Any new classic synth emus on the horizon? Moog, Arp, Obie?

[abernathy]

I don't quite understand that obsession with emulations. Do people have old sysex patches to import? If not, analog synths sound pretty much all the same to me. When I want to make a synth bass sound for instance, I can do it with a Moog, Korg, Roland or whatever. The difference is too little to care about.

I actually prefer a complete original analog-style plugin to any of those precise emulations with all their deficits also copied from the original.

I think it is a matter of personal taste, personal history, and, yes, nostalgia. I'm in my 50s and I grew up listening to Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Larry Fast, Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, etc. Those old analog synth sounds are still the most interesting and beautiful to me. And I personally don't care much about new analog synths with more features, modulations, and effects (but I get why others want those upgrades). I want the subtle (?) random sound of the analog harmonics etc which I feel we're just now getting with newer emus like Repro and The Legend. I love the quirks and limitations we get with obsessively modeled vintage instruments. We would never have something as wonderfully weird as the PolyM if people were just creating new synths. I'm also not ashamed that I love seeing a beautifully rendered old synth GUI - yes I'm a sucker for that.

I don't agree that Moog etc has already been covered - Minimoog and Polymoog yes, but not the modular stuff. Amazing that Arturia did Moog Modular so long ago - quite a project - but it is not up to today's emu standards. But I'm probably weird - I'd just love to have Model 10 or 15 with the quality of The Legend.

I've never been a big fan of digital synths, but I can see why other people are more into that. I do have a soft spot for the DX7! Everyone has different tastes.

[abernathy]

Plogue's working on a DX-7 emu. Given the stellar sonics of their chipsynth line, it should be absolutely amazing.

That would be awesome. Arturia did a great job, but their GUI's, preset manager, etc rub me the wrong way.

[e-crooner]

I don't quite understand that obsession with emulations. Do people have old sysex patches to import? If not, analog synths sound pretty much all the same to me. When I want to make a synth bass sound for instance, I can do it with a Moog, Korg, Roland or whatever. The difference is too little to care about.

I actually prefer a complete original analog-style plugin to any of those precise emulations with all their deficits also copied from the original.

I think it is a matter of personal taste, personal history, and, yes, nostalgia. I'm in my 50s and I grew up listening to Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Larry Fast, Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, etc. Those old analog synth sounds are still the most interesting and beautiful to me. And I personally don't care much about new analog synths with more features, modulations, and effects (but I get why others want those upgrades). I want the subtle (?) random sound of the analog harmonics etc which I feel we're just now getting with newer emus like Repro and The Legend. I love the quirks and limitations we get with obsessively modeled vintage instruments. We would never have something as wonderfully weird as the PolyM if people were just creating new synths. I'm also not ashamed that I love seeing a beautifully rendered old synth GUI - yes I'm a sucker for that.

I don't agree that Moog etc has already been covered - Minimoog and Polymoog yes, but not the modular stuff. Amazing that Arturia did Moog Modular so long ago - quite a project - but it is not up to today's emu standards. But I'm probably weird - I'd just love to have Model 10 or 15 with the quality of The Legend.

I've never been a big fan of digital synths, but I can see why other people are more into that. I do have a soft spot for the DX7! Everyone has different tastes.

I am also in my 50's, but I am more the practical type, I just care about how musical and effective sounds are. If I get a great, classic pad or bass from a rompler, I will use that as well. Or I will use a good general-purpose subtractive synth and try to get as close as possible to the sounds I like with my favorite songs.
Then again, despite our similar ages, I never listened to the artists you mentioned there. Maybe they were more synth-based than "my music"...

But yes, an old-fashioned GUI helps and motivates. I would not want to use something like Fathom, regardless of what it sounds like. I prefer very realistic "hardware" GUI's.

[BlackWinny]

Except the Yamaha FM synthesis and the Casio PD synthesis, I'm also not fan of all the digital techniques, largely preferring all the subtleties of the analog techniques (subtractive, additive, etc.) with all their surprises at each corner.

And I as born with the birth of the analog synthesis at the end of the fifties and grew up with it in the sixties and the seventies up to around the mid of the eighties. My teenage was with folk music (Occidental but also Asian), classical music, and prog-rock music very often composed by young musicians who had a great classical culture or jazz culture so that for them the most important to produce their music was not crazy modulations with only three of four chords for a song as today but awesome scores with great works on harmony, counterpoint, changes of metric structures, changes of keys, divisions in long works to tell a story (even without lyrics), etc.

I think that today the Occidental music practice has made a huge regression in the writing techniques to focus almost only on sounds and rhythms. A huge progression in the creation of rhythms and in the creation of incredibly beautiful and complex sounds, but a huge regression in the writing techniques and in the complexity of the scores themselves.

Young musicians of today have few common points with the young musicians of the 60s, 70s and first half of the 80s. There is a kind of ditch that has widened between the musical culture of the 60/70/80s and the musical culture of today. Fortunately, a ditch that contains some very beautiful bridges. But a ditch anyway.

It doesn't mean that they can't understand each others... It means that they haven't grown with the same musical culture.

It doesn't mean either that the music of today is a bad music compared with the music of the 60s/70s/80s... It simply means that it is a different music. Certainly as good... but different.

And if we grew with the music of the 70s/80s and with the musical culture of these years where the music theory was preeminent compared to the creation of complex sounds, it is normal to try to keep on finding that kind of music and that kind of sounds. Even if in parallel we can appreciate some musics of today.

There are also lots of young people (not only musicians) who still love the styles of these ancient decades. As they may also love the yet much older Medieval, Renaissance, Classical or Romantic musics.

It is a great mistake to think that all the old analog synths sounded more or less the same. If they were created it is precisely because we had not the same perception of the sounds at these years and we all perceive their sounds very differently. Telling that the analog synths sounded all almost the same is as irrelevant as telling that all the electric guitars sound the same or all the acoustic guitars sound the same or all the drumkits sound the same or all the acoustic pianos sound the same. But there has always been new models of electric guitars, of acoustic guitars, of drumkits, of pianos, etc. And there will always be new ones. Why ? Because they ALL sound different.

Analog synths didn't sound the same. They ALL or almost all had their identities, their character, their new features. Analog synthesis had and still have many things to tell, many different sounds to produce. The analog synthesis is not limited to simply one or two VCOs, one or two filters, and a little bunch of effects. Their were different models of oscillators, different models of filters, etc. And there were already many other features, as different types of ring modulations, different types of cross-modulations, different types of phase modulations, different additional features, different routing paths... and all the possible combinations of all that ! And I talk here only about the subtractive synthesis, we could also talk about the additive synthesis, the creation of sounds by comb filters, etc.

Old musicians (as me) don't piss on the new synthesizers. We simply ask for emulations of the synthesizers we loved when we were young and that in general we couldn't afford. We not necessarily ask for perfect 100% reproduction, we simply ask for the ability to have in our hands some software reproductions of some of those good old synths that we loved to hear when we were young, and even sometimes to play when we were young but which broke down definitively and which remain extremely expensive to purchase today. We also want to make profit of both worlds : the ability to reproduce the music we loved with the hardware instruments we loved but with the benefit of the software plugins of today, as the use of several simultaneous instances in a MIDI score, the use of several simultaneous instruments, the huge enhancements that the software environment features to compose while we had only paper in our teenage, etc.

People always try to keep actual the music styles heard in their teenage. It is perfectly normal. And don't think that it will be different for you, young people of today... it will be the same for you in forty years.

Please, young people... don't think only of yourselves, think also that there are musicians older than you who would like to keep on composing and playing today the music they appreciated in their youth. It is not opposed to appreciate the musics of today.

Thanks.

[e-crooner]

Come on, don't tell me you can't make the music you want to make unless someone makes an emulation of the dinosaur hardware used in the music you listened to decades ago

Musicians are not koalas that die without their eucalyptus leaves, good musicians are omnivores that are able to live with and make the best of whatever is at their disposal.

[BlackWinny]

Sorry to tell you that... but your reply is typically the one of a person who has understood absolutely nothing of what I wrote.

[thecontrolcentre]

People always try to keep actual the music styles heard in their teenage. It is perfectly normal. And don't think that it will be different for you, young people of today... it will be the same for you in forty years.

If that was true I'd still be making punk rock ... we're not all stuck in the past.

[recursive one]

When making actual tracks i mostly use software because it's much more convenient. But i have an old hardware synth, Virus TI, and i love playing with it, making sounds and having fun. To my ears it's the best sounding synth I've ever had or played. The tiny subtleties that set it apart from software probably won't matter much in an actual mix but i know they are there and enjoy them.

I'm younger than you guys, my electronic music honeymoon was the first half of 00s and the sounds they were using still give me goosebumps. So i do understand the desire of having a spot on emulation of this or that hardware synth, it is not about better sound it's about having fun and cherishing our nostalgia.

[e-crooner]

Sorry to tell you that... but your reply is typically the one of a person who has understood absolutely nothing of what I wrote.

I did understand what you wrote, I just don't agree with it.

Good musicians will even perform their synth music unplugged, using acoustic instead of electronic instruments, if necessary.

[BlackWinny]

So be kind to let us ask for emulations of our beloved hardware synths without having to always criticize our preferences. We are right to ask for that.

Thanks.

And no, the analog synths didn't sound each other the same. I wrote why. And there is no need for me to go deeper in these explanations as it is not the subject of this thread.

[abernathy]

When making actual tracks i mostly use software because it's much more convenient. But i have an old hardware synth, Virus TI, and i love playing with it, making sounds and having fun. To my ears it's the best sounding synth I've ever had or played. The tiny subtleties that set it apart from software probably won't matter much in an actual mix but i know they are there and enjoy them.

I'm younger than you guys, my electronic music honeymoon was the first half of 00s and the sounds they were using still give me goosebumps. So i do understand the desire of having a spot on emulation of this or that hardware synth, it is not about better sound it's about having fun and cherishing our nostalgia.

And you can love vintage style instruments and sounds without being “stuck in the past”. That’s like saying Radiohead was stuck in the past when they used Mellotron sounds. Or that I’m stuck in the past because I’m not into Billie Eilish or whatever. I’m curious, do you guys criticizing the love of old synths have contempt for Alessandro Cortini, Vince Clarke, or the Stranger Things soundtracks? Fine if you do - just wondering.

[thecontrolcentre]

And you can love vintage style instruments and sounds without being “stuck in the past”. That’s like saying Radiohead was stuck in the past when they used Mellotron sounds. Or that I’m stuck in the past because I’m not into Billie Eilish or whatever. I’m curious, do you guys criticizing the love of old synths have contempt for Alessandro Cortini, Vince Clarke, or the Stranger Things soundtracks? Fine if you do - just wondering.

I wasn't critisizing old synths. I was referring to the comment that I quoted about people preferring sounds and styles from their youth. I have several old synths in my studio, but I don't make old style music with them. I'm a big fan of Cortini too ...

[e-crooner]

So be kind to let us ask for emulations of our beloved hardware synths without having to always criticize our preferences. We are right to ask for that.

Thanks.

And no, the analog synths didn't sound each other the same. I wrote why. And there is no need for me to go deeper in these explanations as it is not the subject of this thread.

Sure, you can ask for anything you want. Nobody keeps you from doing so...

Nor did I say they all sound the same, but that "they sound pretty much all the same to me. When I want to make a synth bass sound for instance, I can do it with a Moog, Korg, Roland or whatever. The difference is too little to care about."

Take Jump for instance. Van Halen might as well have used a Jupiter 8 or a Prophet instead of the Oberheim, and that riff would have turned out just as famous.

Likewise, if your music sucks, it doesn't matter which synths you use.

[BlackWinny]

Could it be possible on KVR to talk about old synths without having SYSTEMATICALLY persons who piss on those who ask for emulations of old synths ? It is precisely the purpose of THIS THREAD !

There are tons of threads for everybody on KVR !

[e-crooner]

Could it be possible on KVR to talk about old synths without having SYSTEMATICALLY persons who piss on those who ask for emulations of old synths ? It is precisely the purpose of THIS THREAD !

There are tons of threads for everybody on KVR !

In the opening post it says "I wonder if these synths are considered too difficult to emulate properly, or not enough of a market for them (hard to believe)."

This actually touches on the question whether it makes sense to make more emulations. Like, is there enough demand for such emulations? Or do most people just not care whether a synth is an emulation or not?

I assume that many of the people who happily use emulations like Legend or Repro don't even know the original.