How come "Hardware" VA's 16 years ago sounded so good like the AN1x and now....

[olepro]

I think SQ8L might be a good example in this discussion.

The creator modeled the original dsp chip inside the Ensoniq SQ80, and see how much cpu it takes from a modern computer... next to nothing !

[EvilDragon]

...AND still sounds amazing.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[Karmacomposer]

I believe it has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with the talented professionals who could make amazingly tiny samples sound amazingly large with analog circuitry and effects.

When you force someone to create something in a very confined space, you will usually find that he or she will succeed regardless of the lack of technology available to them.

With massive amounts of processing power comes massive laziness. None of us HAVE TO fit a tiny ity bitty little sample in an even smaller space anymore. Instead, we sample at 24bit, 48khz or higher and go NUTS on the sample sizes.

If we were forced to use 8 bit, 8khz or less and each sample had to be under 128k, believe me, we would find a way to make that sound good.

Mike

[EvilDragon]

But AN1X has no samples at all.

[samsam]

But. Sorry, there is no soft synth in existence to me that sounds 100 TIMES better than my an1x (or cs1x for that matter) and in raw power we DO have 100 times the power (at the least, we are talking about 16ghz + in hexa cores)rs.

AN1X may have been a classic but the poor CS1X hasn't aged very well, sounds well ropey.

[djanthonyw]

Convertors.

Actual electricity running through actual metal.


For the same reason, my JV1080 sounds better than my Omnisphere despite 20 years of progress and being programmed by the same dude.

I doubt that is the reason. I had a contemporary Roland sampler (S750) and to me the ADA conversion was fairly neutral. What went in sounded pretty much the same coming out again.

It would be an interesting test to make,don't know if Roland made any modules with digital outputs around that era. The 2080 doesn't have it (i believe) but the 5080 did,no ?

There was a similar discussion over at teh slutz (surprise surprise)

Taking into account that the 1080 and Omnisphere have very similar sounds in them programmed by the same dude, I can't think of any other reason.

It's not the timbre's themselves, more the character of the sound.

Similarly, when I had a Virus Ti, the analogue outs sounded different (and to my ears nicer) than the USB audio.

I'm not an analogue/hardware purist by any stretch of the imagination, but there's clearly a difference.

I've had a Virus Classic / B, and the Virus Powercore. They sound exactly the same, so I don't think it's due to converters.

[tenshin111]

I'll add one more reason.

Hardware VA's usually run largely on dedicated Digital Signal Processors (DSP chips). These are far less flexible than the General CPU's we have in our PC's but they are also much more efficient. You can compare it with the graphical power of a video card versus that of the CPU itself.

Of course that's only a small part of the explanation. Modern day CPU's easily crunch those old and not so old DSP's.

I think this is actually quite a good explanation. The whole synth was a highly optimized machine - a single architecture with well-defined purpose and specialised dsp chips.

Actually it isn't. The DSP designer of today has like 1000 times the number cycles to play with than they had back then even though the DSP only did one thing. The available calculating power is NOT the answer to the question.

You are wrong here - DSP chips and general-purpose CPUs are two completely different architectures. One CPU cycle vs one DSP cycle is not the same. In one cycle, a specialised chip can perform computations that would require dozens of cycles of a regular CPU. Add to it ability to work with multiple sets of data (which would be like performing calculation in parallel) and your 1000x more CPU cycles 'advantage' actually means very little in certain situations.

The aforementioned analogy of a CPU vs GPU is a very good one - your 8-core i7 will be painfully slow and inefficient in certain types of computations when compared with a several years old, mid-range graphics card. That's the power of specialization.

And now, when you have a whole device built from ground-up with one purpose in mind you can really achieve a lot with relatively "underpowered" components - think no intermediate layers (like a complex operating system, system calls, device drivers, etc.), no bottlenecks, no wasted cycles.

Speaking of wasted cycles - this is actually a bit more complicated, but your general-purpose CPU wastes a lot of those precious cycles waiting for data and instructions to be fetched from memory. Pipelining, caching, and other technologies help minimise that waste but this is unavoidable. In a specialised architecture you can avoid that to a higher degree and improve overall performance without need for more cycles.

[donato]

A lengthy and almost identical conversation recently took place on another board. I think it's a good read for other opinions:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electron ... ht=digital

[jupiter8]

I'll add one more reason.

Hardware VA's usually run largely on dedicated Digital Signal Processors (DSP chips). These are far less flexible than the General CPU's we have in our PC's but they are also much more efficient. You can compare it with the graphical power of a video card versus that of the CPU itself.

Of course that's only a small part of the explanation. Modern day CPU's easily crunch those old and not so old DSP's.

I think this is actually quite a good explanation. The whole synth was a highly optimized machine - a single architecture with well-defined purpose and specialised dsp chips.

Actually it isn't. The DSP designer of today has like 1000 times the number cycles to play with than they had back then even though the DSP only did one thing. The available calculating power is NOT the answer to the question.

You are wrong here - DSP chips and general-purpose CPUs are two completely different architectures. One CPU cycle vs one DSP cycle is not the same. In one cycle, a specialised chip can perform computations that would require dozens of cycles of a regular CPU. Add to it ability to work with multiple sets of data (which would be like performing calculation in parallel) and your 1000x more CPU cycles 'advantage' actually means very little in certain situations.

The aforementioned analogy of a CPU vs GPU is a very good one - your 8-core i7 will be painfully slow and inefficient in certain types of computations when compared with a several years old, mid-range graphics card. That's the power of specialization.

And now, when you have a whole device built from ground-up with one purpose in mind you can really achieve a lot with relatively "underpowered" components - think no intermediate layers (like a complex operating system, system calls, device drivers, etc.), no bottlenecks, no wasted cycles.

Speaking of wasted cycles - this is actually a bit more complicated, but your general-purpose CPU wastes a lot of those precious cycles waiting for data and instructions to be fetched from memory. Pipelining, caching, and other technologies help minimise that waste but this is unavoidable. In a specialised architecture you can avoid that to a higher degree and improve overall performance without need for more cycles.

And yet an I7 does several hundreds if not a thousand instances of a plugin that TC PowerCore manages only 10 of. That is odd.

[Teksonik]

There are so many aspects of this discussion i would find intriguing to delve into... i hope others do too

cheers.

I don't see why we should be so concerned about numbers. You've fixated on DIVA which is one of the most CPU hungry synths available at the present time. Yea 30 voices in Divine mode would melt my CPU but again the AN1X couldn't do 30 voices so there are advantages and disadvantages.

Just enjoy the times we are living in........ or if you want to go back to the past buy another AN1X.

Like I've said before in this thread I can play several different top quality soft synths at the same time and not break a sweat on this CPU and still get sounds I couldn't even dream of a few decades ago even with the rack full of hardware modules and stand full of keyboards I used to own.....

I guess I just don't care that....or care why....it takes more power to run DIVA than is does an AN1X........all I care about is what's coming out of my speakers and I can tell you what's coming out of them now blows away anything that came out of them in my hardware days.......

[Teksonik]

Hmm.. interesting.. theoretically you could go all hardware, as in PC hardware.. hmmmm ! lol.

That's one point I've been trying to hammer home for quite some time now. A well spec'd computer with a high quality soundcard and good quality midi controller is a hardware synth. There is no difference in concept between what ends up at the end of an audio cable plugged into a dedicated hardware synth and one plugged into the soundcard of a computer. We can argue until we're blue in the face about which signal we prefer but I don't think there can be much argument that dollar for dollar the complexity and range of sounds that we can make with an open ended computer system will far exceed anything in a closed hardware system.....with a quality that's equal or better....in some cases.

I've got an old Pentium 4 laying around that would easily run many of the soft synths that I own. I could simply run a midi cable to it and plug it's audio outputs into my board just as one would any dedicated hardware box and boom instant hardware synth just with a different form factor but I've never felt the need.....

I just feel so blessed to be living in these times of such great flexibility and choices.......from the time I heard the first synth I owned which was a Crumar Orchestrator and thought I was hearing the voice of God to the sounds I can create today with all the different types of synthesis available I realize just how much progress has been made.....truly wonderful times we live in......

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[eidenk]

I'll add one more reason.

Hardware VA's usually run largely on dedicated Digital Signal Processors (DSP chips). These are far less flexible than the General CPU's we have in our PC's but they are also much more efficient. You can compare it with the graphical power of a video card versus that of the CPU itself.

Of course that's only a small part of the explanation. Modern day CPU's easily crunch those old and not so old DSP's.

I think this is actually quite a good explanation. The whole synth was a highly optimized machine - a single architecture with well-defined purpose and specialised dsp chips.

Actually it isn't. The DSP designer of today has like 1000 times the number cycles to play with than they had back then even though the DSP only did one thing. The available calculating power is NOT the answer to the question.

You are wrong here - DSP chips and general-purpose CPUs are two completely different architectures. One CPU cycle vs one DSP cycle is not the same. In one cycle, a specialised chip can perform computations that would require dozens of cycles of a regular CPU. Add to it ability to work with multiple sets of data (which would be like performing calculation in parallel) and your 1000x more CPU cycles 'advantage' actually means very little in certain situations.

The aforementioned analogy of a CPU vs GPU is a very good one - your 8-core i7 will be painfully slow and inefficient in certain types of computations when compared with a several years old, mid-range graphics card. That's the power of specialization.

And now, when you have a whole device built from ground-up with one purpose in mind you can really achieve a lot with relatively "underpowered" components - think no intermediate layers (like a complex operating system, system calls, device drivers, etc.), no bottlenecks, no wasted cycles.

Speaking of wasted cycles - this is actually a bit more complicated, but your general-purpose CPU wastes a lot of those precious cycles waiting for data and instructions to be fetched from memory. Pipelining, caching, and other technologies help minimise that waste but this is unavoidable. In a specialised architecture you can avoid that to a higher degree and improve overall performance without need for more cycles.

And yet an I7 does several hundreds if not a thousand instances of a plugin that TC PowerCore manages only 10 of. That is odd.

Whatever the Powercore vs I7 situation is, what tenshin111 wrote is the answer to waht ttoz asked IMO, the hardware is tailored to the software being run on and performs at 100% efficiency, look up the concept of netlists and Verilog/VHDL programing languages and you'll discover that it's possible to run a specific task on say a 200Mhz ARM chip based machine faster than the very same task on a 5GHz Intel/AMD computer. The strenght of Intel architecture is that it allows to perform virtually any task but its efficiency is extremely low.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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