KVR Audio

cytone · Post by **cytone** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 11:49 am

This is another synth test someone else did.

www.whitwell.ndo.co.uk/musicthing/sounds/synth test.mp3

Listen to it first before looking at the answers here

musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/07/those-synth-test-answers-in-full.html

ericj23 · Post by **ericj23** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:04 pm

it would really help if you said what people were supposed to be gearing from the 5 synths in the test - basically there is two analogues, 2 digital hardware and one computer synth

I easily spottted one of the analogues, but the other one I really struggled with and I could not discern the digital synths and the PC one

Vectorman · Post by **Vectorman** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:13 pm

living sounds wrote:
pdxindy wrote:These challenges always go one way!

Here is an example of a digital soft synth. Just oscs and filters (plus some modulation)- no internal or external effects.

Anyone with a real analog want to take a challenge and duplicate this sound?
http://draigathar.org/sounds/2.5.4.wav
Sounds nice, what is it?

I believe it's the forthcoming Zebra 2.5

hakey · Post by **hakey** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:13 pm

Lossl wrote:
The interesting claim to me is rather that some analog synths may exhibit some (desirable) behaviours that VA emulation can not yet satisfactorily reproduce.
of course there are some "nuances" that have not been 100% faithfully digitally recreated, but it also goes the other way around (and even analog or VA internal- since most synths can sound "better" or "worse" on different material- as all instruments have their strengths and weaknesses)

I'm not sure that I understand your argument - analog synths can't fully recreate the sound of VA's? It's obviously true, but the whole raison d'etre of VA's is to capture the behaviour of analog synths - that is made absolutely explicit in the name Virtual Analog - and, as such, is it not perfectly reasonable to discuss the merits of VA's based in part upon how successfully they fulfil that criteria?

The which is more capable, or sounds better, has a wider timbrel range etc - which, it seems to me, is what you were drifting towards there - is a whole different argument.

living sounds · Post by **living sounds** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:14 pm

cytone wrote:This is another synth test someone else did.

www.whitwell.ndo.co.uk/musicthing/sounds/synth test.mp3

Listen to it first before looking at the answers here

musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/07/those-synth-test-answers-in-full.html

Interesting! Out of those five I only really liked the first one. And I think the SH-2 kills them all sonically.

hakey · Post by **hakey** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:22 pm

cytone wrote:This is another synth test someone else did.

www.whitwell.ndo.co.uk/musicthing/sounds/synth test.mp3

Listen to it first before looking at the answers here

musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/07/those-synth-test-answers-in-full.html

None of them particularly stood out to me as exhibiting any of that 'interesting-unique-to-analog-magic-pixie-dust' behaviour

EDIT After careful listening I'm guessing 1 and 5 are analog. There's something in the top end of 1 that makes me think analog and I'm going for 5 just because it sounds like they've had trouble matching the oscillator's pitch

(but maybe that's a deliberate deception?

)

Answers? (that link doesn't work - I just get 'music thing does not exist')

ericj23 · Post by **ericj23** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:56 pm

I think the really interesting test is not between analogue and VA, because it seems that many of us can spot these with a more than random porbability. The real battle ground is between modern and old analogue

Basically a waldorf pulse versus a moog

or a xoxbox versus a 303

or a prophet versus P08 etc

If people can't tell those apart with quite such certainty then at least analogue mojo (whatever that means) is cheaper

cytone · Post by **cytone** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:00 pm

Answers? (that link doesn't work - I just get 'music thing does not exist')[/quote]

For some reason the link does not paste properly. Just remove the space between the a and nswers.

hakey · Post by **hakey** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:04 pm

cytone wrote:For some reason the link does not paste properly. Just remove the space between the a and nswers.

Thanks.

Hmm... interesting

starla* · Post by starla* » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:08 pm

WMP wrote: Old Analog = Tori Amos (going off on one of her wailing sessions... and I don't mean fishing)

here's the original =)

WMP · Post by **WMP** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:13 pm

I can't help but like some of Kate Bush's work.... don't hurt me to bad

todd_r · Post by **todd_r** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 2:06 pm

I, like some others here, was a bit disapointed in the new Dave Smith stuff, the demos sound more or less like a good quality VA to me. It would be interesting to hear the p08 or mopho in comparison to say d-cam or zebra

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:41 pm

living sounds wrote:
pdxindy wrote:These challenges always go one way!

Here is an example of a digital soft synth. Just oscs and filters (plus some modulation)- no internal or external effects.

Anyone with a real analog want to take a challenge and duplicate this sound?
http://draigathar.org/sounds/2.5.4.wav
Sounds nice, what is it?

Zebra

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:47 pm

jmeier wrote:How about a challenge where someone produces a complex multi-modulated pad in Absynth or FM8 and then someone tries to recreate that with an analog synthesizer?

I put up a relatively simple string sound for any analog user to emulate.

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:04 pm

hakey wrote:
james0tucson wrote:These tend to be the class of problems where "closing the gap fast" would require exponentially increasing computational capacity, which of course isn't happening.
But Moore's Law, which is closely related to (bang for the buck) computational performance, is an exponential rule.

Moore's Law is going to catch up to Heisenberg's Principal at some point and get bitch slapped unless we figure out how to do quantum computing.

Analog or digital ?