Have Modern VST Instruments Replaced Your Hardware Synths ?

[BBFG#]

My primary axe is still my Korg M3 - it’s was improved by primarily software expanders (sound sets) released back in the day - it’s a good reliable all-rounder as a gigging instrument; but it’s no Kronos - and never will it be.

I have a Kronos and the M3 (with the Radias expansion). Some things just sound better on the M3. The one I have considered selling is Kronos. Now I also have a rack Radias and the N5 (not ex). And while I've considered selling them also, decide against it after a even a quick play. I admit the N5 is probably the most sentimental since it is such a gig-workhorse. Small size with good feeling keys and aftertouch. I've literally played parties that seemed to be little more than a one night crack-den for the affluent with it - and it keeps on kicking. I also love that it boots in seven seconds. I haven't used it in recording for years except as an additional controller.
But I really suggest holding on to your M3. It sounds different than the Kronos and the Legacy software.

The other hardware I wouldn't let go of willingly is my V-Synth-GT and R70. For me, both of those feel like the last great things that company produced.

[goldenanalog]

A good friend of mine that makes his living restoring classic analogs has a Radias rack-mount that he dearly loves - AND even tho this isn’t really a necessary thing: the build quality of both the radius and the M3 (according to him - he’s seen the internals of quite a few synths) is BETTER then the Kronos.

I’m not selling my M3 - I was just using that as a “real-world” example of a hardware upgrade path versus a software upgrade path. My M3 also has the radius card and memory expansion chip that I use to hold the extra free sounds that Korg gave us; in addition to some of my own custom samples.

[goldenanalog]

Yeah: would def hold onto your GT! I have an XT that I won’t get rid of either. Hell no.

That’s one synth where there have been many requests to create a vsti. Probably won’t happen anytime soon, tho.

[v1o]

Just for fun, I pulled up RePro and tried to replicate the first factory (though tweaked) preset on my Prophet 6. There’s no way to do it. Sound aside, Repro doesn’t have the features and flexibility to achieve this pretty simple sound. No sub oscillator and no way to assign aftertouch to LFO amount were the features missing. So, while y’all are exalting software instruments for their superior functionality, in this simple case, software fails. Could Urs add it and not blow up CPU usage? Probably not. It’s already pretty high, and if he had to calculate another analog filter, and especially the fact that it can be modulated at audio rate in the poly mod section, it would most likely bring even the best CPUs to their knees.

You were going about things the wrong way. Why don't you limit yourself to a patch that only uses features that are also available on the Prophet 5.

Of course, if that had never happened, I’d happily be making music using whatever, but I feel super lucky to have it and it has nothing to do with the look or feel of it, as it’s a horrible interface and it’s under my desk in a rack next to the ATC, so I don’t even see it. I edit it with the software editor and to me it’s like a VST... but the best sounding VST I have.

Modal's new synths as of the past few years are all digital synths. Surely they'd still be making analogue synths if they were better.

[PieBerger]

Modal's new synths as of the past few years are all digital synths. Surely they'd still be making analogue synths if they were better.

My guess is that they actually want to sell some units and they probably figured that it's easier to sell eight £500 synths to eight people or even an Argon and a Cobalt to the same customer/s than one £4k synth to a single customer.

[zerocrossing]

Here’s an anecdote....

good story, and good job avoiding the point...

Wait, are you alluding that this thread has a point?

[zerocrossing]

Just for fun, I pulled up RePro and tried to replicate the first factory (though tweaked) preset on my Prophet 6. There’s no way to do it. Sound aside, Repro doesn’t have the features and flexibility to achieve this pretty simple sound. No sub oscillator and no way to assign aftertouch to LFO amount were the features missing. So, while y’all are exalting software instruments for their superior functionality, in this simple case, software fails. Could Urs add it and not blow up CPU usage? Probably not. It’s already pretty high, and if he had to calculate another analog filter, and especially the fact that it can be modulated at audio rate in the poly mod section, it would most likely bring even the best CPUs to their knees.

You were going about things the wrong way. Why don't you limit yourself to a patch that only uses features that are also available on the Prophet 5.

Because the question is “have modern VST instruments replaced your hardware synths?” I was illustrating how that answer was a clear “no.” There is nothing that sounds as good as RePro (and like a Prophet 5/6) that has the functionality of the Prophet 6. Therefore, IMO, it can not be replaced.

Of course, if that had never happened, I’d happily be making music using whatever, but I feel super lucky to have it and it has nothing to do with the look or feel of it, as it’s a horrible interface and it’s under my desk in a rack next to the ATC, so I don’t even see it. I edit it with the software editor and to me it’s like a VST... but the best sounding VST I have.

Modal's new synths as of the past few years are all digital synths. Surely they'd still be making analogue synths if they were better.

If you do a bit of digging, you’d find out that at some point one of Modal’s top designers left the company, so I don’t think it has anything to do with what they think is “better.” In all honesty, I never found their all analog synth, the 008 to be to my personal taste. (Though I did recently hear some stuff that somewhat changed my mind.) I’ve followed all their digital releases too, and while I think everything they make sounds great, nothing has grabbed my attention like the 002. It would have been way cheaper for me to buy the Argon and the Cobalt and have money to spare, but this year I went with a PolyBrute because the sound was exciting, and the morphing abilities very interesting.

[AnX]

Here’s an anecdote....

good story, and good job avoiding the point...

Wait, are you alluding that this thread has a point?

well.... ok....


let's finish it up by saying..... all together now...


I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE ALL WRONG!

happy friday

[e-crooner]

I wonder how much better the sound of plugins could already be if developers wouldn't have to think of the CPU load at all, as if every customer had a Cray at home.

[vurt]

I wonder how much better the sound of plugins could already be if developers wouldn't have to think of the CPU load at all, as if every customer had a Cray at home.

reggie or ronnie?

[zerocrossing]

I wonder how much better the sound of plugins could already be if developers wouldn't have to think of the CPU load at all, as if every customer had a Cray at home.

I think we could close the gap, if not totally eliminate it. There was this one back-and-forth between Urs Heckman and I, where I posited that Diva’s filter FM sounded rather muted and dull, in comparison to RePro’s. He got quite angry at me and yelled and stamped around the forum a bit, but then after he calmed down, he did concede that he cut some corners so that Diva could hit a 16 voice count and still be kind to the average CPU of the time it was released. I never meant it as an insult, just an observation. There’s generally always a price for audio quality, though one could surmise that audio character is free. I’m usually willing to sacrifice some ideal sonic quality for things that are interesting. I bought a physical modeled cello this Christmas and it’s f’n ridiculous sounding... but also maxes out my i7. I work in the video game world and it’s always a struggle to make something look like movie quality effects, but the truth is, those movies are made with render farms and often a single frame of a movie can take hours or even days to render.

The scene in which Elsa walks out onto the balcony of her newly constructed ice palace is 218 frames long, and includes the film's longest frame to render. The single frame took more than 132 hours to render (that's more than five days).

So, it seems like CPU power isn’t quite making the leaps it once was... so it’s hard to say when a new consumer grade computer can really make a huge difference. I am getting the feeling that my machine needs an upgrade. Maybe in April for my birthday, I’ll assess. Like I said earlier, I was able to match the quality of my Modal 002 using DS’s Diversion, but I could only get a voice or two out of it because I had the oversampling cranked up. Now... could I replace the character of the 002 in software? Hard to say. It does this thing they call “pole morphing” where you can sweep the filter between 24dB per octave, through band pass to one pole 6dB per octave. There’s also a very good sounding per voice transistor overdrive and a “DeRez” down sampling effect that has a very unique sound compared to other bit crushers.

My “plan” is to keep things as they are, because it’s not hurting anyone in any way, but if things change drastically, like we move to a home with less space, I have no doubt that I’d considerably lighten my hardware synth load... maybe altogether. Having hardware is a luxury, no doubt. I’ll indulge myself until I no longer can.

[chk071]

I wonder how much better the sound of plugins could already be if developers wouldn't have to think of the CPU load at all, as if every customer had a Cray at home.

My guess: Not much. There are already developers which don't comprise much (NI, u-he). I also would say that sound quality is also always up to the skills of the developers. I don't think any developer develops deliberately compromised sounding plugins.

[zerocrossing]

I wonder how much better the sound of plugins could already be if developers wouldn't have to think of the CPU load at all, as if every customer had a Cray at home.

My guess: Not much. There are already developers which don't comprise much (NI, u-he). I also would say that sound quality is also always up to the skills of the developers. I don't think any developer develops deliberately compromised sounding plugins.

Some things seem to come down purely to throwing CPU cycles at it. Since RePro is getting bandied about here a lot, for good reason, it sounds fantastic, you can hear for yourself that for the distortion effects, they sound great low on the scale, but as you go up, they get more and more shrill as they start aliasing. Obviously, Urs knows how to write a saturation algorithm that doesn’t alias (just listen to the saturation in Presswerk and Satin) but they had to make cuts somewhere, and there you have it. Other plugins, like Massive X have beautiful sounding distortion, but it’s not per voice and the rest of the synthesis engine isn’t trying to model the behavior of analog synths.

[AnX]

He got quite angry at me and yelled and stamped around the forum a bit, but then after he calmed down...

he's done that a few times, i think he struggles to understand that most ppl are not geeks, most are making innocent suggestions etc etc..... I guess sometimes he takes it personally.... he's very passionate

tbh, im surprised he stays as calm as he does, given the amount of same old same old stuff that gets thrown at him....

[audiouser720]

I wonder how much better the sound of plugins could already be if developers wouldn't have to think of the CPU load at all, as if every customer had a Cray at home.

My guess: Not much. There are already developers which don't comprise much (NI, u-he). I also would say that sound quality is also always up to the skills of the developers. I don't think any developer develops deliberately compromised sounding plugins.

Some things seem to come down purely to throwing CPU cycles at it. Since RePro is getting bandied about here a lot, for good reason, it sounds fantastic, you can hear for yourself that for the distortion effects, they sound great low on the scale, but as you go up, they get more and more shrill as they start aliasing. Obviously, Urs knows how to write a saturation algorithm that doesn’t alias (just listen to the saturation in Presswerk and Satin) but they had to make cuts somewhere, and there you have it. Other plugins, like Massive X have beautiful sounding distortion, but it’s not per voice and the rest of the synthesis engine isn’t trying to model the behavior of analog synths.

Are you saying that U=he Satin is a software saturation that doesn't alias at all? Can I ask you in what sample rate have you tried it and how far have you pushed it?