Why do people here hate on cherry audio?

[Lazarus451]

If they update to better gui's, I'm a fan. Mostly emulation comparisons are boring. If someone can hear "brighter upper harmonics" compared to Arturia and "analog warmth" here or there I'm sure they can post and reproduce blind tests with all the data. I still enjoy Starsky Carr's videos though. I'm not saying that there isn't differences in Moog emulations for example. But taking random sounds and judging the synth used blindly is not going to be easy.

[Tj Shredder]

But taking random sounds and judging the synth used blindly is not going to be easy.

If its not easy, its not relevant…
I simply ignore hate/stupidity. Its not my problem…

[Lazarus451]

Well, I'm too old to have strong opinions about anything

Maybe my artist name could be Blurred Genre Lines or Emulates Whatever

[zerocrossing]

If they update to better gui's, I'm a fan. Mostly emulation comparisons are boring. If someone can hear "brighter upper harmonics" compared to Arturia and "analog warmth" here or there I'm sure they can post and reproduce blind tests with all the data. I still enjoy Starsky Carr's videos though. I'm not saying that there isn't differences in Moog emulations for example. But taking random sounds and judging the synth used blindly is not going to be easy.

I don’t ever base my opinion on emulation accuracy. I simply took Mercury 4 and went step by step making a pretty basic sound, as I did the same with Jupiter 4. The Roland plugin sounded rich and lush throughout the building of the patch. Going all the way up my 61 key controller, I got a strong clear sound. The Mercury 4 plugin, who I was matching in volume and filter cutoff with a spectrum analyzer, sounded weak and harsh. I remember thinking, “anyone who can’t tell the quality difference between these plugins has a hearing problem.”

I urge you to try it. Just do a simple filter sweep with different resonance levels. Try it at different cutoff amounts. Then try it with different amplifier levels. If you walk away thinking the Cherry Audio plugin is in the same league, I urge you to see an audiologist as soon as you can.

Is the Jupiter 4 plugin perfect? Nope. I still hate that Roland doesn’t really have a preset browser, or allow for things like simple aftertouch. This is where Roland really fails, big time. I can’t really complain about the sound, but they definitely stop at adding velocity and an effects processor (also very good sounding) on their instruments. Cherry let’s you use it in a modular system, so that’s huge, but again, if you have the CPU cycles to spare, Softube Modular, Reaktor Blocks or VCV Rack (free for the stand-alone, but I highly recommend buying the Vult collection) are going to blow it away.

[wwjd]

I've never had a TONE or a SOUND affect my ability to craft an interesting and listenable song. Everyone is different.

I demo, try, and buy most of CA's stuff, and enjoy it a lot. After someone notices it is not PERFECT, that should be the end of it, but to keep bringing it up every time is pointless. WE KNOW it's not perfect - very few are. They're still a lot of funa nd sound great.

[zerocrossing]

Most people (and the vast majority don't own the hardware) seemed to think the Roland Cloud Juno-106 is a near perfect emulation or something, and it's...just not. I'm guessing they just heard the chorus sound. Meanwhile the Arturia Jun-6, which actually sounds more Juno-like minus the chorus (I've owned both 6 and 106) gets ignored by many simply because it's Arturia who "make bad emulations". Maybe also because there is a large swath of firum-goers (who don't actually make music) that do a 30-second demo of a synths filter at high resonance values and use that as the main determination of a synths worth. There are soother folks that think sampling a waveform from an analog synth is all you need to perfectly recreate the sound of an analog oscillator.

Point is, what sometimes feels like general consensus on some forums or in some threads, is sometimes absolute bullcrap.

The Juno 106 was my first synth, so while I can say I'm familiar with it, that was in the 80s, and I haven't touched one since... maybe 88 or so. So, I'm not going to say anything about accuracy, nor do I really care. When I buy any instrument, I assess it on its own merits and sound, not how close it is to something else.

I've assessed that the Cherry Audio synths don't sound very good. You bring up the Arturia stuff being crap, and that's what they sort of remind me of. The old Arturia stuff before they got they started doing good work. So, 2005 Arturia. That's what Cherry Audio sounds like to me.

Some of the old Arturia stuff sounds awesome IMO. If I could still access the V2 Jupiter I might use it more than the newest version. I would 100% take V2 (which I'm not even sure sounded much like a Jupiter) over V3.

Home - Resonance was made with a single old Arturia synth IIRC (I think it might have been the Minimoog emulation everyone complains about?) and that's been streamed well over 100 million times and has some awesome sounding patches in it. I liked the sounds in that song before I knew how it was made.

By the time Jupiter 8 (now Jup-8) came about, their quality had bumped up a bit I think if you bought the old plugins, you can still download and use them, if memory serves. I see them in the Arturia Software app… I think. I did use it a lot, because I liked what I could do with the Galaxy Modulator, which they sadly removed from Jup-8. I wish they’d add that back in.

I know I’m coming off as a cork-sniffing snob, but as someone who was a bottom feeder, in terms of music gear (well most everything… ) for most of my life, I know you don’t have to have the best to get good sounding tunes. For the year I lived in California in the 80s, I gigged with a small solid state Marshall combo amp and my only synth was a Korg Poly-800. The band I played with laughed at me when I showed up to the audition, but then they all remarked at how surprised they were at how good I sounded. I knew what worked and what didn’t work and I exploited what worked.

I’m sure you could do the same with the early Arturia stuff and the current Cherry Audio stuff. Beef it up with some effects and Bob’s your uncle. It might seem crazy to spend $200 on Roland’s plugin, when Cherry is so affordable, but I don’t really think you need to spend a lot to get great sound. TAL’s Jupiter 8 emulation, which is great, is $80. There’s no Cherry Audio Jupiter 8, but they have their 106 on sale for $25 at the moment and you can get TAL’s Juno 60 for $60. Those plugins sound better than the early Arturia or current Cherry Audio plugins, and are totally worth the extra money. As always, your milage may vary.

[kingtubby]

...Cherry let’s you use it in a modular system, so that’s huge, but again, if you have the CPU cycles to spare, Softube Modular, Reaktor Blocks or VCV Rack (free for the stand-alone, but I highly recommend buying the Vult collection) are going to blow it away.

As the Vult modules are available in both VCV and VM it would be interesting to know if there is any discernable audio difference between the two platforms - i.e. do they sound 'better' in VCV or VM, or indeed, the same?

[zerocrossing]

I've never had a TONE or a SOUND affect my ability to craft an interesting and listenable song. Everyone is different.

Sure, this is true. My mom loves Taster’s Choice instant coffee and buys a bunch of McDonalds hamburgers when she has a coupon, and freezes them to eat later. I once took her to a hand crafted ice cream shop and she remarked that the mint in her mint-chocolate-chip ice cream tasted “too real.”

They're still a lot of funa nd sound great.

They most definitely do not sound great, but enjoy whatever you want. It’s no surprise there’s so many McDonald’s in the world. The question was “why do people hate on Cherry Audio?” I’d say hate is too strong a term, but for me it’s more like disregard. My personal opinion is that they should take a break from the fire hose of plugin releases and spend time going back and actually making their plugins sound good. I’d be the first in line if they could get their stuff to sound as good as Softube’s stuff.

[zerocrossing]

...Cherry let’s you use it in a modular system, so that’s huge, but again, if you have the CPU cycles to spare, Softube Modular, Reaktor Blocks or VCV Rack (free for the stand-alone, but I highly recommend buying the Vult collection) are going to blow it away.

As the Vult modules are available in both VCV and VM it would be interesting to know if there is any discernable audio difference between the two platforms - i.e. do they sound 'better' in VCV or VM, or indeed, the same?

Good question. I don’t know, but I do know that I have to run VCV at 4X oversampling to get the quality that I’m after, and I don’t remember Voltage Modular having that option.

[kingtubby]

Good question. I don’t know, but I do know that I have to run VCV at 4X oversampling to get the quality that I’m after, and I don’t remember Voltage Modular having that option.

Voltage Modular is fixed at 48k, however I believe it is possible that individual modules can be internally over-sampled.
I've no idea whether that applies to the Vult modules though, and I doubt my aging ears could tell the difference anyway

edit: typo

[Vortifex]

Edited

[rsaintjohn]

Tough crowd I must be a glutton for punishment by jumping into this thread, especially on a day where we're about to (gasp!) launch a new product. Everyone is welcome to their opinions, of course. Criticism (constructive or otherwise) is noted. And we have free demos of all of our software for those looking to draw their own conclusions. There are a few specific statements or questions to which I feel compelled to reply.

And if the Cherry Audio synths really sounded bad, why do they always get good reviews in magazines, Musictech, Musicradar etc.?

Because those magazines are worthless advertorials, nothing more.

If you're implying that we pay for reviews, you're mistaken. We don't even buy digital or print ads with publications, or participate in their promotional spotlights. I am very stingy about such things. If a media outlet requests an NFR from me to do a review, of course I provide it. But I have no say (or time to review, frankly) over editorial content. And we do get less-than-favorable reviews sometimes, and take them into consideration. Where we can improve, we do.

I disagree. Here's some info from their site:
Cherry Audio was formed by a small group of industry veterans from the likes of Sonic Foundry, Cakewalk, Bias, Acoustica, and Keyboard Magazine. Cherry Audio is backed by a real company of industry professionals, and our products are built by programmers with decades of experience creating audio and DSP software.

I wonder who those nameless industry veterans are?

Good lord It's not a state secret.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvSrs5G9QO4
There you go, there's two of them. Dan Goldstein and Mitchell Sigman. Heck, I'm not one of the founders, but I've been in the media software industry since 1996.

The point is, the company may be relatively new, but we're not. We are a small company full of people with industry experience, who love gear and music, and we're growing. Our pricing and business model work just fine for our customers and for us. We don't have to charge more just because we could. We work hard, we work smart, and, yes, we do R&D.

Don’t know about the others , industry veterans or not ,not when it comes to analog modelling , why else would they hire a third party developer for their latest stuff ?

Mark (our only "third party developer") works for Mark because he wants to, and works with us because it's a win-win. I have no idea why this would make any difference to anyone. The partnership has had fantastic results.

At this point, I would have expected, if they were working on improvements to the older products, to see the "" in the preset browser for them, too. Someone suggested they may have changed software devs at some point, and there are just some changes they can't/won't make to the older code.

It will happen, we know it's a great feature, and we intend to update all of the older products with it. As for "changed software devs" and "can't/won't," that's just silly. We have not lost or changed developers. Dan is responsible for most of the code, he designed that feature, and he'll roll it and other improvements into the others, just like we did with oversampling. We appreciate your patience.

For those who like us and some/all of our products, we like you too. Thanks for sticking with us as we grow and get better. For those who don't like us, we listen anyway and will continue to improve in the hope of at least earning your respect, if not your business.

[chk071]

[Teksonik]

As always there are two questions:

1. How does a plugin sound?

2. How does a plugin sound when compared to the competition ?

It's entirely possible for a plugin to sound good but not as good as the competition.

That's when price, GUI, copy protection method, etc come in to play when deciding to buy one or the other.

[Rahodees]

Sorry to seize on one unimportant detail Robert but new product soon? As in later today, tomorrow, within the next month?