VSTis as good as hardware? Similar to Access Virus Quality?

[D-Fusion]

doesnt everyone use noise? if i ever get my hands on an analog without the ability to mix white noise with the oscillator, it gets a mod so fast you wouldnt believe. noise is really important to get those rad pulse bass stabs. if only i had a 4013 laying around to replace the sub osc in this synth i'd show you...

concerning the 'super saw' stuff with however many thousands of oscillators, that isnt so impressive. there are a ton of methods to do things tricky/fast and get results you wouldnt tell the difference with.

here is a good example:

xhip can do 32 saws per voice, with 64 voices (2048 oscillators) fairly easy on a fast cpu. it does 256 voices just fine on my p3 550. i'm talking about real saws here, no tricks involved. if i wanted to do tricks... the thought of how many saws i could conjure is frightening indeed.

think about what a fairly average pc can do. think about a 640x480 graphics rendering program, maybe 3d graphics, whatever. assuming you only need to do an add per pixel, you're doing 18432000 adds per second (at 60 fps.)

a pc can do this with absolutely no problem! infact, you can do a whole load more than just an add per pixel at that rate. considering rendering naive saws and squares before a decimation stage takes pretty much just one or two adds per, i wonder how many you could do on a pc that way, hm?

I agree
I did just install it yesterday and i really love it specially the new saw PWM Supersaw option
It barely use any cpu at all so i hope you will keep that in xhip

[tony tony chopper]

considering rendering naive saws and squares before a decimation stage takes pretty much just one or two adds per

mmh I can't see a proper oscillator with just 2 additions(?)

Either it's a pre-computed table, and you have to peek at least 2 samples (then the RAM access is the problem) for a linear interpolator, and do a couple of muls & adds, or it's an algorithmic bandlimited saw and it's much more than that.

But ok you can skip per-osc amp & ramping if it's not a true unison. Still, for a proper linear interpolation (and I don't think the Virus has waveforms big enough to afford no interpolation), it's at least 2 add's and a mul.
Old trackers were using a nice trick to get linear interpolation at almost no cost, but even that involved a MUL.

[vvanrij]

Is there any particular reason why unison is so rare on softsynths? Especially a polyphonic unison

[waveriderarts]

there's no such thing as zero latency, so if you mean unnoticable latency, obviously with today's 2ms to 10ms ASIO latencies

i can notice 10ms latency - the virus runs at the 2ms latency end fo the spectrum - so again folks 80 voices with 70 fx at 24/96 at 2ms latency

are you sure your pc can do that ???

iN my opinion no PC can do that at the moment....

yes dedicated harware boxes still have the lead....

they dont have to have the fastest processors even, just dedicated hardware is an advantage enough

but I have used lots of hardware that maxed out (lost timing) before all voices were used

there is is not much I can do at 2 ms on my PC, certainly run 1X16voices high quality syth with fx, but not 80 high quality 96kHz voices

[projectdan]

Is there any particular reason why unison is so rare on softsynths? Especially a polyphonic unison

Because it takes CPU I would guess, and its not as in demand/fasionable as mono unison. Tera and Zero Vector have poly unison.

[vvanrij]

Btw trying to get even 40voices in a 4 multitimbral Vaz Modular is quite hard

[DavenH]

can dsp boards now be made with modern pc specs?

Although I suppose that might be a waste of power consumption if they can already do 1800 voices.

[tony tony chopper]

xhip can do 32 saws per voice, with 64 voices (2048 oscillators) fairly easy on a fast cpu

mmh on my AMD3500 it seems to eat 2%/voice with both osc set to ramp with unison. I'd like to test better but where do you raise the poly limit (it always says ?

Also, is it me or it looks like 14 saws/osc, not 16?


Really for me the problem is the mem cache. If I play a lot of osc from *different tables*, I almost double the CPU usage

[BertKoor]

Is there any particular reason why unison is so rare on softsynths? Especially a polyphonic unison

On true analog synths you'd get a nice unison sound because each oscillator had a slightly different tuning. On softsynths with perfect tuning the feature doesn't turn out to be that nice and useful. You'll also see that on hardware synths with digital oscillators there are less with a unison feature. Chorus effects have replaced it. Also fattens it up for less costs (doesn't use extra oscillators)

Imagine Z3ta doing unison with 8 voices, AND allowing 16-voice polyphony. How much CPU is left then for other things??

[tony tony chopper]

On softsynths with perfect tuning the feature doesn't turn out to be that nice and useful.

obviously unison comes with tuning control

[projectdan]

Btw trying to get even 40voices in a 4 multitimbral Vaz Modular is quite hard

Not suprising, its modular its not going to be the most efficient synth in the world. Best to compare like with like.

[vvanrij]

Well for instance my KS-Rack has the option for 'analog drift', which recreates that effect of slightly detuning. And using the unison gives a nice and rich effect. It just doesn't sound the same as a chorus And like you stated, is kind of the discussion of previous page, where we said, is it really possible to recreate the virus' options on a pc (hyperoscs, dualfilters, 96khz, effects and still 80voices). It certainly is not the case in Vaz Modular Especially not in multitimbral mode!

[D-Fusion]

A Virus Can't sound like this either
http://www.4shared.com/file/3045437/6a1 ... sh-32.html

[vvanrij]

Btw trying to get even 40voices in a 4 multitimbral Vaz Modular is quite hard

Not suprising, its modular its not going to be the most efficient synth in the world. Best to compare like with like.

True but, for instance Albino 3, which offers now nearly the same options as a TI, still has a hardtime if you'd open 16 instances, and played 4 notes on each

[vvanrij]

A Virus Can't sound like this either
http://www.4shared.com/file/3045437/6a1 ... sh-32.html

I love my SH32 , you could use some filter and effects Cause I think a virus can sound like that haha