Nexus 2 vs Avengers sound quality?

[v1o]

At least for my own needs, it comes down to two tings, sound quality and custom expansions. it's a major plus that the user can create custom expansions in Avenger, whereas for Nexus 2 it's not something ReFX wants to do. I emailed them and got a clear answer :

Hi,

No, creating your own .nxp files for personal and commercial sale is not permitted.

Regards,
XXX

So it's super sad and it's a major turnoff for me.

As for the sound quality i think it was explained rather nicely above. Quality wise they are both good. For me both are nice but Avenger gets an extra plus for creating custom expansions.

Lol, that's utter bullshit. Document formats are not copyrighted. If you can figure out how they work, you can create your own and sell them. Just like anyone can create a software that reads those files.

It's as absurd as a certain sound designer forbidding presets he did for one synth to be loaded into another synth. It's simply not his call as long as those presets were obtained legally.

Sure, it's like people copying a book, obtained legally of couse, and selling it under another title, because well ' they can read the files '. It's not stealing somebody elese work, and mind work, it's just innocent and harmless reading. Anyway, a Sound designer works can be stolen, hmmm no 'read', and used anywhere for somebody else profit, it's not as it were a real job, isn't it ?

I think all Sound Designers present on KVR will 100% agree with you on that.

It's not stealing, it's just hmmmm well, probably something else ( just like reading the files of an U-he synthesizer, duplicating them and selling it .... -oh no wait, this is probably p.racy ... )

Unfortunately, in France, something like 'intellectual property' do exist. That's the law . As I see it, something might to be missing in the equation though. As it's not a stric mathematical item, and my english vocabulary is so poor, I'd simply call it 'ethics', or 'moral'. Ymmv.

No it's not like copying and no you're not stealing anyone's work. When you produce your own original content and put it out in the Nexus document format. The closest analogy would developing your own original Nintendo games using your own tools and selling them on proprietary cartridges to bypass Nintendo's licensing. Or another analogy would be if you developed a machine that can natively read and play Nintendo cartridges. It's not copying or stealing.

[sameer]

I always thought the question of sound quality in a synth (or in Nexus's case, rompler) is kind of a ridiculous conversation to have at all. Where people talk about "sound quality" I take that to mean (A) audio fidelity and/or (B) accurate representation of its subject matter. Where in the case of (A) Nearly all VSTi, just like all DAWs' sound engines, are built on mathematical principles that make them practically indistinguishable from one another without (and even sometimes with) analyzers and metrics that I don't even understand... and (B) the most perfect sawtooth wave is not necessarily the most pleasing sound - see u-he synths, with their deliberately, painstakingly built-in imperfections.

And finally if you're talking about audio fidelity, consider who you are trying to impress. If you're trying to make it big as a musician, most people will hear your music on laptops and iphones. I promise you NOBODY will say "wow, I bet he did this on Avenger instead of Nexus. Listen to the pristine audio quality on that synth lead!"

So the question of Nexus vs Avenger is very simple: are you a sound designer or are you not? Frankly, Avenger might be the best sound design workhorse I've ever used. It's biggest--and practically its only--limitation is that it currently only supports serial filter routing, so you'd have to duplicate an oscillator to do parallel filter routing. It also only supports basic FM since you're limited to one modulator per carrier. Aside from that, it can do practically everything under the sun and the suite of FX included in it is worth more than the price of the synth. If that sounds like a bunch of jargon to you, stick with Nexus; unless I'm mistaken, the people making the preset expansions for the two VSTi are the same people, so they're likely to be similar in quality, if not content as well.

Beyond that, Avenger has Nexus's filters included, as well as some of, if not all, its built in FX. So I'd say their sound quality is probably pretty much identical

You may be mistaken here. Especially when it come to SUbtractive synthesis the filters play a big role in shaping the sound.The filter coding changes the color of the filter and response, there are other variables like oversampling, filter styles etc which give it all different character.
The FM engines of almost every synth out there give a different result.Even the simplest sawtooth plucks dont sound the same when designed on different synth engines.

[chk071]

Even the simplest sawtooth plucks dont sound the same when designed on different synth engines.

True. Don't tell the "Do i really need synth X when i already own synth Y?" peeps though.

[Razzia]

You may be mistaken here. Especially when it come to SUbtractive synthesis the filters play a big role in shaping the sound.The filter coding changes the color of the filter and response, there are other variables like oversampling, filter styles etc which give it all different character.
The FM engines of almost every synth out there give a different result.Even the simplest sawtooth plucks dont sound the same when designed on different synth engines.

You might be right. Maybe it's a semantics issue, but when someone asks about sound quality i always think they must mean audio fidelity because most other things are pretty subjective in what sounds good. And oversampling aside, audio fidelity is pretty tough to differentiate unless (even if?) you have extraordinary ears.

As far as plucks, i could be wrong but i always regarded that as having even more to do with the envelopes. But you're right, without an mseg it can be tough to get plucks to sound the same on different synths

[dune_rave]

I like the sounds of avenger and i don't know whether i need nexus or not.
it's quite disturbing, that there's no demo to nexus. if a user , like me, wants to test it in his own environment, simply there's no safe solution. should i download a copy from the net ? no, that's not safe at all.
I quite like the base idea of having ready to use sounds. on the other hand i still have such synths, so i delay buying nexus like i delay buying omnisphere. Maybe I can buy one second hand at kvr...