KVR Audio

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:06 am

wagtunes wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:41 pmOdyssey surprises me. I owned one. I hated it. I sold it.

What model did you have? Only the original, white panelled one had that filter and the Rev II & III filters aren't nearly as good. That was the first one I heard, back in 1980 when Magazine toured Australia, and I have lusted after one ever since.

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:15 am

BONES wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:06 am
wagtunes wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:41 pmOdyssey surprises me. I owned one. I hated it. I sold it.
What model did you have? Only the original, white panelled one had that filter and the Rev II & III filters aren't nearly as good. That was the first one I heard, back in 1980 when Magazine toured Australia, and I have lusted after one ever since.

Ah okay, that explains it. I had the Rev II.

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:31 am

Can you make a sweep with the Freq when Res is 0, half way, and full for Obsession? Init with just one osc / Saw.

I did compared (the above way) OBXa V to several synth and the 4 pole is the weakestf among all I tested! 2pl is barely there, so I think OBXa originally had weak resonance. I might do comparison and post it later (but I don't have Obsession to compare).

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:05 am

Yes, Resonance range in OBSession is definitely very restricted but for my needs the 2 Pole covers the sweet spot well enough. Where the other synths in that comparison had their resonance set at 30-50%, OBSession was at 80% to achieve a similar result.

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:12 am

I see. Thanks for the examples. It made me went and tested several synths I have. Some like ARP Odyssey (with Rev I) is really a monster, but also Arturia's Matrix 12 it seems very underrated (by me especially!). I still like a lot the Moog emulations (Legend and Mini V as well).
Anyway, still, the OBXa V can produce wonderful pads and bass, so I expect Obsession to shine with such sounds as well.

Yorrrrrr · Post by **Yorrrrrr** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:15 am

AFAIK, OB-Xa resonance range never was ear piercingly high. And as such, Obsession. It is kind of moderate, but just enough to produce resonant sounds. It's a sweet spot.

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:24 am

So what made the OB Xa such a celebrity? Is it the oscillators and other components?

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:34 am

EnGee wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:24 am So what made the OB Xa such a celebrity? Is it the oscillators and other components?

My guess? It was a poly synth. There weren't many at the time. Famous people used them. Now they're classics.

Not saying it's bad, just pointing out that there weren't a million analog polysynths on the market. And an 8 voice polysynth cost as much as some new cars in 1980.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:02 am

The simple answer is that in it's day it wasn't used the way synths get used today, so the resonance would have been seen as usable all the way to 10, instead of only being usable up to 5 or 6. On the polyphony front, it was the same as Jupiter 8, which came out the same year and, of course, was also hugely popular. From memory they were about the same price, too.

Yorrrrrr · Post by **Yorrrrrr** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:05 am

Yes, I can't use RePro beyond 60% resonance. I don't know how that extreme tinnitus whistling would be useful, it's really harsh and annoying. And these kind of filters suffer too much from losing volume or bass with higher levels of resonance. Not Obsession's 2 pole though. I love it because of this, it's perfect.

EnGee · Post by **EnGee** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:25 am

So does that mean all analogue synths are great each in its way as the uniqueness is the matter of how randomly behaved and in the kind of the imperfection as opposed to the perfect digital synths later. Now, it is the matter of how to capture that randomness with algorithms to emulate that imperfect behaviour and present it to us in a software.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:56 am

Have a listen to my demo thing again and you can hear all of that for yourself. With no detuning, the oscillators should be identical, which would mean none of the phasing you can hear in pretty much all of them. It's probably least obvious in Legend, i.e. the most stable osc of the bunch, and most obvious in Odyssey and Mono/Poly.

With OBSession, there are also differences from voice to voice which are consistent. e.g. If voice 4's tuning is a little sharp, every time voice 4 is heard, it will be a little sharp. It makes the OBSession demos way more interesting because every voice is subtly different and, best of all, Synapse gives you full control over that so it can be as wild or as tame as you want it to be.

Yorrrrrr · Post by **Yorrrrrr** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:59 am

Yes EnGee, it's all about capturing the randomness and imperfections, which gives the sound, character and behavior of analog. In this case, the emulation is about capturing the specific unit of OB-Xa the developer had in hand. A developer can't possibly build an emulation that sounds exactly like every OB-Xa in the world, because every unit is always slightly different, it's all so random and organic in analog..from oscillators, to filters, to envelopes, to polyphonic voices, etc. There may be greater differences between two units of the same hardware, than there is when comparing the plugin to the modeled OB-Xa unit. And if you play a note now, doesn't mean the next is going to sound exactly the same. And maybe tomorrow your analog synth won't seem to sound the same as today...

Synapse did a fine job with this one (as always). It's a beautiful, simple, straightforward modern software interpretation of the Oberheim. Sounds just as great. It feels like a real instrument, like a real synthesizer. I'm sure many of you synth lovers are going to enjoy it

AnX · Post by **AnX** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:40 am

AnX wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:45 pm
BONES wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:10 am

Here's the audio http://www.novakill.com/stuff/EMULATORIES.ogg
Ok, had a quick listen, cant tell you what is what right now, but i can tell you #4 sounds the worst of the bunch...

BONES wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 9:35 pmAnyway, they are:

Odyssey
OBSession
Legend
RePro-1
V-Station
Korg Mono/Poly

so I didn't like Repro....

just had no low end... and I didn't even notice you had Odyssey there.... I didn't have a chance to listen again to try and guess what was what

tony10000 · Post by **tony10000** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 5:46 am

AnX wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:40 am
AnX wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:45 pm
BONES wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:10 am

Here's the audio http://www.novakill.com/stuff/EMULATORIES.ogg
Ok, had a quick listen, cant tell you what is what right now, but i can tell you #4 sounds the worst of the bunch...

BONES wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 9:35 pmAnyway, they are:

Odyssey
OBSession
Legend
RePro-1
V-Station
Korg Mono/Poly
so I didn't like Repro....

just had no low end... and I didn't even notice you had Odyssey there.... I didn't have a chance to listen again to try and guess what was what

I would rather hear them do filter sweeps. That is much more revealing than static sounds.

Upcoming Synapse OB-Xa: Obsession