Mark Mothersbaugh on Classic Hardware vs Software Emulations

[jamcat]

Herbert von Karajan sold over 200 million records of music he didn’t write or even play on.

Sure but did he brag about charting on some obscure chart while offering criticism for those who didn't?

I don’t know. He wasn’t on KVR.

[D-Fusion]

I wonder how much of the perceived fatness difference between hardware and emu here is the filter being actually too clean and not having any slight distortion nonlinearities the original hardware may have?

Based on what i hear on my headphones it is more to do with the digital stiffness that gives the sound a 2d machine gun effect sound in the memorymoog comparison video and the sounds that get close enough are probably sounds that only uses 1 oscillator.

It is the moving oscillators that add some thickness to the sound and the memorymoog would probably sound the same as the plugin if it had the same stiff pitch perfect oscillators.

[Aloysius]

Not a synth but when I listen to Overloud TH-U I sense that I am hearing a very choked output. It seems unnatural to me. A picture has been taken but it seems very forced for want of a better word. It does not replace the real thing imo. It may be state of the art but perhaps the art is in a state.

[zerocrossing]

I wonder how much of the perceived fatness difference between hardware and emu here is the filter being actually too clean and not having any slight distortion nonlinearities the original hardware may have?

Based on what i hear on my headphones it is more to do with the digital stiffness that gives the sound a 2d machine gun effect sound in the memorymoog comparison video and the sounds that get close enough are probably sounds that only uses 1 oscillator.

It is the moving oscillators that add some thickness to the sound and the memorymoog would probably sound the same as the plugin if it had the same stiff pitch perfect oscillators.

But Memorymoog V has a per-voice control on how loose the oscillators, and actually all the main components, are.

[D-Fusion]

I wonder how much of the perceived fatness difference between hardware and emu here is the filter being actually too clean and not having any slight distortion nonlinearities the original hardware may have?

Based on what i hear on my headphones it is more to do with the digital stiffness that gives the sound a 2d machine gun effect sound in the memorymoog comparison video and the sounds that get close enough are probably sounds that only uses 1 oscillator.

It is the moving oscillators that add some thickness to the sound and the memorymoog would probably sound the same as the plugin if it had the same stiff pitch perfect oscillators.

But Memorymoog V has a per-voice control on how loose the oscillators, and actually all the main components, are.

That is true but it doesn't sound like that feature is used in the comparison video on some of the sounds so maybe it would get closer if it was set correctly?

[whassup]

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

Hm, flux core fumes...

[El°HYM]

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.

Aww, I like Raum.

Oh the new Tangerine Dream with Thorsten Quaeschning is great. Quantum Gate is a good album too. I was thinking of that period between the late 80s and early 2000s.

To be fair, Quaeschning's Rig is still quite Analog. When TD transitioned to fully digital, with all those Workstations and digital effects only. Quite horrible and also sad at the same time, kind of similar to folks today feeling the need the replace everything analog with a plugin, because it looks almost the same. Eno somehow managed it better when he fell in love with his DX7, but kept some of the old stuff around, better transition at least. Last Studio session I have seen him was mainly Logic, yet still some racks to the side.

[zerocrossing]

I wonder how much of the perceived fatness difference between hardware and emu here is the filter being actually too clean and not having any slight distortion nonlinearities the original hardware may have?

Based on what i hear on my headphones it is more to do with the digital stiffness that gives the sound a 2d machine gun effect sound in the memorymoog comparison video and the sounds that get close enough are probably sounds that only uses 1 oscillator.

It is the moving oscillators that add some thickness to the sound and the memorymoog would probably sound the same as the plugin if it had the same stiff pitch perfect oscillators.

But Memorymoog V has a per-voice control on how loose the oscillators, and actually all the main components, are.

That is true but it doesn't sound like that feature is used in the comparison video on some of the sounds so maybe it would get closer if it was set correctly?

Hard for me to say, as I’ve got no access to the hardware. All I can surmise is that one might be able to get closer if they build a patch from scratch and carefully match the settings by ear with visual confirmation. Getting per voice offsets to match would be extremely challenging, so your best bet is to just use your own judgement.

Of course, if you’re happy with your Memorymoog, there’s no reason to pick this up. I doubt the market for this is full of Memorymoog owners. As always, it’s best to judge these things like unique instruments that share their feature sets and general characteristics with a classic synthesizer, but also extend the idea. Instead of asking how much it sounds like the original, as how well it can make sounds that serve your music.

[sellyoursoul]

Not a synth but when I listen to Overloud TH-U I sense that I am hearing a very choked output. It seems unnatural to me. A picture has been taken but it seems very forced for want of a better word. It does not replace the real thing imo. It may be state of the art but perhaps the art is in a state.

Have you tried amp profiles? Profiles are a huge sonic improvement over modelers to my ears. Some people just don't hear it, happy with their modelers, and that's okay, which is the same with synths. To each their own. Personally, I would never use an amp modeler again. That ship has sailed. I hope to see profiling permeate other areas of plugins, such as compressors and non-linearities in synths and other things.

By the way, NAM A2 just dropped, and I think every profile on Tone3000 has been retrained to A2 by now. A2 improves NAM accuracy (which was often already indistinguishable from the real recorded amps used for profiling), reduces latency by quite a bit, improves dynamics, and is significantly more cpu efficient. And now standard and lite versions are included in every profile.

Back on topic...

[TechHaus]

Uncanny valley.

Like talking to a human vs a chatbot.