KVR Audio

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:24 pm

wagtunes wrote:Do I still like Spectral? Yes. I have no intentions of ever getting rid of it. Because on those days when I want to get really creative, Spectral is a playground. There aren't a lot of synths that go beyond it.

There is another HUGE difference between Spectral and Thorn: Thorn is a new fully supported instrument, Spectral is an old discountinued unsupported instrument. You can't get rid of Spectral even if you wanted to.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:30 pm

Now that you mention it, what is the resell policy of DS, any fee, does licenses become NFR ?

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:35 pm

Numanoid wrote:Now that you mention it, what is the resell policy of DS, any fee, does licenses become NFR ?

I bought Diversion 2nd hand with no problems and I am pretty sure its not NFR. Anyone?

imrae · Post by **imrae** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:41 pm

There seems to be a good amount of overlap between my take on this and wagtunes'. A couple of comments:

wagtunes wrote: 1. Spectral's bottom end can't touch Thorn's. That's not its strong suit. For bass, I'd choose Thorn over Spectral in a heartbeat.

I don't understand this? In both cases you can literally draw in a stronger fundamental if you want one. There's no fixed highpass, they both give as much bass as you ask for.

3. As a pure spectral synth, Spectral beats Thorn hands down. It's not even close. If that's your main criteria for choosing between the two, Spectral wins.

Could you explain what's meant by this? We're literally comparing spectral synths here, I don't quite get which aspect you mean. I think you're referring to the oscillator partial editors? That's a tough one, Spectral has more editing features but Thorn's keyframing wavetable feature is really helpful for assembling the waveform you want. The visual/audio feedback is quicker too.

6. While Thorn does have the Harmonic Filter, Spectral's 4 drawable filters simply allow it to come up with timbers that would be impossible to reproduce with Thorn. The downside is the amount of work needed to get that uniqueness.

The harmonic filter in Thorn is drawable and can be modulated. In principle multiple instances of Thorn could be used to layer different spectral filters but clearly this is cumbersome.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:44 pm

plexuss wrote:
Numanoid wrote:Now that you mention it, what is the resell policy of DS, any fee, does licenses become NFR ?
I bought Diversion 2nd hand with no problems and I am pretty sure its not NFR. Anyone?

No fee, no NFR. He's that kind of guy.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:46 pm

imrae wrote:
wagtunes wrote: 3. As a pure spectral synth, Spectral beats Thorn hands down. It's not even close. If that's your main criteria for choosing between the two, Spectral wins.
Could you explain what's meant by this?

On the other hand, as a pure thorn synth, Thorn beats Spectral hands down. It's not even close. Go figure!

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:48 pm

Nice

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:56 pm

When importing waves, do they get embedded in the patch or do you have to include the wave folder when sharing patches?

cb8rwh · Post by **cb8rwh** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:02 pm

If you mean in the Noise osc, then they get embedded.

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:05 pm

cb8rwh wrote:If you mean in the Noise osc, then they get embedded.

I mean all the oscillators.

cb8rwh · Post by **cb8rwh** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:28 pm

Well I mean you could try and build a preset with a sample and then delete/move the sample to check. Alternatively, do what I did (for the noise osc) and post a preset for someone else to check.

I just tried with osc 1 and it seems to embed.

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:30 pm

cb8rwh wrote:Well I mean you could try and build a preset with a sample and then delete/move the sample to check. Alternatively, do what I did (for the noise osc) and post a preset for someone else to check.

I just tried with osc 1 and it seems to embed.

Seems to as well but when I turned the pos knob, my whole PC froze. So I won't be embedding anymore waves until somebody else discovers this, reports it, and it's fixed.

cb8rwh · Post by **cb8rwh** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:32 pm

Yeah, I get a few problems when trying some of the osc spectral functions (Smooth seems touchy!). Crashes Bitwig and have to reload all plugins.

Russell Grand · Post by **Russell Grand** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:01 pm

recursive one wrote:
imrae wrote:
wagtunes wrote: 3. As a pure spectral synth, Spectral beats Thorn hands down. It's not even close. If that's your main criteria for choosing between the two, Spectral wins.
Could you explain what's meant by this?
On the other hand, as a pure thorn synth, Thorn beats Spectral hands down. It's not even close. Go figure!

Agreed, Thorn is a better synth, no contest. Spectral is decent, but honestly it's nothing mind-blowing and it seems to be lacking a certain something (besides support

)

Sound Author · Post by **Sound Author** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:03 pm

wagtunes wrote:
cb8rwh wrote:If you mean in the Noise osc, then they get embedded.
I mean all the oscillators.

To the best of my understanding, the only oscillator that embeds an actual WAV file is the Noise osc. When you "Import All Frames" or "Import Single Frame" within the Harmonic Oscillators, you aren't really importing a WAV file, but rather the harmonic content of that WAV file, which is summed and loaded into the Spectrum Table. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that no actual WAV file is being loaded there.

Thorn: Dmitry Sches' new synth!