Why do I seem to like free synths better ?

[Tj Shredder]

what kind of orchestra has a player with a stradivarius in chair one and a 50 quid off amazon in 3rd?

Maybe the 3rd chair accidentally stepped on his Stradivari just before they went on and had to run down to Aldi and get a replacement?.

You obviously lack of experience. You will find Stradivaris only with soloists, there the sound matters. I have a violin I think sounds better than a Stradivari, but I would not be able to play solo to an orchestra (beside the lack of skills), it would not cut through and would be way too soft.
I once bought a cheap electric violin, and without bringing it to a luthier and pay at least five times the price, it would remain unusable…
But I bet an industrial made guitar can be better than a handmade one from an unexperienced luthier. The really expensive instruments are unique in a way an amateur musician would not be able to recognize, unless you sit in the audience listening to your guitar hero and wonder how he gets that emotion and expression across. The secret is an inspiring instrument which seems to have its own life…
Stradivaris do have that property, but only kids might recognize it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... story.html

[nirm123]

what kind of orchestra has a player with a stradivarius in chair one and a 50 quid off amazon in 3rd?

Maybe the 3rd chair accidentally stepped on his Stradivari just before they went on and had to run down to Aldi and get a replacement?.

You obviously lack of experience... The really expensive instruments are unique in a way an amateur musician would not be able to recognize

absolutely true, you need to educate yourself in order to be able to identify such differences, that's part of your growth as a musician.

[dellboy]

For what its worth, and to further complicate matters, Hilary Hahn, one of the worlds top violinist, plays an 1864 violin by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, which is a copy of a 1743 violin by Del Gesu (Guarnerius). Its still possible to pick up a Vuillaume violin for under $200,000, which is a pittance compared to the many millions a real Del Gesu commands.

[dellboy]

You obviously lack of experience. You will find Stradivaris only with soloists, there the sound matters. I have a violin I think sounds better than a Stradivari, but I would not be able to play solo to an orchestra (beside the lack of skills), it would not cut through and would be way too soft.
I once bought a cheap electric violin, and without bringing it to a luthier and pay at least five times the price, it would remain unusable…
But I bet an industrial made guitar can be better than a handmade one from an unexperienced luthier. The really expensive instruments are unique in a way an amateur musician would not be able to recognize, unless you sit in the audience listening to your guitar hero and wonder how he gets that emotion and expression across. The secret is an inspiring instrument which seems to have its own life…

Good post.

What you highlight, for both a violin and guitar, is that its all about the "setup".

[Michael L]

violin comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3ZlqNTAPtU

cello comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TXdkcE09lk

and of course the legendary Yuri Wong who recreates film scores using stock Logic instruments:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Oz1wtO8tkt

[dellboy]

Do you judge the sound of a 60 or 106 without the chorus?

I have a Juno 6, and yes, the chorus is glorious, but it does have a big button to turn it off if you want. So my request to synth designers is a big prominent "global fx" button so that I can turn all the fx at the click of a mouse. I am quite capable of adding my own external fx if I want it.

Oooh you gave it a whole couple of minutes more. How generous! I’m sure in that time you got a full idea of the oscillator modes for the 4 oscillators per voice with gobs of waveform choices, the 6 filter types for the 2 filters per voice, the huge mod matrix, etc. Oddly enough if you look at their preset store there is a lot of EDM stuff there, and a lot of other stuff. It excels at EDM sounds but by no means limited to those.

Drips 80’s and sounds fantastic.

No one said that it does not sound fantastic, its just not the sound I am looking for. I am not that impressed by how many oscillators a thing has and all the other technical stuff, it did not have a decent electric piano and that is my favourite instrument of the moment, so its not for me.

But lets get back to free.

I wish I had not used that word in the title now. Its not about "free", as in beer, but "free", from commercial considerations that go with anything that has to make money for moneys sake. Its just refreshing to use something and enjoy it for what it is, free of hype. And lets not forget that there is a much bigger enemy to free for developers, and that's piracy, something which I would never advocate.

[crickey13]

I honestly don't care even a little bit about updates. In fact, updates are just as likely to ruin a synth as improve it. e.g. I much prefer the original DUNE to v2 or v3 and I used to use Hive quite a bit until it got updated to v2, now I never touch it. Even the firmware update for Uno Synth that allowed me to access both ADSRs from the front panel annoys me because the added functionality no longer matches the labelling on the chassis.

Yeah, a fair point. That would explain my penchant for older plugins like Rhino and Helix. Their development has ended for all intents and purposes and what you see is what you get basically. I wish both would get a GUI update, but other than that, they're perfectly fine. Don't fix what ain't broken.

That being said, I kind of like where Hive seems to be headed now with the new filter modes added to it. The 2.1 update made me pull the trigger.

No, not at all. That part of my post was just my general contribution, not a response to anything in particular.

Ah, okay, makes sense.

[chk071]

They sound so frigging good though.

Maybe in 1% of use-cases but not the other 99% of the time. I don't even know which synths have a ZDF filter, can you point me at one or two?

Free ones: Tyrell N6, TAL-Noisemaker (only the SVF filter), Charlatan... commercial ones: Massive X, Dune 3, all the u-he synths (except Zebra), Monark, Viper. There are more, but, those are just the ones I remember now.

From what I understood, it makes it easier for developers to implement realistic analog filter behavior. In which way, I can't tell. But, from my experience, of course depending on which filter is modelled exactly, they have a better resonant behavior, and respond quicker to modulation.

Also, from what I understand, ZDF is not a guarantee that a filter sounds good or not though. You can make good and shitty filters, just like with any other method you apply, I guess. If I understood it correctly, it simply makes analog modelling easier.

[Russell Grand]

Because you didn't have to fork over any hard-earned cash.

[BONES]

If that were the case nobody would have done it. Everyone did. Jupiter-8, king of vintage, doesn’t sound all that great without effects. None of them do.

You are just proving the opposite point here. You're right, things sound better with effects but that doesn't mean they have to be, or are even best placed, with the instrument itself. As Dellboy says, he can add effects himself, he doesn't need them to be part of the synth, which is why he finds freebies with no effects work well for him. It's a very simple proposition, well enunciated. I don't see how there can be any argument about it.

Do you judge the sound of a 60 or 106 without the chorus?

Yes, why wouldn't you? I don't even think much of the Juno's chorus. It does the job but I can think of better ways to process the raw sound.

Oooh you gave it a whole couple of minutes more. How generous! I’m sure in that time you got a full idea of the oscillator modes for the 4 oscillators per voice with gobs of waveform choices, the 6 filter types for the 2 filters per voice, the huge mod matrix, etc.

You say all that as though those things are desirable but what you describe to me are things that would put me off downloading the demo.

Drips 80’s and sounds fantastic.

Which is it? It can't be both. OK, after listening to the first minute, it's definitely very 80s, it doesn't sound fantastic.

Diva is an analog emulation, Spire is not. I own both. Different synths totally.

Wait on, a minute ago you were saying how good it is at vintage sounds, now you say it can't be compared to a vintage emulation. Which is it? Again, it can't be both.

The only true freebie out there that really is anything like Spire is Surge which definitely gives Spire a run for its money.

Does it not occur to you that the attraction to freebies might be that they are nothing like Spire? That said, I'd be surprised if Vital couldn't mix it with Spire.

[Vortifex]

Edited

[BONES]

Sounded like a violin to me.

Watch again and listen more closely. I could hear the difference on my freaking ipad.

Both sounded like violins to me and in an orchestra with 32 of 'em in a nice big hall, the cheapo would be fine.

Would you hear one cheap violin among a group of expensive ones? Probably not in the setting of a full orchestra.

OK, so you agree with me. Nice to know.

The really expensive instruments are unique in a way an amateur musician would not be able to recognize, unless you sit in the audience listening to your guitar hero and wonder how he gets that emotion and expression across. The secret is an inspiring instrument which seems to have its own life…

All just wank to me and completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is about FREE PLUGINS.

absolutely true, you need to educate yourself in order to be able to identify such differences, that's part of your growth as a musician.

I 'm not a musician's arsehole and have absolutely no interest in becoming one. As I said above, it's all just wankery as far as I'm concerned and all this shit you people are spewing confirms it.

Free ones: Tyrell N6, TAL-Noisemaker (only the SVF filter), Charlatan... commercial ones: Massive X, Dune 3, all the u-he synths, Monark, Viper. There are more, but, those are just the ones I remember now.

I own some of those and I can't say there is anything at all special about Tyrell N6's filter and there are only a very few filter types in DUNE that I like so I can't see why I'd care about it.

But, from my experience, of course depending on which filter is modelled exactly, they have a better resonant behavior, and respond quicker to modulation.

Neither of those things are likely. Resonant behaviour is much more about filter design. e.g. Compare a Moog Ladder filter to an Oberheim SEM filter. ZDF or not, they behave very differently. Response, of course, will always be immediate.

[jasonekratz]

But lets get back to free.

I wish I had not used that word in the title now. Its not about "free", as in beer, but "free", from commercial considerations that go with anything that has to make money for moneys sake. Its just refreshing to use something and enjoy it for what it is, free of hype. And lets not forget that there is a much bigger enemy to free for developers, and that's piracy, something which I would never advocate.

Except many people like to make money doing the things they like to do and for the consumer that, hopefully, brings a lot of benefits. I use and enjoy all of the stuff I have. I have it for a reason and none of it has to do with hype. Sure, if there is hype for something I'll be more likely to try it out but thats where the hype machine ends for me. As to piracy? Well yeah thats a problem but I haven't heard of anyone going out of business because of it yet.

To mention once more the two most prominent free synths out there right now: Surge and Vital. Vital isn't truly free, as noted already the developer is hoping people like the base version enough they're willing to pay a subscription fee for everything else. Surge was a commercial product and it shows. It's fortunate that now there is a dedicated team of people willing to put in the time to keep it moving forward free of charge.

Anyhow, I won't keep hounding you on this. At the end of the day use what you like, that's all that matters.

[vurt]

I 'm not a musician's arsehole

are you a different part of a musician?
or a different kind of arsehole?

[mystran]

But, from my experience, of course depending on which filter is modelled exactly, they have a better resonant behavior, and respond quicker to modulation.

Neither of those things are likely. Resonant behaviour is much more about filter design. e.g. Compare a Moog Ladder filter to an Oberheim SEM filter. ZDF or not, they behave very differently. Response, of course, will always be immediate.

The whole ZDF-thing has become a popular buzzword, but it's really not magic at all. Rather it is simply about using convergent, consistent, implicit numerical integration, typically using the trapezoidal rule. In comparison to older filters build using various kinds of ad-hoc hacks, the goal of the "ZDF" approach is to rely on well-founded mathematics.

If we further combine a method such as trapezoidal integration with a convergent numerical scheme for solving non-linearities (which is not a requirement for "ZDF" as such), then in some sense we get the mathematically correct continuous-time behaviour for the model as we decrease the time-step to zero (that is, increase the sampling rate to infinity).

Note that this doesn't say anything about the accuracy of the (mathematical) model, but rather about the numerical implementation. By using well-founded numerical integration methods, we get to worry less about things like implementation stability and more about improving the accuracy of the (mathematical) model itself.

The underlined part is the important part: ZDF is no silver bullet, because it's not the numerical integration scheme, but rather the underlying mathematical model that ultimately gives you a certain sort of behaviour. ZDF (ie. trapezoidal integration typically) just means that the actual implementations tend to be closer to the desired mathematical model, so one can spend ones time on improving the model instead and not worry about things like inconsistent resonance peaks due to additional phase-shifts that are not part of the target model at all.