Asking hardware synth owners for a favor :)

[recursive one]

Hi Ingo! I'm sorry for derailing this thread (and I'm even more sorry for posting dog pics, freaking out about Tone2 marketing stuff and doing other evil things ) but while we at it, could you tell me something about Virus hypersaw? Here is a quick and dirty comparison between Virus Hypersaw osc and some plugins

You hear that Virus does sound different. It has really thick and coherent sound while the plugins sound, well... a bit lackluster in comparison. Why? The patches are very simple so my lousy programming skills don't count You had explained in the Icarus thread that it has something to do with phasing or like that but you deleted your post before I read it thoroughly.

EDIT: this comparison was wrong I've removed it

[fluffy_little_something]

Deleted...

[recursive one]

For the hypersaw patch: Virus: 0:0 to 0:15, Spire 0:16 to 0:31, Dune 2: 0:32 to 0:47

[fluffy_little_something]

I listened to it on the headphones and it becomes quite obvious why the Virus sounds denser, namely because the soft synths have a much wider panorama whereas the Virus bundles all the energy in the middle. Wideness usually leads to a "fluffier" sound.

[recursive one]

Consider that the Virus hypersaw osillator, iirc, has quite a bit of pan spread in this example

EDIT: I was talking BS, it doesn't. Fluffy Little Something has good ears.

[fluffy_little_something]

Much less than the soft synths. I know that problem from Sylenth, with a stereo spread setting of more than 5/10, the sound kind of gets diluted. At a setting of 3 to 5 the sound is much denser and the waves seem to interact with each other, enriching the overall sound.

[aciddose]

If you're going to compare things, don't layer them in with 50 other unrelated things.

Remove the filter, remove the envelopes, remove absolutely everything except the oscillator. Then you can make a comparison.

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/supper-sawer
(since soundcloud can't "process" the file) http://xhip.net/temp/supper_sawer.mp3

That's 256 ramps in unison. After about 20-30 you can't hear anything but more of a phase-noise effect. It's sort of like white noise but very easily distinguishable from it.

What actually happens is that there are so many peaks at high frequency that your ears can't distinguish them. (They don't contain enough individual frequency bands / receptors.)

The amplitude however does not behave in a completely random ("white noise") fashion and you can try for yourself: mix white noise in the band above 2k at the same spectra as the 1/n falloff from the ramp. You'll easily distinguish in an A/B comparison. This is because 1) the density is frequency dependent (white noise = uniform) and 2) amplitude variations are not random.

That said there is little use above 30-part unisons in mono, or 60-part in stereo. The effect is only to move the timbre closer to noise. If you applied an infinite number of parts in unison the effect would become near indistinguishable from noise apart from the fact lower partials would have gaps between them.

In fact it may be reasonably trivial to come up with a FIR filter which can transform white noise into a synthetic "infini-unison" timbre... only that this doesn't actually sound good at all and so would be useless.

[foosnark]

Out of curiosity, I tried this on my AY3. This is, um, not a great synth for testing your ideas.

First off: there is no release time. Even with the (weird) envelopes enabled, release is instantaneous. ("Envelopes" are more like slow amplitude modulation, and quantized to 8 levels as it happens.)

Second: voice assignment always goes to voice 6 if it's not busy. Then 3 if it's not busy, then 5, 2, 4, and 1 in that order. If you play a 7th note, it's simply ignored.

(This is easy to tell because you can transpose each voice separately, and 1-3 are on a separate channel from 4-6.)

It can stack voices in that order if you trigger multiple MIDI note on messages for the same note -- but any note off message kills all voices that are playing that note.

Whether in poly mode with stacked voices on the same note, or in mono mode with multiple voices enabled, every note is different; it sounds like the phase relationships between each voice are different for every note, even if they're playing at the same frequency. (And frequency is quantized coarsely enough that you can tell when they're not detuned.) Some latency in their trigger times? Intentional phase randomization? I don't know.

[Ingonator]

Hi Ingo! I'm sorry for derailing this thread (and I'm even more sorry for posting dog pics, freaking out about Tone2 marketing stuff and doing other evil things ) but while we at it, could you tell me something about Virus hypersaw? Here is a quick and dirty comparison between Virus Hypersaw osc and some plugins

https://soundcloud.com/recursion-loop/v ... e-vs-dune2

You hear that Virus does sound different. It has really thick and coherent sound while the plugins sound, well... a bit lackluster in comparison. Why? The patches are very simple so my lousy programming skills don't count You had explained in the Icarus thread that it has something to do with phasing or like that but you deleted your post before I read it thoroughly.

When i still had my Virus TI desktop (sold to Markus fro mTone2 last year) i had the opportunity to compare it top teh Hypersaw in Tone2 Electra 2.1 and it really nailed it. The Hypersaw in Icarus is similar but will work with all waveforms, not just the Saw. It also has the "HyperSpread" mode which is like the Hypersaw mode but with stereo spread of the voices.

Here are audio demos of the Virus TI and Electra 2.1 that i had created last year (the Dropbox link still existed):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/532 ... ison_1.zip
This was done at the maximum detune in Electra 2.1 and the corresponding value in teh Virus TI.

The Hypersaw could indeed sound very thick and is perfect for lush pad sounds. It should also sound very clean without any phasing.

FWIW i do not think that DUNE 2 and Spire include 100% proper emulations of the Hypersaw whiie in DUNE 2 the Multisaw feature works with all waveforms like i Icarus and sounds great on it's own.
With "Linear" or "Alternate" tuning mode, Density set to 9 and AMT at 100 the Multisaw in DUNE 2 could sound comparable to the Hypersaw but not identical (overall seems to be closer to the Supersaw or a mix of Supersaw and Hypersaw). Seems to be brighter and not as "clean" as the real Hypersaw. Soemtimes in DUNE 2 i also noticed a small amount of phasisng (or a comparable kind of background noise) which you usually do not get with a proper Hypersaw.

The Hypersaw and the Roland Supersaw (both Elecra 2.1 and Icarus also include Supersaw modes) also sound quite different from each other and both sound quite different to a typical Unison. In the past with older versions of Synthmaster 2 i had wated lots of time to get a siimilar sound using both the Unison and the additive oscillator (which includes up to 8 detuneable waveforms).
Icarus will also include a "standard" unison mode (at least standard in terms of sound) besides the Hypersaw, HyperStereo, Supersaw and other modes.

A dedicated Hypersaw or Supersaw oscilator uses much less CPU than a typical Unison which could easily be noticed in DUNE 2 whe using either teh Multisaw feature or the Unison.

Before i sold the Virus TI i also made samples of the Hypersaw at different detune amounts and so far this worked nicely in e.g. my Blofeld and also PPG Wave 3.V.

My Novation UltraNova has a comparable feature in each of the 3 Oscs called "Density" (2 parameters) taht opposing to the also included Unison does not seem to "eat" any voices.

[recursive one]

Fluffy Little Something, here is the example you've asked for:

https://soundcloud.com/recursion-loop/v ... te-overlap

One saw oscilaltor, filter fully open, long release. First 8 notes have free running phase the next 8 ones are phase locked.

Ingonator, thanks a ton! Having read your explanations I have to admit that I was stupid as fvck - Virus hypersaw oscillator as such doesn't have any stereo spead, why on earth did I think that it has

I my hypersaw comparison the plugins had stereo spread, Virus didn't and Fluffy Little Something spotted exactly this. So this comparison I've posted means nothing, I've deleted it from my soundcloud. Dune2 with saw osc, 32 unison, 65% detune (alternate) and ZERO stereo spread sounds almost indentical to Virus hypersaw and SPAN shows that they have very close spectrum.

I should really learn my tools better

[fluffy_little_something]

Thanks, without retriggering it sounds like Zebra, also a slight phaser effect, which I could live with as the changes are gradual, not abrupt and static like on Sylenth.
Interesting that it sounds different with retriggering on in your case...