Non-emulation VA synth recommendations.

[BONES]

I've never thought about it that way, I just like the way it sounds. I don't think DUNE sounds thinner, though, I reckon they just sound a bit different from each other.

Just a hint: punch cards are thing of the past.

Punch-cards in shoe boxes were all there was when I was at uni and only staff had direct access to the computer (we only had one).

But do tell....which of "world's biggest software companies" were you working at in the early 70s?

I spent most of six years at Autodesk as a product specialist, working closely with the development teams on the products I was responsible for and acting as a bit of an interface between our customers and them. They prioritised features through use-cases, not by the number of idiots requesting something. Go to them with a solid use-case from a single customer and they'd be all over it. Tell them that every customer you visited wanted a particular feature and they'd simply ask "why?". If you couldn't give them a really good "why", they wouldn't be interested.

It was never a numbers game, it was always about genuine improvement to the product on the "build it and they will come" principle. Of course, it was very different from the attitude of the sales teams, who always found it easier to give customers what they wanted, rather than what they needed. But that's why I worked for product development, not sales (no commission for me).

BTW, well done for taking an adage literally.

[_leras]

A grey area for me might be the use of single cycle wave samples, or wavetables, in the oscillator stage to generate the sound. To me that's a bit more like "sampling".

My understanding is that pretty much every VA does that. Even if it calculates the waveforms on startup rather than loads them, that it ends up with the wave shapes in memory.

Without doing this caching of waveforms CPU usage would be too high.

(In my understanding)

[jdoo]

Serum, Pigments or... WaveState. Wavestate can double in the classic bread & butter categories, in a pinch

[zzz00m]

A grey area for me might be the use of single cycle wave samples, or wavetables, in the oscillator stage to generate the sound. To me that's a bit more like "sampling".

My understanding is that pretty much every VA does that. Even if it calculates the waveforms on startup rather than loads them, that it ends up with the wave shapes in memory.

Without doing this caching of waveforms CPU usage would be too high.

(In my understanding)

In this instance I was thinking about how SynthMaster works beyond the basic oscillators, such as sine, triangle, saw, etc. Also available are imported single-cycle waves as the sound source for the oscillators, such as from KORG, Mellotron, Moog, Oberheim, Prophet, Roland, Rhodes, etc. So in that usage case, they are not modeling an analog wave, but using the single-cycle sample from another synth to generate the tone.

[rezoneight]

I've never thought about it that way, I just like the way it sounds. I don't think DUNE sounds thinner, though, I reckon they just sound a bit different from each other.

Just a hint: punch cards are thing of the past.

Punch-cards in shoe boxes were all there was when I was at uni and only staff had direct access to the computer (we only had one).

But do tell....which of "world's biggest software companies" were you working at in the early 70s?

I spent most of six years at Autodesk

BTW, well done for taking an adage literally.

It was a ridiculous “adage” to use as you know nothing about my work history. But have been programming professionally for 30-ish years for companies of all sizes. There are always priorities and cost considerations because there are only so many resources to get work done. That counts for even small companies, more so because they have fewer resources. For someone like a Synapse who can’t afford to just drop Apple support, M1 native is just an item on a backlog of work like anything else, probably taking higher priority because it’s important. But this idea that Windows folk here have that some stuff is just being dropped because of M1 support is frankly ridiculous.

[revvy]

But this idea that Windows folk here have that some stuff is just being dropped because of M1 support is frankly ridiculous.

But funny if true. Imagine the uproar.

j/k, I thank Synapse for their continued Mac support

[digitalboytn]

So it must have been just a rumour that Synapse Audio was dropping Mac support completely

[Tj Shredder]

In the beginning there was the usual complains, until they realized its easier than in the early days of Macs with a similar situation. If you are able to set up your code base cross platform and cross CPU, you gain other advantages and stop worrying about OS changes. Most devs use libraries that do the platform specific details for you and free you up to concentrate just on DSP and GUI…

[YnJ]

Tone2 Saurus, as a non-emulation the finest vintage VA synth I can think of. If you get it make sure you have a look at this soundset as well for some real vintage goodies

http://www.electric-himalaya.com/saurus-old-volt.html

[_leras]

A grey area for me might be the use of single cycle wave samples, or wavetables, in the oscillator stage to generate the sound. To me that's a bit more like "sampling".

My understanding is that pretty much every VA does that. Even if it calculates the waveforms on startup rather than loads them, that it ends up with the wave shapes in memory.

Without doing this caching of waveforms CPU usage would be too high.

(In my understanding)

In this instance I was thinking about how SynthMaster works beyond the basic oscillators, such as sine, triangle, saw, etc. Also available are imported single-cycle waves as the sound source for the oscillators, such as from KORG, Mellotron, Moog, Oberheim, Prophet, Roland, Rhodes, etc. So in that usage case, they are not modeling an analog wave, but using the single-cycle sample from another synth to generate the tone.

Yes, to your first point. It is like sampling, just all under the hood where it would loop a waveform, allow it to pitch up and down etc.

My point was just that VA oscillator would operate on the same basis. It may just calculate the waveform to store in memory instead of loading it.

[zzz00m]

A grey area for me might be the use of single cycle wave samples, or wavetables, in the oscillator stage to generate the sound. To me that's a bit more like "sampling".

My understanding is that pretty much every VA does that. Even if it calculates the waveforms on startup rather than loads them, that it ends up with the wave shapes in memory.

Without doing this caching of waveforms CPU usage would be too high.

(In my understanding)

In this instance I was thinking about how SynthMaster works beyond the basic oscillators, such as sine, triangle, saw, etc. Also available are imported single-cycle waves as the sound source for the oscillators, such as from KORG, Mellotron, Moog, Oberheim, Prophet, Roland, Rhodes, etc. So in that usage case, they are not modeling an analog wave, but using the single-cycle sample from another synth to generate the tone.

Yes, to your first point. It is like sampling, just all under the hood where it would loop a waveform, allow it to pitch up and down etc.

My point was just that VA oscillator would operate on the same basis. It may just calculate the waveform to store in memory instead of loading it.

I think that in your last point you are expressing what Urs Heckmann has stated about how he models analog oscillator circuits with math in the computer processor. The math describes how the current flows and behaves, so yes an oscillator is "calculated" in a virtual analog synth. Done purely mathematically, you should have more control of how the waveform is shaped.

If you use a single-cycle sample as an initial oscillator wave source, that wave shape is already "baked in", not calculated in real-time based on circuit modeling math, although it can be processed to further modify or morph it.

I believe that remains an important distinction.

[Richard_Synapse]

It took them more than a year after the release of the first M1 powered computers, so hardly "timely".

It was about two months. We were among the first to introduce native M1 support for our plugins, and long before most DAWs supported native M1 plugins to begin with.

Richard

[_leras]

The math describes how the current flows and behaves, so yes an oscillator is "calculated" in a virtual analog synth. Done purely mathematically, you should have more control of how the waveform is shaped.

If you use a single-cycle sample as an initial oscillator wave source, that wave shape is already "baked in", not calculated in real-time based on circuit modeling math, although it can be processed to further modify or morph it.

I believe that remains an important distinction.

I'm sure there's more than one way to do it. I don't think people actually calculate sin though, they'd have a lookup which would in essence be the same as a waveform/sample of sin.

[rezoneight]

Tone2 Saurus, as a non-emulation the finest vintage VA synth I can think of. If you get it make sure you have a look at this soundset as well for some real vintage goodies

http://www.electric-himalaya.com/saurus-old-volt.html

Absolutely 100%. Saurus rules.

[rezoneight]

It took them more than a year after the release of the first M1 powered computers, so hardly "timely".

It was about two months. We were among the first to introduce native M1 support for our plugins, and long before most DAWs supported native M1 plugins to begin with.

Richard

and thank you for doing so!