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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quote:

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

Well, then this thread is really missing the mark, since the Virus isn't analog.

I assume you meant "hardware" rather than "analog."

quote:

Originally posted by kitphillips 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...

Yeah the delay really does alot to the sound.
I just recorded and did the automation by hand. Envelopes and everything is by default.
The only thing i did to program this sound was adding 4 unison to a saw wave and automated the filter.

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Of course synths are going to sound different because they have differently programmed filters, oscillators, envelope generators, and internal effects. But if the point is that software somehow automatically sounds "worse," I simply don't agree with that. You can go ahead and come up with some stupid insult like "Then maybe your ears aren't working, hur hur!" But it's just subjective in the end.

Neither do I agree with the idea, which I see almost as often, that all soft synths somehow sound "alike" while each piece of VA hardware has an individual character. I think every synth will have its own sound, because of the factors noted above.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Well, then this thread is really missing the mark, since the Virus isn't analog. I assume you meant "hardware" rather than "analog."

Hah, busted! Ouch!
All this time I assumed a virus was analogue. I'm a software guy, so I don't know this hardware stuff. *shrug*

Less talk, more sounds!

Midi is posted, so we're looking at 1 saw osc 4x unison, no filter envelope, no effects, filter automation and normalization to ~0dB (no compression/limiting)
Any synth you think sounds better, post it.

Here are 2 more:

Sylenth:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/j68bge

Z3ta:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nhntas

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.. 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.

hey Subtle

to my ears, your file seems to have a nice bit of stereo width - i think that makes it sound better and louder, which may in turn make comparisons seem less good...

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quote:

Originally posted by evo8 hey Subtle to my ears, your file seems to have a nice bit of stereo width - i think that makes it sound better and louder, which may in turn make comparisons seem less good...

Yeah that is correct, the Virus has full panspread on the unison by default.
So u might wanna add that.

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So far I think the z3ta filter sounds the closest to the Virus. The osc isn't as bright when the filter is open, and it has less stereo width, but other than that it is basically the same.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles So far I think the z3ta filter sounds the closest to the Virus. The osc isn't as bright when the filter is open, and it has less stereo width, but other than that it is basically the same.

So like saying there was 2 twin girls but one had brown teeth and one had white but youd still take a bj from the brown tooth one?

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles So far I think the z3ta filter sounds the closest to the Virus. The osc isn't as bright when the filter is open, and it has less stereo width, but other than that it is basically the same.

AFAIK z3ta doesn't have a "stereo spread" option. So this is the best you're gonna get without using effects..


And lets not forget one important thing...
Many VST's are trying to sound like the virus, one way or the other. None can say "virus vst", ofc. But many have tried to get as close as possible. And the result?
None have made it so far. Close, but not close enough. And we're only talking bare bone base sound like the oscillators and filters. If we were to actually compare 2 synths we would have to look at the Virus hypersaw, wavetable, grain and formant synthesis, distortions, phaser, chorus, ring mod, FM mod, the "analog filter" mode, and the new tape delay, frequency shifter and character modes...not to mention the vocoder and atomizer. There is absolutely nothing like it in software. Not even close.
It may be possible to do it.. but has it been done? No.
Unless we're counting the Virus powercore, but that's also not software alone, and the Virus Ti with the new v3.1 OS has a lot more features.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles So far I think the z3ta filter sounds the closest to the Virus. The osc isn't as bright when the filter is open, and it has less stereo width, but other than that it is basically the same.

I had to listen over and over just to see if I could understand what people on this forum are talking about and I just realized.. I have better hearing than all the software lovers.


There is a HUGE difference between those 2 samples.
Sylenth sounds thin, dry, dull, tired, cold, and depressed.

Virus sounds thick, rich, deep, lush, shiny, warm, and depressed (melody) but strong.