Have Modern VST Instruments Replaced Your Hardware Synths ?

[zerocrossing]

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.

I'd like to see a spectrogram of Repro's aliasing

Then go look at one.

[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.

It's pretty close though, isn't it? I mean, if you take the Blue Monark filter in MX, for example, the filter sounds a bit better in Monark, might have more or different non-linearities, but, with MX, you get gazillions of voices (which you won't get in analog anyway), so, yeah, if you want, that's compromised due to the size and feature set of the synth.

Might be better to compare with actual emulations, like Monark, RePro, Oberhausen, whatever. At least I would talk about such plugins, when we ask the question how much developers compromise, and where plugins would be if developers wouldn't compromise. (Again, I don't think that's really the primary thinking in such soft synths. At some point, it also gets so complex that you have to ask yourself whether you want to implement every weird fart an analog devices does, to get a "believable" sound. Capturing every single thing going on in the physical world isn't possible anyway.)

Oh, I totally agree, and when I say that RePro’s distortion aliases, it’s definitely usable in a lot of the range and I’ve gotten some super fat bass out of it, no doubt, but the topic is whether or not software can replace hardware, you can’t ignore artifacts that are clearly audible in the basic range of a 61 key controller. Of course, the OG Prophet 5 and Pro One had no distortion at all, so it’s all bonus anyway, but the Prophet 6 does have analog distortion and you can run a lead line all the way up and it sounds harmonically rich and sweet all the way.

I totally get that we’re talking about edge cases and extremes in this conversation and it’s easy to say, “well who uses those types of things?” The answer is, “me.” I use them, and fairly frequently. I also still think that the Prophet 6 has a beautiful “open” sound, where RePro sounds a bit more closed. That can be a double edged sword, as I’ve had to EQ the 6 to make it fit better in a dense mix, especially with guitars, where RePro seems to need less of that type of thing. Software in general seems to be a bit easier to mix, IMO, though I often hear people say the exact opposite. Most of my stuff doesn’t have a lot going on in it, though, so a big sounding instrument can shine without stepping on a thousand tracks of Serum. I’m always still thinking like I’m in a 4 or 5 piece band. That’s how I roll.

[zerocrossing]

Presswerk and satin’s dist. algo isn’t per voice either
These are stereo processors , processing left/right.

That’s what I was pointing out, though maybe I didn’t make it clear. RePro has to deal with pushing the filter, the distortion (per voice) and the Velvet saturation. For what it’s doing, it’s admirable, but if I compare it to my Peak, which has all of those gain features, including per voice distortion, you don’t get any digital artifacts at all. Maybe that isn’t important, and of course you can make great sounding music without those features, but if you use them like I do, it’s nice to have actual analog.

[excuse me please]

Multi-core processing is factually based on the Dunning-Kruger effect. Nerds are simply not that smart.

[_leras]

You don't have to go expensive or look that far to find some pretty nice hardware sounds, that vsti are still not quite there for.

[excuse me please]

Am really considering to purchase some Korgies. After months of pop and clicks I maybe want more stability during the creative process.
Now I'm into production, unwanted delay is not what I'm after.

[ScrLk]

If they had modern rack mount Korg workstations...

[chk071]

Now I'm into production, unwanted delay is not what I'm after.

If you are like me, then having to bounce everything is quite the opposite of a fast workflow...

At least with plugins, you have the choice whether you want to bounce when you get crackling or not.

[Cro-magnon]

For me the first I use something is because it sounds good,before it is faster.

[BONES]

Oh, I totally agree, and when I say that RePro’s distortion aliases, it’s definitely usable in a lot of the range and I’ve gotten some super fat bass out of it, no doubt, but the topic is whether or not software can replace hardware, you can’t ignore artifacts that are clearly audible in the basic range of a 61 key controller.

Why not, when you are willing to ignore so many of the drawbacks of hardware? As you point out, the topic is whether or not software can replace hardware, not whether it can sound identical or not. This bullshit about not being able to recreate a specific patch from a specific hardware synth in one specific softsynth is just that - bullshit. It's entirely irrelevant because most of us would rather put up with a tiny bit of barely noticeable aliasing in very specific, largely avoidable, situations if it means not having to spend an evening (and then $100) chasing down mains hum problems or dealing with all the other limitations of hardware. And remember, I still own plenty of hardware so it's not like I think hardware is shit, it's just that I have no problem acknowledging that there is no way in which it cannot be 100% replaced by software and that my choice to keep buying it is purely down to me being a bit nostalgic and wanting to look the part on stage.

Of course, the OG Prophet 5 and Pro One had no distortion at all, so it’s all bonus anyway, but the Prophet 6 does have analog distortion and you can run a lead line all the way up and it sounds harmonically rich and sweet all the way.

I can run RePro 5 "all the way up" and it still sounds fine to me. With the soft clip turned all the way up, the sound becomes ear-piercingly shrill long before I can detect any aliasing. to 99.99% of listeners, that would simply be the way that synth sounded, not a problem with the sound.

[EnGee]

You don't have to go expensive or look that far to find some pretty nice hardware sounds, that vsti are still not quite there for.

I had the MiniBrute 2. I liked it, but not love it (especially after about a week or so). It wasn't easy to reach the sound that I really want. In the end, I sold it. I liked the software RePro more to be honest and found it more useful for me.

Anyway, I have spent some time with Massive X yesterday starting from init and I could reach great results
The PM, feedback and routing beside the effects, can lead to crazy results. Possibly, it can't do everything but neither any piece of hardware! I'm intending to invest more and more in learning it as I believe it is damn capable but easy and fast to do various complex sounds when you know its functions well

[excuse me please]

Now I'm into production, unwanted delay is not what I'm after.

If you are like me, then having to bounce everything is quite the opposite of a fast workflow...

At least with plugins, you have the choice whether you want to bounce when you get crackling or not.

I do not bounce. I just export everything to wav. Far better than bouncing, because I can still adjust the sound of every synth.

[Cro-magnon]

What's the problem with RePro? Here are two instances of RePro 5, each playing a 3 note chord on my laptop. The interesting thing to note is that Studio One reports 29% CPU usage, whereas Task Manager says it's really only 6.6%. That's just 1.1% of my available CPU power per voice. It's nothing so I don't quite see why everyone is making such a fuss.

For some reason the image wasn't displaying in the post, so click on the link to see it.
http://novakill.com/stuff/RePro_CPU.jpg

Your cpu meter in your DAW is the realtime performance,but that not necessarily reflects the cpu in task manager.I'm not skilled in computers enough to explain the fine details of this,but I've read that the cpu meter in the DAW takes other things than the cpu in consideration,such as your ASIO drivers.
If one of the cpu's cores is overloaded,your cpu meter in your DAW will hit 100% when in task manager the cpu in way less loaded because 7 cores are still available,for example.

[v1o]

You don't have to go expensive or look that far to find some pretty nice hardware sounds, that vsti are still not quite there for.

BeepStreet synths can do those mono sounds. Have a look at Zeeon, Drambo and Dagger. Also have a look at Cadmium even though it isn't VA it can do beefy basses.

[_leras]

You don't have to go expensive or look that far to find some pretty nice hardware sounds, that vsti are still not quite there for.

BeepStreet synths can do those mono sounds. Have a look at Zeeon, Drambo and Dagger. Also have a look at Cadmium even though it isn't VA it can do beefy basses.

They seem to sound pretty good, definitely in the direction of that micro brute.

A real shame that they don't run on a PC so I could check them out properly.