Arturia synth development.

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bobhva wrote:I am an older guy and when I was younger I could only dream of having a collection of synthesizers like I have in software today. I have 8 Arturia synths and plan to add the Synclavier V if I ever find it for a price that I can afford. I love how so many people whine and complain about how the Arturia plugins and other emulations are not perfect recreations of the originals. If it is that important to you and you have the money, by all means get the original hardware. I don't have the money or space to acquire and store a hardware collection like this. For me, as an amateur who just plays with music for fun - I really don't care if it is not a perfect copy of the original. I am so grateful to have access to software that sounds close to stuff that I could only wish for in my younger days. If you take a look here on KVR you will find that something bad has been written about almost every piece of software ever produced - I guess there will always be those who view the glass as half empty in just about every walk of life.
I think you maybe miss my point. Sure, I'm grateful to live in this time with all the amazing instruments, physical and virtual, that we have access to. What I'm pointing out is that while computer technology has progressed, many of the Arturia plug ins act as if it's 2005.

I might be wrong, but my guess isn't that they never thought, "well this is as good as possible." I'm sure it was tradeoffs based on what the popular CPU of that time could handle. I'm just saying that now high speed CPUs are not expensive. Many developers have upped the quality of the plug in to use that power. Now, if you're still using your old Core Duo, then by all means feel free to stay at whatever current versions you'd like, but I think Arturia could really become one of the better thought of developers if they gave their engines a once over.

Another thing I don't get is the love for the status quo. It seems as if you're against progress. Why? I'm not even talking about adding a bunch of doo-dads until the emulations end up as feature-bloated beasts. I'm saying leave things as is (well, fix obvious bugs) and just update the audio quality or level of detail. They obviously have thought about it in the case of Mini V. I'm just saying that it was too little. Offer a high quality mode for those who want it.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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waltercruz wrote:BTW, they did released an interview/ad with one of their developers - Stefano, who did the new filter code on Mini V3. If I'm reading it correctly, they decided not to go on a ZDF filter, and use another design, not so perfect, but easier on CPU.

https://www.arturia.com/mini-v/behindth ... r_picture2
See, this is exactly my point. Why are they behaving like everyone's on an Core Duo? Maybe they don't think the nonlinearities of the filter behavior are that important, but to me it makes such a huge difference. Hell, offer two filter modes, an economy and a performance. Everyone's happy.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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zerocrossing wrote: See, this is exactly my point. Why are they behaving like everyone's on an Core Duo?
Well.. I had a core 2 duo until 3 or 4 weeks ago :oops:

I would love to see some DSP skilled people analyze the papers on which the new mini V filter code was based to see if there's something inovative on them (articles 5 and 6 here). It's possible to here some samples of the code here (the files on Proposed column).
Last edited by waltercruz on Fri Oct 28, 2016 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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waltercruz wrote:
zerocrossing wrote: See, this is exactly my point. Why are they behaving like everyone's on an Core Duo?
Well.. I had a core 2 duo until 3 or 4 weeks ago :oops:

I would love to see some DSP skilled people analyze the papers on which the new mini V filter code was based to see if there's something inovative on them (articles 5 and 6 here). It's possible to here some samples of the core [url=http://research.spa.aalto.fi/publicatio ... 2014-moog/]here[url] (the files on Proposed column).
Hi guys,

I can confirm you that there are quiet some innovation in Stefano's work, he actually did a PhD Thesis on the subject. If you want audio samples, you can have a look at this page.
http://research.spa.aalto.fi/publicatio ... 2014-moog/

This does not includes comparison with competition but with Spice reference as well as previous academic research on the topic.

The implementation in our Mini V3 is based on the "Proposed" version and has been improved by Stefano when he implemented his algorithm.

Just for clarifying, this techniques is ZDF as stated in the title of the article.

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zerocrossing wrote: I think you maybe miss my point. Sure, I'm grateful to live in this time with all the amazing instruments, physical and virtual, that we have access to. What I'm pointing out is that while computer technology has progressed, many of the Arturia plug ins act as if it's 2005.
I've used recently these older Arturia synths that trouble you so much in various made-for-TV spots, including some 15 and 30-second adverts. I use them in recording my personal songs and in places within our band's recordings.

Never once did anyone say to me, especially qualified keyboardists, Oh, that was a really nice part you played in such-and-such. But what ruined it was you were using those older, inferior Arturia synths, and they sounded so unlike the real Jupiter or ______(insert other synth). My point is, clearly, that no one hears the difference, no one, even if they did, would care.

As I can tell by the length of some of these tomes of moaning and complaining, and also by the inordinate time some spend (and brainpower spent as well) wallowing in this topic, that too many have forgotten that it's reall about making great music, or at least good music for those here less capable. Nobody anywhere within the professional side of music making really cares about any of this, neither the useless carrying on being done here. Part of the reason is we know any good sound will do fine used correctly. Also, I suspect it is because we're just a little too busy earning good salaries and royalties to worry about things that you've now filled 10 pages with this time around.

So, it doesn't even matter that the endless arguing and arguments themselves are weak or baseless. It's your equivalent of naval gazing. You worry about the accuracy of the VST's emulation for what reason? For 99% of you, NO ONE will ever hear anything you play with VST X or Y. Except maybe your sis or your mom.

And what some forget is that even among the original hardware in question, no two creations of the product ever sounded identical in the first place. Bring me a couple dozen Model D's from 1970. A couple or three will sound quite close, but all others will vary to each side. The same goes for many Oberheims and others. This voids your entire silly discussion. You have some imagined ideal or "perfect" sound in your head, but it doesn't truly exist.

So I call this just the lemming mouthing of false arguments. Look over all the past threads, and you'll see it is simply become trendy to bash Arturia. Lennar took FOREVER to make his ONE synth 64 bit, years and years between updates. But it's not cool, not trendy to bash Lennar, so he only got the cliche joking and occasional ribbing about it. People need to get their heads on straight. I've never seen such warped and biased treatment. It's just so cliche and so immature.

-Marla

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MarlaPodolski wrote:[
So I call this just the lemming mouthing of false arguments. Look over all the past threads, and you'll see it is simply become trendy to bash Arturia. Lennar took FOREVER to make his ONE synth 64 bit, years and years between updates. But it's not cool, not trendy to bash Lennar, so he only got the cliche joking and occasional ribbing about it. People need to get their heads on straight. I've never seen such warped and biased treatment. It's just so cliche and so immature.

-Marla
This is hilarious... It honestly sounds like Arturia is your child and someone has just thrown it off a bridge.

Another BS statement about Lennar there... There's plenty of threads bashing Lennar over sylenth's update times, etc. Or do you only see only what you want to see? :lol:

I think it's far more immature to 'spit the dummy', because someone criticizes Arturia.

Chill dude... (and girls can be called dudes btw).
I will take the Lord's name in vain, whenever I want. Hail Satan! And his little goblins too. :lol:

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@Kevin,

Thanks for the update!

The minute you release a Prohet 5/VS with the VS truer to the original (aliasing, warts and all) I'll be there with my credit card! ;-)

Kind regards,

Joachim
If it were easy, anybody could do it!

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MarlaPodolski wrote:Nobody anywhere within the professional side of music making really cares about any of this, neither the useless carrying on being done here.
That's one thing separating you from the professionals, you care deeply and passionately about what DAW people use. :hihi:

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Kevin [Arturia] wrote:Just for clarifying, this techniques is ZDF as stated in the title of the article.
To clarify, it's an *approximation* to what other developers are doing by implicitly solving non-linear equations with a delay-less closed loop. It's likely better than "the olden method", but it's not as close to the non-linear behaviour as a circuit simulation based on Kirchhoff. It's a compromise for CPU usage.

I like you guys, it's always good to hang out with some peeps of Arturia at trade shows. However, I'm sorry to say that, but your marketing department is always good for a facepalm. A quote from the "behind the scenes" website:
about the old methods they wrote:This was very evident when the filter was set in self-oscillation mode: if you kept the emphasis high enough and tried to sweep the cutoff, you could see that the amplitude of the sine wave generated by self-oscillation was very far from constant, and at the lowest cutoff settings it would just die out.
Well, guess what, a real Minimoog filter does that too. Self-oscillation / resonance dies out below 200Hz. If your new implementation doesn't (as the context of the quote suggests), then you're advertising a bug as a feature :clown:

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.jon wrote:
MarlaPodolski wrote:Nobody anywhere within the professional side of music making really cares about any of this, neither the useless carrying on being done here.
That's one thing separating you from the professionals, you care deeply and passionately about what DAW people use. :hihi:
I was thinking that too! :D
I will take the Lord's name in vain, whenever I want. Hail Satan! And his little goblins too. :lol:

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wagtunes wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:
wagtunes wrote:But where does someone turn to if they want a CS 80 emulation? What's better?
ME-80. I find it sounds warmer and just better overall.
Well, I demo'd it. One, I don't like the interface nearly as much as the updated Arturia one. Two, I don't think the sounds are all that much different, if at all. It's not like the ME-80 blows me away. It doesn't. Three, the ME-80, at least on my system, is buggier than the Arturia. So ultimately, I didn't buy the ME-80. Forget that, price wise, the Arturia is also cheaper if bought in the entire collection. May even be cheaper if bought separately but I'm not sure.

Same with Time Warps 2600. I don't think it's nearly as good as the Arturia and it's damn expensive to boot.
I recently posted some examples which TimewARP2600 has been doing since 2005. For the last couple of years, it has been quite amusing watching the rest of KVR go "wow" at DIVA and Monark or anything else, because years before one was already able to do most of it.

The Arturia version of the 2600 on the other hand, even the new gui version, still sounds like a toy for 3 year olds, you know like those plastic keyboards, that are 500 grams in weight. And the thing is, I tried to do something serious with the Arturia ARP for years, and could only ever get a few good sounds. But if I tried to go crazy with it, it'd immediately return to that 3 year old's keyboard.

ME80 is also a masterpiece as far as sound is concerned in comparison to CS80V. That said though, the Arturia one is pretty good, especially since they worked on it more than on their other older synths, due to the input and critique of several people. I've been able to do some very un-CS80 like music with the V, as well as some wonderful CS80-like stuff, you just have to use the thing properly. (And ignore most Arturia factory patches, because they have some of the worst factory patch designers in the universe.) The thing is though, for bass and the higher freqs, for that I'd have to use more capable emulations, Arturia stuff just sounds blah! Their later stuff, starting form the SEM, is more in line with an effort worthy of emulation praise.

One good emulation will always be better than 10 average ones, which is why the V collection is a distraction for those who do not know how to control themselves. 1 good emulation will get you far. Not only because of its own quality, but for the intimacy and understanding that will develop between you and the instrument. That intimacy and understand are everything! They are what create things that impress even you. They are what drive forward innovation. In other words, the more instruments you have to spread yourself over, which is the case with the V collection, the less you will appreciate what you can do with even one instrument, let alone more. And this in turn will decrease your overall output and perhaps, its quality, it's value to the self and to society. Its ultimate value, determined by the height of meaning and expression one was able to reach when creating this thing, in the first place.

There's is a clear and deserved reason for the critique that Arturia receives. People are not stupid to say things just because they have so much time to waste. There is a reason for what they say. There is also a reason why someone who defends something, defends it without being able to talk critically about what they are defending.
"The educated person is one who knows how to find out what he does not know" - George Simmel
“It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.” - John Wooden

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I understand that people here are now going through an obsessive phase where the accuracy of a filter resonance hump emulation @ 200Hz seems like really important, but such details have no connection with music whatsoever. Marla, in all hear confusion, is absolutely right about the end product- in the context of a track, it just doesn't matter if it's a real Moog, an old emulation, a premium quad-core unching scientifically accurate new emulation, a Synthedit emulation or even an emulation at all. Nobody knows what it is, nobody cares.

Urs your and everyone else's talent is wasted on fiddling with boring replicas when you could be creating your own synths. :(

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.jon wrote: Urs your and everyone else's talent is wasted on fiddling with boring replicas when you could be creating your own synths. :(
Don't listen to jon...

Urs, please please keep bringing us old amazing sounding synth replicas, as well as anything else you'd like to do. 8)
I will take the Lord's name in vain, whenever I want. Hail Satan! And his little goblins too. :lol:

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It is almost like there are several separate arguments going on in this thread!

1- Arturia V collection 5 is great value highly musical VSTs (irrespective of if they sound like the originals, most of which no one has ever heard live); if you are only interested in having the most exacting emulations of the original synths, this may not be for you- if you want a ton of different instruments with modern GUI and tens of thousands of pre-sets, its a good buy. Other people specialise in highly accurate (but CPU intensive and limited polyphony) VSTs, so it is good that we have A choice- not everyone cares that much about this (or they just go strait to real analogue if they want analogue)

2- It is possible (if you care) top crate more exact emulation of old analogue synths (including their flaws and limitations). Its possible to model filters and oscillators to component level if you care that much about an exact emulation. I don't believe anyone who listens to music cares, but I understand the technical fascination and appreciate the work and skill behind all this- its fascinating, clever, technical and has absolutely nothing to do with writing a good melody or interesting chord progression!

This is KVR- we can discuss and appreciate both music, instruments for making music and software coding/mathematics....some people have a bias to the music, other the software and accuracy of the mathematical modelling (I just like the GUI's :D )
X32 Desk, i9 PC, S49MK2, Studio One, BWS, Live 12. PUSH 3 SA, Osmose, Summit, Pro 3, Prophet8, Syntakt, Digitone, Drumlogue, OP1-F, Eurorack, TD27 Drums, Nord Drum3P, Guitars, Basses, Amps and of course lots of pedals!

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This thread is so laughable it's almost pathetic.

News flash. Marla is dead on the money. Nobody who listens to music gives a shit what synth you use. Hell, nobody could tell what synth you used. If I posted a track here YOU couldn't tell what synth I used. Lotta chest beating in this place with no substance behind it.

Now, if YOU need to use a "better" emulation for your ears to get "inspired" to make "better" music, yes, that's a perfectly valid argument. Even I would have trouble making music on a synth that sounded really, really bad to my ears. I would not be inspired. That's why when I do soundscape work I go to Omnisphere because those patches so inspire me. That's a valid argument, to use a synth for your own personal enjoyment.

But if you seriously think that Joe Blow gives a crap what synth you used to make your music, you're sadly mistaken. He doesn't care and couldn't tell you what synth you used if you gave him 200 years to guess it.

Back in the 70s, the group Boston's promo line was "no synths were used to make this album."

Why? Because obviously there were a whole lotta people bitching and complaining about synths in music in the first place. Yeah, lotta people didn't like them AT ALL.

So get over yourselves. Using an Arturia emulation, as long as it inspires the one using it, is no different from using YOUR emulation of choice as far as the end listener is concerned.

The only difference is in YOUR brain and how it inspires YOU.

Valid, yes. But not the definitive "this synth is better than that synth" when it comes to actually making the music.

Tin foil hat is on.

Because I know what BS is coming next.

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