Diva Vs. Real Analog

[Old Crab]

Introductory price: 119$ (+19% VAT in EU) extended till January 15th, 2012

Seriously thinking about straining my resources to get it.

I'm able to run many presets on divine but mostly on "great" although I'm not always sure if it's my system breaking up or else the timed distortion sounds erupting due to it being in demo mode. Honestly, I prefered the way that Zebra demoed using random notes after a short time. This method really makes it hard for me to tell whether it's demo-noise or processor/soundcard overload.

Nevertheless, an awesome piece of work and kudos to Urs and everyone involved in its development and for the great presets

I've re-edited this post since going back and playing around more, I really seem to be having a lot of trouble with the sound breaking up quite badly. I don'nt know if I have to close the current instance of Diva and start a new one or completely close down my DAW and start over. Getting some very bad distortion even though my cpu usage is often well within the lower limits.

I'm not sure if a better sound card would help the situation or not.

Still, an awesome synth though!

OC

[JerGoertz]

10 PRINT "My computer isn't fast enough to run good synths!"
20 PRINT "I'll buy a new computer!"
30 PRINT "Now my computer is fast enough to run good synths!"
40 PRINT "Uh oh, what I thought were good synths aren't actually good anymore!"
50 PRINT "I'll buy the newer synths!"
60 GOTO 10

[trimph1]

10 PRINT "My computer isn't fast enough to run good synths!"
20 PRINT "I'll buy a new computer!"
30 PRINT "Now my computer is fast enough to run good synths!"
40 PRINT "Uh oh, what I thought were good synths aren't actually good anymore!"
50 PRINT "I'll buy the newer synths!"
60 GOTO 10

You got the market sussed out...

[hakey]

Back OT (DIVA vs. Analog):

Quantity of information:

44,100/48,000/96,000 points vs: INF (continuous; no reconstruction filter used or required-no breakdown of the wave-shape at the boundaries)

1. Information is physical stuff, so the quantity of information in any analog signal over a fixed time can not be infinite (that would break the first law of thermodynamics).

2. After DA conversion the resultant signal is analog anyway, so has the exact same quality of continuity.

3. Not sure what any of this has to do with the relative merits of either as musical instruments.

[savantgarde]

I've re-edited this post since going back and playing around more, I really seem to be having a lot of trouble with the sound breaking up quite badly. I don'nt know if I have to close the current instance of Diva and start a new one or completely close down my DAW and start over. Getting some very bad distortion even though my cpu usage is often well within the lower limits.

Are you sure you're not maxing out a single CPU core? From the Reaper performance meter I thought I was in the clear with CPU usage at ~14%, but I didn't realize only a single core was getting taxed

[Urs]

Manual s final. Would find link if I han't had a Mai Tai (ehm, two). Will try poost link tomorrow. Howie did a great job, but is now off to LA, works for other boss. Can't compete with another entry on IMDB...

Will Hans let Howie come back from his media adventure in Los Wierdos ?

But of course! (I can't imagine Howie staying for longer than a month...)

[Old Crab]

Are you sure you're not maxing out a single CPU core? From the Reaper performance meter I thought I was in the clear with CPU usage at ~14%, but I didn't realize only a single core was getting taxed

I don't think I'm maxing out a single core since I usually receive a message about "high cpu usage", but you certainly can be right.
How would I alleviate that issue if that were the case?
Thanks for your help too btw
OC

[savantgarde]

Are you sure you're not maxing out a single CPU core? From the Reaper performance meter I thought I was in the clear with CPU usage at ~14%, but I didn't realize only a single core was getting taxed

I don't think I'm maxing out a single core since I usually receive a message about "high cpu usage", but you certainly can be right.
How would I alleviate that issue if that were the case?
Thanks for your help too btw
OC

To see if you're maxing out a core, you can f.ex. open the Windows Task Manager (if you're on Windows?) and click the Performance tab. Then you'll see usage per CPU core. If you are in fact maxing out a core, use a lower accuracy setting in Diva (I use 'draft' or 'fast'). Diva itself isn't capable of multi-processing.

[goldenanalog]

Back OT (DIVA vs. Analog):

Quantity of information:

44,100/48,000/96,000 points vs: INF (continuous; no reconstruction filter used or required-no breakdown of the wave-shape at the boundaries)

1. Information is physical stuff, so the quantity of information in any analog signal over a fixed time can not be infinite (that would break the first law of thermodynamics).

2. After DA conversion the resultant signal is analog anyway, so has the exact same quality of continuity.

3. Not sure what any of this has to do with the relative merits of either as musical instruments.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, hakey!

3.) This is really just a coarse comparison between 2 different methods of synthesis, and the possible reasons why they inherently sound different.

1.) No matter how small of a window of time that you use to measure an analog signal, there will be a rate of change associated with that period of time-even when your time measurement window is infinitely small (in theory, at least-I recognize that there are limits in a physical system)

Immediately after conversion back to analog, the reconstructed waveform looks like a series of discrete values due to sample/hold circuitry 'freezing' the last given value. Rate of change *inside* a sample period is fixed: zero. *Between* sample periods: asymptotic.

2.) Reconstruction filters are imperfect; therefore, there is distortion introduced when a wave is 'reconstructed'. This is readily apparent at the boundary-if you were to attempt to reproduce an 10khz analog wave (any shape)using 44.1khz as the sampling frequency, the reconstructed waveform would probably not look like the original.

[ho66it]

Are you sure you're not maxing out a single CPU core? From the Reaper performance meter I thought I was in the clear with CPU usage at ~14%, but I didn't realize only a single core was getting taxed

I don't think I'm maxing out a single core since I usually receive a message about "high cpu usage", but you certainly can be right.
How would I alleviate that issue if that were the case?
Thanks for your help too btw
OC

To see if you're maxing out a core, you can f.ex. open the Windows Task Manager (if you're on Windows?) and click the Performance tab. Then you'll see usage per CPU core. If you are in fact maxing out a core, use a lower accuracy setting in Diva (I use 'draft' or 'fast'). Diva itself isn't capable of multi-processing.

I have been watching the Activity Monitor (Mac) cpu usage that does that same thing as the Performance tab in Windows Task Manager. I get the audio drop out before the cpu usage appears to max out in either the bar graph or the tabular % indication. In fact I've never seen an indication of more than 73% even though the cpu sounds like it's crapping out. I suspect that these displays actually indicate a RMS value rather than an actual peak value. I see a similar thing using the Performance Meter in Reaper. Does anyone know if there is a better tool to capture actual cpu usage values?

[savantgarde]

I have been watching the Activity Monitor (Mac) cpu usage that does that same thing as the Performance tab in Windows Task Manager. I get the audio drop out before the cpu usage appears to max out in either the bar graph or the tabular % indication. In fact I've never seen an indication of more than 73% even though the cpu sounds like it's crapping out. I suspect that these displays actually indicate a RMS value rather than an actual peak value. I see a similar thing using the Performance Meter in Reaper. Does anyone know if there is a better tool to capture actual cpu usage values?

One possibility is that these monitors don't sample often enough, so that you have CPU bursts higher than what is reported. It could be though that the sound card starts to struggle at 73% (well, the highest sampled CPU usage is 73% anyway), so increasing the latency might help?

Have you enabled "Display realtime (RT) CPU on graph" in the Reaper performance meter? I think this means to show the maximum usage for any single core in use by Reaper. At least, this seemed to correspond to the core utilized by Diva for me. Otherwise, you can try Studio One, since this has per-core CPU monitor.

[Shy]

Reconstruction filters are imperfect; therefore, there is distortion introduced when a wave is 'reconstructed'. This is readily apparent at the boundary-if you were to attempt to reproduce an 10khz analog wave (any shape)using 44.1khz as the sampling frequency, the reconstructed waveform would probably not look like the original.

A "reconstructed" waveform doesn't have to "look", it has to sound like the original waveform. DAC reconstruction filters have reached the point of providing far above satisfactory results for perceived (read: by humans) signals ages ago. Same with ADC antialiasing filters. All this is besides the point anyway. Everyone here runs both analog and digital synthesizers through reconstruction filters. Do you really feel like converting this thread to yet another analog vs digital medium "debate" thread? Not that I care, because this thread is a piece of shit already anyway.

[dsynth27]

Reconstruction filters are imperfect; therefore, there is distortion introduced when a wave is 'reconstructed'. This is readily apparent at the boundary-if you were to attempt to reproduce an 10khz analog wave (any shape)using 44.1khz as the sampling frequency, the reconstructed waveform would probably not look like the original.

.... Do you really feel like converting this thread to yet another analog vs digital medium "debate" thread? Not that I care, because this thread is a piece of shit already anyway.

I say keep it going...! I really like what both had to say (informative) and found goldenanalog's comment very interesting!!

[Old Crab]

Are you sure you're not maxing out a single CPU core? From the Reaper performance meter I thought I was in the clear with CPU usage at ~14%, but I didn't realize only a single core was getting taxed

I don't think I'm maxing out a single core since I usually receive a message about "high cpu usage", but you certainly can be right.
How would I alleviate that issue if that were the case?
Thanks for your help too btw
OC

To see if you're maxing out a core, you can f.ex. open the Windows Task Manager (if you're on Windows?) and click the Performance tab. Then you'll see usage per CPU core. If you are in fact maxing out a core, use a lower accuracy setting in Diva (I use 'draft' or 'fast'). Diva itself isn't capable of multi-processing.

Thanks savantgarde, I'll do that.
what seems to be happening is that once I start to have problems with divine mode, they seem to accumulate to the point that even switching to great or even draft modes become unusable. Sadly, it looks like I'd probably have to stick with great mode and never venture into divine.
Still, great mode sounds excellent anyway.

OC

[savantgarde]

You realize that you can have a different setting for offline rendering right? That is, DIVA can be as divine as you like once you decide to record her:)