Software vs. Analog in 2025 – Has the Balance Shifted?

[seafire]

The issue is, no one with a Moog One will dare do that because it would devalue their property.

I doubt very much people who drop 10k on a synth are the same people who argue pointlessly on forums or YT, or feel the need to justify anything. They probably just make music.

[IvyBirds]

The issue is, no one with a Moog One will dare do that because it would devalue their property.

I doubt very much people who drop 10k on a synth are the same people who argue pointlessly on forums or YT, or feel the need to justify anything. They probably just make music.

How do you think the subject of the Moog One came up in this very thread?

And drop by a hardware forum like Gearspace and check out the Moog One thread

[IvyBirds]

When I talk about distortion, I'm not necessarily talking about what you hear from cranking the gain up on a Mesa Dual Rectifier, though it can be, but it's usually a lot more subtile, and I can hear it all over One demos, and it's all over Legend HZ as well.

And that is my confusion, I have played with a Moog One multiple times at length Sweetwater's Showroom in Indiana. They have one hooked up to monitors on an end cap. If you ever get the chance to go there your should it's gear heaven. I have never heard anything all that special that I can't do with plugins. i am going to Ft Wayne again in August for my family reunion. They would let me record there and even give me a zoom recorder to do so. I should make a recording of it with the stock Eventide reverb, and then of The Legend HZ with some Eventide plugins and post the results. My guess if people tried to guess they would guess the plugin as it sounds fatter and fuller thanks to it having 6 Oscillators that you can detune and stereo spread controls.

If you have The Legend try

Oscillator 1: 16' (square wave), volume set to 2.
Oscillator 2: 2' (square wave), volume set to 8.
Oscillator 3: 16' (square wave), volume set to 2.

The Legend does a killer job of modeling the distortion inherent in the mixer section of the Minimoog. Having two oscs at 8 gives you a lot of that without being overpowering. Running the other two at 2 gives you a combined 4 because they are both playing square waves so it's more clean

Feel free to add a bit of drive if you want

Detune osc 1 by 1 cent flat, osc 2 by 2 cent flat and osc 3 by 3 cent flat

Repeat for Osc 4-6 only detune them sharp by the same amounts.

Amp and filter envelope to taste, cutoff and resonance to taste but generally close to wide open

Split the stereo signal into two channels in your mixer with the pan knob on the left around 11:00 and the pan knob on the right at 1:00 and use an effects send to a chorus of your choice and mix back in with the dry signal to taste, add a touch of a high quality stereo dark plate or spring reverb of choice

You will have an absolutely killer Minimoog lead sound that in a blind test if they are honest 99% of the people would say came from hardware

I would put that up against any hardware Moog any day of the week. I use this often

[HAL76]

"Good sounding nonlinear processing is very difficult to make in digital. Just as good sounding linear in analog" (zvukofor 2024).

Simple but true

[wikter]

I remember about 20 or so years ago there difference was fairly obvious.

You can add 20 years more.

[zerocrossing]

The issue is, no one with a Moog One will dare do that because it would devalue their property.

I doubt very much people who drop 10k on a synth are the same people who argue pointlessly on forums or YT, or feel the need to justify anything. They probably just make music.

We're literally having a an argument with a guy who has a Moog One.

[zerocrossing]

When I talk about distortion, I'm not necessarily talking about what you hear from cranking the gain up on a Mesa Dual Rectifier, though it can be, but it's usually a lot more subtile, and I can hear it all over One demos, and it's all over Legend HZ as well.

And that is my confusion, I have played with a Moog One multiple times at length Sweetwater's Showroom in Indiana. They have one hooked up to monitors on an end cap. If you ever get the chance to go there your should it's gear heaven. I have never heard anything all that special that I can't do with plugins. i am going to Ft Wayne again in August for my family reunion. They would let me record there and even give me a zoom recorder to do so. I should make a recording of it with the stock Eventide reverb, and then of The Legend HZ with some Eventide plugins and post the results. My guess if people tried to guess they would guess the plugin as it sounds fatter and fuller thanks to it having 6 Oscillators that you can detune and stereo spread controls.

If you have The Legend try

Oscillator 1: 16' (square wave), volume set to 2.
Oscillator 2: 2' (square wave), volume set to 8.
Oscillator 3: 16' (square wave), volume set to 2.

The Legend does a killer job of modeling the distortion inherent in the mixer section of the Minimoog. Having two oscs at 8 gives you a lot of that without being overpowering. Running the other two at 2 gives you a combined 4 because they are both playing square waves so it's more clean

Feel free to add a bit of drive if you want

Detune osc 1 by 1 cent flat, osc 2 by 2 cent flat and osc 3 by 3 cent flat

Repeat for Osc 4-6 only detune them sharp by the same amounts.

Amp and filter envelope to taste, cutoff and resonance to taste but generally close to wide open

Split the stereo signal into two channels in your mixer with the pan knob on the left around 11:00 and the pan knob on the right at 1:00 and use an effects send to a chorus of your choice and mix back in with the dry signal to taste, add a touch of a high quality stereo dark plate or spring reverb of choice

You will have an absolutely killer Minimoog lead sound that in a blind test if they are honest 99% of the people would say came from hardware

I would put that up against any hardware Moog any day of the week. I use this often

You seem to be stuck on something that we're not really talking about, or at least I'm not talking about. Of course LegendHZ has abilities that the Moog One does not, and vice versa. I could just as easily start talking about oscillator sync, which the Moog One can do. I'm not talking about obvious differences in features. I'm talking about some basic things that both do. I'm saying that there are audio rate modulations that the software doesn't do well, especially on higher notes. You may not care, or even come across it, but it absolutely is there, and it is a difference. I didn't try oscillator FM, but my guess is, Legend will be weaker there as well.

[zerocrossing]

I remember about 20 or so years ago there difference was fairly obvious.

You can add 20 years more.

There weren't even plugins in 1985.

[wikter]

I remember about 20 or so years ago there difference was fairly obvious.

You can add 20 years more.

There weren't even plugins in 1985.

Software existed.

[Zipede]

Sorry if anyone's posted this one already, but it seems relevant to this thread.

[IvyBirds]

The issue is, no one with a Moog One will dare do that because it would devalue their property.

I doubt very much people who drop 10k on a synth are the same people who argue pointlessly on forums or YT, or feel the need to justify anything. They probably just make music.

We're literally having a an argument with a guy who has a Moog One.

But the Minimoog the Legend Models doesn't have Oscillator Sync either and neither does the $5,000 Minimoog reissue

I also don't think many people are buying the Moog One to do Oscillator Sync or Filter FM either as there are very few demo videos of that feature and hardly anyone every talks about it except for people who don't actually own one for a variety if other reasons

I mean how important is that feature when even someone like you who loves that sort of thing won't buy it because it lacks the full MIDI spec?

But as you are aware Oscillator Sync is found all over plugin land, and in doing so you are not locked in to just having 3 Oscillators and ladder filters to use it to use it with , or crippled with the rather limited modulation options relative to software options either

As for filter FM again that exists all over plugin land if you want it also and in software synths that give you far more options than what exists in the Moog One

Now one can argue all day which one "sounds better" but that is not definable and comes down to personal taste and opinions

[markello]

So you have two oscillators and you detune them. Then what?

[dionenoid]

"Good sounding nonlinear processing is very difficult to make in digital. Just as good sounding linear in analog" (zvukofor 2024).

Simple but true

Still the truth in 2025. As also acknowledged by almost every dev around btw.

But please don't ruin this topic by posting something sensible

[crimsonwarlock]

The Moog One back and forth can be resolved pretty simple, if the guy who has one posts an example sound of his Moog One that he thinks is impossible to do with software, and others can try to match it with a software-based example.

Software will then either fail, or show it is possible.

So, here's the dare: Moog One, one specific sound unique to it, post it. No YT-videos of overproduced demos, just an audio file. After all the over-confident posts about it, this should an easy One

[vurt]

isn't it the software that's foobar on the moog?

im sure we can all agree, the democratisation of music, is somewhere software wins hands down.