How come "Hardware" VA's 16 years ago sounded so good like the AN1x and now....

[DevonB]

My old Roland JD990 has sampled minimoog saws, and sounds more minimoog than any softsynth I have tried. I believe it has got 44.1 samplingrate and 18 bit converters.

44.1khz uncompressed is what Mr. Persing told me but not sure of the bit depth of the convertors. It makes a huge difference especially comparing the JV line back-to-back because it is 30khz compressed audio.

Devon

[Aiynzahev]

The fashion at the moment is high CPU synths. People want high CPU. They will not use a low CPU synth because they will think that it sounds bad. The message to developers is clear.

I have been working on oversampling lately. I have big problems to hear any difference between oversampled and not oversampled.

I think over sampling is part to blame for the heavy CPU these days. On some synths I can barely hear a different, such as Sylenth, Largo. But on others it makes a very clear different, Korg Mono/poly, Zebra2, and especially the Dcam synths.

[Uncle E]

In a good mix? LOL, right back atcha.

Yes, in a good mix.

[Uncle E]

The fashion at the moment is high CPU synths. People want high CPU. They will not use a low CPU synth because they will think that it sounds bad. The message to developers is clear.

Personally, all I'm looking for now is a synth that sounds as good as DIVA but uses less CPU. I haven't found it yet.

I have been working on oversampling lately. I have big problems to hear any difference between oversampled and not oversampled.

In DIVA, I haven't found much benefit to using basses in better than Draft mode. However, for anything with lots of high frequency content, the higher oversampling is a great improvement. Fortunately for my little MacBook Air, I can do all my writing in Draft mode and then mixdown at the highest possible quality.

FM modulation is much smoother at 8X oversampling, but many times I prefer the raspy powerful FM sound from 1X oversampling over the smooth 8X oversampling sound.

That's why it's important to have the option to choose!

Try an oversampling plug-in on Pro53 or miniSID. Those two instruments benefit massively from it.

[Uncle E]

I think over sampling is part to blame for the heavy CPU these days. On some synths I can barely hear a different, such as Sylenth, Largo. But on others it makes a very clear different, Korg Mono/poly, Zebra2, and especially the Dcam synths.

Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Isn't it strange that there should be that difference? I don't understand why all synths don't benefit.

[Aiynzahev]

I think over sampling is part to blame for the heavy CPU these days. On some synths I can barely hear a different, such as Sylenth, Largo. But on others it makes a very clear different, Korg Mono/poly, Zebra2, and especially the Dcam synths.

Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Isn't it strange that there should be that difference? I don't understand why all synths don't benefit.

Well Sylenth1 already over-samples the effects and probably therefore the synthesis in general. How it is still light on CPU though I do not know. There is a lot of mystery around synthesizer design.

Perhaps it comes down to choices that all designers have to make, maybe some synths employ oversampling at some sections by default, like effect plugins often do. I just found out from reading the manual that Mpressor by Elysia/Brainworx plug-in will 4x over-sample by default if you are running at under 50kHz. That means on a 44.1 session it's running at 176kHz!

On Dcam it's the brightness and fullness of the waveforms that changes, on other synths it's the filters and then it is a huge difference.

By the way, Uncle E, have you demoed Oxium and what did you think? Personally I found it to be on the same level as DIVA in terms lively and engaging sound, in that the filter sounds bright, lively and real. It doesn't sound like DIVA, but it has that "aha!" feeling when you adjust the filter that you get from DIVA.

To a slightly lesser extent I felt the same about Corona, it can sound very analog, though again a very different flavour from DIVA. Imo these three are particularly good at analog sound.

[Uncle E]

By the way, Uncle E, have you demoed Oxium and what did you think? Personally I found it to be on the same level as DIVA in terms lively and engaging sound, in that the filter sounds bright, lively and real. It doesn't sound like DIVA, but it has that "aha!" feeling when you adjust the filter that you get from DIVA.

I think I need to work with it some more. The presets really did nothing for me.

[osiris]

I really interested to hear your opinion of Lush. I realize since you're probably making presets for it and you got a free copy, it may be biased. But I think you're honest enough to give a true review of the highs and lows and keep everybody happy....

[Uncle E]

I really interested to hear your opinion of Lush. I realize since you're probably making presets for it and you got a free copy, it may be biased. But I think you're honest enough to give a true review of the highs and lows and keep everybody happy....

Oh, I'm not making presets for LuSH or getting a free copy. The only bias will be that I don't want to spend the money on it (at least not until D16 does one of their annual promotions ).

[osiris]

I'm speaking @ Aiyn....
(sorry)

[EvilDragon]

Do they look different in a different DAW?

They never should look different no matter which DAW you use. If they somehow turn out that way, then DAW settings aren't the same (pan law, dithering, sample rate, bit depth, etc.)

Do they look different coming through different soundcards??

That would depend on soundcard DA stage, so possibly, but the differences would be really REALLY small with today's quality of DACs.

[pdxindy]

I think over sampling is part to blame for the heavy CPU these days. On some synths I can barely hear a different, such as Sylenth, Largo. But on others it makes a very clear different, Korg Mono/poly, Zebra2, and especially the Dcam synths.

Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Isn't it strange that there should be that difference? I don't understand why all synths don't benefit.

Well Sylenth1 already over-samples the effects and probably therefore the synthesis in general. How it is still light on CPU though I do not know. There is a lot of mystery around synthesizer design.

Sylenth has a limited feature-set that avoids cpu consuming functions... PWM, Filter FM, Cross-Modulation etc

[Arrested Developer]

For the same reason, my JV1080 sounds better than my Omnisphere despite 20 years of progress and being programmed by the same dude.

I think, the reason is rather that Roland used samples that not only sounded really good, but - in the case of real instruments - also were played really good.
(what's the use of a 3 TB string-library, if the vibrato isn't "musical"; or of a huge piano library with 127 velocity switches if the instrument itself doesn't sound good?)

Nevertheless, I'm not only don't miss the JV1080, but I'm really glad that times are over.
I think, that the JV-s (and similar instruments) always had a certain "plastic" taste in the sound.
It sounded good, but usually not good enough.
To me the JV1080 immediately associates the times, when the orchestra-mockups, used for TV-films, sounded really creepy.


to the topic:
it's quite useless to discuss the "liking" or "disliking" of a certain sound in an objective manner.
If you are used to hear a sound, because you owned that certain synth at the age of 17, you associate memories, emotions etc. with them.
It has lots to do with conditioning.
For example, when i hear the mellotron flutes, it immediately amazes me.
But i'm not sure if this would be so, if the Beatles hadn't used it on Strawberry fields.

Then again, a good programmer with the technology of 1990 will always produce a better sound as a bad
programmer with state of the art computers.
But fortunately, we still have really good programmers nowadays, who are able to max out the given CPU power.

[Aiynzahev]

That's very interesting Aiyn. More comparisons please. Visual doesn't lie, as opposed to what people hear, or think they hear (or want to hear)
Out of curiosity, since people say AD conversion affects the sound, what did you use to generate the above pics? (I.E., DAW, etc....)
Do they look different in a different DAW? Do they look different coming through different soundcards??
It's some interesting questions.
Also, could you do some compares between VST's and hardware?

They are not passing through any A/D to D/A stages. They are simply being analysed in the DAW since they are VSTi. I used an analyser part of Studio One's plug-ins.

I do have more, I will run some more comparisons. It is interesting. I actually did it to prove or disprove the idea that Tone2 had simply made a cut-down version of ElectraX. As you can see from the waveforms it's nothing like, and it's closest counterpart there is actually Diva's Moog OSC or Dcam Strobe.

It's amazing how such a small variance in waveforms adds up to so much.

As to an opinion on Lush 101. I look at every synth as a combination of modules, each can be evaluated separately and then as a whole (work-flow).

With Lush 101, I was excited as soon as I read the manual. We all know the quality of their work from their 303 emulation, which is exceptional and always got my attention. I often wondered if they would make a more featured synth because I saw potential.

This synth is very high quality in every area, the oscillators, the supersaw, the filters, the unison and the effects. I find it is a synth I feel drawn to to make ordinary sounds, plucks, pads, basses, because it just does them so well and at the same time I am very curious as to how wild this thing can get. In particular I expect it can do very convincing analog sounds. My beta did not have a mod-matrix for the longest time, so I still have not really explored this synth in that regard yet.

But I have over 30 synths and most of them are very good. Still there are some synths which make sounds as a matter of utility, you adjust and adjust until it sounds right. You learn it's special tricks and sweetspots. Lush is something you adjust for ages, not because it doesn't sound right at any one setting, but because it sounds great at all settings and you are drawn to explore all of those nuances. It sounds full, convincing and interesting before effects are even brought into the picture. In fact I often come across great sounds while programming only to completely pass over them out of interest as to what will happen next if I keep going. In that sense I am not as productive with this synth, but I am deeply drawn to be creative.

There are other synths which present problems of their own, DIVA for example can be very hard to mix and It's not the sharpest, quickest sounding synths, making it a trickier for dance music, though it adds something very special to this area.

Lush is a very good all-rounder, it's not overly bright like many straight up digital synths, not overly dull like some vintage emulations and not slow. Also I should add that not all synths get unsion down very well. With some there are some real phasing issues and you get sudden bursts in volume. Lush has this down perfectly (as perfect as I've experienced). I can stack 8 voices of supersaw without detune and without spread, with no phasing or volume problems. And it doesn't sound like a garbled mess, it sounds lush.

I generally don't like all slider controls or the limitations of one osc synths (like strobe) but that in this case that doesn't mean I don't enjoy programming them and in both cases it's very rewarding. In Lush there is a lot of flexibility at the OSC level and the workflow is good because it is so clearly laid out and accessible.

That is my honest opinion. But in general I evaluate synths with a higher level of acceptance than a lot of other people, just because I have so many and I don't expect them to all be strong in every area, they are all tools to me. Still, others just might not like it's tone. Not everyone likes the Roland sound.



As you can see, it's an interesting waveform with a lot of information at the tip.

[osiris]

Thank you Aiyn. I really value your opinion. Your demos were great and what struck me was how bright it sounded. Even the very harsh digital stuff sounded raw in a good way. Like Massive with a great preset. I think you and Rob Lee may be the busiest, most knowledgeable sound designers around. Makes me want it all that much more.