Mark Mothersbaugh on Classic Hardware vs Software Emulations

[JerGoertz]

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

Someday software will sound indistinguishable from hardware and nobody here will notice.

[stoopicus]

I've always found Cherry Audio to be second rate.

Really disagree here, Atomika, PS-20, and Dreamsynth all sound great to me. YMMV I guess.

[TechHaus]

Today i learned - Whip It ripped off Pretty Woman.

[IvyBirds]

nteresting. I would have said it was too basic to control the HZ version based on first impressions. Is it, once set up, much easier/more pleasant to use than a mouse? I guess it depends on if you use it for performance vs sound design/tweak

I only use it for sound design and tweaking in my home studio, at the gig on the stage I use different controllers.

I use a lot of Minimoog sounds in the bands I play in and really like the sound of the Legend HZ

There must be things you cannot do without a mouse tho? Assign mods, the msegs etc?

Sure but those things were not on the OG Minimoog, and are not on the Moog/inMusic reissue or the Behringer Clone either.

The idea is not to totally replace your mouse, however you can if you want to totally recreate the workflow of a hardware Minimoog with Minimoog plugins. It also an be especially fun with non Minimoog plugins

However the Idea is to use this in a universal fashion across all of your instruments. Since the Minimoog was the archetype used for synths the controls will work on pretty much anything. You very quickly get muscle memory and don't even need to look at the controller to adjust things. The SFC Mini gives you control over a bank of three oscialtors and has a shift switch to give you three more. So you can universally control up to 6 oscialtors across all your plugins

For envelopes I use a Novation Launch Control XL in addition to this however. It has 3 horizontal rows of 8 knobs and a row of 8 faders. That gives you a powerful universal controller for up to four envelopes with up to 8 segments, however it has 15 banks of them so I can in theory control 60 envelopes with it if I choose

For MSEG beyond 8 segments the GUI for that on a screen would be much easier to make sense of so I would simply use a mouse and screen

Of course you can always use a mouse in addition to the controllers. The dedicated envelope controller is handy however for deeper more complex Synths that have multiple pages so for example you are on the ModMatrix screen and decide you want to adjust the attack of envelope 3 you don't have to flip over to a different screen you can just turn the knob

Also handy is how you can use the 15 user banks when making layered patches either with multitimbral plugins or multiple different ones. That allows you to tweak the envelopes on one layer or plugin while working with the GUI of another

[machinesworking]

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?

Based on is far different than exact emulation, it's why Diva was a smart move by U-He, and Dreamsynth works as a send up, not an exact copy. It's IMO a much more honorable approach.

[machinesworking]

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.

Sure but the Memory V does have unison and it's crap compared to the real thing. If you stack the exact same sawtooth wave that doesn't really move at all a thousand times you're not going to hear much difference, in other words, with no variation stacking doesn't do anything, and detuning will just make it muddy. Atomika oscs wide open with as little filter influence on the sound as possible etc. still sound much bigger than the Memory V, or most soft synths. This, is the mythical analog (™Bones) hardware sound that some people complain about, and again we have examples where developers pull it off, it's not impossible.

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.

Yeah that's a good point, it does come from both sides, customers want familiar products so "new" has to be hyped up like Avenger, Serum, Hive etc. and developers have a roadmap to work with. I just get sick of a skeuomorphic send up with mediocre osc and filter emulaitons of the real thing, they screw up the most important parts pretty often. I'm not sentimental for the interface of the SEM, I want the sound with modern improvements like voice stacking unison etc

[idoru97214]

OMG. I hadn't been on here in a while. Re-affirmed: KVR = a whole legion of lifeforms who have dedicated their life to splitting the hairs of vaguely music related arguments down into their constituent atoms; then further, until the original thoughts behind the arguments break down into their quantum components, release small amounts of energy and disappear into entropy itself.

[VOODOO U]

OMG. I hadn't been on here in a while. Re-affirmed: KVR = a whole legion of lifeforms who have dedicated their life to splitting the hairs of vaguely music related arguments down into their constituent atoms; then further, until the original thoughts behind the arguments break down into their quantum components, release small amounts of energy and disappear into entropy itself.

You could've just said KVR = geeks. The bad kind too.

[TechHaus]

Today i learned - Whip It ripped off Pretty Woman.

Get through the intro, it's worth it, imo.

Devo's "Whip It" with Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale | One Song Podcast - Full Episode

[THE INTRANCER]

All I had was a 1970's organ in the 1980's until I had a Casio SK1 which for me was just fun, but then I was just a child who had fun all the time with friends, watching videos, playing computer games, playing pool, darts, running around with other kids and exploring the outdoors such as caves, building huts in the forest, exploring spooky houses like the Goonies, watching TV and listening to music and to no surprise to many, drawing and building things with construction sets, and also playing board and LCD games.

[jamcat]

exploring spooky houses like the Goonies

How well did the "Goonies defense" hold up in court?

[BONES]

You have made it abundantly clear here that you use presets and AI to make music.

I do now, yes, but those tools weren't always around, I used to have to do things the old fashioned way. So while your head seems to still be stuck in the 1970s, I'm using tools at the cutting edge of technology, just like a Model D was 50-odd years ago. That's why our albums chart and yours don't.

I use it to create new instruments and sounds often with the GUI from the plugin on one monitor and custom GUI on another along with controllers.. So I am not just turning a knob I am adjusting parameters on Synths that I use to make sounds, do you find it enjoyable to use a mouse 100% of the time it's just a piece of plastic with a few buttons that click and either ball or optical sensor and maybe a scroll wheel. Is it the tool or what the tool does?

My mouse is hardly "a piece of plasitc", it is precision engineered with an aluminium chassis, finely balanced to my liking, via a set of adjustable counterweights, shaped to fit my hand perfectly via a series of movable parts to alter the width and length of the device. And it probably has as almost as many controls as your box of knobs, although I don't use most of them. When you're using a tool 10-12 hours a day, you'd be a mug not to have the best available.

It seems like you are the one with the limited capacity for abstract thought. It's why you use presets and AI rather than designing your own sounds or writing your own music.

Nah, I just don't give a f**k about such petty considerations, I'm focused on making good music. The process is meaningless to me, I don't have a fragile ego that needs constant propping up.

For me I want unlimited control to express my abstract thoughts without limitations.

Which is why you use a box of knobs, rather than take full advantage of the multifarious ways in which you can interact with features of a softsynth on a screen? Yeah, good one.

[foosnark]

This is what happened to Tangerine Dream. They went from wonderful hypnotic analog soundscapes to pure cheese. Le Parc and Underwater Sunlight were their last good albums.

To me, TD's decline was as much about their approach as analog vs. digital synths. My favorite albums of theirs are Phaedra and Rubycon, and they're using the simplest sequencers with short loops, tweaking them on the fly, and playing over that. But in their era of maximum cheese, they were writing everything in MIDI piano rolls.

(I did like Exit, which was PPG-heavy. And I have a soft spot in my heart for Optical Race, though it absolutely is the worst kind of cheese... mostly because I got it back in high school when electronic music albums weren't the easiest thing to find (where I lived).)

[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?

Based on is far different than exact emulation, it's why Diva was a smart move by U-He, and Dreamsynth works as a send up, not an exact copy. It's IMO a much more honorable approach.

But here's the thing. We are discussing the absolute value of the instruments and their fit for making music. Yes, the Arturia or Cherry emulations of the classic synths may have some minor differences - but they are still outstanding instruments just as fit for making music as the real things were.

Sure, both Arturia and Cherry are cashing in on the nostalgia value and lucrative gear worship of those old instruments - but it's not their fault that people have serious rose-colored glasses for hardware that was often flaky and inconsistent AF. They are wise to capitalize on it.

In the end, all that matters is something sounds good. I can get the same kinds of sounds out of Cherry PS-20 as I could out of a real MS-20, it will be indistinguishable in the mix, and generally using PS-20 is a far more effective workflow for me than a real MS-20 would be. Isn't that what really matters?

[zedeloc]

Damn. This whole discussion is really making me feel ripped off. I spent a whopping $49.99 on V Collection 8. Then I spent $99 more on an upgrade to V Collection 11!? AND YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT THOSE SYNTHS AREN'T EXACTLY PERFECTLY 1:1 AND I LITERALLY FLUSHED $148.99 DOWN THE CRAPPER?!

I'll be in the basement inhaling flux core fumes for the next 6 months, because I'M going DIY modular. Fool me once...