Repro-5

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nevernamed wrote:You should limit yourself to speaking only about yourself and your own perception.
When you claim that a product makes an objective difference, you open yourself up to that claim being questioned. When you're only argument is your subjective perception, then you should get used to people questioning the claims.
In this forum, which is informal to say the least, there isn't any possibility at all of presenting a case study.
In other words, you don't have any references to share. I didn't think so. High end manufacturers don't like blind tests, they generally reveal that people can't tell the difference and that's not good for sales.

The differences between DACs are subtle at best. When people claim that there is this night and day difference then you are opening yourself up to criticism of your claims. This is especially true when you make attempts to link a bunch of subjective perceptions to a device for which you have zero evidence that any technical merits of the device would lead to such differences in perception. No blind tests, no links to papers that describe how particular features yield specific measurable differences, etc.

I can accept that you like it and even that you can hear differences. I'm not convinced that what you're hearing isn't bias, but that's neither here nor there really.

I also don't think that your advice, like most audiophile type advice, is useful to the typical KVR reader really. I think that the general claim that high end technical leadership leads to diminishing returns is valid and that the pareto optimal position is where it's interesting to talk about differences that can be heard/measured.

Here's an example of bias. It's called the McGurk effect. You can HEAR it, I can HEAR it, but there is no difference. If you weren't told about what you were hearing, there is no way that your brain could distinguish between an actual difference or bias. You ACTUALLY HEAR a difference.


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I know what you say nevernamed, but hi-end categories have more to do with taste than any other thing. I like Mytek ADs, Apogee DAs have certain colour that I like, Cranesong is almost too neutral for me, so always left me in a so-so state I really preffer the RME!!! because what belong to what is a personal opinion based largely on taste, not specs. I can ear all that minute diferences, and IMO, the brand of the tubes in one of the compressors have a greater effect than the differences between those higher end ADCs or DACs.
About your sentence of needing a mastering chain for hearing the fetails of repro-1 I`m just saying two things:

A/ You don´t need that hi-end chain for working with plugins (or harware synths!), Its a BIG investment that IMHO don´t reward you with a greater experience because:

B/ The clinical listening and lack of "hi-fi" sound can play the opposite role when creating sound or composing, I was trying that for some time with my mastering rig and it always take my mind and turn it to the "faults" and imperfections instead of the important things. I can´t imagine anyone composing or even recording takes using that kind sound chains, its really counterproductive!

Best regards!!

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pdxindy wrote:
nevernamed wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:Agreed with Klinik. I'm not doing any mastering here, I don't need such mastering grade equipment, I don't have monitors (nor do I want to) that cost a kidney a piece. Economies of scale are totally not there for the regular home studio hobbyst, surely you agree with that?

Also RME still rocks, and countless mixes have been done on RME equipment, so yeah. :)
Yeah but play a track through something like the aforementioned and you'll want to demote your RME rather quickly. Some of these converters are primarily musical, for all the detail they offer as well as transparency they are not unpleasant, and are a joy to simply sit back and listen to. I didn't disagree with you about the RME but it's just not on the same level. That was my point.

Sure I agree that this is beyond reach of a home studio hobbyist but that said the Cranesong Solaris is actually priced rather sensibly. I think ultimately you and I play on a different level. I've moved on from RME a while ago and as much as I respect the company and think they do brilliant work I think there are even greater heights.
RME is good enough for me too... at that point, the difference is meaningless (to me) compared to the other factors like the music itself.

It is the exact same argument that has gone on for decades among audiophiles and which pre-amp, turntable, etc etc is the best, most musical etc. It becomes an end in itself. If that interests someone, fine, but it is just not necessary to make and thoroughly enjoy music.
When I used to sell consumer electronics, I had a saying (usually to broke customers pining for a giant Sony) "Bart Simpson is just as funny on the cheapest TV we have." In the end, most of us have to make concessions. My Fireface sounds great to me. I never once thought, "Urg. Those DACs are killing me, if only I I had..." Of course, there are better sounding converters, but now, if you're talking pure sonic quality, why use a VSTi? Why not just buy a Prophet 5 and a Pro-1? My guess is, as good as RePro-5 will be, and I bet it'll be stellar, the difference between it and the real thing will be more audible than the difference between it running on my RME and the Cranesong interface. Will my Mackie monitors even be able to reproduce the difference? What about when I play it from my iPhone with my Bowers and Wilkins P5 Bluetooth headphones? Or on my aging Boston Acoustic speaker being powered by a basic consumer level receiver? See? I live in the real world. When I get that kind of cash together, I'll spend it on a Modal .002r over some ultra high end converter. I can't even tell the difference between my RME's line inputs and my ADA8200's.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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I wonder how Repro-5 is coming along... :wink:
John Braner
http://johnbraner.bandcamp.com
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
and all the major streaming/download sites.

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jbraner wrote:I wonder how Repro-5 is coming along... :wink:
Nicely. I think we're almost done sound-wise. We had Howie in the office for AB testing with a reference hardware and the differences are in the same magnitude as the difference between the reference hardware and another (as far as one can tell by Youtube).

We will however merge our tagged preset browser into the project this week. We'll see how long it takes to get things up and running with it, it's a major surgery on our codebase, probably the biggest we ever had...

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That's worth waiting for ;-)
I'd love to be able to query the tags - and list all presets set for (for example) brass + arps
John Braner
http://johnbraner.bandcamp.com
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
and all the major streaming/download sites.

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Don´t forget to feed Howie in his dungeon :D

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Cinebient wrote:Don´t forget to feed Howie in his dungeon :D
No worries. Funny enough, Hans Z had the same request last night :lol: :lol: :lol:

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ghettosynth wrote:
nevernamed wrote:You should limit yourself to speaking only about yourself and your own perception.
When you claim that a product makes an objective difference, you open yourself up to that claim being questioned. When you're only argument is your subjective perception, then you should get used to people questioning the claims.
In this forum, which is informal to say the least, there isn't any possibility at all of presenting a case study.
In other words, you don't have any references to share. I didn't think so. High end manufacturers don't like blind tests, they generally reveal that people can't tell the difference and that's not good for sales.

The differences between DACs are subtle at best. When people claim that there is this night and day difference then you are opening yourself up to criticism of your claims. This is especially true when you make attempts to link a bunch of subjective perceptions to a device for which you have zero evidence that any technical merits of the device would lead to such differences in perception. No blind tests, no links to papers that describe how particular features yield specific measurable differences, etc.

I can accept that you like it and even that you can hear differences. I'm not convinced that what you're hearing isn't bias, but that's neither here nor there really.

I also don't think that your advice, like most audiophile type advice, is useful to the typical KVR reader really. I think that the general claim that high end technical leadership leads to diminishing returns is valid and that the pareto optimal position is where it's interesting to talk about differences that can be heard/measured.

Here's an example of bias. It's called the McGurk effect. You can HEAR it, I can HEAR it, but there is no difference. If you weren't told about what you were hearing, there is no way that your brain could distinguish between an actual difference or bias. You ACTUALLY HEAR a difference.

First of all this is an anonymous forum. I don't open myself to anything nor do I have to substantiate anything. Even if I wanted to organize this the forum itself would make it impossible (technically).

You can question my claims until you're blue in the face and I would be completely unaffected.

Secondly objective realities are not an empirical fact. Not in physics nor in philosophy. In fact in formal logic the idea doesn't fare well at all and in physics, well read about how phenomena behave in quantum experiments if you're interested to learn why this proposition is highly problematic.

And by the way there is no bias but since you haven't any experience with the aforementioned it precludes you from discussion.

Thirdly you've not heard any of the converters I mentioned have you? I asked you twice now but you're avoiding answering so I'll proceed under the presumption that you've not heard them. Not having heard them disqualifies you from having any sort of opinion (i.e. lack of experience etc). Not having heard them you can't say one way or the other that there is only a subtle difference (I think you extend this stupidity to 'every' DAC not just aforementioned). You can't really say anything at all not having heard them.

Whether my advice is useful or not is again not for you to say. Not having worked with these devices you are precluded from offering up an opinion.

And lastly if you want anything that even remotely resembles proof ring around the various top flight studios in the US and UK. Ask them why is it that they don't use the FF400 system in the studio. I expect you'll get a reply somewhere along the lines of: "well there is only a subtle difference between DACs but we decided to spend 15 grand on a Burl system anyway". "We could have had the FF400 for all of 300 quid or so but we thought, nah we'd rather spend 15 grand.".

Now if you'll excuse me I'd like to return to my anechoic chamber so I can do some blind testing in order to validating myself and my biases as I wait for the Repro5 to arrive.

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Urs wrote:
jbraner wrote:I wonder how Repro-5 is coming along... :wink:
Nicely. I think we're almost done sound-wise. We had Howie in the office for AB testing with a reference hardware and the differences are in the same magnitude as the difference between the reference hardware and another (as far as one can tell by Youtube).

We will however merge our tagged preset browser into the project this week. We'll see how long it takes to get things up and running with it, it's a major surgery on our codebase, probably the biggest we ever had...
Not to distract from the very important converter discussion, but just want to point out that I'm almost as excited by the tagged preset browser as I am by RePro-5 itself. I'd been kind of compiling my own favorites via my DAW's preset system so having something more advanced in the various U-he products will be very appreciated here.

Will RePro-1 get the updated browser at the same time RePro-5 goes beta or into the final release? Or will RePro-1 get updated much later?

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Urs wrote: No worries. Funny enough, Hans Z had the same request last night :lol: :lol: :lol:
Is dark repro-5/repro-hz already planned? :)
Murderous duck!

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nevernamed wrote: Secondly objective realities are not an empirical fact. Not in physics nor in philosophy. In fact in formal logic the idea doesn't fare well at all and in physics, well read about how phenomena behave in quantum experiments if you're interested to learn why this proposition is highly problematic.
LOL!

We aren't talking about quantum physics, we're talking about separating your bias from your claims.
And by the way there is no bias...
Look, as soon as you claim that "there is no bias", you're simply wrong. There is ALWAYS bias and trying to bring in formality that you don't actually understand just tightens the noose.

Every time I test something I recognize that the potential magnitude of bias may be clouding the issue. I go out of my way to try to minimize this, if you take nothing else away from this conversation you should at least learn that. People prefer the sound of synths with wooden end cheeks, more prestigious names, and more expensive knobs. You will actually HEAR differences, that is the power of bias.

The bottom line is that you don't actually have any evidence or data that quantifies the magnitude differences that you claim exist. I'm not even talking about your blind tests, I don't think that you have the qualifications to run them successfully. You can't even point to ANY tests that quantify the difference in some meaningful way with respect to human perception. Hence, the reasonable conclusion is that, as others agree, that any differences are at best subtle, and more likely simply a matter of taste in small degrees.

This is way off topic at this point. We're talking about a synth. You made some claims that you can't back up and the general consensus here is that you're overstating your case. I would suggest that you bring this back around to Repro and out of the domain of your own perception. If it makes you happy to play your soft synth through an expensive DAC, good for you. However, any suggestion that it makes a huge difference that other people will notice is an objective claim that you can't back up. You have yet to bring up any even slightly reasonable technical justification for this, and I think that's because, for whatever reasons, you can't.

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I'm waiting for Louis Vuitton and Gucci branded DACs for a long time.
Leather surface, read wood, gold panel and brand - that's what attracts customer.
That's what would allow you to get your claim to fame to completely new level.
Murderous duck!

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Im waiting for a poly synth, not a pointless preset browser.... seriously.

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A good tag-based preset browser is not pointless at all. Seriously.

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