Retrologue by Steinberg

[Teksonik]

24 oscillators? What is the point of that?

If you have to ask the question you're not ready for the answer. Experience is your best teacher.

[Teksonik]

The difference between a tool and a toy is who is using it and for what.
If you insist it's a toy, then that really says more about you than it does it.

Nice try but what makes a synth a toy is its feature set regardless of who is using it.

There are sounds that other synths can make that Retrologue or DIVA simply can't because of their limited architecture.

If you don't understand that fact it says everything about you.......

[Teksonik]

The difference between a tool and a toy is who is using it and for what.
If you insist it's a toy, then that really says more about you than it does it.

100%, attitudes like that are a huge red flag when it comes to credibility. I've been hearing for decades about how "X is a toy" or "You can't use X if you're a serious musician/audio engineer", all while seeing professionals use them to make groundbreaking and beloved music. At least it's useful to help sort out the opinions worth listening to.

Sure you can use simple synths and sounds to make good music just like you can use only the color blue to make a painting but imagine what paintings you could make with all the colors of the rainbow or songs you could make with a wider range of sounds than are possible with a couple of Oscs with only a few different waveforms.

I'm done with this thread but I'll leave you with this old saying:

Simple things amuse simple minds.

[cobaia]

Let's hear it

[BBFG#]

I wonder if they even hear themselves...

[concealed identity]

Simple blue art for idiots:


Superior art for high IQs:

[IvyBirds]

The difference between a tool and a toy is who is using it and for what.
If you insist it's a toy, then that really says more about you than it does it.

Nice try but what makes a synth a toy is its feature set regardless of who is using it.

There are sounds that other synths can make that Retrologue or DIVA simply can't because of their limited architecture.

If you don't understand that fact it says everything about you.......

This x1000. What some people refuse to understand, is that using the right tool for the job is what's important. When my son was a young boy he had a set of "toy" hand tools. Screwdrivers, wrenches, tape measure, even a hammer. You could use those to build a house or fix an engine if you tried hard enough, but using proper tools would be so much better and more useful. Is it wrong then to call my sons old play things "toys"? You could use them to turn a screw or tighten a nut after all? If a skilled mechanic used both would it be right for him to call my sons wrench a toy? It was made of plastic and not metal but it could be used to tighten a bolt

As a musician when I get an idea for a sound I need the tools to get out of the way and not be the limiting factor. Now maybe that idea only needs a single oscillator, maybe it needs 2 or 3, or maybe it needs 20

If I am using something like Dune I have 24 of them, and rather than have just a handful of waveforms I can have unlimited varieties of waveforms. Of course if I wanted to I could use just a single osc and have it make a saw wave. I can use three of them set to saw waves and run it through a ladder filter and use basic envelopes to control everything and a single LFO for modulation. I have now recreated the structure of a Minimoog

While that's all fine and good, what if you want to take it further? You can't do that with just a Minimoog. So in DUNE 3, load up three analog waveforms across Oscillators 1, 2, and 3, and set each to 8 multi-voices to stack a 24 oscillators per note. To keep the patch from turning into mud, keep Oscillator 1's stereo spread narrow for center punch, detune and max out the Stereo width on Oscillators 2 and 3, and run them all into the zero-delay Transistor Ladder filter (Minimoog Design). Crank the filter Drive to glue the 24 voices together with authentic Moog saturation, then use the Mod Matrix to route LFO 1 to invertedly modulate the left and right filter cutoffs for an ultra-wide, evolving stereo field.

When you do that, you quickly start to realize that the OG Minimoog seems like a toy

[cobaia]

The difference between a tool and a toy is who is using it and for what.
If you insist it's a toy, then that really says more about you than it does it.

Nice try but what makes a synth a toy is its feature set regardless of who is using it.

There are sounds that other synths can make that Retrologue or DIVA simply can't because of their limited architecture.

If you don't understand that fact it says everything about you.......

This x1000. What some people refuse to understand, is that using the right tool for the job is what's important. When my son was a young boy he had a set of "toy" hand tools. Screwdrivers, wrenches, tape measure, even a hammer. You could use those to build a house or fix an engine if you tried hard enough, but using proper tools would be so much better and more useful. Is it wrong then to call my sons old play things "toys"? You could use them to turn a screw or tighten a nut after all? If a skilled mechanic used both would it be right for him to call my sons wrench a toy? It was made of plastic and not metal but it could be used to tighten a bolt

As a musician when I get an idea for a sound I need the tools to get out of the way and not be the limiting factor. Now maybe that idea only needs a single oscillator, maybe it needs 2 or 3, or maybe it needs 20

If I am using something like Dune I have 24 of them, and rather than have just a handful of waveforms I can have unlimited varieties of waveforms. Of course if I wanted to I could use just a single osc and have it make a saw wave. I can use three of them set to saw waves and run it through a ladder filter and use basic envelopes to control everything and a single LFO for modulation. I have now recreated the structure of a Minimoog

While that's all fine and good, what if you want to take it further? You can't do that with just a Minimoog. So in DUNE 3, load up three analog waveforms across Oscillators 1, 2, and 3, and set each to 8 multi-voices to stack a 24 oscillators per note. To keep the patch from turning into mud, keep Oscillator 1's stereo spread narrow for center punch, detune and max out the Stereo width on Oscillators 2 and 3, and run them all into the zero-delay Transistor Ladder filter (Minimoog Design). Crank the filter Drive to glue the 24 voices together with authentic Moog saturation, then use the Mod Matrix to route LFO 1 to invertedly modulate the left and right filter cutoffs for an ultra-wide, evolving stereo field.

When you do that, you quickly start to realize that the OG Minimoog seems like a toy

Let's hear it
Your description sounds like noise to me. When you glue 24 voices together with saturation, the character of your individual waveforms gets lots, anyway.

Comparing plastic tools to metal ones is rather different. It is all about quality, while with synths it is not. There it is mostly about quantity nowadays.

Many years ago I used to have a synth where one could draw user waveforms, but at the end of the day, it made little difference. It was not worth the effort.

[IvyBirds]

Simple blue art for idiots:

You are right only idiots would call "Femme accroupie" (most commonly translated as Crouching Woman or Woman Sitting, with Hood) by the Spanish master Pablo Picasso simple blue, because it's not simple blue, and only those ignorant to what it is would claim it is.

Picasso painted that during his so called blue period where he was rather deeply impoverished and couldn't afford to use a lot of colors so instead he used four primary paints. Prussian Blue, Artificial Ultramarine, Zinc White, and Bone Black. To those four he would add powdered yellow, green, or red pigments.

So he didn't just use blue paint, he used multiple colors of paint and mixed those in with other pigments. He also didn't do this as an artistic choice but rather because it was all he could afford. Even if you know nothing about it's history or Art in general you should be able to see that it plainly is using white and black paint in addition to blue



He also abandoned painting this way as soon as he had the ability to do so. He finished painting that image in 1903, and in 1905 he took that same canvas on on the back painted "Mother and Child (Maternité) 1905

Screenshot_20260716-135625.jpg

You will notice that when he was no longer forced to he starting using all kinds of color even on the same canvas

This can be applied to Synths as well. Back in the day we were forced to accept limitations, lots of great music was made with limited Synths, not by choice but because that was all that was available. Much like with Picasso he was forced to limit his pallet because financially that was all that was available to him

However he moved past that once new options opened up. In 2026 we no longer need to limit ourselves to what was available in the 1970s and 1980s limited by analog technology.

[IvyBirds]

Let's hear it
Your description sounds like noise to me. When you glue 24 voices together with saturation, the character of your individual waveforms gets lots, anyway.

If you want to hear it for yourself just go here

https://www.synapse-audio.com/dune3.html

And download the fully functional demo and hear it for yourself. If you can't be bothered to to do that why should I be bothered to make a demo for you? Especially as you have already made up your mind that it will sound like noise which it won't but you have already made that determination without hearing it. To quote Metallica "open mind for a different view"

Comparing plastic tools to metal ones is rather different. It is all about quality, while with synths it is not. There it is mostly about quantity nowadays.

No it's exactly the same. They are both things that can tighten a bolt.

Imagine looking at a synth like DUNE 3—with its dual synthesis engines, high-precision filters, graphic LFOs, and endless sound design flexibility—and dismissing it as just 'quantity.'
What you call 'quality' in a traditional Minimoog is actually just nostalgia for a dinosaur. If your creativity stops where a mod matrix begins, just say that. Don't blame modern architecture because you can't figure out what to do with more than a fixed signal path

Many years ago I used to have a synth where one could draw user waveforms, but at the end of the day, it made little difference. It was not worth the effort.

Wow that's like saying "I tried to finger paint once, but my stick figures looked terrible, so I concluded the entire medium of visual art is just a useless gimmick". What an Incredible self-own.

[cobaia]

Let's hear it
Your description sounds like noise to me. When you glue 24 voices together with saturation, the character of your individual waveforms gets lots, anyway.

If you want to hear it for yourself just go here

https://www.synapse-audio.com/dune3.html

And download the fully functional demo and hear it for yourself. If you can't be bothered to to do that why should I be bothered to make a demo for you? Especially as you have already made up your mind that it will sound like noise which it won't but you have already made that determination without hearing it. To quote Metallica "open mind for a different view"

Comparing plastic tools to metal ones is rather different. It is all about quality, while with synths it is not. There it is mostly about quantity nowadays.

No it's exactly the same. They are both things that can tighten a bolt.

Imagine looking at a synth like DUNE 3—with its dual synthesis engines, high-precision filters, graphic LFOs, and endless sound design flexibility—and dismissing it as just 'quantity.'
What you call 'quality' in a traditional Minimoog is actually just nostalgia for a dinosaur. If your creativity stops where a mod matrix begins, just say that. Don't blame modern architecture because you can't figure out what to do with more than a fixed signal path

Many years ago I used to have a synth where one could draw user waveforms, but at the end of the day, it made little difference. It was not worth the effort.

Wow that's like saying "I tried to finger paint once, but my stick figures looked terrible, so I concluded the entire medium of visual art is just a useless gimmick". What an Incredible self-own.

I know Dune 3, but never really liked it. It sounds a bit sterile and cold to me. Ideal for EDM, which I despise.
This is the most modern type of music I like, and I think I could make most if not all those sounds in Retrologue 2 or similar synths, if I had to...


To me the singer is always in the center of music.

Your analogy makes little sense to me because a plastic screwdriver is not made for tightening real screws. Plastic tools are made for fun and play, not for work.
Likewise, quality subtractive synths are made for work, not for fun and play. That is why people still use such synths in the studio, be it hardware, be it software.

A sawtooth in Diva, Retrologue etc. is in no way inferior to a sawtooth in Dune 3.
The same goes for the filter. What there is, is at the same level. And what there is not, does not reduce the quality of what there is.