Retrologue 2 - not authentic enough?

[IvyBirds]

I have both DIVA and Retrologue 2, and I have to say that Retrologue is great at what it does. Does it sound just like DIVA? Sometimes I can get amazingly close. Other times, DIVA does get more "analog-ey". But who cares? I don't. I really like Retrologue for the amazing capabilities that it DOES have, and I'm not kicking it out of my template because it's not like DIVA. DIVA is great on many things, and so is Retrologue. It's definitely "authentic" enough for me, and I have TONS of great V.I.s... Steinberg did a fantastic job with it. At the end of the day, it's not what's "analog" - it's what sounds good. That's all I care about in an instrument.

Well said!

So you agree DIVA sounds more Analogy which disputes your entire argument that it doesn't
. awesome

[IvyBirds]

To me good, authentic analog sound is the pleasant sound I know from music from the late 70s and early 80s, when analog synths ruled. Obviously you have a different idea what typical analog sound is...

This song for instance is full of analog synths, but no distortion as far as I can hear:

The irony here is absolutely off the charts.
What do you think actually created that "pleasant sound from the late 70s and early 80s"? Magic?

Those iconic records were made by tracking Prophet-5s, Minimoogs, and Jupiter-8s through discrete console transformers directly onto 2-inch magnetic tape. That legendary "warm, smooth, pleasant" character you are romanticizing was created specifically by subtle non-linear harmonic saturation, tape compression, transformer drive, and voice-board drift.

You literally just admitted you are "allergic to distortion and drive," yet you claim to love the exact era of music defined entirely by hardware saturation from start to finish.

You don't have a "different idea of typical analog sound"—you just don't realize that the exact 1970s warmth you claim to love is the circuit behavior you keep rejecting as "horrible noise." You are praising the destination while violently rejecting the actual physics that created it.

If you want pristine, hyper-clean, zero-saturation signal paths with no circuit instability, that's completely fine! But that is the literal definition of modern digital DSP—not 1970s and 1980s analog hardware.

[swilow11]

Super 8 sounds better than them all. Fight me.

Super 8 models the Roland Juno voice layout. Instead of picking a single static waveform from a dropdown box, Super 8 uses Roland’s classic slider-blend structure, letting you simultaneously mix saw, pulse, sine, and sub-oscillators to recreate the phase coupling and harmonic weight of Roland's physical voice cards.

One the filter it is modeled after the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5. It recreates the non-linear 24dB low-pass drive, saturation, and resonant punch of the original SSM/CEM filter chips.

So Super 8 literally pairs Roland oscillator blending with a Prophet filter topology.

Comparing that to Retrologue isn't even fair. Super 8 is an explicit component-level mashup of two specific vintage icons, while Retrologue isn't modeling a Roland oscillator or a Prophet filter.

If you like the sound of Super 8 better than DIVA you won't get any arguments from me

Sorry for being unfair, Retrologue.

[Ah_Dziz]

"Authentic" is a pretty ambiguous term. Retrologue is a totally decent synth especially if you got it for free via cubase. I've paid large sums of money for worse synths.

[Gam456]

"Authentic" is a pretty ambiguous term. Retrologue is a totally decent synth especially if you got it for free via cubase. I've paid large sums of money for worse synths.

Authentic in a way, the code reproduce each component and behaviour to be the most close as possible to the original hardware. That's the approach of U-he, Gforce, Roland, Softube, Synapse.
They are way more cpu hungry.

In the other hand, many VA use a more simple method. OSC and vcf are mathematically perfect and not introducing any imperfection and instability. They are obviously not accurate but cpu friendly.

Is it a bad thing? Absolutely not. Many legendary VA hardware such Nord, Access, Roland was build in that way.

Today it's a matter of experience with analog gear and personal taste.

[chk071]

Well, obviously, the name "Retrologue" was chosen rather for marketing purposes, than for its actual analog authenticity. Which is fine, but, comparing it to synth which actually try to emulate analog behavior, based on today's tech, it certainly falls short in that department.

Doesn't mean that you couldn't enjoy it, of course. I also enjoy VA's which don't try to mimic analog behavior as close as possible.

So, getting back to the original question by the unfortunately banned now OP , I would say, no, Retrologue isn't authentic enough in terms of analog behavior, especially when you compare it to the synths mentioned in the original post. It's a typical pre 2010 virtual analog, using the tech which was standard at the time roughly when Sylenth1 was released.

Again, that shouldn't mean that you could not have fun with it. There are a lot of negatives with synths which closely model analog behavior too, like the excessive CPU consumption, lack of voices, lack of features etc.

[kritikon]

Not so unfortunately banned. This was fairly obviously some incidental trolling as a cover to pretend interest in anything music related. He was banned (I assume) because of his Off Topic stuff. The usual nutjob stuff, possibly Russian troll considering his content, but certainly nutjobbery deliberately intended to troll.

[IvyBirds]

Not so unfortunately banned. This was fairly obviously some incidental trolling as a cover to pretend interest in anything music related. He was banned (I assume) because of his Off Topic stuff. The usual nutjob stuff, possibly Russian troll considering his content, but certainly nutjobbery deliberately intended to troll.

Yeah only Russian Trolls would think Retrologue sounded authentic analog

[TechHaus]

He played you like a fiddle, ivy.

[oscillik]

Clocked as a troll with the UI scaling discussion.