Arturia Pigments 3 is out!

[Arashi]

Yeah.. you would think that is the case. I too have been told my ears are shot from my days of playing live. But I can hear the difference. I have also been told some interfaces, plugins and VSTs actually work better at 96 than at 44. 96 might have been the SR they were designed to work in. using anything lower makes them less optimized. Only thing you can do is try it and see if its true in your case.

I found this really interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCwIsT0X8M

[Watchful]

Anyone else having incredible difficulty with Arturia's site? I'm getting time out errors and invalid SSL warnings trying to download the update, and their software center app keeps freezing on download.

[Teksonik]

Hmmm I just got this when trying to download the Pigments installer:

Arturia 050321-1.png

I was able to log in to my account without a problem and the ASC downloaded fine.

[Watchful]

That's also happening to me.

[telecode]

I found this really interesting:

yeah. i am aware of that video. they have some great ones in that play list. I personally take the approach of "do I hear and difference and does it matter to me?" i don't recall hearing that much of a different when i switched my projects working from 44 to 48 SR. but i did hear a difference when going to 96.

[EnGee]

What I know, if the plugin eliminates most of the aliasing, then I don't see a point in using a sample rate higher than 44.1/48 kHz. For me it's just a waste of energy and space.

To be honest, I don't hear a difference above 44.1 kHz. Is the sound quality of the CD is not enough?!

Use good plugins that don't introduce aliasing that much, otherwise go analogue (everything from synths to the mixing/summing console!

[pixel85]

"Macos is better than Windows because I have Mac!"
"I recognize only 16 colours so everyone who is using Pantone should stop it immediately!"

How this topic changed into another "I THIS so you should do the same!"

Let people use higher sample rates if they want. You don't have to. Do what you like but please don't give silly 'advice' like "go analogue", just because you want others to use 44.1kHz. It's not like they're recording on your hard drive.

[EnGee]

Going analogue is not a silly advice as much as your 96k! I'm not holding a gun into your head if you want to use 96k! Go use 192k and be super clever (who cares!)

[chk071]

What I know, if the plugin eliminates most of the aliasing, then I don't see a point in using a sample rate higher than 44.1/48 kHz. For me it's just a waste of energy and space.

Same here.

Let people use higher sample rates if they want.

I don't quite understand where you got the idea from that someone would force you not to do so?

[Arashi]

Go use 192k and be super clever (who cares!)

384 kHz or bust! (Believe it or not, that's actually a thing now.)

Around 20 years ago there was also a competing technology called DSD (alternative to PCM) that encodes digital audio at only 1-bit, but with a sample rate around 2.8 MHz. There was a lot of arguing about which was better (which I don't understand at all), but it sort of faded away like Betamax.

[pixel85]

Going analogue is not a silly advice as much as your 96k! I'm not holding a gun into your head if you want to use 96k! Go use 192k and be super clever (who cares!)

Costs of going to 96k = $0
Costs of changing plugins and instruments to hardware/analog = thousands of dollars + requirement of a lot of space and additional maintenance.
Great advice!

Apparently you care. Otherwise you wouldn't tell people what they should do.

[pixel85]

What I know, if the plugin eliminates most of the aliasing, then I don't see a point in using a sample rate higher than 44.1/48 kHz. For me it's just a waste of energy and space.

Same here.

Let people use higher sample rates if they want.

I don't quite understand where you got the idea from that someone would force you not to do so?

"Use good plugins that don't introduce aliasing that much, otherwise go analogue (everything from synths to the mixing/summing console!"

Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. But tell me, if somebody doesn't care about what others do (X), then why would he or she tell others to do something else (Y) instead?

It's like somebody would say "I don't care about you using Windows but go use Linux or MacOS instead!".

[EnGee]

Go use 192k and be super clever (who cares!)

384 kHz or bust! (Believe it or not, that's actually a thing now.)

Around 20 years ago there was also a competing technology called DSD (alternative to PCM) that encodes digital audio at only 1-bit, but with a sample rate around 2.8 MHz. There was a lot of arguing about which was better (which I don't understand at all), but it sort of faded away like Betamax.

You got me on this

Yes, I read about it. It was by Korg (the DSD thing)? I also didn't understand what they mean by 1-bit!!
Technologies are coming and go, but our ears are not evolving that fast! I mean maybe if we do music at 384kHz, some "very" evolved Aliens would contact us and make a contract with us for their planets? Possible. We can maybe do like Beethoven, we make music without hearing it

[WasteLand]

for normal use, 44.100/16 is enough, in a studio it is another situation, bit depth: summing, rounding errors, and yes a higher sample rate, makes a sound sometimes better, but oversampling is always preferred, in my humble opinion.

SACD is the one bit thing, i guess.. never heard it. don't have a SACD. but a high end system. which can play, one DAC, at 24bit/192Khz. the difference isn't there, even if it is a 'master', i.e. a render from a DAW.

but my opinion.

Pigments, i remember that a MPE patch that worked pretty well, after some update, still Pigments 2, had problems playing.
yes 256 grains (2 times...). and MPE... still playable.

the Teksonik patch, gives more than 100% (on a windows system...), but is still playable, no noticable, but not optimal conditions now, with setting partials to 256. this is on a system, a laptop, so never optimal, and with no asio soundinterface connected at this moment. (48.000 Khz, 480 sample buffer, not asio, wasapi... standalone...).

Pigments eats CPU for breakfast. yes. but you don't need 512 partials, or sometimes.. there are other ways to achieve the same result.

still i feel Pigments 3 can be optimized. if i am right, Arturia uses Juce, not a bad 'framework', i don't know how the Harmonic engine works, FFT based, or and array of oscillators... my feeling is the latter, SIMD can handle a lot (also a problem with FFT..).

and of course it can't pre-render anything, with all the modulation capabilities.

(o the cheapest option for 'oversampling', if a VST plugin does not have it, but some VST plugins uses a fixed sample rate, so project settings to 96Khz or oversampling wrappers don't do the trick. element kushview, 2 dollars..)

[imrae]

The DSD/1-bit thing isn't as mad or exotic as it sounds, because a lot of traditional PCM ADCs use similar delta-sigma encoding to an oversampled 1-bit stream - before converting that to a multi-bit signal. Choosing whether to have the ADC convert to a multi-bit stream or do that conversion later is a bit like choosing to photograph in TIFF vs RAW.