KVR Audio

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:34 am

Z1202 wrote:The Diva (some 2 years old demo, didn't bother to install the latest one, sorry) was running at the "Great" rather than "Divine" quality, but that was already about the double CPU usage of Monark (the host SR was set to 88kHz).

I thought about that. Hehehe, I guess I need to fire up Monark again. So if Monark is faster than Diva on extreme settings, it should either alias more, or it uses a limited number of iterations to converge, or it uses an analytical approach. When I checked Monark out a few months ago I had the impression that it generally used more CPU than Diva for a single voice, but I haven't tried extremes. And it might have been a biased impression.

Hank the Knife · Post by **Hank the Knife** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 6:00 am

Urs wrote:
Synthetic Wav wrote:true, but the one sounding best had to be the hardware for many
Thats the depressing truth. Many people still assume that analogue synths have the superior sound in tests like these. Many people still want the software to fail, to confirm their bias. It's very easy to predict that, once the result is unveiled, a whole bunch of posts will be about nothing less than pointing out what those failures are. Thankfully though, this paradigm crumbles.

That is just your opinion. The truth is not a collection of opinions. It's simply a matter of taste in this case. What else? Because some actually do prefer synth A and vice versa. THAT is the truth. Or.. did I miss something? Then read the comments.. I can sense your insecurity but not your responsibility neither your authority. Because you have none in this case. You just state your opinion as if it were a fact. Cheap trick, by the way, but that is just MY opinion. The only truth of this topic is that people do ACTUALLY have opinions and their taste. No more or less. That is an INDIVIDUAL matter. Whatever you might state or not.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 7:09 am

Hank the Knife wrote:
Urs wrote:
Synthetic Wav wrote:true, but the one sounding best had to be the hardware for many
Thats the depressing truth. Many people still assume that analogue synths have the superior sound in tests like these. Many people still want the software to fail, to confirm their bias. It's very easy to predict that, once the result is unveiled, a whole bunch of posts will be about nothing less than pointing out what those failures are. Thankfully though, this paradigm crumbles.
That is just your opinion. The truth is not a collection of opinions. It's simply a matter of taste in this case. What else? Because some actually do prefer synth A and vice versa. THAT is the truth. Or.. did I miss something? Then read the comments.. I can sense your insecurity but not your responsibility neither your authority. Because you have none in this case. You just state your opinion as if it were a fact. Cheap trick, by the way, but that is just MY opinion. The only truth of this topic is that people do ACTUALLY have opinions and their taste. No more or less. That is an INDIVIDUAL matter. Whatever you might state or not.

So, I've been wrong all those years. The people who kept saying that analogue synths can never be matched in software are just constructs of my imagination - just like the people who hear huge differences between the sound examples and "clearly, the software is less 3d" and whatever ways they find to value its sonic inferiority.

Thanks for clearing that up. I'll sleep better now.

GHOST19 · Post by **GHOST19** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 7:29 am

You also see many people in KVR expecting the software to sound better, but I agree it's an anomaly and in the real world most people expect analog to sound better.

Hank the Knife · Post by **Hank the Knife** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 7:31 am

Listen..

kvaca · Post by **kvaca** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 7:42 am

Urs wrote:
Synthetic Wav wrote:true, but the one sounding best had to be the hardware for many
Thats the depressing truth. Many people still assume that analogue synths have the superior sound in tests like these. Many people still want the software to fail, to confirm their bias.

You forgot that similarly many biased people want software to win, isnt it strange?
Or its normal that some happy owners of Diva /or OB/ want their instrument to win the battle in any case?

Hank the Knife · Post by **Hank the Knife** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 8:15 am

'So, I've been wrong all those years.'
@Urs
Wrong about WHAT? Since when has listening to music become a matter of right and wrong..? Sorry, but I think I'm losing you here. I thought music was a matter of expression. Of feelings. Again.. WHAT else? Music is no matter of live or death, I suppose.
Maybe for guys like Hendrix. However, that seems like an obsession to me.

Z1202 · Post by **Z1202** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 8:36 am

Urs wrote:
Z1202 wrote:The Diva (some 2 years old demo, didn't bother to install the latest one, sorry) was running at the "Great" rather than "Divine" quality, but that was already about the double CPU usage of Monark (the host SR was set to 88kHz).
I thought about that. Hehehe, I guess I need to fire up Monark again. So if Monark is faster than Diva on extreme settings, it should either alias more, or it uses a limited number of iterations to converge, or it uses an analytical approach. When I checked Monark out a few months ago I had the impression that it generally used more CPU than Diva for a single voice, but I haven't tried extremes. And it might have been a biased impression.

Monark is always running at 88/96kHz regardless of the host SR. OTOH, I had impression from Diva, that the internal sampling rates are configured relative to the host. Is that true? Because then maybe "Great" at 88kHz host SR is already "Divine" at 44?

As a general remark, it would be nice if developers took into account that people use other host SR's than 44 and 48. I was interested in Lush-101 once, but it was unusable CPU-wise for me at 88kHz. My guess is that it oversamples internally by the same factor, no matter what the host SR is.

Edit: BTW, if you ever get to do a completely revised version of ACE, I'd like to be a part of the beta (not sure, if you would like me to

)

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 8:40 am

kvaca wrote:
Urs wrote:
Synthetic Wav wrote:true, but the one sounding best had to be the hardware for many
Thats the depressing truth. Many people still assume that analogue synths have the superior sound in tests like these. Many people still want the software to fail, to confirm their bias.
You forgot that similarly many biased people want software to win, isnt it strange?
Or its normal that some happy owners of Diva /or OB/ want their instrument to win the battle in any case?

I couldn't care less which side wins, but what I really hate is snobbery in all its forms (which you find anywhere in this world, seems to be a human constant in a way...)

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:09 am

Digital synths are held to higher standards than analogue synths. It is always the digital synth that is having to exactly mimic the analogue... which is a fundamentally inferior position... Start trying to exactly emulate digital synths with analogue synths and the analogue synths will not fare so well.

Not only is the comparison always one directional, but time has selected the best of the best analogue synths that get compared to. Try comparing to some of the more mediocre analogues that have come and gone.

Also, just because one can still find some situations where analogue has some superiority, does not automatically make them better, because there are also areas where digital is superior... but that is usually left out. If there is one small place that analogue has an advantage, that that is taken as conclusive of fundamental superiority.

I currently have 2 analogue synths and have had others in the past, including an OB. Analogue offers something lovely... but if I was forced to choose only analogue or only digital, I would choose digital... because the vast sonic palette that analogue cannot come close to. Fortunately I don;t have to choose

Personally, I don't care if Diva sounds perfectly analogue... it has some of the characteristics I like about analogue and most important to me, it sounds gorgeous.

kvaca · Post by **kvaca** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:11 am

GHOST19 wrote:You also see many people in KVR expecting the software to sound better, but I agree it's an anomaly and in the real world most people expect analog to sound better.

well, it depends what you mean "better"...

personally I expect Diva to sound better in sense better=cleaner, more hi-fi, and worse in sense worse= more artificial or fake
but - sametime I expect hw to sound worse when worse=more dirty, more lo-fi, and better in sense better= more realistic

BUT: my problem probably is that analoguesamples unfortunally made all Diva samples also partially dirty and lo-fi /just make the test harder/ which forced me to try to judge the files only using one left criterion = which sounds more real to my ears...and in this case they were all A examples which sounded to me waaaay more realistic

AND even more funnier thing is that in some cases - theoretically - it can happen that in the end I would prefer to use Diva over any hw just because I hate high noisefloor in my music so much

fluffy_little_something · Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:16 am

Better in this context probably means authentic, which can be good or bad, depending on what people want to hear. If someone prefers modern wavetable stuff, they will likely not be thrilled by the typical analog sound, be it hw or sw.

Hank the Knife · Post by **Hank the Knife** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:23 am

In a scientific sense and setting they should've isolated the synths from its sonic texture. Only then you can make a comparison A to B. Those examples are far from objective. That said, I think Diva is a great synth. I was just teasing a little here and there

It astonishes me that this simple fact of scientific isolation is not exclusively stated before in this thread. Correct me when I'm wrong.
If I want to compare a dog to a cat I wouldn't let the whole zoo running around them. If that makes any sense lol

kvaca · Post by **kvaca** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:29 am

Hank the Knife wrote:In a scientific sense and setting they should've isolated the synths from its sonic texture. Only then you can make a comparison A to B. Those examples are far from objective. That said, I think Diva is a great synth. I was just teasing a little here and there
It astonishes me that this simple fact of scientific isolation is not exclusively stated before in this thread. Correct me when I'm wrong.
If I want to compare a dog to a cat I wouldn't let the whole zoo running around them. If that makes any sense lol

??
what do you call the whole zoo in this test?
do you mean theres something important missing?

fluffy_little_something · Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:34 am

I don't need scientific isolation, whatever that is. It would be enough if the patches were as close as possible, which is not the case with some sounds. Test 5 for instance, they could have been made to sound much closer. The obvious difference there is not due to hw vs sw, but patch design.

Diva vs Analogue - a real world test