Diva Vs. Real Analog

[hakey]

Having a subjective disliking for the sound of a synth is understandable.

For that subjective dislike to elicit the kind of anger and bitterness so evident in your posts is just plain odd.

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[Urs]

It's funny how, when you accidentally piss someone off once, they keep getting back at you again and again and again and again, even years later when the original offense is long forgotten.

[hakey]

Ah, that explains it!

[S0lo]

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.

An analog synthesizer recorded to digital on anything but the most crap equipment still sounds like an analog synthesizer. Obviously higher sampling and bit rates, and better ADDA filtering are going to capture more of the signal, but it is clearly not sampling limitations which are the cause of things sounding "not analog". If sampling limitations were at fault, it would not be possible to capture analog sound in recordings. Sure an analog synthesizer sounds better in real life, what doesn't? But the great bulk of distinguishing characteristics survives even 16/44.1 recording/playback and digital processing.

I'd agree with that too. It's NOT only sampling that causes the sound to be different. Otherwise, an analog song writen to CD (which usually uses 44Khz sampling rate) would sound much worse than the real. Do you ever realize a difference? I don't. In theory (Nyquist-Shannon), 2x over sampling is sufficient to reconstruct an original signal (while x is the highest frequency in the original signal).

I think, what makes analog synths different is the amount of dynamics, non-linearity, un-preciseness and unintended inter-actions between it's inner circuitry. The reason why pressing a key will sound a bit different every time. Why filter knobs would go wild at the extremes. It's not easy to exactly reconstruct that in a soft synth without emulation (which seams to be done by Diva).

Saying that, "different" doesn't always means "better", I personally do NOT think that analog synths are always better than soft synths. I like allot of digital sounds. Also, there are soft synths out there that are capable of creating unbelievable sounds, much better than any other analog synth I've heard. And With carefull sound design, The dynamics, randomness and un-preciseness can be reconstructed with a good synth and keen designer. Take for example the sounds that come with Absynth or Sylenth1.

[Shy]

hakey: I'm just bitter about what I believe is low expectations by people.

Urs: what the hell are you talking about? Not liking your synth is personal now? For the record, I dislike almost all "virtual analog" synths, you can relax. (Hint: I wouldn't have sold the NL2X if I really liked it)

[Urs]

hakey: I'm just bitter about what I believe is low expectations by people.

Urs: what the hell are you talking about? Not liking your synth is personal now? For the record, I dislike almost all "virtual analog" synths, you can relax. (Hint: I wouldn't have sold the NL2X if I really liked it)

Sheeesh, and I thought it was still about that stupid joke I made in the smart aliasing thread.

[Shy]

Eh? Then you thought wrong. And "antialiasing" was what I meant.

[Urs]

Eh? Then you thought wrong. And "antialiasing" was what I meant.

Ok. Sorry then.

[trimph1]

hakey: I'm just bitter about what I believe is low expectations by people.

What low expectations? I don't see there to be an issue with this..I see it as a different set of sounds that I can use(or not) in my pallet. Difference=/=hierarchy here.

Urs: what the hell are you talking about? Not liking your synth is personal now? For the record, I dislike almost all "virtual analog" synths, you can relax. (Hint: I wouldn't have sold the NL2X if I really liked it)

Well, it may not be personal but if you keep ranting about it long afterwards it can very well be seen as that.

I just see this difference as a good thing. Yes, there are VA's that I have that come awful darn close to what I have here...and to me that is close enough. Until someone comes up with a VA objective-o-meter that you can put into your computer that can tell you that it is the exact one to one correspondence you are only going to get opinions...like it or not.

[Shy]

I have no problem whatsoever with your opinion, so I don't really need that "like it or not" comment, unlike most people in threads like this. And, as far as I remember, this is the first comment I've ever made on this forum regarding disliking Diva. The other one was a single comment in the u-he forum in response to a guy's comparison comment (to which he later thanked me for correcting him).

[JoeCat]

Thanks, Aroused by jarjar for your thoughts! If what you are saying is true, then the natural question is: Why doesn't digital sampling of notes across a given analog synth adding round-robin info; then playback of those samples solve the problem? And what about live situations for the performer? He or she knows when they are playing the real deal. Let's see where we are in a few years after other Dev's have started catching up to Urs, and Urs has pushed us further ahead.

@urs - at the risk of making what sounds like a feature request (and bringing ACE up again): Would it be possible at some point to incorporate something like ACE's mapping generator into Diva? That would provide for simulating round-robin. Not to feature-creap the instrument, but having it behind the hood like ACE would provide the option for dialing in some of that analog randomness.

[hakey]

Shy's 'smart aliasing':

It's obvious to me that they design their aliasing to sound good

[Shy]

Yes, smartass. When writing "aliasing" and "antialiasing" in a single post a million times, shit happens.
You really don't like people who disagree with your opinion, eh?

[trimph1]

Maybe they need to start using 'The Soundgoodizer' along with the VA...

[hakey]

You really don't like people who disagree with your opinion, eh?

Hmm, neutral - not really that bothered.

I just thought that others might find your pronouncements on 'smart aliasing' as amusing as I did.

Not to say that it has some bearing on the credibility of your statements in this thread. I mean, you can't really expect anyone to take you seriously now, can you?