Mark Mothersbaugh on Classic Hardware vs Software Emulations

[jamcat]

Again are we supposed to be impressed by that?

I’m impressed by anyone who has finished an album. Hell, I’m impressed by anyone who has finished a song.

[stoopicus]

Yeah, all joking aside, I have not yet done this so I am not casting any stones there.

[machinesworking]

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.

Detuning creates phasing, which gives the sound movement. It's the very essence of Unison. Without detuning it just makes it louder, which is useless. bx_oberhausen doesn't have a detune control but if you turn on TMT, which simulates analogue instability in the signal path, you get the same effect and it is perfectly judged on that synth to make it sound abso-f**king-lutely huge! Four voices is usually plenty (which is good because it's a CPU hog) but it's nice to know there are 32 available if you need them.

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.

I think GForce's SEM does a pretty good job here, too, whereas Cherry's SEM definitely needs unison (which it has), as does Arturia's (which it lacks). DForce's OB-E and OB-EZ, of course, have it all - big oscillators and 8 stackable voices. If only OB-E was a little easier to work with or OB-EZ offered a few more controls.

One thing kind of cool on the Memorymoog here, there's a bunch of service settings you can access, so you can look at the oscillators tuning range etc. it shows the amount of cents off each oscillator is, and even "in tune" they float 2-5 cents around 7F in hexidecimal where they're suppose to sit, the numbers are always moving but only by a slight amount cents wise. That's all 18 oscillators all very slightly moving all the time. I think this is why so many soft synths sound like virtual analogs or DCO synths, that's a hell of a lot of CPU cycles to calculate, especially adding in all the other elements of a synth beyond the oscs. I suspect most developers are just detuning by a few cents without it movin around. Maybe that's why I like what I hear with Atomika, on a big bass sound it's doing a good simulation of that irregular tuning without sounding artificial?

The thing though, DCO synths and VA's, wavetable etc. all sound great. There are tricks to add in beef that have nothing to do with slight variations in tuning etc.

You're reminding me I need to mess with the Oberhausen a bit more, don't own the G-Force version, but I got decent bass out of the Arturia years ago.

[BONES]

I dunno how much more CPU intensive it would be, it's really just another LFO per osc to calculate.

[BONES]

Wow so you are taking about things from 10 years ago

How is that relevant in showing that it's not an Industrial music chart? After all, it's not my fault that Red Hot Chili Peppers and Psychedelic Furs haven't released anything for a while.

In 2016 Red Hot Chili Peppers released an album called "The Getaway" it went #1 in 10 countries and #2 in the USA, UK, and Germany on the Billboard 200 chart. It sold over 500,000 units in America and is certified Gold, and another 500,000+ globally. It's a great album, I own it and went to that tour in 2017 and saw them headline Lollapalooza festival in July 2016.

Which proves my point, doesn't it? No Industrial band in history as ever had that level of success.

The fact you are comparing yourself with them is cute.

I wasn't comparing anything, I was simply pointing out that you have no f**king idea what you're talking about. But when you think about it, it does show you the kinds of artists that our music has been able to compete successfully with.

Novakill has never been on the Billboard 200

We've never released a single in the US and our first two albums, which were released in the US, were rubbish and didn't chart anywhere. That's one of the good things about not being stuck in the past, you give yourself the opportunity to learn and grow, to get better at what you do.

Now if you want to talk about the DAC or the German Alternative Chart that's a different story. That's not based on album sales or streams. It's a closed-panel chart compiled by publicists determined by points awarded from weekly DJ playlists, not from actual sales.

Yes, it's like the Oscars or the Golden Globes, which is why it means a lot more to us than some shallow (but potentially lucrative) popularity contest. After all, it's not like any bands in our genre have ever done anything of note on any mainstream charts anywhere in the world. Even Skinny Puppy never cracked the Top 100 in the States, although Nitzer Ebb and Front 242 had some minor success on the Billboard Dance chart in the late 80s and early 90s.

You can reach #1 on that chart without actual selling much of anything.

You don't have to tell us that, the album that spent 2 weeks at no. 1 only sold 69 CDs in it's first quarter on sale (which was its best quarter).

It's pretty meaningless in reality.

Absolutely, I shudder to think what sort of utter shite we'd have to churn out to sell records. You can f**king have that, mate, we'll do what we do and be more than happy with some minimal acknowledgement from the industry that we're doing OK.

Again are we supposed to be impressed by that?

Well, it's all relative, isn't it? The obvious elephant in the room is how your career would compare to ours. I mean, I'm not proud of any chart success we might have had or any of that, but I am proud of the body of work I/we have been able to accumulate over the decades. Our Discogs page, for example, spreads over three pages of releases. What does yours look like? And if I go and search YouTube, how many Ivy Birds videos will I find? Or maybe you can point us to some of your work on Spotify or Apple Music?

Or maybe f**king not, eh?

So yeah, it's all relative.

But that was 10 years ago, and it's 2026. The State of the Music Industry and Music Production is vastly different now than it was then which is really the topic of this thread

Oh yeah, it is 2026, isn't it. And where were we when 2026 rolled around? Oh, that's right, we had an album at no. 4 on the DAC. Honestly, you just keep walking straight into it. It's so easy it's not even fun any more.

Anyway, I should be getting on. The new album isn't going to master itself, is it?