Tone2 I2 vs Trueno Analog

[perpetual3]

Hm. No distribution in the US? That’s... an issue. I guess I could take the plunge and just write it off as a loss if it doesn’t work... I hate having to deal with overseas shipping if there’s an issue, but I guess it’s tiny enough.

I ordered from gear4music (or whatever it is) for $117 shipped arrived in 2 days ahead of schedule.

[focusrite]

Just checked and they've sold out.

[perpetual3]

Thanks for confirming. Bought one

Super! Tell me how you like it



Makes me think.. Should I create a facebook group (or similar) where people could have a chat that stays in topic? Meaning that I could punish ignorant arses

I would love that, but I don’t use FB anymore.

[zerocrossing]

Hm. No distribution in the US? That’s... an issue. I guess I could take the plunge and just write it off as a loss if it doesn’t work... I hate having to deal with overseas shipping if there’s an issue, but I guess it’s tiny enough.

I ordered from gear4music (or whatever it is) for $117 shipped arrived in 2 days ahead of schedule.

OK, thanks. I’ll look into them. That does seem like a no-brainer deal.

[zerocrossing]

I’ve got a few questions:

How well does it “play” with other audio devices? Meaning, I’m on Windows 10 with a Fireface 400, but I also run an Analog Heat.

Where are the demos? Other than two YouTube videos and the website demo tracks, there seems to be nothing from users.

If I’m running my interface with a 32 sample buffer, will my latency increase?

[stearine]

How well does it “play” with other audio devices?

Maybe play "with" would be more appropriate? If the stick inputs digital audio, I'd imagine there's a Windows device driver handling the data and either sending it directly to the VST or a digital audio bus via the Windows sound framework (whatever that is called as of this writing), and the VST sends control messages to the driver? I'd expect having other audio devices in the system to be about as consequential to performance of Trueno as any other gear as it should depend more on how well the OS's scheduler handles shuffling several "real time critical" devices (and Windows audio specifically). The other thing on the software side determining performance would be the device driver but I'd expect it to reveal its faults with or without the other devices. The only thing that would worry me is everything latency.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong. :-) I don't own a Trueno and am spoiled by RME.

[zerocrossing]

How well does it “play” with other audio devices?

Maybe play "with" would be more appropriate? If the stick inputs digital audio, I'd imagine there's a Windows device driver handling the data and either sending it directly to the VST or a digital audio bus via the Windows sound framework (whatever that is called as of this writing), and the VST sends control messages to the driver? I'd expect having other audio devices in the system to be about as consequential to performance of Trueno as any other gear as it should depend more on how well the OS's scheduler handles shuffling several "real time critical" devices (and Windows audio specifically). The other thing on the software side determining performance would be the device driver but I'd expect it to reveal its faults with or without the other devices. The only thing that would worry me is everything latency.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong. I don't own a Trueno and am spoiled by RME.

Well, I know there can only be so much throughput on a bus. I’m not really familiar with USB 2 in this respect. I came from the Mac world where FireWire was it, and I just stuck with that. So, the bulk of my audio i/o is via a FireWire card into the RME FireFace 400 (which has extended i/o via ADA8200) USB is handling all my MIDI and audio in and out of the Analog Heat. It all works like a charm.

[stearine]

The bandwidth of USB (2.0 or later) isn't a bottleneck but all that goes into managing latencies may easily become that. I just imagine there are thousand ways to unbalance resource use, responsiveness and consistency. :-P I'd love to talk more about it but frankly I know too little.

[ghettosynth]

...

[sleepcircle]

Also sometimes stuff that cannot be heard can be felt long-term, regardless. Certain nasty combinations can exhaust and tire my ears and mind a lot faster than others, even if I don't notice anything right away

[zerocrossing]

The difference should be obvious to your analyzer even if it isn't to your ears.

If that's true then the difference is completely irrelevant. Surely we all make music to be heard by people with ears, not to be looked at on an analyser?

You completely missed the point. I'm only pointing out that if you CAN'T hear that difference that your analyzer will show you that it's there.

As zerocrossing pointed out, many, if not most, Reaktor instruments will deliver improved sonic behavior when you turn up the oversampling. I was pointing out to Distorted Horizon that this is EXACTLY the case when you are using the Monark oscillator. With the sampling rate of the DAW fixed, you will see a difference in the high frequency content when you increase Reaktor's processing rate.

Whether or not you can hear this difference in oscillator content is debatable, but it is there and your analyzer can see it. The point being that it's possible that further processing might emphasize the presence or absence of this detail and that might be precisely why one would notice reduced high end content with Reaktor running at 44.1, as was obviously the case in the provided pictures.

If you're still confused, I'll post some pictures for you?

Sometimes the differences can be super subtle, but often very noticeable. Here’s an experiment you can easily try. Load up Monark, or really any .ens that allows you to modulate the filter cutoff with one of the audio oscillators. Turn up that filter FM with oscillator modulation that’s an octave above the oscillator that you’re listening to. (Though you can also have both oscillators going) Listen to it while set at 44.1 or 48 and then double that number. It should be a very clear difference. Try turning the resonance up too, that will highlight things even more. Now, if you try that with an actual analog, it won’t matter if your converter is running at 44.1. It’ll sound great.

Now, if you’re doing a basic synth sound with no osc sync, or other audio rate shenanigans, no super high notes or unfiltered sawtooths, 44.1 or 48 is going to be fine for most sounds.

Anyway, you’ll notice that if you start filling your projects with Reaktor instances running at 96 kHz, some Serum, a convolution reverb and some high quality saturation, even a modern computer can start feeling the burn. Something like Trueno can be a good way to free up some CPU and get some interesting character. I’m flush with hardware synths and software, so I’ll probably pass on this one. Seems cool, though. They should make a PCIe poly version.

[BONES]

Reaktor expensive? If you think about the cost per free instrument/effect you get, it’s probably the cheapest commercial instrument out there, and that’s not including the user library.

That's value, not price. I simply don't see why I need all the stuff it has to offer. If I bought into it, it would be to make my own ensembles, not because I could use other people's, and for that SynthEdit still seems like a much better deal at $20.

Anyway, I just brought up Reaktor Blocks because I know its a way to easily make a 1:1 feature replica of a synth like Trueno. I could have easily said Zebra HZ, which I think has the ability to replicate the feature set too.

Yeah but that's just features. I don't look at features, beyond having the basics covered. I am much more interested in character because you can make most sounds with pretty much any synth but getting the character you want is much harder. A good example is the classic acid bassline sound - there are a million synths that can do it but when it comes to that specific character (which I hate, for the record), the 303 is still the king.

No, I meant “raw sound” meaning not one that had a lot of effects going on, not a raw oscillator sound. That would be meaningless. I was hoping to get a demo showing off the character of the oscillators interacting with the filter so I could see what a similar type sound would sound like using one of the better VSTis.

Funnily enough, I don't think you can discount effects, either. My favourite Trueno preset, Sweeping Strings, sounds very ordinary if you turn off the chorus. If you didn't like that patch, you'd say the chorus was a pretty horrible effect but the way it transforms the sound in that particular patch really works.

One of the big things I like about Trueno is how easy it is to dial in some expressiveness. Velocity and aftertouch are front and centre and you can route them to pretty much any parameter you want. The only disappointment is that, for whatever reason, you can only set up to CC40 for modulation, which means I need a custom set-up for my Roli.

Reaktor is really expensive

its half price twice a year, around £90. Cheap as chips

Says the man who hasn't spent that much on the combined total of everything he's used for music production over his entire life. I've never seen Reaktor for less than Au$299, which is about twice as much as I've ever paid for any music software, other than Cubase Pro (at half price). The US$20 I paid for SynthEdit 16 or 17 years ago seems like way better value to me.

I can't wait to try this. What's the CPU hit like? I'm guessing it's gonna be tiny.

It can actually be quite high for what it is as it does a lot of processing on the computer side. If you have all the effects on, expect it to use as much CPU as any well-optimised VSTi. I've seen it use twice as much as a typical patch in DUNE, for example.

Huh. I went to that site and got a “Trueno did not match any results” message.

Here it is - https://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards-an ... sizer/2LZ0 Sadly, as you will see, they've run out. Seems we've had some success getting people interested.

You completely missed the point. I'm only pointing out that if you CAN'T hear that difference that your analyzer will show you that it's there.

No, I completely got your point but you seemed to have completely missed mine.

As zerocrossing pointed out, many, if not most, Reaktor instruments will deliver improved sonic behavior when you turn up the oversampling.

And If "improved sonic behaviour" was what I was after, I might give a toss. But it's not. So I don't. I like the way Trueno's sonic misbehaves, that's what gives it its character.

I was pointing out to Distorted Horizon that this is EXACTLY the case when you are using the Monark oscillator. With the sampling rate of the DAW fixed, you will see a difference in the high frequency content when you increase Reaktor's processing rate.

But you won't hear it, so it doesn't matter, so why bother to bring it up? May as well mention the price of crude oil.

[ghettosynth]

...

[AnX]

Says the man who hasn't spent that much on the combined total of everything he's used for music production over his entire life. I've never seen Reaktor for less than Au$299, which is about twice as much as I've ever paid for any music software, other than Cubase Pro (at half price). The US$20 I paid for SynthEdit 16 or 17 years ago seems like way better value to me.

thats value, not price

[zerocrossing]

Hm. No distribution in the US? That’s... an issue. I guess I could take the plunge and just write it off as a loss if it doesn’t work... I hate having to deal with overseas shipping if there’s an issue, but I guess it’s tiny enough.

bones ordered from the uk (gear for music i think) to aus, received in 3 days.
not bad turnaround really.

Huh. I went to that site and got a “Trueno did not match any results” message.

There was only 1 left after I ordered from there. Amazon UK have them but £40 more!

Got it. No worries. I’ll wait for the next production run. I’m in no hurry. I’ve got plenty on my table right now.