation. At least that's how I see it.

If you are doing a scientific experiment / research, obviously you want that the end result is based on the parameters you give, and there are no deviations due to inferior equipment, buggy algorithms or confounding variables. If you're mixing or mastering a record, pretty surely you want that you'll have an accurate reproduction of the recording to base your creative decisions on. But if you are making a sound or a piece of music, an element of surprise or a piece of equipment / instrument with subjectively interesting and pleasing sonic signature may help you in making something you will be amazed at even yourself. That's actually the best personal reaction to my own output, when I've crafted something for some time, listen to the result and catch myself thinking "wow, did I really make that?"