indistinguishable from hardware ??

[whyterabbyt]

But it had the same meaning in the context of that discussion.

nope.

[ariston]

But some people have to discuss all day long.

I'm at home, on sick leave. Bit boring, but now, thanks to this thread... instant entertainment!

[whyterabbyt]

Actually there is only a handful of softsynths not emulating hardware afaic

wrong way round. very few softsynths are genuine attempts at emulation.

[hakey]

It'd be funny if it was this guy:

http://soundcloud.com/izonin/80s-bliss-demo-song

izonin, if that *is* you... all this talk of taking music seriously... I mean where does one even start?

[hakey]

woops double post

[izonin]

The DX7 is an exception, it doesn't have filters. It doesn't try to emulate.

kinda irrelevant to what I found funny, and an inconsistent argument, since only a tiny handful of softsynths try to emulate either.

It's not inconsistent. I pointed out, that it's the poor filters that cripple the sound of this emulation (OP-X Pro).

[buttrock]

I'm always kind of suspicous when someone has a definition of what "real music" (art,literature etc) is. But I belong to the late Mtv early Internet generation anyway and have not been to berklee in the first place

[whyterabbyt]

It'd be funny if it was this guy:

http://soundcloud.com/izonin/80s-bliss-demo-song

izonin, if that *is* you... all this talk of taking music seriously... I mean where does one even start?

its a demo of a sampleset of his. want a link to the softsynth he released?

[osiris]

When I go to the store, I play around with the hardware every chance I get. I don't think it's a fair cop when these beasts have got, like 3 CPU's and such. There was one workstation that was the price of a used car, that was absolutely amazing. You could sequence a whole tune on it. Everything.
I have heard some things on Z3ta+ and Massive that come VERY close. I think the one thing missing is the warm bottom end I hear in the hardware.

[trimph1]

But some people have to discuss all day long.

I'm at home, on sick leave. Bit boring, but now, thanks to this thread... instant entertainment!

I'm off today as well!!

[izonin]

It'd be funny if it was this guy:

http://soundcloud.com/izonin/80s-bliss-demo-song

izonin, if that *is* you... all this talk of taking music seriously... I mean where does one even start?

That's what I referred to as an anecdotal use of cheap/free instruments.

[Urs]

All software emulations of anologue synths fail miserably.

I agree.

They fail *miserably* - or there are some minor differences if you really look closely?

Nope, they don't fail miserably. Just in small details. Inaudible to most people.

My bad, I skipped "miserably"

[PAK]

What's in your opinion a vst softsynth indistinguishable from hardware sound? (Analog Synths like the prophet 5,oberheim obx/8,juno 60,jupiter 8,odissey,polysix etc.)If possible send some sound comparison between your vst synth and analog synth patches.

Well, despite the fact the last 7 pages have mostly been people replying to Izonin's trolling nonsense, I'll reply.

Many VST's can often be indistinguishable from the hardware they emulate. Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know how to shape sound or has replaced religion with a belief in hardware, probably complete with a hoarding "my bedroom looks like a junk store" personality to boot

However nothing presently emulates an analogue synth completely to the point where you could say some differences aren't audible at least some of the time. Even where a digital emulation, using the original code as its basis, is concerned you can still find some differences. (An example is Novation V-Station, where it's pretty much identical to the hardware A and K Station, but you can find differences if you know where to look). In analogue emulations these differences tend to be found at the extreme ends of the signal, either in the very low bass or highest frequency portions, as well as differences in attack behaviour (which is an area our ears are very sensitive - Roland based the D50 synth on this sort of concept).

Really, the question is perhaps better phrased as "how often can a synth be made to sound like its target, and (more importantly) how easily?" Even that isn't a simple answer, because it's dependent on what you think is still missing, and that depends on what qualities you want and like which, in turn, tends to be determined by your musical tastes. I favour Sonic Projects OP-X Pro II and think it's extremely good if you're inclined towards liking Oberheim synths and synth music sounds of the early 80's in general. Other synths, like Zebra or DCAM, can indeed do different aspects of analogue behaviour better, particularly where you're seeking out things like snappy attacks. But they may require a bit more effort from the user to throw off a more modern aspect to their tone and "lean" in the direction synths like OP-X go more easily.

Maybe some would disagree with that sentiment, but that's my opinion anyway, and there needn't be much dispute where software is concerned because there's software demos where you can make your mind up for yourself. Check the OP-X Pro II audio demo page. I think Peter does a very good job of demonstrating why it's a notch above other stuff if those are the sorts of sounds you want to go for.

If you have a chunk of change burning a hole in your pocket you might want to go in the direction of Ingonator's response, where he's mixed in something like a Slim Phatty. There's a good argument to be made that mixing in a real analogue with emulations adds in an extra element the ear doesn't hear in emulations, and that actually makes it harder for your ears to tell the other sounds are coming from emulations. So you needn't have every sound coming from a hardware source. One or two can suffice in fooling ANYONE that the whole track is made from analogue equipment. I dare say you can do the same with software, but it's that bit tougher to pull off

In the other direction there are also many many excellent free alternatives too, and there's enough of them to cover a whole bunch of ground without spending a penny. Where there's Korg Legacy's Mono/Poly there's things like Mono/fury. Where there's FM8 there's Hexter v1.3 (Very good DX7 sounds, but an awful GUI). Where there's Waldorf PPG Wave V3 you can find WaveSim (capable of very nice PPG sounds, if a bit rough around the edges). MiniMogueVA? It goes on and on. NI's Reaktor also has some good free stuff in the user library. If you had that my first port of call would be the Solina V ensemble, which is a lovely sounding string machine emulation along the lines of the classic Solina. I'd take that over an actual Solina any day!

[whyterabbyt]

It's not inconsistent.

its certainly inconsistent with any notion of 'real music by actual musicians' outside the imagination of anyone without an unnatural fondness for 1960's state-sponsored lithuanian toilet-cleaner advertisements.

[UltraJv]

It'd be funny if it was this guy:

http://soundcloud.com/izonin/80s-bliss-demo-song

izonin, if that *is* you... all this talk of taking music seriously... I mean where does one even start?

That's what I referred to as an anecdotal use of cheap/free instruments.

Most people who are worried about image and what other musos think about this will just use a Mac