indistinguishable from hardware ??

[PAK]

You can't either in a blind test...

Blind tests are often badly done. Take someone to a different environment than they're used to. Use different speakers than they're used to and then expect them to hear small differences.

If the differences are that small, then they're not important (certainly not to the extent that izonin is suggesting).

Izonin is off on his own planet, and you're banned from visiting unless you like Jazz.

But I have to disagree with the sentiment. The context matters. Your ears can easily hear a difference between a dog barking and a flute (At least I hope they can, otherwise what are you doing with that flute? - On second thoughts, don't answer that ). They might struggle more when it comes to differences between 2 synths, but that doesn't mean they can't consistently hear them, nor have a strong preference for one, when presented with the correct scenario.

It's not only the manner of basics like familiar listening equipment. How the audio is presented also matters. Play me 20 raw oscillator comparisons in a row. Not only is it a good way to set someone crazy ("bleep!, bleep!") but our ears are absolutely crap at telling differences when they're presented that way. Attempt to actually play something musical, though, and all of a sudden differences, which aren't audible in a bleep bleep comparison, might be heard more easily.

[olepro]

You can't either in a blind test...

Blind tests are often badly done. Take someone to a different environment than they're used to. Use different speakers than they're used to and then expect them to hear small differences. Whichever genius thinks this is a good way to determine things hasn't thought things through much.

I think a minimum starting point, for a really good blind test, would be to insist the person bring their own headphones (to remove room factors) and allow the listener to listen via something they're at least somewhat familiar with.

It hasn't to be that complicated at all.
I can post an example here and ask izonin what he hear and he cannot tell me 100% what is hardware or software.
If i post these examples 100 times his guess will be around 50% right...

Otherwise i think, with all his posts here he has brought him self out in the middle of the biggest ocean without a compass

[PAK]

It hasn't to be that complicated at all.

I disagree. If you've never used a pair of headphones or speakers then it takes time for your brain to make the adjustments necessary to pin point small differences. More probably on a scale of days rather than minutes or hours. To ignore, as most blind audio tests do, is to ignore how our brains behave and miss some of the point.

I can post an example here and ask izonin what he hear and he cannot tell me 100% what is hardware or software. If i post these examples 100 times his guess will be around 50% right...

I bet you can. But I can also post examples where he'll be right almost 100% of the time if his ears are any good.

Why? Because it depends on the areas you're comparing. Pads are sometimes more difficult to guess than bass sounds. FX make things more difficult to guess. Sudden filter movements may be easier to tell than slow ones. Really basic bleep bleep sounds (sine wave Vs sine wave) may be more difficult to tell apart than something done in a musical context.

But I agree with your overall sentiment. Anyone who says they can always hear a difference, except in fairly well defined contexts, is full of it.

Otherwise i think, with all his posts here he has brought him self out in the middle of the biggest ocean without a compass

On this we can also agree

[izonin]

You can't either in a blind test...

Blind tests are often badly done. Take someone to a different environment than they're used to. Use different speakers than they're used to and then expect them to hear small differences. Whichever genius thinks this is a good way to determine things hasn't thought things through much.

I think a minimum starting point, for a really good blind test, would be to insist the person bring their own headphones (to remove room factors) and allow the listener to listen via something they're at least somewhat familiar with.

It hasn't to be that complicated at all.
I can post an example here and ask izonin what he hear and he cannot tell me 100% what is hardware or software.
If i post these examples 100 times his guess will be around 50% right...

Otherwise i think, with all his posts here he has brought him self out in the middle of the biggest ocean without a compass

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscilloscope... You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

[Shy]

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscillator. You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

Really?

[whyterabbyt]

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscillator.

in a properly rigorous listening test?

hmmm. you've obviously never heard of science, have you...

"its okay Mr Schroedinger, I killed the cat before I put it in the box"

[osiris]

As far as envelopes go, I know a trick I did in SE was assign the low value of the Attack a -1 to make it snappy. Don't know if that would work in the code world. Urs, have you ever tried this trick?
The Release was always in ms, not voltage. You can get excruciatingly long releases with ms.

[himalaya]

I can post an example here and ask izonin what he hear and he cannot tell me 100% what is hardware or software.

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscilloscope... You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

Olepro wants you to hear it, not look at it.

[izonin]

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscillator. You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

Really?

This could be anything. You could stitch cycles from analogue and digital osc's together.
It doesn't look like the result of a Chebyshev in an A/D converter, so I'll say digital.

[MaxSynths]

I know a trick I did in SE was assign the low value of the Attack a -1 to make it snappy.

Is this "snappy"?

http://www.maxsynths.com/TEMP/OSCTest1.wav

(already posted previously)


BTW the new ADSR (ADSR2) module in SE doesn't have a negative value by default when set to min? (can't remember...)

[izonin]

I can post an example here and ask izonin what he hear and he cannot tell me 100% what is hardware or software.

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscilloscope... You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

Olepro wants you to hear it, not look at it.

But I'll be tempted to cheat. I mean, who wouldn't.

[Shy]

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscillator. You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

Really?

This could be anything. You could stitch cycles from analogue and digital osc's together.
It doesn't look like the result of a Chebyshev in an A/D converter, so I'll say digital.

Digital what? And it did go through A/D conversion.

[osiris]

@Max - no the ADSR doesn't. You have to click on it and write in a -1 value. It's an SE fakeout to make the envelope faster than it is.

[izonin]

That wouldn't work. I could just look at the waves in an oscillator. You can tell the difference by the way they are anti-aliased.

Really?

This could be anything. You could stitch cycles from analogue and digital osc's together.
It doesn't look like the result of a Chebyshev in an A/D converter, so I'll say digital.

Digital what? And it did go through A/D conversion.

Digital saw? There are anti-aliasing artifacts typical for bandlimiting. That's why I think it's not analogue in origin, whether it went through an A/D or not.

[Urs]

As far as envelopes go, I know a trick I did in SE was assign the low value of the Attack a -1 to make it snappy. Don't know if that would work in the code world. Urs, have you ever tried this trick?
The Release was always in ms, not voltage. You can get excruciatingly long releases with ms.

We're doing similar things. To mimic the Jupiter 6' digital envelopes we had to let sustain go to -10 on a scale from 0-100. It would be the snappiest envelope I've come across if it wasn't quantised (our emulation can be run at audio rate to overcome the quantisation artifacts)

And of course the Minimoog's VCA envelope has the Attack/Decay reference point way above its clipping level - which creates a short hold time depending on Attack and Decay settings. Not so much in the filter envelope though.

Urs