Softube Model 80 Five Voice Synth

[DrGonzo]

Specific synths are suited for particular patch types and even polyphony/monophony comes into play. Onboard FX do nothing but ruin patch design by encouraging mutated patches unrelated to the hardware. Ditching onboard FX is always the right way, one thing Softube does right.

My circle of people making music are split into three pretty much equal parts. People who want a clean signal, people who just care about cool sounds, and people who don't care.

There is no the right way.

[BONES]

RePro-5 has the per voice distortion... you cannot do that with Outboard FX

That's an entirely different thing, simulating an apsect of the original signal path. It's not an effect as such.

[cyberheater]

After spending hours (sad I know) comparing Softubes version vs Uhe's I've come to the conclusion that they can sound identical.
There are minor differences in levels and knob setting etc... as you would expect. Interestingly for me the filter sounds absolutely identical. Very impressive modelling.

I'll stick to the Uhe version. As much as I like Softube stuff there is no good reason (apart from GAS) to get it.

[Greenstorm33]

After spending hours (sad I know) comparing Softubes version vs Uhe's I've come to the conclusion that they can sound identical.
There are minor differences in levels and knob setting etc... as you would expect. Interestingly for me the filter sounds absolutely identical. Very impressive modelling.

I'll stick to the Uhe version. As much as I like Softube stuff there is no good reason (apart from GAS) to get it.

Gotta get those sweet sweet Modular modules tho

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I think to remember he once just made some assumptions and drew conclusions that I thought gave a wrong impression.

I clarified two items in the comments that he missed: 1) you can use the red triangle next to the mod wheel to set the initial modulation amount and that's stored with presets, and 2) you can quantize the filter to semitones using mod slots. And to his credit, he pinned the comment so it's visible right up top.

All in all, it was worth watching while I was prepping dinner last night. He had a slight preference for the Softube as a strict emulation, but RePro-5 was neck and neck with it and they were so very close. Anyone who actually tries both I think will find RePro-5 is far better as an overall instrument (FX, per voice distortion, browser quality, preset quality, more voices, more flexible, etc.).

[zvenx]

....... Anyone who actually tries both I think will find RePro-5 is far better as an overall instrument (FX, per voice distortion, browser quality, preset quality, more voices, more flexible, etc.).

This was my conclusion too, though like a few others mentioned, I found the softube one easier to tweak, for me.
rsp

[rod_zero]

....... Anyone who actually tries both I think will find RePro-5 is far better as an overall instrument (FX, per voice distortion, browser quality, preset quality, more voices, more flexible, etc.).

This was my conclusion too, though like a few others mentioned, I found the softube one easier to tweak, for me.
rsp

IMHO it is the dark skin, demoing Model 80 makes it very clear for me as I don't have to look twice and hard to the knob position and labels (i have very high myopia so I really suffer when a GUI is hard to read). Maybe U.he could include a lighter grey skin.

[wvshpr]

[mholloway]

It's hard to use Model-80 because I constantly miss the Repro per-voice panning (softube's panner is soooo much less flexible than the u-he approach), the velocity controls on both envelopes (softube's hidden velocity > cutoff is not anywhere as useful to me as u-he putting the vel scaling on the filter _envelope_, which, afaic, is the right way to do this kind of routing) and the two mod matrix areas, which are incredibly useful.

They sound pretty similar...but the feature set of Repro-5 is so much better in every way.

[beely]

For me, Repro is the better product, but for those who like Softube's approach, then great - there's enough choice in the market that we can choose the instruments that match our needs best.

All of them do Plenty Good Prophet, imo.

[bmanic]

As I don't own Repro I purchased this (was way cheaper than Repro). To my ears, running at 192kHz, it sounds pretty damn spot on. At 44.1kHz or 48kHz there are some issues if you go nuts with the FM and/or sync, especially if you try to make any kind of bell like tones that you play high up the keyboard.

Sound wise to my ears this one just "sounds analogue" in a very pleasing way. I can't put my finger on what that actually means but it just sounds "real". I did not get this impression of Repro 5 when I tried it. Probably a case of placebo on my part but I never really gelled with it.

In fact, I never really liked the sound of a Prophet anyhow but I decided to try the demo of M80 and started messing around with the oscillator mixer and made sure I didn't push too hard into the filter.. suddenly it sounds a lot nicer and less boxy/congested, something I always disliked about the hardware. So here we have a software version that I can gently tickle into the filter and have it be a lot more polite.. without bringing out huge noise problems once you boost the main output. Speaking of which, I wish Softube allowed at least +12dB more gain on the main output knob. Now I need to do all the extra gain on the DAW fader instead.

.. but yeah, to my ears this is an absolutely superb emulation as long as you run it at 192kHz (it doesn't support any higher rates, just like all other Softube plugins).

[bonch]

Geez, 45 minutes of oscilloscope waveforms.

I hope this time around he checks out Repro's waveforms at different samplerates. Their "jaggyness"
at lower samplerates is an artefact of downsampling, not an artefact of modelling. I think to remember he once just made some assumptions and drew conclusions that I thought gave a wrong impression.

The analysis never gets that technical. In my opinion, he's trying to have it two ways, luring viewers with a shootout that compares emulations to hardware while insisting he's not doing a shootout and that accuracy to his hardware isn't important. If that's the case, what's the point of matching them in an analyzer for 45 minutes? I don't know what information I'm meant to gain.

A comparative analysis of behavioral differences could be an interesting thing to do if well-defined and technically informed. Glaring at primitive waveforms in an analyzer only makes me increasingly anxious. It feels like comparing guitars by playing single notes through an oscilloscope rather than just grabbing the damn things and playing. I don't want to listen to a resonant filter sweep four times. Play Radiohead or something before I lose my mind.

[cyberheater]

I don't want to listen to a resonant filter sweep four times. Play Radiohead or something before I lose my mind.

Given that he's trying to determine the accuracy of emulation I would say that filter sweeps and comparing VCO etc... is a valid approach.

[AdvancedFollower]

Both approaches have their merit. You're not going to learn much about the accuracy of the emulation from someone playing Radiohead, but it gives you a better indication of how the synth would sound in an actual musical context. However I think all 3 plugins (Repro, Model 80, Arturia) plus the actual hardware are pretty much interchangeable when used in an actual mix with lots of processing and other parts playing. You're really only going to hear the differences when listening to the VCO's and filter sweeps in isolation.
As I already own Repro and Prophet 5V, I feel zero need to get Model 80, even if at some particular combination of filter frequency and resonance, it might sound slightly closer to an actual P5 (or at least closer to the particular Prophet Starsky compared it to - it's quite possible the hardware units the other plugins were modelled after sound slightly different).

[bonch]

I don't want to listen to a resonant filter sweep four times. Play Radiohead or something before I lose my mind.

Given that he's trying to determine the accuracy of emulation I would say that filter sweeps and comparing VCO etc... is a valid approach.

According to him, he's not trying to determine emulation accuracy. For the sake of argument, if that was the goal, we're back to my point that the different emulations are modeling different units, so how do we define accuracy? Do we fly to France and borrow Arturia's reference hardware so we can plug it into an analyzer? What if oversampling causes a phase shift in the waveform? Is that a modeling error or an unavoidable digital artifact? There would need to be a well-defined, technically informed test protocol to draw meaningful conclusions.