Why do people here hate on cherry audio?

[havran]

Probably just mad that the devs might have Bing Cherry trees in their back yards, and they themselves don't.

Possibly mentally hijacked by psychic Asian Carp in Lake Michigan who pine for muddled memories of sound production elsewhere.

[zerocrossing]

Probably just mad that the devs might have Bing Cherry trees in their back yards, and they themselves don't.

Possibly mentally hijacked by psychic Asian Carp in Lake Michigan who pine for muddled memories of sound production elsewhere.

I've got an Asian plum tree in my front yard and it's a huge hassle. What a mess in the fall.

[BONES]

There are much better plug-ins than what Cherry Audio makes. It's that simple.

I'd suggest that's a simplistic view, not "simple". Some of Cherry's synths are pretty ordinary but some sound f**king great. Atomika is one of my favourite sounding synths. It's absolutely brutal. I really like the tone of their ARP Soloist, too, although it's not something I have a lot of use for. I like what I've heard of SH-Max, too, but I haven't got around to buying it yet. I'm not an anal retentive wanker, so I don't care if they do or don't sound like the thing they are meant to sound like, I appreciate them for what they are.

I'm a sucker for buying synth plugins and I have way too many. The ones I keep coming back to and use most often are U-he and GForce. Those are the best.

To you, I don't really rate either. I have Hive and it's OK but it's only usable because of a third party skin I got for it. I've also got the RePros but I haven't used either for years. I have a few GForce synths but I don't think any of them stack up to other options. I want to love their SEM but I much prefer bx_oberhausen. Oddity sounds good but Korg's Odyssey sounds better. I don't like MiniMoogs at the best of times but I think The Legend is a more useful instrument than the GForce thing. I bought Accent and TVS Pro when they were cheap on release but I've not really found much use for either. I think my favourite GForce synth is probably OB-EZ but it is very limited (by design). Like the Cherry version, OB-E is just way too hard to work with.

OTOH, we use Atomika all the time. I've got nothing else that sounds like it, I love it!

Years ago I got the Arturia collection on a deeply discounted sale and it seemed like a really good deal just based on how much stuff was in it. But only a few of them are actually useful. Many are kind of bland, frankly.

I did exactly the same and discovered the same thing. These days there are only one or two I bother installing and I never use them. It was ultimately a bit of a waste of money (like so many things I buy).

[osiris]

I think it's the if it's that cheap it must be bad syndrome. Same hate people had for Synthedit and Synthmaker stuff, some of which was quite good.

[husker37]

.... so I don't care if they do or don't sound like the thing they are meant to sound like, I appreciate them for what they are.

Sometimes, I wish we had more of that attitude around here.

[TechHaus]

.... so I don't care if they do or don't sound like the thing they are meant to sound like, I appreciate them for what they are.

Sometimes, I wish we had more of that attitude around here.

Agreed, but I get why someone would be disappointed, as well. After all, it is much easier to market something based on a known entity than a fresh idea - double edged sword.

[BONES]

Oh, I get why some people are disappointed but that's their problem, something they really should address in their own, sad lives.

[IvyBirds]

.... so I don't care if they do or don't sound like the thing they are meant to sound like, I appreciate them for what they are.

Sometimes, I wish we had more of that attitude around here.

Agreed, but I get why someone would be disappointed, as well. After all, it is much easier to market something based on a known entity than a fresh idea - double edged sword.

Thing is Cherry Audio gives you a 30 day window to demo their software

https://cherryaudio.kayako.com/article/ ... purchasing


If you buy software you are unsure about without demoing it when you had 30 days to do so that's on you

Cherry Audio also tends to make plugins for hardware 99+% of potential customers have never even tried let alone owned

How many people here at KVR own a Crumar DS-2? How about SH-5, SH-7, and SH-3A all at the same time? How about a Jupiter 8? Trident? Crumar Sprit? Or an original Arp Odyssey? Original Wasp? Original Prophet 10, Polivoks? Chroma? Original Sem? Etc

I have none of those things, so if Cherry Audio comes out with something new I will try it and if I like he sound of it I will buy it. Doesn't matter if they sound exactly like the originals or not as I don't have the originals and I never will have the originals

[Vortifex]

I mean, if something is supposed to sound like a thing, and it doesn't sound like that thing, then criticism is justified. Doesn't mean it's not good in its own right. And if it doesn't sound like the thing, then why market it as an emulation of the thing? Just make it its own thing...

My complaint about Cherry Audio isn't the sound (apart from the naff effects drenched all over their presets) - it's the godawful UIs on some of their synths. They're fine when it comes to simple synths like Miniverse or Atomika, but I don't know how anyone can stand to look at Sines or Dreamsynth for more than a minute without bleeding from the eyes. Generally with their larger synths the UIs feel so cluttered and hard to look at.

[abernathy]

I mean, if something is supposed to sound like a thing, and it doesn't sound like that thing, then criticism is justified. Doesn't mean it's not good in its own right. And if it doesn't sound like the thing, then why market it as an emulation of the thing? Just make it its own thing...

My complaint about Cherry Audio isn't the sound (apart from the naff effects drenched all over their presets) - it's the godawful UIs on some of their synths. They're fine when it comes to simple synths like Miniverse or Atomika, but I don't know how anyone can stand to look at Sines or Dreamsynth for more than a minute without bleeding from the eyes. Generally with their larger synths the UIs feel so cluttered and hard to look at.

I was just coming here to say it doesn't matter how good they sound to me, I just don't like their GUI style and don't enjoy looking at them, especially the weird exaggerated perspective on the keyboards, etc. I don't get why they think that looks good.

[beely]

I also *despise* that exaggerated faux-3D perspective, like you're sitting in the middle looking through a widescreen lens, with the controls over the left bending to the left, and the controls on the right bending to the right.

Apart from being ugly and giving an inconsistency to the controls making them harder to hit, you move the plugin interface over to the left side of your screen, and now you have the lovely unnatural affect of being off to the right of the "device", but the right-hand controls now over on your left are also bending to the right.

I know graphic guys think the 3D thing looks cool because it's somehow more "photorealistic" if you compare to photos from that position but a) photos from that position would actually need a wider angle than the eyes normally have to produce that affect, so it's already faked and overdone and b) our eyes don't work like a flat photo does. We don't perceive the controls in the same way as looking at a 2D flat image, we decode the control perspectives as a way of perceiving depth - it's just parsed completely differently to a flat faux-3D image.

Top down, head on (or front on for rack-style units etc) is the way these interfaces work best, it gives control consistency, doesn't give headaches to those sensitive to these kind of cues, and doesn't break the whole intended affect when you move the GUI on your screen to non-central positions. For some people, this doesn't seem to bother them, or they even like it - fair enough for you. For me, I dislike it so much it makes me not want to use the product.

I got Cherry's Mercury-8 recently, and it has the same problem (amongst other problems - it's super cluttered). If they'd made the UI more like their Mercury-6, which is top-down, clean and relatively uncluttered, it would be far more inviting to use for me.

[IvyBirds]

I mean, if something is supposed to sound like a thing, and it doesn't sound like that thing, then criticism is justified.

That's great but if you don't own the hardware and have never even tried the hardware, or if you did it was once or twice decades ago how can you actually know what a plugin emulating it is supposed to sound like?

And before you say YouTube there are to many variables with YouTube demos to make any kind of conclusions as whatever signal path, gain staging, preamps, mixer, effects, EQ, limiter, and mastering was done before and during the video was made will have an effect that then gets compounded with the way YouTube will then compress the audio and the digital file itself

Even then you have no idea how representative the hardware synth in question in the YouTube video is to other Synths like it? Is it calibrated properly? Is it in good working condition? Has it been modified? Are all the capacitors functioning to spec? Is the power supply outputting the correct voltages or is it starving or overdriving the circuits? Was the synth in question ever modified or repaired using incorrect parts? We just don't know and even the guy who made the video has no idea because more than likely they are not the original owner and the synth in question is 40+ years old and has changed hands many many times

Because of that, it's very possible the plugin from any developer sounds exactly like the copy of the synth they have in their studio, but different from the one the guy on some YouTube video made, and different than someone on a Web forum remembers from the time they played it in a music shop on crappy headphone back in 1997, or has in their studio that is outputting 11 or 13 volts on the rail not 12

All you can do is try the demo for the plugin and see if you like the sound or not and if you do, and it is something useful for you consider buying it

As for the GUI Cherry Audio always has excellent Host Automation capabilities so I fold all of them I own into my own custom GUI so no problems there when doing sound design or performing

[Vortifex]

I mean, if something is supposed to sound like a thing, and it doesn't sound like that thing, then criticism is justified.

That's great but if you don't own the hardware and have never even tried the hardware, or if you did it was once or twice decades ago how can you actually know what a plugin emulating it is supposed to sound like?

I would assume it's the people who own or have owned the hardware making that specific criticism.

[IvyBirds]

I mean, if something is supposed to sound like a thing, and it doesn't sound like that thing, then criticism is justified.

That's great but if you don't own the hardware and have never even tried the hardware, or if you did it was once or twice decades ago how can you actually know what a plugin emulating it is supposed to sound like?

I would assume it's the people who own or have owned the hardware making that specific criticism.

Only it's not, it's like you have never read a music production forum

And unless you currently own the actual hardware you can't make accurate A/B comparisons as you are relying on your memory, so "used to own" is pointless

Human auditory sensory memory (echoic memory) is extremely short-lived and extremely unreliable, beyond that if you owned that instrument and played it through a different signal chain, mixer, amp, speaker combo in a different room, and perhaps all at a different amplitude how can you make any comparison at all? You really can't

[pekbro]

To me they just seem very cookie-cutter. I have not tried a single one since they started the whole behringer of the SW world thing, so that assessment is probably out of date.