Mark Mothersbaugh on Classic Hardware vs Software Emulations

[rod_zero]

Srsly, discussing how vs software for 20 of more years here is the real tradition.

[jamcat]

Not sure you are making the point you want to make IvyBirds.

My supermarket has this big display of Hot Wheels cars and grown men crowd around when new ones come in and grab a handful.

I asked one in line what's up with the Hot Wheels cars, and he said "well, i can't get the real ones."

Aka the Arturias are fugazzi toys.

Right. IvyBirds was making my point for me, whether he knew it or not. What matters in the scale model scene is its accuracy. A Lionel Hudson model is accurate down to the rivets. A Thomas the Tank Engine has a happy face on it. So train enthusiasts tend to want the truly accurate model, since they can't have the real thing. Just like synth enthusiasts.

[morelia]

you guys probably have none and just assume

-Mothersbaugh would have done it
-He wouldn't have needed money
-he certainly wouldn't have let them put words into his mouth.
-He'd have seen it as a good marketing opportunity
-probably because they used softsynths
-it was probably made with softsynths.
-There is no way a company the size of Arturia could afford to pay someone like Mark Mothersbaugh for his endorsement

Come on, it's all just conversation, with varying degrees of knowledge attached.

[machinesworking]

I have little attachment to hardware, if the Memoymoog V was even 90% there I would be happy to sell my Memorymoog and use it instead. What is happening though, is I'll wait until the next sale with Memory V in the collection to pick it up, and likely use it for what it's good for.

Well, is it 90% there? Can you tell us?

It's not, the main two parts are pretty far off, the architecture is there so you get the Memorymoogs take on voice modulation, which is cool, but the oscillators sound thin, and the filter does not have the distorted quality at certain settings that the hardware has. I'm pretty sure I could get a better emulation of the MM out of Diva, 100% true about the voice stacking, it just doesn't sound anything like a Memorymoog when you stack all 18 oscs on a mono patch.

I think people will get some use out of it, but it's not unique enough to really differentiate itself from other Arturia synths. Even within companies likely due to developers and release schedules, it seems there's massive variation in quality of emulations. Cherry disappointed me with the MM emu they did it's further away from the real thing than this one, But Atomika sounds great and their non emulation synths are pretty good too, I've gotten great things out of Dreamsynth.

I think that's one thing that makes companies like U-He stand out, there isn't the kind of developer turnover you get at Arturia, NI, Cherry etc.

[stoopicus]

It's not impossible, there are solid examples of good emulations and when it comes to old digital hardware they nail it, FFS NI FM7 could load DX7 patches perfectly.

SQ-80V is arguably THE best recreation of old hardware. It loads ESQ-1 and SQ-80 SYSEX perfectly, and sounds very close to exactly the same. I owned an ESQ-1 and I can't tell the difference in most patches. The only real thing I have noticed is the keyboard velocity tracking is a bit different.

Arturia simply nailed it perfectly.

But suppose they hadn't, and what if SQ-80V still sounded good, but only close and not exactly the same. Would that make it a bad instrument?

No, of course not, that would make it something like Cherry Dreamsynth but with an Ensoniq skin. It would only be bad for people with a weird purity agenda.

[IvyBirds]

Not sure you are making the point you want to make IvyBirds.

My supermarket has this big display of Hot Wheels cars and grown men crowd around when new ones come in and grab a handful.

I asked one in line what's up with the Hot Wheels cars, and he said "well, i can't get the real ones."

Aka the Arturias are fugazzi toys.

Right. IvyBirds was making my point for me, whether he knew it or not. What matters in the scale model scene is its accuracy. A Lionel Hudson model is accurate down to the rivets. A Thomas the Tank Engine has a happy face on it. So train enthusiasts tend to want the truly accurate model, since they can't have the real thing. Just like synth enthusiasts.

Ok if the Lionel Hudson Model is accurate down to the rivets where do I load the coal and put in the water and where is the boiler and how does the steam move the pistons that moves the wheels

It doesn't have any of that, it's a low cost replica

http://www.lionel.com/products/vision-7 ... 4-6-11209/

What it does have is fake smoke that doesn't come from burning coal, and fake steam that doesn't come from a boiler

It has a replica of a bell but it doesn't make any sound, as it has built in speakers that playback the sounds of a real train

You absolutely proved the point with your analogy that if you like steam engines but don't want to own a real steam locomotive you can get a low cost imitation one that has fake coal, fake smoke, a fake bell, and makes all kinds of fake sounds, even the rivits are fake and you can make it move down a fake track, with fake trees, and fake mountains, with fake houses, fake towns, and fake people

Not sure why you are talking about Thomas the Tank Engine here. The Lionel Train is every bit the toy the Thomas the Tank Engine is and neither of them are real steam engines

So thank you for proving that you don't need to buy hardware synths and can buy the replica version of them. Just like you don't need to buy a real J1-e class of New York Central’s world-famous Hudson engines that run on coal fired steam, when you can buy the low cost replica version that doesn't

[TechHaus]

I have little attachment to hardware, if the Memoymoog V was even 90% there I would be happy to sell my Memorymoog and use it instead. What is happening though, is I'll wait until the next sale with Memory V in the collection to pick it up, and likely use it for what it's good for.

Well, is it 90% there? Can you tell us?

It's not, the main two parts are pretty far off, the architecture is there so you get the Memorymoogs take on voice modulation, which is cool, but the oscillators sound thin, and the filter does not have the distorted quality at certain settings that the hardware has. I'm pretty sure I could get a better emulation of the MM out of Diva, 100% true about the voice stacking, it just doesn't sound anything like a Memorymoog when you stack all 18 oscs on a mono patch.

I think people will get some use out of it, but it's not unique enough to really differentiate itself from other Arturia synths. Even within companies likely due to developers and release schedules, it seems there's massive variation in quality of emulations. Cherry disappointed me with the MM emu they did it's further away from the real thing than this one, But Atomika sounds great and their non emulation synths are pretty good too, I've gotten great things out of Dreamsynth.

I think that's one thing that makes companies like U-He stand out, there isn't the kind of developer turnover you get at Arturia, NI, Cherry etc.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

My first run-in with digital "analog" were the original Korg Collection plugins - the M1 and Wavestation were fine, but the MS20 and Polysix sounded like they had more in common with a Korg MS2000 than the real things. I put them in the same class as the Novation V-Station, that I also used a lot back then, and maybe Reason's Thor. Yes, I made a lot of music with these things! But I guess I'm a "fart sniffer". I know these are all 2005-ish synths.

I moved to Linux so I sold off the collection a long time ago - I see there are V2 versions of all of the originals. I'm just not that interested.

Nice to see you endorse U-He, and your reasons make sense. I can see myself spending hundreds of dollars on his / their stuff in the future still.

[machinesworking]

SQ-80V is arguably THE best recreation of old hardware. It loads ESQ-1 and SQ-80 SYSEX perfectly, and sounds very close to exactly the same. I owned an ESQ-1 and I can't tell the difference in most patches. The only real thing I have noticed is the keyboard velocity tracking is a bit different.

Arturia simply nailed it perfectly.

But suppose they hadn't, and what if SQ-80V still sounded good, but only close and not exactly the same. Would that make it a bad instrument?

No, of course not, that would make it something like Cherry Dreamsynth but with an Ensoniq skin. It would only be bad for people with a weird purity agenda.

I bolded and underlined the part where you answered your own question. There's no purity agenda in thinking that if you say you emulated a certain synth, it should be dammed close, not sort of the same for easy patches. especially when some VI's have come close or even nailed it.

With some company getting to 80% on a classic synth, it's going to be useful even if the makers don't nail it. So we accept useful, and white lies.

[machinesworking]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

My first run-in with digital "analog" were the original Korg Collection plugins - the M1 and Wavestation were fine, but the MS20 and Polysix sounded like they had more in common with a Korg MS2000 than the real things. I put them in the same class as the Novation V-Station, that I also used a lot back then, and maybe Reason's Thor. Yes, I made a lot of music with these things! But I guess I'm a "fart sniffer". I know these are all 2005-ish synths.

I moved to Linux so I sold off the collection a long time ago - I see there are V2 versions of all of the originals. I'm just not that interested.

Nice to see you endorse U-He, and your reasons make sense. I can see myself spending hundreds of dollars on his / their stuff in the future still.

Hell I wrote stuff with Reason Subtractor for years! Cheesy sounding thing that it is. There were a few Max/MSP Pluggo synths, absolutely basic, would cut through any mix, so useful. there aren't rules to this, I just don't get pretending that X product nailed it if it clearly did not.

[stoopicus]

I bolded and underlined the part where you answered your own question. There's no purity agenda in thinking that if you say you emulated a certain synth, it should be dammed close, not sort of the same for easy patches. especially when some VI's have come close or even nailed it.

Cherry Dreamsynth is marketed as being based on the ESQ-1, Kawai K3, and other '80s hybrids.

It doesn't really sound close to any patch on any of them. It sounds great, but it is its own thing.

Is it bad?

[BONES]

Why is something I enjoy using a complete waste of money?

Really? You're seriously feeding me this line? OK, here it is, then - so you enjoy fiddling with knobs, do you? Good to know. But seriously, it's a box of f**king knobs, where is the enjoyment in operating a potentiometer? Do you get off turning taps (faucets) on and off, too? Operating door handles? Screwing and unscrewing bottle caps?

Or is it about a limited capacity for abstract thought? That you can't immerse yourself into the process without that familiar, physical interaction? I'm a bit the same with computer games that involve driving - without the physical sensation of being thrown around by Newtonian physics and the physical feedback you get from the car as you push the limits, I can't do it at all. Yet pro racing drivers can't get enough of that shit.

Of course I can use a mouse, but I am also smart enough to know that a mouse is but one input device for a software instrument

Yes, one that you already have that's far more versatile in the environment in which you are working, that doesn't require you to look away from what you're doing to use.

Many plugins including The Legend HZ have multiple screens, perhaps you can explain how if I am on one screen how I can adjust something on another with a mouse without flipping the screen to another page?

This response shows just how little thought you put into things. For a start, your expensive box 'o knobs will only work on one or two very specific instruments, so you won't be "flipping" GUI pages, you'll be plugging and unplugging different boxes 'o knobs for each new instrument you want to work on. Meanwhile, a mouse will work on every single f**king thing you have installed on your computer, no flipping or plugging required.

Then there's the fact that your box o' knobs has even fewer controls on it than any softsynth interface, which requires you to do a lot more "flipping" with your box than you'd have to do with a mouse. In any event, I think it's reasonably well known around here that I don't like synths that can't show me all their controls on a single page GUI.

I can also use them in conjunction with a mouse if I choose. As a right handed person I can use the mouse with my right hand and be adjusting something while also turning knobs with my left hand. So for example with the Legend HZ I can use the mouse to maneuver the drop down menus or the 12 slot modmatrix while adjusting the oscialtors.

A computer with a 10 point touchscreen (like my last 7 or 8 PCs) would blow your tiny mind, then!?!

Beyond that I like to program layered sounds. For example layering a Minimoog Bass sound with FM Bass.

I prefer to find a synth that can do what I need all on it's own. Layering is lazy, a failure of your ability to patch a synth or, in the case of your example, a great example of why the MiniMoog is a useless piece of shit in the modern context.

[jamcat]

I bolded and underlined the part where you answered your own question. There's no purity agenda in thinking that if you say you emulated a certain synth, it should be dammed close, not sort of the same for easy patches. especially when some VI's have come close or even nailed it.

Cherry Dreamsynth is marketed as being based on the ESQ-1, Kawai K3, and other '80s hybrids.

It doesn't really sound close to any patch on any of them. It sounds great, but it is its own thing.

Is it bad?

I've always found Cherry Audio to be second rate. I've tried a few, including the Quadra and Polymode. They have that cheap nasal sound to the filters that was common in early 2000s synth plugins. I wish they were better because I would have bought the Quadra at the very least if they were. The Polymode just doesn't sound like a Polymoog, unlike the XILS version, which I bought after comparing the two. Maybe their newer models have improved.

[BONES]

Picking up on a point that was made earlier in the thread, what does it actually matter how accurate a software version of a hardware synth is, if it's close enough ? ...
... The V Collection has allowed me to play synths i'd never get close to as a HW unit, and they can't be THAT different.

I don't even get that. I mean, why would you be interested in playing old synths? They've had their day, the world has moved on. Yes, I love the sound of a SEM and the ARP Odyssey can do amazing things but I have no interest at all in owning or even playing either. My main interest in emulations is the simplicity of their architecture and interface.

What I'd find a lot more interesting are instruments that, instead of just trying to emulate old synths, took them further in new and interesting ways. Sure, a lot of emulations add extra features but they are always trying to do it in a way that is sympathetic to the original, which is often just f**king stupid. The perfect example is Oberheim's SEM - what is the most obvious and glaring thing the original SEM is missing? It's full ADSR envelopes, yet every SEMulation I have seen retains it's stupid, limited envelope set-up instead of just putting a couple of ADSR envelopes in, which would only involve two extra knobs. To me it's sheer bloody-mindedness and it makes no sense, yet that's what they all do. It's collective madness.

What chaps my ass is when they didn't get hardly any of it correctly. I mentioned Atomika for getting the sound of big mono synths right because it's flatly obvious when you compare it to other VI's, even ten year old plus Diva sounds huge compared to most of Arturia's collection. I've owned V-Collection forever and honestly I mostly use them loaded with delay, reverb etc. and they're great for that, since you can save that all in the patch.

To me, the solution to this issue is so completely obvious that it does my head in that Arturia pretty much don't do it. If you want your synth to sound big, add UNISON. bx_oberhausen can stack 32 voices, which blows every hardware synth ever made right out of the water. If it had ADSR envelopes it would be perfect! But Arturia's SEM doesn't have unison, so I never use it.

My issue is simple, if it doesn't sound like the original, if it can't load patches from the original, then it's just marketing, they're selling us all on nostalgia.

I don't think it's marketing as such, it's more catering to a lucrative market. I think in some cases it's also the challenge of doing it and getting it right. With a new synth, you do your best and it sinks or swims but with an emulation a developer has a point of comparison, a definite goal to achieve, which can be an interesting challenge for them.

SQ-80V is arguably THE best recreation of old hardware. It loads ESQ-1 and SQ-80 SYSEX perfectly, and sounds very close to exactly the same. I owned an ESQ-1 and I can't tell the difference in most patches. The only real thing I have noticed is the keyboard velocity tracking is a bit different.

I had an ESQ-M as my mainstay for years but I'd be f**ked if I'd want one again, let alone a softsynth imitation of it. It's just a synth, I have hundreds of them at my fingertips now, I couldn't care less about something from 40 years ago.

My first run-in with digital "analog" were the original Korg Collection plugins - the M1 and Wavestation were fine, but the MS20 and Polysix sounded like they had more in common with a Korg MS2000 than the real things.

What, because they were actually useful? I saw plenty of bands back in the day with MS-20s but none of them did anythign with them that made them sound like they might be worth owning (and I was a Korg guy back then). MS-20 was just another synth that you bought, usually second-hand, because that's all you could afford. The Korg VSTi sounds fine to me, we've used it to good effect on a couple of songs, including a big bassline in this song. It's the repetitive bit underneath the Atomika bassline, you can hear it on its own at about 2:51 (no EQ or external effects) -