Aliasing on Arturia Plugins?

[bonch]

Aliasing in a softsynth isn't going to cost anyone here a Grammy.

[zerocrossing]

Aliasing in a softsynth isn't going to cost anyone here a Grammy.

Neither will bad breath, but who wants that?

What’s your point? Aliasing is good?


To me, it’s all about context. I love an old school 8 bit digital waveform, like from the old Microwaves. I would be surprised if it did not alias. Same if you presented it in a plugin form, but if you tell me that you’re emulating analog, I’m going to expect to not find aliasing or any other digital artifacts. I’m sure that’s the goal of the developers, as well. No one says, “well, we have the CPU cycles to oversample this, but let’s just leave it in for fun.” They did the best they could while being able to run on the CPU of the day, but that was a long time ago, for synths like the Mini V. While they’ve done great work wtih Prophet 5 V, CS-80 V, OP-Xa V, Jup-8 V, Buchla Easel V, MS-20 V, they’ve not hit all their legacy instruments. I don’t care that much about Mini V, as we have a bunch of good Minimoog emulations, but I’d really love for them to hit Matrix 12 V next, or 2600 V. Then maybe Modular V. In all honesty, I’ve already got so many great hardware and software instruments, I could never fully explore all my possibilities.

[bonch]

What’s your point? Aliasing is good?

That would be a weird interpretation of that statement. My point is just what I said. Fretting over this doesn't make better or more successful music.

No one says, “well, we have the CPU cycles to oversample this, but let’s just leave it in for fun.” They did the best they could while being able to run on the CPU of the day, but that was a long time ago, for synths like the Mini V.

Oversampling can have drawbacks, such as increased latency, pre-ringing artifacts, or other issues. It's not a simple matter of a plug-in being behind the times if it doesn't have oversampling or that it would have oversampling if only CPUs were fast enough when it came out.

[El°HYM]

While this is certainly true for (some) internal oversampling, the audio quality will always benefit from running at a higher samplerate e.g. @192 or higher

[bonch]

"Man, this would have been a good album, but they didn't run their session at 192kHz."

[Vortifex]

..

[El°HYM]

"Man, this would have been a good album, but they didn't run their session at 192kHz."

If you cant hear it, you are a consumer and not a producer. Just the facts.

[bonch]

"Man, this would have been a good album, but they didn't run their session at 192kHz."

If you cant hear it, you are a consumer and not a producer. Just the facts.

As if anyone here can tell what sample rate an album was produced with by listening to it. Amateurs tend to fall into the trap of fretting about things that a listener can't hear and won't care about, and it's a dangerous trap because it tempts people to spend money and resources unnecessarily.

[Junolab]

"Man, this would have been a good album, but they didn't run their session at 192kHz."

If you cant hear it, you are a consumer and not a producer. Just the facts.

That's a silly statement.

[El°HYM]

Most dangerous trap might be a consumer wasting his money on a DAW then thinking he just became a producer. Then ranting over at #kvr pretending to be an Audio - Engineer. But each to his own, I guess.

[zerocrossing]

What’s your point? Aliasing is good?

That would be a weird interpretation of that statement. My point is just what I said. Fretting over this doesn't make better or more successful music.

That point is irrelevant to the conversation, because it’s just as valid to say, “not fretting over this doesn’t make better or more successful music.” This isn’t a thread about how to become successful in the music business, but if it was, gear would have nothing to do with it.

I’m totally neutral about aliasing. It’s like seeing a brush stroke on a painting. If you want that in your painting, choose an appropriate brush, but don’t sell me a sable brush that can’t blend seamlessly.

[bonch]

That point is irrelevant to the conversation, because it’s just as valid to say, “not fretting over this doesn’t make better or more successful music.” This isn’t a thread about how to become successful in the music business, but if it was, gear would have nothing to do with it.

It's relevant to point out that the degree of aliasing discussed here doesn't matter in practice. Disagree that not fretting over it doesn't make better music--not fretting over things that don't matter enables you to focus on things that do. People often have a temptation to focus on insignificant technical details of their plug-ins, what the Aliasing Police have to say, what Plugin Doctor has to say, and so on, because it's quicker and easier than harder creative tasks like creating a good workflow or breaking a creative block.

[jamcat]

Reality check time. You will only hear aliasing if you're really looking for it in isolation.

But if you isolate any track from a song, you'll hear all kinds of garbage: Amplifier noise. Mic handling noise. Fan noise. Air conditioners. Digital Quantization. Noise gate flitter. Coughs, chair squeaks, talking, and all manner of background noise.

And yet, anything that isn't the loudest thing gets completely lost in the mix.
-60dB aliasing is the least of your worries.
So what are we really talking about here?

[bmanic]

What’s your point? Aliasing is good?

That would be a weird interpretation of that statement. My point is just what I said. Fretting over this doesn't make better or more successful music.

That's a very easy and typical cop-out with a slippery slope. You could say the same for anything and drag it down to only using a single recorder or just farting noises.

Music per say is subjective. Aliasing on an analogue emulation is not a matter of subjective opinion when there is none in the original piece of hardware that is getting emulated. It is purely objective observation.

It's in the eye of the beholder if aliasing bothers you enough for it to affect your music. You're quite arrogant if you make general sweeping statements of what others should or should not perceive as something making your music better.

Also, many people just like to play synthesizers, not even necessarily produce music with them. Go tell a pianist that they shouldn't bother getting a quality piano because it doesn't really matter as it wont affect his composing skills. They may as well use a half broken, horribly tinny piece of shit piano, right?

see? slippery slope. Why not instead stay on topic instead of your generalized sweeping "blah blah it's no problem because of XYZ".

[jamcat]

Aliasing on an analogue emulation is not a matter of subjective opinion when there is none in the original piece of hardware that is getting emulated.

But there's a different kind of noise in the original piece of hardware, and it's much louder and always present. Electronics are generally very noisy things with all sorts of weird artifacts of their own.