24 Synth Supersaw Comparison

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Norqa wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:24 pm
gaggle of hermits wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:59 pm

i think it's just because vital has a larger detuning range than the others - the tones start to line up again. to me, it feels that maximum out of tuneness is around 65% on vital.
Could be.
Perhaps other Synths scale things differently?
Or it could be that Vital simply just doesn't care and does what it wants when it goes out of whack.
vital has a huge maximum detune range if you go into the advanced settings, which is what happened here i think on the "organ sound". so, yes, other synths do scale it differently.

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Norqa wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:03 pm
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:56 am
Cool, thanks. The extreme detune is not supposed to sound good in this context. 😃
Understood but all the other Synths seemed to sound roughly the same at the maximum detune (generally awful as expected) Vital behaved completely differently, almost like some of the harmonics flipped?
Maybe Vital has extra secret sauce? :)
As someone above mentioned. I did indeed set the detune to maximum (as with all). Massive (original) also has the extreme detune settings. Some of them have a very small detune range - I think Ana 2 detune is very tame.

I also noticed Massive X only has 6 voices. In my opinion, this has an effect on the supersaw it can produce.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:17 pm
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:48 am However, there are a couple of synths that really didn't sound as good, especially played higher up.
Did you check for aliasing? If you do a pitch bend in the high register it gets very evident… With supersaw its the nature of the beast to be prone to aliasing…
From my brief test, most synths didn't have much audible aliasing. Expect the JPK6 which has loads of extra bright harmonics, which I guess is aliasing (I don't want a technical conversation about it really). Saying that, I expect it is because the supersaw had aliasing the same which was part of the bright sounds - from my understanding, not trying to teach anything here. :lol:

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Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:00 pm As someone above mentioned. I did indeed set the detune to maximum (as with all). Massive (original) also has the extreme detune settings. Some of them have a very small detune range - I think Ana 2 detune is very tame.

I also noticed Massive X only has 6 voices. In my opinion, this has an effect on the supersaw it can produce.
It was always going to be a rough test and for that I appreciate your efforts.
To drill down further perhaps Dune2 would have been worth a mention?
It has different modes on the Supersaw, Linear, Non Linear, Gaussian and alternate to name some.

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Norqa wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:18 pm
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:00 pm As someone above mentioned. I did indeed set the detune to maximum (as with all). Massive (original) also has the extreme detune settings. Some of them have a very small detune range - I think Ana 2 detune is very tame.

I also noticed Massive X only has 6 voices. In my opinion, this has an effect on the supersaw it can produce.
It was always going to be a rough test and for that I appreciate your efforts.
To drill down further perhaps Dune2 would have been worth a mention?
It has different modes on the Supersaw, Linear, Non Linear, Gaussian and alternate to name some.
He used D3 (has the same modes)

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AnX wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:36 pm

He used D3 (has the same modes)
Yeah that is true Anx.
But none of the modes could be explored in such a simple test.

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Norqa wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:42 pm
AnX wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:36 pm

He used D3 (has the same modes)
Yeah that is true Anx.
But none of the modes could be explored in such a simple test.
That's right, I did mention something about that on the page too. I think it was DUNE 3 linear mode used here. Btw, I personally thought Dune's detune sounded very smooth. I bet it does a great SUPERSTRING?! :hihi:

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This was a lot of fun. Nice thread

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GeneralQ wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 7:48 pm This was a lot of fun. Nice thread
Ah thanks very much! :D Had a lot of fun doing it. Was a lot of work though.

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Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:01 am
HTT wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:29 am I liked this comparison. Thanks for doing it.

I did the blind and then the YouTube version. I liked Diva and Jp6k supersaws the best. Next tier was Serum, original Massive, Spire, and Pigments 3. Next tier was ANA 2, Rapid, PhasePlant, and Zebra 2. And so on…

It seemed the supersynths (Avenger, Dune 3, and Omnisphere) were compressed. I wonder how Falcon would have fared.
Thank you. :) I added no compression and outputs on synths were fairly low so no clipping.
I didn't think you did add compression on those synths. It just seemed to me that they lacked oomph. Maybe missing low end then?

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Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:04 pm
Tj Shredder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:17 pm
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:48 am However, there are a couple of synths that really didn't sound as good, especially played higher up.
Did you check for aliasing? If you do a pitch bend in the high register it gets very evident… With supersaw its the nature of the beast to be prone to aliasing…
From my brief test, most synths didn't have much audible aliasing. Expect the JPK6 which has loads of extra bright harmonics, which I guess is aliasing (I don't want a technical conversation about it really). Saying that, I expect it is because the supersaw had aliasing the same which was part of the bright sounds - from my understanding, not trying to teach anything here. :lol:
JP6K has aliasing. It has specially simulated aliasing of JP8000/8080 which is a godfather of SuperSaws. That synth (original hardware) was used to create the first track that made SuperSaw famous (System F - Out of the blue) :)

Aliasing is actually part of the "classic sound of supersaw". Access Virus quickly became 2nd "best synth" for SuperSaw/HyperSaw. If I remember correctly, Virus has 96k SR so it can avoid (most of) aliasing.
About plugins, I remember that Spire sounded waaaay better in 96k projects (huge audible difference). Today most plugins use oversampling for SuperSaws to avoid aliasing I guess?

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HTT wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:39 pm
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:01 am
HTT wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:29 am I liked this comparison. Thanks for doing it.

I did the blind and then the YouTube version. I liked Diva and Jp6k supersaws the best. Next tier was Serum, original Massive, Spire, and Pigments 3. Next tier was ANA 2, Rapid, PhasePlant, and Zebra 2. And so on…

It seemed the supersynths (Avenger, Dune 3, and Omnisphere) were compressed. I wonder how Falcon would have fared.
Thank you. :) I added no compression and outputs on synths were fairly low so no clipping.
I didn't think you did add compression on those synths. It just seemed to me that they lacked oomph. Maybe missing low end then?
I added or took away nothing. Some just sound different to others. The 2 you say you liked best were mono though.

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pixel85 wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 5:56 am
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:04 pm
Tj Shredder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:17 pm
Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:48 am However, there are a couple of synths that really didn't sound as good, especially played higher up.
Did you check for aliasing? If you do a pitch bend in the high register it gets very evident… With supersaw its the nature of the beast to be prone to aliasing…
From my brief test, most synths didn't have much audible aliasing. Expect the JPK6 which has loads of extra bright harmonics, which I guess is aliasing (I don't want a technical conversation about it really). Saying that, I expect it is because the supersaw had aliasing the same which was part of the bright sounds - from my understanding, not trying to teach anything here. :lol:
JP6K has aliasing. It has specially simulated aliasing of JP8000/8080 which is a godfather of SuperSaws. That synth (original hardware) was used to create the first track that made SuperSaw famous (System F - Out of the blue) :)

Aliasing is actually part of the "classic sound of supersaw". Access Virus quickly became 2nd "best synth" for SuperSaw/HyperSaw. If I remember correctly, Virus has 96k SR so it can avoid (most of) aliasing.
About plugins, I remember that Spire sounded waaaay better in 96k projects (huge audible difference). Today most plugins use oversampling for SuperSaws to avoid aliasing I guess?
Exactly, that is my understanding as well.

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Biome_Digital wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:51 pm
Norqa wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:42 pm
AnX wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:36 pm

He used D3 (has the same modes)
Yeah that is true Anx.
But none of the modes could be explored in such a simple test.
That's right, I did mention something about that on the page too. I think it was DUNE 3 linear mode used here. Btw, I personally thought Dune's detune sounded very smooth. I bet it does a great SUPERSTRING?! :hihi:
IIRC, D3 has a specific osc detune mode that emulates the jp8000 supersaw.... bit fuzzy on the details, and may be wrong....

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AnX wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:24 am IIRC, D3 has a specific osc detune mode that emulates the jp8000 supersaw.... bit fuzzy on the details, and may be wrong....
I think it was Swarm.
I indeed prefer it to other detune modes when it comes to making the classic oldschool "tarnce" stuff.
You may think you can fly ... but you better not try

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