Which is the most accurate emulation of a classic hardware synth to date?

[Ingonator]

Both of Tal's commercial synths.

By the way, who started that whole software emulation thing? Was it Korg themselves? Or what was the first accurate emulation? (Not SynthEdit synths, mind you, their emulation accuracy usually ended at the GUI )

NI Pro-53 where the very first version called "Pro-Five" seemed to be from around 2000 and one of the first VST plugins.

The very first version of Waldorf PPG Wave 2.V seemed to be released around 2000/2001 too.
First version of the Waldorf Edition that also included Attack and D-Pole was released around 2003.
All those plugins still work nicely within Waldorf Edition 2 and are available in all plugin formats and also with NKS support now. Even if i normally prefer using PPG Wave 3.V i still like to use PPG 2.V too. One of the last updates of Waldorf Edition 2 includes a 64 patches bank from myself including the coresponding NKS preset files.

Arturia Minimoog V seemed to be one of the first analog emulations too, same with the first Korg plugins (both around 2004).

[JJ_Jettflow]

I think the first proper effort at emulation was NI's Pro-Five and B4. Neon is so rudimentary that makes me think there's been no emulative effort at all in it, just a bunch of basic DSP algorithms through a biquad filter and that's it. (Biquad filter is a purely digital construct, as such it is not an emulation of anything from the analog realm - at least to my understanding).

Yeah, I jumped the gun on Neon..I was thinking the very first VST as opposed to the first emulation.

[chk071]

I frankly wonder how many more of such threads we need.

[fluffy_little_something]

NI Pro-53 where the very first version called "Pro-Five" seemed to be from around 2000 and one of the first VST plugins.

The very first version of Waldorf PPG Wave 2.V seemed to be released around 2000/2001 too.
First version of the Waldorf Edition that also included Attack and D-Pole was released around 2003.
All those plugins still work nicely within Waldorf Edition 2 and are available in all plugin formats and also with NKS support now. Even if i normally prefer using PPG Wave 3.V i still like to use PPG 2.V too. One of the last updates of Waldorf Edition 2 includes a 64 patches bank from myself including the coresponding NKS preset files.

Arturia Minimoog V seemed to be one of the first analog emulations too, same with the first Korg plugins (both around 2004).

Somehow I have always associated Waldorf with that cold German pop sound of the 80's and thus ignored.

[izonin]

An emulation? Like a Nintendo emulation for PC?

Korg M1 plugin

[ENV1]

This question has a rather low likelihood of being answered in a meaningful way.

Take only 2 synths and 2 people:

Person1: "The filter on my synth is 7.3% more accurate than the filter on your synth thus my synths accuracy score is higher".

Person2: "No its not. The oscillators on my synth are 9.3% more accurate than the ones on your synth hence the accuracy score of my synth is higher".

Person1: "Nonsense. Surely you must see that filter accuracy is more important than oscillator accuracy and that it therefore contributes 6.4% more toward the overall accuracy score than the oscillators?".

Person2: "Not in my opinion. The character of a synth really suffers a lot when the oscillators arent right whereas the filter doesnt matter much as long as it sounds good. Accurate oscillators therefore contribute 14.8% more toward the overall accuracy score than an accurate filter".

Im sure you can see where this would go. By the time EGs and LFOs and audio-rate modulation have been brought into the picture they will want to rend each other.


The only way to get a halfways meaningful answer to this question would be to take each and every emulation and compare each and every item with the respective hardware counterpart. (Talk about sisyphean tasks.) And even then there is still the fact that one hardware unit pretty much never sounds exactly like another, (heck, even the same one may sound different on different days due to temperature differences), in other words you might as well just forget the whole thing and do something more productive with your time...

[jdoo]

...
The Korg Wavestation plugin is very close to the hardware too and also adds a resonant filter mode not found in the hardware.
I got a hardware Wavestation EX since 2014 and the plugin since around 2006.

+1

[PatchAdamz]

Almost an impossible question to answer unless you A/B between the original hardware and the software.

TAL-U-NO-LX has has some video comparisons with the hardware on youtube that are impressive.

The KORG collection was "ported" from the original hardware and well done.

The Legend, Repro-1, Gforce Oddity 2, Monark, Minimonsta, etc all have something nice to offer.

Also, an important note, how authentically these synths reproduce as "vintage" is directly related to how they are recorded and mixed.

Keep in mind that our favorite, "classic" electronic LPs were NOT recorded on a DAW.

[nicksohn]

Gfoece oddity2, imposcar.

[pdxindy]

my Analog Rytm VST plugin is the best hardware emulation to date...

[ghettosynth]

Given that we're talking about classic hardware, not necessarily analog, Dexed is surely a contender. That said, I would probably give the nod to either the wavestation or the M1, not because they're stellar, but because they have an easy job to do in terms of accurate emulation.

[aMUSEd]

If digital can be included then probably SonicCharge Cyclone and Hartman Neuron VS since both of these are not so much emulations as direct ports of the hardware OS to plugin format (I guess that is also true of the Arturia Synclavier although it's incomplete).

[Sound Mechanics]

Given that we're talking about classic hardware, not necessarily analog, Dexed is surely a contender. That said, I would probably give the nod to either the wavestation or the M1, not because they're stellar, but because they have an easy job to do in terms of accurate emulation.

Thanks all for the comments... so far

I had FM7 and loved messing around making all manner of sounds with it but I never thought it had the same character as my brothers DX7, that I used extensively...

Then I tried Dexed last week - it is a DX7 in software - the exaxt same character just jumped straight out of my speakers and I was back in the 80's. I was really impressed. I hope the interface is developed though?

[zerocrossing]

Since the only classic synth that I've ever owned was the Juno 106, I can say that based on my memory (it's been 15 years) the Roland Juno 106 plug in sounds super close. Exact? No idea. In fact, I really have never had any classic synth in my studio to put against the software. I honestly don't care about it that much. What I care about is, does it sound good? Here are emulations that I think sound very good.

Oddity 2
ImpOSCar 2
Legend
All the new Roland Plugins.
RePro-1
PPG 3
Dexed
Synclavier V
TAL Sampler
[edit forgot these]
OP-X Pro
Monark
KLC (though, I think that now that CPUs are faster they could give the analogs a second pass and make them even better, and also give lower bit depth options in Wavestation. What I'd really love Korg to do is make a software KingKORG that takes emulations of it's famous analogs but marries them with waves and functions from the Wavestation and DW8000.)

What I find the most curious, is that there are so few a/b tests like the ones Starsky Carr does. I've been using ImpOSCar 2 a lot lately, so this thread made me wonder if someone did a test like that. If they did, I couldn't find it. You'd think a lot of these arguments could be put to rest with some simple testing, but I guess people with the originals aren't interested.

[Sound Mechanics]

Here's a good test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlmrnAk0oHU