Retrologue 2 - not authentic enough?

[IvyBirds]

I have both DIVA and Retrologue 2, and I have to say that Retrologue is great at what it does. Does it sound just like DIVA? Sometimes I can get amazingly close. Other times, DIVA does get more "analog-ey". But who cares? I don't. I really like Retrologue for the amazing capabilities that it DOES have, and I'm not kicking it out of my template because it's not like DIVA. DIVA is great on many things, and so is Retrologue. It's definitely "authentic" enough for me, and I have TONS of great V.I.s... Steinberg did a fantastic job with it. At the end of the day, it's not what's "analog" - it's what sounds good. That's all I care about in an instrument.

Well said!

So you agree DIVA sounds more Analogy which disputes your entire argument that it doesn't
. awesome

[IvyBirds]

To me good, authentic analog sound is the pleasant sound I know from music from the late 70s and early 80s, when analog synths ruled. Obviously you have a different idea what typical analog sound is...

This song for instance is full of analog synths, but no distortion as far as I can hear:

The irony here is absolutely off the charts.
What do you think actually created that "pleasant sound from the late 70s and early 80s"? Magic?

Those iconic records were made by tracking Prophet-5s, Minimoogs, and Jupiter-8s through discrete console transformers directly onto 2-inch magnetic tape. That legendary "warm, smooth, pleasant" character you are romanticizing was created specifically by subtle non-linear harmonic saturation, tape compression, transformer drive, and voice-board drift.

You literally just admitted you are "allergic to distortion and drive," yet you claim to love the exact era of music defined entirely by hardware saturation from start to finish.

You don't have a "different idea of typical analog sound"—you just don't realize that the exact 1970s warmth you claim to love is the circuit behavior you keep rejecting as "horrible noise." You are praising the destination while violently rejecting the actual physics that created it.

If you want pristine, hyper-clean, zero-saturation signal paths with no circuit instability, that's completely fine! But that is the literal definition of modern digital DSP—not 1970s and 1980s analog hardware.