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

[Mushy Mushy]

Worst thread ever?

[chk071]

Yeah. Wonder whose fault that is.

[vurt]

Worst thread ever?

or best thread ever!

[Functional]

Ok, my first impression: Massive X does not have a quality problem in the oscillators. There are no aritifacts to speak of with standard waveforms. I agree that SPAN needs to be set to extreme settings to exhibit harmonics on the sine wave. My impression is, the tools Sadowick is using are extremely sensitive, and I can't really work out what the dB-scale grid in the Fabfilter plug-in refers to.

I won't explore complex waveforms as long as I don't know what I'm doing though

50% off u-he diva / repro at NI
some people are going to assume that you can't speak quite as freely as you normally do.
I don't think I am being unreasonable because there's the possibility of a very slight conflict of interest.

Imo NI have lost credibility with this Synth, hardly anyone can deny it wasn't ready for release.
They shouldn't be rewarded for that. None of us should be defending what they are doing.
What next ..loot boxes in a Synth with day 1 dlc?

Jesus christ. I told before how Sadowick and the way he handled this whole thing has inspired now people to think that there is some form of conspiracy and plugin developers can't be anymore trusted when it comes to... plugin development?

Anyway, thanks for proving my point

[Urs]

Ok, my first impression: Massive X does not have a quality problem in the oscillators. There are no aritifacts to speak of with standard waveforms. I agree that SPAN needs to be set to extreme settings to exhibit harmonics on the sine wave. My impression is, the tools Sadowick is using are extremely sensitive, and I can't really work out what the dB-scale grid in the Fabfilter plug-in refers to.

I won't explore complex waveforms as long as I don't know what I'm doing though

50% off u-he diva / repro at NI
some people are going to assume that you can't speak quite as freely as you normally do.
I don't think I am being unreasonable because there's the possibility of a very slight conflict of interest.

Imo NI have lost credibility with this Synth, hardly anyone can deny it wasn't ready for release.
They shouldn't be rewarded for that. None of us should be defending what they are doing.
What next ..loot boxes in a Synth with day 1 dlc?

Man, you crack me up. I just said - in nice words - that the lack of a user manual and the unintuitive interface prevent me from further testing. How's that for an unbiased thought?

[vurt]

Yeah. Wonder whose fault that is.

yours.

[Vortifex]

Tbh it's not any alleged aliasing that people should be bothered about, it's the lack of basic features and functionality in a so-called next generation flagship synth. The video by Composing Gloves linked earlier was bang on.

[Mushy Mushy]

Yeah. Wonder whose fault that is.

Honestly, it’s everybody’s. All of us are beating this dead horse.

[chk071]

Yeah. Wonder whose fault that is.

yours.

No.

[chk071]

Yeah. Wonder whose fault that is.

Honestly, it’s everybody’s. All of us are beating this dead horse.

Well, i'll leave it at that now. There's been enough factual evidence that a lot of what's happening in his vids was just plain misinformation. Hopefully he learns about it, before feeding more bullshit to his 168.000 subscribers (lol). Strange new world.

BTW, do you know how he also could have reacted? Like any decent person. Asking whether or not he might have been wrong, and, if people could explain why he is wrong. But, nope. "I'm right, you experts." Not cool.

[Kian Russell]

I don't even think it's worth a comment. Ridiculous. I'm sure everyone at u-he or NI headquarters will laugh about it.

Synth developers can laugh all they like but my wallet has the last laugh

[Kian Russell]

Man, you crack me up. I just said - in nice words - that the lack of a user manual and the unintuitive interface prevent me from further testing. How's that for an unbiased thought?

I know but

[perpetual3]

.. I'd surely hope that a user manual would clear up why the sine wave oscillators produce audible harmonics (nothing wrong with that if it's an inherent part of the synthesis..

Urs, the sine wave hasn't any harmonics when the filters are turned off. I suppose it's a kind of overdrive behavior.

It absolutely does.

OK, so, i set SPAN to go down to -120 dB now, and, there it is, starting at about -90 dB:

Massive_X_Sine_05.jpg

For any other synth, people would probably argue that it's not in the audible range, but, not on this one, it seems.

Wonder where it's coming from, though. I checked in 3 oscilloscopes, and, each of them seemed to display a perfect sine.

Gonna check with some other plugins now.

UNACCEPTABLE!

Anyway, whatever you're seeing there, I cannot see it myself after I tested. Since I have the Serum demo though, I decided to test it as well. The results are in the attachments. Both normalized to same loudness +-0.2db. I had to play a particular note (I think it was a sharp, and let the puns begin) because I could not get the aliasing artifacts to appear in every note with Massive X, only some of them (which is quite interesting, actually). Both behave in a very similar fashion; Serum has just a tiny bit more visible aliasing artifacts when playing at higher frequencies but Serum also has slightly (like -6 - -12db or so) less amplitude in them.

This is Serum:

serum.png

This is Massive X:

massive.png

I also tested square waves. Serum performed significantly better than MX in terms of aliasing. That is, if you play a C9.

But play a C3 and honestly telling the aliasing apart is pretty much impossible. So now I know; if I am going to ever make music with square waves and I happen to need a note at ninth octave, I should definitively pick Serum in case aliasing is a no-go. I have now developed as a producer.

The point is not that you have to play a C9.

The point is that the aliasing will be compounded due to modulations and distortions.

I went to the XFER websites and their marketing copy for Serum emphasizes that fact: high quality oscillators designed to leverage modulations.

I agree with Sadowick - we (those who have bought MX) as well as though who wanted to but didn’t shouldn’t rationalize deficiencies in an expensive “next gen” synth. Instead, we should make these issues known. Having watched all of Sadowick’s videos, I come to the conclusion that he is a very respectful, very thorough, and fairly knowledgeable person. He is not “trash” talking NI. He is pointing out some legitimate issues.

In my personal opinion I think MX can sound amazing. I can only hope that NI live up to their marketing copy and deliver on future updates.

[Functional]

Tbh it's not any alleged aliasing that people should be bothered about, it's the lack of basic features and functionality in a so-called next generation flagship synth. The video by Composing Gloves linked earlier was bang on.

Most of us are pretty much in agreement that there's lots of stuff currently that's missing and that's needed pronto. Midi learn and user manual for example. There's just not much of a point in discussing on a matter that we all agree on, now is there? It's not like we can set up a plan to fix it.

The sadowick saga however is interesting matter because it holds larger implications about the whole educational side of youtube and its potential to mislead people be it intentionally or unintentionally

[perpetual3]

Tbh it's not any alleged aliasing that people should be bothered about, it's the lack of basic features and functionality in a so-called next generation flagship synth. The video by Composing Gloves linked earlier was bang on.

Yeah, the lack of basic features is, quite frankly, unexpected and unacceptable.