Hardware vs software synths take infinity : topic initial focus Andromeda A6

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kmonkey wrote:It is simple. No SW synth sound like Andromeda. Yet.
Andromeda only got monotimbral effects, software synth are much better equipped.

And just like sofware synths Andromeda lacks discrete components.
Last edited by Numanoid on Tue May 31, 2016 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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The snobbery in here is getting thick and sickening.

But that's par for the course for KVR.

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kmonkey wrote:
toine6 wrote:you could still use free vst's and make music just as good though not exactly the same.
That's true paradox above.

You can not make free synth to sound as lovely as paid one. There is even greater difference between paid one and truly amazing hardware synth. Tell me free synth which can sound as Bazille? Give me one? What do you know what i am trying to achieve?

Yes i can make music with free synths but what kind of music exactly? If you will now claim that Kraftwerk would sound the same with free synths i'll just say Tuna-fish to that.
It's not a paradox, I didn't say it would sound the same, I said it could still be as good. Some people think caviar is the finest food in the world, and I would just argue that if you can't afford caviar or even if you can, you could still find something just as a good OR BETTER, for a much cheaper.

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kmonkey wrote:This won't help as much but i wanted to chime in with my personal opinion.

I can only reflect OP findings. I don't have A6 but my friend does have two of them. He is sounddesigner. Anyway....i had chance to listen this instrument and okay i am here for what more then decade, i have my personal bias, no agenda whatsoever. Zero emotions regarding company brand and lalalala.

My top of the top synth company is U-he, then Ni and then everyone else. That being said i was blown away by A6. Should i note that best softsynth of all time at this point of time is for me - Bazille.

You can all bullshit me with "it's because it is tactile" or whatever the nonsense you can came up with. I have more then 100 plugins, probably 40% of them are synths. I run them at all rates, i do know how to design pad blabla.

There is simply no plugin (no i can't get this from Diva) which can get you such amazing pads as on A6. I don't have words to describe this i simply decided to stop wasting time trying to make my plugins to sound as good as hardware synth because at this point it is still impossible. Maybe not totally impossible some synth do sound same or even better then similar HW i will admit that. But there is so much under that HW canvas that it is impossible to say that sw sound as good as hw.

As i see it now after so many time people which claim soft synths sound same as hardware synths simply never tried one. There is no other explanation for this phenomenon..

Here i am playing with my integra 7 which is all in out software yet for some reason these outdated roms sound more lively then on my computer. Especially when transposing. Kontakt does not give me same results not even at 96khz with best possible quality.

Someone said that once upon a time he created two tracks and one had Virus other had plugin. People picked plugin. Ohhh weeee what this does tell me. That you provided better result with the plugin. If you think that plugin is better then Virus because of this particular track where you even intentionally mixed virus badly - well no shit Sherlock...amazingly absurd test and time wasted. With Reaktor i can create my trash can to sound better then some of my hardware if that is my intention.

I am actually glad OP stepped up with this because we all know he is persistent and he have ton of plugins, he know how to do proper test so you can not shut him up.
Thanks for your support. I am not sure why a couple posters got personal in this topic, when no matter how hard i try to be "nice", there is always someone who takes it the wrong way. So thanks for at least being one showing the GOOD kind of support since the topic has gone that way. :)

I agree with all points..

and i agree with integra also! I started a topic about that sort of thing in hardware.. how did these programmers get such small sample sets to sound good on those hardware romplers like roland.. so playable and usable. Look the motif is "only" 743 mb and it sounds amazing.. but i mean that's the MB for EVERYTHING! So a good piano or string is only using mere MB.. i don't know how they do it. Just another example.

Anyway, these are the analogs i currently have - jdxi monophonic voice, pulse 2 mono and 8 voice paraphonic, and 2 chained dsi tetra for 8 voice poly.. and in all three of the i find the bass end (pulse), pads(tetra) and rawness (jD) better than softsynth. Just maybe me.

Believe me there is no way i would inconvenience myself to 1600 cables and hardware everywhere if i could have a nice neat studio with a top of the line computer and the best soft synths, if i didn't think there was an advantage.

It all started when i listened to my recordings from 98-2002 which all used hardare exclusively, through an analog desk, and preferring what i did back then sound quality wise. Plus with a top of the range macbook or imac, using fx and synths you kill the quad core cpu VERY fast.. so i thought.. to get a good mac pro, with 1tb flash, and hexa core processor or 8 core 3ghz, 32gb ram and a 23" apple screen is 10 to 11 thousand dollars.. so i thought.. why not stick with my awesome working 2011 imac with 2600k inside (3.4ghz i7 quad core 8 thread), and put that money into hardware synths and take all the load off the cpu. So it was a new journey.. i did exclusively soft synths for 10 years.. and before that hardware for around 10 or maybe 11.. so why not start a new chapter.. nothing wrong with giving life some change/excitement/something to focus on. Now i am having fun re doing some of my favourite songs with hardware sounds replacing the software ones, and uad fx replacing the native stuff (really noticeable with the exclusive uad reverbs and comps imo).. and i'm having a blast.. why some people want to hurt me personally for it, i have no idea.

Cheers mate, have a great day :tu:

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Someone once said: A thing of beauty is a joy forever

At KVR this saying is rather: A thing of beauty is a threat forever :P

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Urs wrote:
TheoM wrote:why have i NEVER heard ANY plugin that can sound as good?
Because Alesis are really good in making reverbs. I mean, really really good. Most on-board reverbs of softsynths (including ours) don't sound as good as the Alesis reverb built into the Andromeda. The best fix for this is to buy a decent reverb and drench the sound of any synth in it, like it was done in the video you linked. Problem solved, huge amounts of money saved 8)
I would totally agree here!
Maybe it´s more of a placebo effect :D
And i find even reverbs like B2 much better and any synth can sound fantastic with great FX on top. Of course a you-tube video is not good at all to compare sounds.
In general i didn´t find those sound better than a lot other synths in other videos/sound demos.
But if someone felt in love and says there is nothing better...it´s all fine and a personal taste.
Hardware maybe still can top any software in some areas but i like software more because of the flexibility.
In 5-10 years or so maybe each 5 dollar app sounds as good as that :D
Still waiting for the Holophone...

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I love hardware. I love software. I used both and i don't really care what i (or others, for that matter) use. As long as the workflow and the sound are something i can use.

However, these days i use more software then hardware. To be honest, i don't use hardware (synths) anymore. I don't know why exactly, but i guess it is less versatile (for the stuff i do anyway). The music (my music, that is) isn't suffering by using software. But i think it depends on what kind of music one makes as well.
And for instance, for live stuff (in a band), i would rather pick a nice hardware synth.
But a good softsynth like Diva or Oddity2 would do the trick as well.

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I probably would love hardware too, if i owned some. :P Pretty sure i'd fall in love with something like the Virus Polar for example. So i can really understand why people go for it. Obviously, the hands on lets you build up an entirely different relationship, than operating something virtually on a screen. If hardware sounds better, i cannot judge. But what i guess is that with building hardware, the pressure to build quality is probably a bit higher than with software, simply because the manufacturing costs are higher, and you need someone to build stuff for you, or delivers parts to you.

Anyway, i'd love to own something hardware. It's just the costs that put me off. :?

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chk071 wrote:I probably would love hardware too, if i owned some. :P Pretty sure i'd fall in love with something like the Virus Polar for example. So i can really understand why people go for it. Obviously, the hands on lets you build up an entirely different relationship, than operating something virtually on a screen. If hardware sounds better, i cannot judge. But what i guess is that with building hardware, the pressure to build quality is probably a bit higher than with software, simply because the manufacturing costs are higher, and you need someone to build stuff for you, or delivers parts to you.

Anyway, i'd love to own something hardware. It's just the costs that put me off. :?
Especially costs, but also maintenance. Plus the extra cables, more power, space..etc....on the other hand, a good synth like (IMHO) sub37, is just awesome to play with. No midi controller i used trumps that. Not by a long shot.

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@ The ones saying "analog gave me such beautiful pads, i never heard anything like that from a soft synth".

Did you actually try to copy the sound having both analog and software on hand at the same time, hooked up to an oscilloscope and a frequency analyzer ?
If yes, then at what exact stage of copying the sound did the software fail you ?

Copying a single oscillator sound with a fully open filter is a childs play - i did that and posted the results on some other forum and no one spotted that there were 2 sounds, not 1.
But that is only the very first step.
Does it sound different when you add a second oscillator and detune it to line up perfectly with the analog synths second oscillator on an oscilloscope ?
Or does it sound different when the filter comes into play ? Maybe a different filter frequency response curve, or maybe the resonance behaves differently ?
Or are single notes exactly the same, but differences start appearing when you play chords ? (Which would mean some nonlinearities in voice summing - that is the step my attempts often fail at).

Tell me where the software fails, maybe software devs will learn something from you and next gen plugins will be even better. :)
[====[\\\\\\\\]>------,

Ay caramba !

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TheoM wrote:So i am asking in all seriousness... if plugins are as good, why have i NEVER heard ANY plugin that can sound as good? In terms of raw tone and emotion.. playing pads on that thing literally had my entire body in shivers, i almost started crying at one point!
So, as Andromeda came out in 2001, did you waste 15 years of your musical life playing with inferior products.

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I think posting examples of other synths would make no sense because all demos of analog synths i heard also makes no sense to me. They mostly sounds fantastic, full, warm, analog...whatever but that doesn´t make them sound better than most of the soft synths i played myself or heard in those demos.
I think no one could ever show a soft synth which the OP might like more since the sound in the demo is exact what he like the most.... just buy that damn thing.
I´m really much more impressed by softsynths like Dagger synth, U-he stuff, Dune 2, Falcon, Omnisphere and yeah also even some tiny iOS synth apps like Moog Model 15.
Best is still (and of course just my useless opinion) to use different tools and layer them all together in a DAW and using extern FX on top plus some automations and midi FX for moving that sound.
Take on top a controller like the Seaboard Rise or Linnstrument etc. and it´s just much more interesting....for me and maybe a few others.
But if it´s that sound from an old Hardware sound what you like....go for it!
Even if i really would like it more, the price is just so high these days compared to plug-ins and apps which are just great and will be even better in the future.
And of course it´s in general a personal thing. Crowd listens to crappy iPhone included headphones and compressed data. They even wouldn´t know a different between my cat cosing or a Moog filter.
Also what is a "good" sound.
All these sound in the demos sound really very good but if i want another timbre which i or another person think sound good or better you maybe even can´t produce that with those synths.
I mean i like steaks and a vegetarian might disagree :D It´s O.k.

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TheoM wrote:
Anyway, these are the analogs i currently have - jdxi monophonic voice, pulse 2 mono and 8 voice paraphonic, and 2 chained dsi tetra for 8 voice poly.. and in all three of the i find the bass end (pulse), pads(tetra) and rawness (jD) better than softsynth.
I may be wrong, but really its just the filters that are analogue in those units...???

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Numanoid wrote:
TheoM wrote:So i am asking in all seriousness... if plugins are as good, why have i NEVER heard ANY plugin that can sound as good? In terms of raw tone and emotion.. playing pads on that thing literally had my entire body in shivers, i almost started crying at one point!
So, as Andromeda came out in 2001, did you waste 15 years of your musical life playing with inferior products.
that was when i had my severe ear damage and decided to sell up the lot.. i quit and travelled for a while.. when i re learned how to mix, i started again with all software. Had moved into my own home, so cost vs space etc (previously we had a huge studio)

no wasted time.. just seeking the best as time goes on.. does that sufficiently answer you?

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TheoM wrote:no wasted time.. just seeking the best as time goes on.. does that sufficiently answer you?
So you owned an Andromeda earlier, but sold it, because of storage issues when you went travelling?

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