Synth with the quality (not neccessarily sound) of nord lead synths

[pixel85]

Reveal sound 'Spire' in 96kHz (NL also work in 96kHz) - sounds sat nicely together without need to tweak with external eq etc.
You have depth, great sound and extended oscillator section that you can make amazing big sound with basic one oscillator setup

I can't tell does it sound exactly like NL, i didnt touch NL from time when NL3 was released. For me Spire have much more depth than Discovery Pro

[pixel85]

I really wish someone who describes sounds as "sit really well together" would describe what exactly they mean by that from a technical point of view. I've tried to get at this in other threads, e.g., the one about the SC plugin, and it's hard to nail down what people mean.

I think it means that you don't need to spend a lot of time on inserts to fit it into mix. It's about synths, dunno how to translate it when talk about SC plugin

[ghettosynth]

I really wish someone who describes sounds as "sit really well together" would describe what exactly they mean by that from a technical point of view. I've tried to get at this in other threads, e.g., the one about the SC plugin, and it's hard to nail down what people mean.

I think it means that you don't need to spend a lot of time on inserts to fit it into mix. It's about synths, dunno how to translate it when talk about SC plugin

Again, that's not a technical explanation for anything. It's just circular, you saying that something fits into a mix because it's easy to fit it into a mix.

[kippertoffee]

I really wish someone who describes sounds as "sit really well together" would describe what exactly they mean by that from a technical point of view. I've tried to get at this in other threads, e.g., the one about the SC plugin, and it's hard to nail down what people mean.

I think it means that you don't need to spend a lot of time on inserts to fit it into mix. It's about synths, dunno how to translate it when talk about SC plugin

Again, that's not a technical explanation for anything. It's just circular, you saying that something fits into a mix because it's easy to fit it into a mix.

Have you never noticed that some synths just naturally layer better... will sit together without sounding crowded? I can't give a techincal answer, and I doubt anyone here can, because I sincerely doubt anyone has performed a detailed techincal anlysis of the output of a NL2. Perhaps the oscillators are more strictly band-limited (althoug i doubt it because it aliases like f**k at high registers)? Maybe there is very little saturation in the filter? Maybe it's something to do with the phase response of the filter? I really don't know, but my subjective experience is that, when layered, the final result sounds cleaner and less busy than with other synths.

[glokraw]

I would like to put my fingers on a better technical explanation though, if such a thing exists.

Not really technical, but take songs like 'On the Floor' from J-lo,
or 'Don't Get me Wrong' from the Pretenders. They don't feature
awesome riffs, and may be great fun to jam along with, but all the sonic ranges, or bands, are filled with an important part of the song,
mini-hooks that work in their blended simplicity, where adding to them, without muddying up the works, would be difficult, if not pointless, as proved by their producers.
When CSN&Y toured, it was mainly a six man band, and nobody clammored for a band of ten or twelve. Excellence without pointless excess.
Cheers

[glokraw]

Of course, Sade and the Rippingtons etc might tour with
ten or twelve, but great musicians, who didn't need to play
outside the boundaries of the songs, to be entertaining, and happy,

[izonin]

Another vote for Spire. It has that thin, clear sound of the early VA's that fits nicely into the mix. Run it at 88.2 or 96 KHz for max clarity.

[ghettosynth]

I would like to put my fingers on a better technical explanation though, if such a thing exists.

Not really technical, but take songs like 'On the Floor' from J-lo,
or 'Don't Get me Wrong' from the Pretenders. They don't feature
awesome riffs, and may be great fun to jam along with, but all the sonic ranges, or bands, are filled with an important part of the song,
mini-hooks that work in their blended simplicity, where adding to them, without muddying up the works, would be difficult, if not pointless, as proved by their producers.
When CSN&Y toured, it was mainly a six man band, and nobody clammored for a band of ten or twelve. Excellence without pointless excess.
Cheers

If that's what it's about then, as I said, it's about being thin, and adding to that, complexity in the filter.

Thin tends to imply lacking low end where it should be present. At the high end, better analog filters have a lot of character that add harmonics, particularly as we use more resonance.

Consequently, whenI hear "it fits great into a mix", I think, "it's a thin synth with a mediocre filter."

Also, "easy to EQ" falls flat to me in this sense, width is not particularly challenging to control. What's challenging is more subtle EQ boosting here and cutting there. Where you get some overlap and strange resonances when two instruments hit certain frequencies at the same time.

So, I'm still not seeing how this has a technical basis in "easy to mix." It might have made more sense back in the day when you had to use your mixer for channel EQ and there was no satisfactory solution to easily constraining the sound to a range without dramatically impacting the quality of the sound.

I guess I just don't see the "bandpass filter of low quality emulation" as an advantage today. I think that people probably think of certain synths fondly, for whatever reason, and this "easy to mix" thing is just something that gets said a lot about thin synths so it gets repeated.

[3ee]

How about Synth1 running @ 96k ?

[samplerbanker]

The only hw synth I own now is the NR2X and it will stay here.

This is a comparison not made by myself but my own tests resulted the same:
https://soundcloud.com/aaronmarshall/no ... -disco-dsp - See the comment section which is which

Sorry, but there is something magic in the hw sound.
And yes, I also prefer software instruments...

[recursive one]

The only hw synth I own now is the NR2X and it will stay here.

This is a comparison not made by myself but my own tests resulted the same:
https://soundcloud.com/aaronmarshall/no ... -disco-dsp - See the comment section which is which

Sorry, but there is something magic in the hw sound.
And yes, I also prefer software instruments...

Quoted from the description at the soundcloud "Comparison of the Nord Lead 2 hardware synth vs the soft synth, discoDSP Discovery Pro. They have the exact settings, and identical automation"

Since Discovery and Nord have completely different filter design (Discovery has zdf filers, Nord doesn't) no wonder that the same settings would sound different, especially on the sounds with automated/modulated filters.

[ghettosynth]

..I was way off topic...and I don't feel like editing.

[zerocrossing]

Hello,

I've used a couple of nord synths in my time, and I loved that fact that the sounds often sat so nicely together, layered well, mixed well. OK, the NL2 has crap filters, but it has a certain charm. Sometimes you want that one monster sound that beats the cack out of you, but sometimes you want four sounds that will play nicely together.

I'm looking for recommendations of synths that have that same sort of quality, if such a thing exists.

Ta!

I love NL2's filter. It's not "fat" by Moog standards, but has a distinctive character all its own and was a big reason why the Nords sat so well in a mix. I never should've sold mine. I miss those snappy envelopes and immediately intuitive workflow. Never before or since have I been as productive in creating my own sounds.

DiscoDSP Discovery and Synth1 are two of the most well known emulations, but neither quite nailed it, at least not at the time when I compared them.

I don't think I ever did a 1:1 with Synth1, but I did with my 2x and I found that the only thing DiscoDSP missed with Discovery Pro (current version) is the aliasing. I believe you can turn down the over sampling if you want it.

[Aiynzahev]

U-he Bazille. It just struck mean as having a similar quality to it's sound as the Nord Lead 4 (when I had one).

[zerocrossing]

The only hw synth I own now is the NR2X and it will stay here.

This is a comparison not made by myself but my own tests resulted the same:
https://soundcloud.com/aaronmarshall/no ... -disco-dsp - See the comment section which is which

Sorry, but there is something magic in the hw sound.
And yes, I also prefer software instruments...

I hear differences, for sure, but I think that with some tweaking you could get these closer. I remember when I was putting my Nord Lead 2x up against Discovery Pro they weren't 1:1 at all, but if I ignored what the knobs were doing and tweaked them I could get very close to the point where it didn't make enough difference having the hardware unit.