Native Instruments Massive X Synth - Sequel to Massive (Out Now!)

[Ah_Dziz]

Hey guys! So I did the follow up video and I thought before I made it live to my subscribers the experts could watch it and explain to me whats happening. Ive found that the filter compounds the aliasing and the LFOs in Oscillator modes are not band-limited at all! Square waves really break this thing.

I just grabbed this download since I already owned the license. The aliasing doesn’t seem to be a problem in practice as the sound is quite fun. The aliasing in massive 1 and FM 7/8 were a large part of what made them the goto synths for wubba Dubai music. The extra harmonics in the sine wave aren’t aliasing, they are distortion of some kind which is..... meh. They will fold back into the audible spectrum when they reach the NyQuist frequency, but I’m not a big fan of sine waves up above 1000hz anyhow. So aside from huge slow pitch sweeps at earbleedingly loud levels up at the edge of the useful range of pitch, the aliasing is no problem for me. There are tons of synths I use far more regularly that alias far more and it’s not a problem. If it bugs you so much that a digital synth aliases, just don’t use it. I wouldn’t have bought it if I didn’t own komplete, but the aliasing hasn’t been a problem in practice (as it is with some things I have in my plugin folder). Did you try eliminating the nonlinearities in the signal by using different wavetable playback modes? Some may do more or less aliasing.

[BlitBit]

This aliasing pedantry is really getting boring - maybe some mod can split it off?

I guess one could say you're not aMUSEd?

[BDeep]

OK I must say I am confused now, Sadowick. I just set the Sin-Tri-Saw-SQ wavetable direct to output, WT position at max (so it's a square wave), bypassed filter and all, then did a 96 semitone pitch bend on it (because MX is crazy like that it allows you such huge bend ranges, pretty cool) and recorded the output. Here's the result:

https://app.box.com/s/z1vrk9p037ggh8nwlejz2iy6ir6ef0pt


It's a WAV file. Can ANYONE hear any aliasing here? Even SPAN doesn't show anything that's not at around -130 dB or so.

Because with processing these artifacts are accentuated. EQ, compression, saturation, ect bring these out.

Demonstration just for you using your audio sweep:


These things matter

Oh crap, I didn't intend to get into this debate. But there you have it

What you hear is Saturn. I just tested it, when Saturn is in normal mode, you get what you just demonstrated, but it in HQ mode and it is a lot less (not gone, less). It'll do that with any high pitched sweep.

[pixel85]

Do we have 200 yet? Yes? No?

EDIT: Nah I didn't hit 200 yet. Who will be the lucky one?

[mladi]

This aliasing pedantry is really getting boring - maybe some mod can split it off?

I guess one could say you're not aMUSEd?

Not only he. This is absurd.. a guy and his clickbait Youtube clip made a point where in reality is nothing.

PS. We learned Saturn is shitty as well.

[EvilDragon]

I've just tried Serum's square wave, and of course, putting Saturn on it and doing the same pitch sweep yields pretty much the same artifacts! SHOCKING!

[Kian Russell]

sadowick shouldn't have used an external plugin like saturn to demonstrate aliasing.
he is right though, it will compound when the source is bad.

btw i didn't listen to ED's clip on the browser, loaded it into bitwig.

[EvilDragon]

PS. We learned Saturn is shitty as well.

No Saturn is actually great, when you use it for things it's intended to. See Dan Worrall's video about it!

[JoeCat]

"I hear aliasing" was going to be the plot of The Sixth Sense, but they were all 'meh' at the last minute.

Spoiler alert: Bruce Willis' character is aliased.

[BlitBit]

btw i didn't listen to ED's clip on the browser, loaded it into bitwig.

With Saturn in low quality mode on it?

[aMUSEd]

This aliasing pedantry is really getting boring - maybe some mod can split it off?

I guess one could say you're not aMUSEd?

[McLilith]

OK I must say I am confused now, Sadowick. I just set the Sin-Tri-Saw-SQ wavetable direct to output, WT position at max (so it's a square wave), bypassed filter and all, then did a 96 semitone pitch bend on it (because MX is crazy like that it allows you such huge bend ranges, pretty cool) and recorded the output. Here's the result:

https://app.box.com/s/z1vrk9p037ggh8nwlejz2iy6ir6ef0pt


It's a WAV file. Can ANYONE hear any aliasing here? Even SPAN doesn't show anything that's not at around -130 dB or so.

I really hate to say this. I have a huge amount of respect for you, but I definitely hear what sounds like "heterodyning" or "aliasing" in that WAV file. After the main frequency reaches a certain pitch, I can then hear spurious pitches for the rest of the frequency sweep. It's easy for me to hear on my modest studio speakers. It's not a tiny detail I need precise isolated headphones and careful listening to detect.

That said, I still like Massive X.

By the way, does Massive X have any sort of "HQ" or "perfect" mode that it uses when not rendering in real time?

[ghettosynth]

You have to be careful to make sure that your observations aren't an artifact of your testing scenario. When I just run the sweep through iZotope insight on 44k the alisasing appears to be about 90 dB down from the fundamental, however, if I switch my system to 96k then they appear to be about 120 dB down. The wav file isn't changing, it's fixed at 48k so what's being observed is either a side effect of the measurement or dithering, or both. Without more testing, I can't know if even those results are also a side effect of measurement and that the aliasing is actually lower than that.

[Ah_Dziz]

It doesnt matter, I for one use a lot of lfos in my sounds for my productions and I would never ever use a synth with this amount of aliasing in 2019, no matter is coming from osc or lfo modulating osc, etc etc. Its really not acceptable in this time.

I’m willing to bet that this is not true. Unless you have an all hardware rig ( I hate it for you if you do) then you have plenty of aliasing at these levels and then some.

[perpetual3]

200?

Missed it.