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Put your money where your mouth is

OK, it had to happen and it needs a new thread.

quote:

Take a single saw, decrease the filter and put a slight unison detune on it. And it will already sound better than most softsynths, add some delay and you are a mile ahead.

Due to quotes like this, I'm going to ask the "software is thin and nasty" crowd to put their money where their mouths are.

Subtle, if this is true, then please post a 320 kbit mp3 of this sound playing both single notes and chords and we'll see if I (or someone else) can make it (or something better) in software. Make it a short clip to keep the size down, but make sure you play over the entire key range.

I'm not going to claim that I'll definately be able to do it, because I'm a poor synth programmer. But I'll have a crack, and I know ther will be someone on this board who can do it.


EDIT: Sorry, wrong quote.

This is going to be interesting.

Very nice initiative, this is going to get fun

Well, here it is.

VIRUS TEST

A single Virus Saw, with 4 unison.. with a slight delay, and increasing filter cutoff.

VIRUS TEST NO DELAY

Same but with no delay

Keep in mind that you must only use the same settings as i have.

Here is the MIDI

Bring it on.

Sounds nice, but post the damn midi.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz Sounds nice, but post the damn midi.

Done

If it's going to be a fair test, you should remove the effects (delay etc) and probably just start with a single osc before using unison.

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle Very nice initiative, this is going to get fun Well, here it is. VIRUS TEST A single Virus Saw, with 4 unison, full detune.. with a slight delay, and increasing filter cutoff. Keep in mind that you must only use the same settings as i have. Here is the MIDI Bring it on.

OK. Give me a little while, I might not be able to finish it till tomorrow morning, but we'll see.

I probably won't use the exact same settings, I'll aim for the same sound, with similar numbers of oscillators and filters.

And then I'll challence you with a relatively simple sound from a VST, and we'll use that to see whether your virus can do the same things as my VST

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle Very nice initiative, this is going to get fun Well, here it is. VIRUS TEST A single Virus Saw, with 4 unison, full detune.. with a slight delay, and increasing filter cutoff. Keep in mind that you must only use the same settings as i have. Here is the MIDI Bring it on.

wow, glad i'm getting a virus

take the delay off, it confuses things... osc+filter are the main thing for us to look at.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm take the delay off, it confuses things... osc+filter are the main thing for us to look at.

Ok added one with no delay.
Keep in mind though, that the delay is an important feature of the virus sound.

Reason Thor: 1 Osc + Unison and Delay:
http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/88678/Thor1%20wet.mp3

Reason Thor: 1 Osc + Unison & No Delay
http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/88678/Thor1%20dry.mp3

quote:

Originally posted by Bren-F Reason Thor: 1 Osc + Unison and Delay: http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/88678/Thor1%20wet.mp3 Reason Thor: 1 Osc + Unison & No Delay http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/88678/Thor1%20dry.mp3

Not bad

I`ll let others be the judge about what sounds better though.

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle Not bad I`ll let others be the judge about what sounds better though.

Virus - 1 vote

To keep things fair we should hear z3ta and sylenth too. Those are the closest VST competition atm.

the virus sounds better out of those two

I tried with the Korg Polysix VST. I found that it sucks at sounding like a Virus, but it sounds pretty nice in its own right (or at least I think it does):

http://jbj.raceriv.com/sounds/polysix1.mp3

Dry, followed by wet; unison at 4 throughout. I put a bit of reverb in the second part since Ableton's delay doesn't have a diffusion control. Also I gradually increased the decay and release a bit to give it more of a "Deadmau5y" feel.

Camelaudio Alchemy

1 Osc, 4 voice unison, full detune, no effects
[[ LINK REMOVED ]]

^ That's a bit much detuning for a Deadmau5 imitation.

Jeez, ya just HAD to use a dang deadmau5 riff?

Theres a little flaw that yet remains in this test though. The volume should be the same. It is true that people tend to like music more when it's louder, so both examples oughta have the same rough perceived volume.
It also goes that compression ought to be avoided.

Delay definitely muddies the comparison too. If a significant part of 'the virus sound' is derived from the delay, and not the sythesis itself.. Well.... There ya go.

Then there's the bias aspect of it all... We could only be sure with a blind comparison.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm the virus sounds better out of those two

THOR currently doesn't have a global unison feature, I'm guessing Bren is using the multiosc (8 detuned waveforms) so it's not a fair comparison.

quote:

Originally posted by MOK Then there's the bias aspect of it all... We could only be sure with a blind comparison.

Good point. Although I think that if the point is just to see if softsynths can sound "like a Virus," then the way we're doing it now -- Virus riff followed by attempts at imitation -- is fine.

Virus, so far.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Good point. Although I think that if the point is just to see if softsynths can sound "like a Virus," then the way we're doing it now -- Virus riff followed by attempts at imitation -- is fine.

Yeah. But thats definitely not whats going on here. This is a clashing between good and evil, wrong and right, order and chaos, yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly. This is the point where analog and digital meet in an explosive collision of fate. Ya know, like those exploding football helmets.

The point I'm seeing here is to try and 'prove' analog sounds, specifically, BETTER than a softsynth. Nothing less.

Bren, close but no medal IMO, it doesn't sound that close to the original. Its like its got an envelope on it, too much unison and the saw is a bit too smooth. Its also less honky than the virus.

A couple of notes;

1/ the delay is better left off. All synths have delays, assuming its just a digital delay it should't really colour the sound. They should all sound the same. I could get a lot closer to the sound when you turned the delay off, it was confusing me a fair bit.

2/ it would have been a lot better if you had left the filter envelope in that midi file (not sure if thats actually possible..?) as it was I was guessing a bit. I've got the raw sound pretty similar though.

I'm going to tweak mine a touch more and post in the morning. It doesn't sound identical, but I don't think worse...

The filter envelope is just full decay and sustain with basically no release. You can tell if you import it into a wave editor.

quote:

Originally posted by MOK Yeah. But thats definitely not whats going on here. This is a clashing between good and evil, wrong and right, order and chaos, yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly. This is the point where analog and digital meet in an explosive collision of fate. Ya know, like those exploding football helmets. The point I'm seeing here is to try and 'prove' analog sounds, specifically, BETTER than a softsynth. Nothing less.

Analogue hasn't come into it yet. But if someone with a minimoog wants to join in, then please do. I'm not good at programming moog sounds though, so someone else will have to be the VSTs champion for that.

What its actually about is just proving that hardware and software do the same thing. They might sound a bit different (in a very minor way), but by the time they're in a mix, they should be almost indistinguishable. Its about proving that software doesn't have a distinct sound, and neither does hardware.

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