Synapse Audio Minimoog emulation "The Legend" for VST/AU and RE released!

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The Legend

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EnGee wrote:I did a tiny comparison between 5 synths (includes The Legend of course). It is a simple bass and as I'm not a pro sound designer, so forgive me for my lack of the details.

I tried to make them as near as possible and as equal as I could in volume with a very simple bass melody. It repeats the same midi file for each synth to play (which takes about 15 seconds each).

https://soundcloud.com/engeemoon/bass-comparison

I don't know really, but the most difference I think it is in the character and the way of playing. I like them all to be honest as they are from my favourite synths :)

What do you think? Is there a clear difference between each synth? Can you spot The Legend easily? Do you believe that the skill of the programmer (sound designer) is as important as the synth sound/character?
First i want to say i am not very good at those "guess the synth" games. Anyway with this my impression was that the differnces are actually quite big, especially between the first and the last one. Part of that difference also seems to be in the envelope setting that does not really seem to match between the 5 examples (or the mixture/balance between envelope, Cutoff and envelope amount). Not 100% sure but my guess would be that the first one is The Legend which could be also wrong.

Anyway my experience is that reprograming a sibngke or a few soudns from other synths usually could work nicely (like with some of my Synth Brass patches) but the more patches you try to replicate the more difficult it gets to nail all of them properly.

I am not sure if also other Minimoog emulatiosn are included in your comparison but obviiously with those it would be more easy to get closer to The Legend.

My own comparison i did (see my post above) were with the Bandpass filter and there it seems to be even more difficult to get a similar sound from other synths. If you combine all 4 filters availabl in Teh Legend for a comparison it wil get VEYR difficult to nail all those wit hanother plugin. While Monark has a 12dB BPF too it does not offer polyphony and some other features in The Legend and as soon as you use those advanced features it would be also difficult to replicate the BPF sounds of The Legend in Monark (in The Legend you simply have to switch to the 24dB BPF mode that already makes this impossible).

Opposing to many other BPFs that were used in vintage synths the ones in The Legend are resonant until self-oscillation. For example there is a big difference to an Oberheim SEM style BPF which is a state variable filter opposing to the transistor ladder filter of the Minimoog (and the BPF is built on the same topology as the Minimoog LPF).
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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Wow!
This Legend fanboi thread is still up and running ...
Dear Monark users: you will NEVER persuade these guys that Legend is just a synth among others ...
:dog:

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Ingonator wrote:
First i want to say i am not very good at those "guess the synth" games. Anyway with this my impression was that the differnces are actually quite big, especially between the first and the last one. Part of that difference also seems to be in the envelope setting that does not really seem to match between the 5 examples (or the mixture/balance between envelope, Cutoff and envelope amount). Not 100% sure but my guess would be that the first one is The Legend which could be also wrong.

Anyway my experience is that reprograming a sibngke or a few soudns from other synths usually could work nicely (like with some of my Synth Brass patches) but the more patches you try to replicate the more difficult it gets to nail all of them properly.

I am not sure if also other Minimoog emulatiosn are included in your comparison but obviiously with those it would be more easy to get closer to The Legend.

My own comparison i did (see my post above) were with the Bandpass filter and there it seems to be even more difficult to get a similar sound from other synths. If you combine all 4 filters availabl in Teh Legend for a comparison it wil get VEYR difficult to nail all those wit hanother plugin. While Monark has a 12dB BPF too it does not offer polyphony and some other features in The Legend and as soon as you use those advanced features it would be also difficult to replicate the BPF sounds of The Legend in Monark (in The Legend you simply have to switch to the 24dB BPF mode that already makes this impossible).

Opposing to many other BPFs that were used in vintage synths the ones in The Legend are resonant until self-oscillation. For example there is a big difference to an Oberheim SEM style BPF which is a state variable filter opposing to the transistor ladder filter of the Minimoog (and the BPF is built on the same topology as the Minimoog LPF).
It is not a game. It is a test of some synths bass sound comparison I did it for myself. I already have my conclusion but wanted to read others opinions.

I'm not biased towards or against the Legend although it is from my favourite synths (which are in this comparison: Dune2, RePro-1, Sylenth1 and Monark in no particular order). I urge the others to do such comparison with their own synths. There is a lot to learn from it.

I tried to reach a similar sound in few other synths, but it was taking a lot of time and effort to do that, so I didn't include them in this comparison.Anyway, they have their own strength in other kind of sounds especially the not retro ones.
Using: Cubase Pro 15, Reason 13, Tascam US-4x4HR, MODX6, DM12D, LaunchKey 49, Yamaha guitar(Pacifica 612v) and bass (BB234) and some virtual instruments and synths.

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EnGee wrote:
What do you think? Is there a clear difference between each synth? Can you spot The Legend easily?
No, but, i do think, for such relatively simple patches, it's pretty hard to distinguish several synths, while on other, more complex patches, it is easier. For example, i don't think anyone could really distinguish the sawtooth, or square waveforms of certain synths, but, it's rather eary to distinguish them with a filter sweep, unison sounds, or extremer sounds.

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EnGee wrote: I'm not biased towards or against the Legend although it is from my favourite synths (which are in this comparison: Dune2, RePro-1, Sylenth1 and Monark in no particular order). I urge the others to do such comparison with their own synths. There is a lot to learn from it.

I tried to reach a similar sound in few other synths, but it was taking a lot of time and effort to do that, so I didn't include them in this comparison.Anyway, they have their own strength in other kind of sounds especially the not retro ones.
Well, if you read my reply rorrectly my conclusion was that there was a clear difference between all 5 synths, especiallym teh first and the last example. This is not just the sound but also the parameters like eg. the envelopes were not matched close enough IMO.

As you mention Monark a guess would be that the first example in your comparison is The Legend and the second Monark but i could be wrong.

Repro-1 IMO is too much different in the basic sound to do a proper comparison.

Sylenth1 is quite different too and as an anlog emulation does not match with the quality of synths like e.g. The Legend and Repro-1.

DUNE 2 is great on it's own especially for the "multisaw" and wavetable stuff but i would not really see it as a direct replacement for The Legend or other vintage analog synth emulations. This might change with DUNE 3. The oscilators in DUNE 2 are much more "precise" concerning the tuning compared to the analog modeled ones in The Legend and also Repro-1.


PS:
My own comparisons with the 12dB Bandpass filter (like in the audio demo of The Legend i posted) that i did were not to find a "better" synth but so see how many got a BPF that sounds comparable. Along the 17 other synths those were not many.
This comparison was only for a single patch from the Legend. When comparing multiple patches the selection of similar sounding synths would be even less.
If i combine all features including all 4 filter modes i doubt i would find a synth that would fully nail the sound of The Legend using all those.
Last edited by Ingonator on Sat Feb 11, 2017 5:46 pm, edited 7 times in total.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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martinjuenke wrote:Wow!
This Legend fanboi thread is still up and running ...
Why should the thread not continue. I do not see something wrong about "Legend fanbois" posting in a thread about The Legend and yes i am a "fanboi" too... :borg:
martinjuenke wrote:Wow!
Dear Monark users: you will NEVER persuade these guys that Legend is just a synth among others ...
:dog:
The Legend is better IMO and Monark was better than other Minimoog emulation before The Legend was released. With better i do not mean just your personal taste (e.g. a possible more aggressive sound in Monark) but also better as a proper emulation.
Now that i have both and especially after the 1.1 update for The Legend i do not see reason why i should prefer Monark in favor of The Legend. The Legend could do all what Monark could do and then some more.
Last edited by Ingonator on Sat Feb 11, 2017 6:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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Gee, you two are from the same city and don't even agree :hihi:

Anyway, I think #5 might be Sylenth with retrigger on, it sounds a bit cleaner and much more consistent than the rest, which have unpleasant volume fluctuations.
But I agree that it is hard to compare them as the patches are not set up the same. However, that might not even be possible as I remember comparing Legend and Sylenth1 one evening, and the envelopes are very different. Legend has that pick-up thingy that Sylenth1 and probably most of the others in that comparison lack. (Personally, I don't like that behavior, so I don't miss it.)

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Can anyone recommend a good patch library for the Legend?

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republik wrote:Can anyone recommend a good patch library for the Legend?
I like Legendary, by VintageSynthPads.

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republik wrote:Can anyone recommend a good patch library for the Legend?
In my own threda at the Soundware forum i summed up links for both commercial and free patches (including my own free ones of course):
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2#p6695162

I did not buy one of the commercial ones myself yet but this does not mean i am not interested in them.
I was just too busy with my own ones and also playing with the factory presets so far.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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republik wrote:Can anyone recommend a good patch library for the Legend?
While I'm in the process of creating my own (won't be done until April) can I make a suggestion? It's a really easy synth. Dive in and experiment. I think you'll find you can come up with some really great patches of your own with very little effort. There aren't really many parameters on this synth so you're not getting all that complex even tweaking everything.

Download the 25 patches I put up on Dropbox and study them. That should give you a pretty good idea of what's possible with The Legend.

You'll find the link in Ingo's thread under Soundware.

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republik wrote:Can anyone recommend a good patch library for the Legend?
No. Program your own. Its not hard.

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I was considering buying this but found that it's too heavy for my 192k studio.
I think I will buy when it has options to lower the rate of oversampling.
x8 is obviously too much for my studio.
soundcloud.com/yudaidhun

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Yudaidhun wrote:192k
:lol: :x :lol: :roll:
[====[\\\\\\\\]>------,

Ay caramba !

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Thanks for the recommendations (and advice). I'm not against programming synths myself, easy or challenging - I actually love diving into modular synthesis, for example - but I also like checking out patch libraries for inspiration. Especially showing off how far an easy synth can be pushed, and tweaking from there.

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