Native Instruments Massive X Synth - Sequel to Massive (Out Now!)

[jancivil]

My point is that all tools have their limitations. If you give a violinist a tuba, it would be reasonable for them to say they can't play an orchestral violin part - it's not reasonable to say they're a bad musician if they can't use a tool they're not completely comfortable with.

Well, sound design is not musical instrument performance. I would say that if someone can't use a flute as well as they can a tuba as an orchestrator, their orchestrator chops seem questionable. You're amplifying your straw man of someone that just wasn't comfortable when it really was
It’s super tinnie and digital sounding. Pretty much only useful for making ambient music for film because of how thin and unremarkable it is.

It seems to me that might be the real example in thread of someone that wants a thing to be a thing it's not really, or more like an analog subtractive synth essentially.

[Deep Purple]

I replied because I don't think it's a valid statement to say that a person is bad at something because they don't like the character of the tool. If they blame the tool for bad results, that's something entirely different, but telling someone that "if x is true then you suck" is nothing more than a barely veiled insult for no good reason.

I replied only because of the poor logic. Here your fallacy is the straw man argument.

When someone say that Massive is bad, thin sounding, digital or can't be used to create this or that sound I instantly know that person who wrote that simply suck as a sound designer

Now you appear to characterize that as something else, as a way to seem to improve the point. I didn't see any 'I don't like the particular character of it so I use something else', I saw what was written.

v1o wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:26 am
Massive is the most overrated VST of all time. It’s super tinnie and digital sounding. Pretty much only useful for making ambient music for film because of how thin and unremarkable it is.

You can do what you want with that but I don't think I'm reading anything into the exchange. I think the assessment they aren't very apt for synth sound design may not be a terrible stretch.
But by the time I chimed in to the shit talking, BONES had increased my irritation by maybe 7% with that bullshit.

I have really no interest in the "philosophy" or that kind of thing. You're a big fan, apparently of that individual Jarre; his music is not my bag, I could give a shit.

I spend a lot of time with that DX7 and recently was reminded how good of a fat synth brass tone you could get with it, and specifically how to. So you support a dismissive statement with another one, neither seems especially expert.

I had no intention of creating a straw man - I don't think it's much of a stretch to consider "bad", "thin sounding" or "digital" as comments on the character of an instrument. I wasn't extending the same descriptive characteristics to the DX7, nor am I am particularly a fan of JMJ - I just recalled his dislike of the DX7 and made what was obviously a clumsy attempt to insert other variables into the ad hominem to show it as such.

[BONES]

Bullshit.
The reality is you have this subjective impression [out of little to no interest, it's right there] but you want to sound like you know everything, and in your quest you posture like you're stating objective facts.

Are you suggesting that you know better than I do how I should spend my time? How unbelievably arrogant is that!?!

I use the things that give me the best results with the least effort. You're sort of right, it's a partially subjective thing, but the foundations for building that perspective are absolutely quantifiable and, therefore, largely (if not completely) objective. e.g. It is an objective fact that none of Massive's factory string presets are as useful for creating big, lush strings as presets in other synths I own, like DUNE or Equator (which cheats a little by using samples). I think it is completely reasonable, then, to conclude that if I want to make those sounds, Massive is probably going to require a lot more effort than DUNE or Equator and may not even deliver in the end. Given that I have a demanding full-time job and other commitments, I have to wonder why I'd waste my limited time trying to make Massive do those sounds, knowing I could be better using that time working on my vocal takes or polishing our final mixes before we have to deliver our finished album to our label at the end of next month. The only subjective part of it all is how important/useful those sounds are. If they are not important to you, fine, but they are important to what we do.

This is just an example. As I said, we use Massive in several of our songs. It's really good for some things but that doesn't make it utterly infallible and totally brilliant for every single thing we might need it for. If things worked like that we would all only need one synth and we'd all have the same one synth and every other developer would go out of business.

[jancivil]

Ok, but I find v1o's remark impossible to defend like that. That isn't the character of the tool in and of itself, not to my experience which itself is quite limited, so I think it's kind of a too-glib thing to say. It looks like someone incurious tbh.

Different people like different things, Massive is so not my go-to because the interface, which I'm actually not that comfortable with myself.

thanks for taking the time to clarify, 'my bad'.

[BONES]

In fact out of all my plugins I would say Massive is one that has some of the most high quality patches for the sort of music I like. In that sense its age is a positive.

Do you have any decent synth strings patches? Something that could do Gary Numan's Cars kind of sound. Because that's one area that Massive's vast preset library seems to fail at badly. Most of the things tagged as "strings" sound thin, weak and lame. There are one or two passably usable presets but DUNE can do way, way better with just a single oscillator on a single layer. We use those kinds of sounds a fair bit, so it's one of the first things I go looking for, and Massive doesn't seem to be able to deliver at all.

But you can get great sound from Massive instantly.

OK, then, show me a great strings preset I could use to do Gay Numan's Cars. There isn't one in the factory library, nor in any of the half-a-dozen Maschine expansions we have. I can give you a DUNE preset to give you an idea of what I'm talking about if you like, or point you to some factory patches in Novation's Ultranova or Audiothingies' MicroMonsta.

Massive easily stands to the today's standards. But well... Hard to argue with someone who wrote so much bs about Moog filter

BS? Are you telling me the bottom end doesn't roll off as you increase resonance? That's my only complaint about the Moog Ladder filter and it's an easily verifiable fact not disputed by anyone. The only difference of opinion seems to be over whether or not that's a good thing and the best arguments for it being good seem to be "you don't know what you're talking about" or "shut up, you're a horrible person", which are hardly convincing, are they?

When someone say that Massive is bad, thin sounding, digital or can't be used to create this or that sound I instantly know that person who wrote that simply suck as a sound designer

Jean Michel Jarre was pretty open about his hatred of the DX7 when it was released, particularly in that it was only good for imitating acoustic instruments.
He must suck as a sound designer...

Is Massive a DX7 emulation? That's something new to me. Tell me more

I think he was using a different example to illustrate a point. I think using the DX 7, though, is a bit harsh because that thing was all but unprogrammable to most of us when it came out. It was just such a different concept, so far outside anyone's experience. I had a DX9 and it was a challenge just making a patch that was in tune at the time. Today I could probably manage it much better but back then it was terrifying. When you got it right, though, it was fantastic. I used it on my first single to do the filter-sweep style pad. You can hear it most clearly in the break - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdsyKMdFKyU

[EnGee]

But why would you use Massive for such sounds?! I mean I can get a little bit close (playing around with the preset "Affecting Preciousness") but not really that I feel it is a natural fit. It is possible but I need to be very comfortable with Massive (which I'm not to be honest).

I wouldn't even use Dune for such sounds, because it is more or less the same! This is why I have synths like Korg ARP Odyssey (which you have it too I think). It is just so much easier with Odyssey for the early 80's sounds. I have just loaded it and with the first preset I felt I'm already 75% there!

[BONES]

I'm not interested in early 80s sounds, I was just looking for something that I figured most people would know, to describe what I meant. What we really use is more like the sort of stuff ROMplers are good at. In fact, for a long time we mostly relied on an Orion sample set that was sampled from the Yamaha CS1x (which I used to own), courtesy of our resident bundle of joy, Dave.

DUNE is actually brilliant at doing it, even better than the CS1x or Ultranova. In fact, it's probably the best I've ever heard. I've not tried to do the same with Odyssey but if it was any good, it would use a lot more CPU power to get there, especially as those timbres rely heavily on lots of unison voices (and/or a fat chorus/ensemble effect).

[pixel85]

When someone say that Massive is bad, thin sounding, digital or can't be used to create this or that sound I instantly know that person who wrote that simply suck as a sound designer

Jean Michel Jarre was pretty open about his hatred of the DX7 when it was released, particularly in that it was only good for imitating acoustic instruments.

He must suck as a sound designer...

Is Massive a DX7 emulation? That's something new to me. Tell me more

I'm not sure if you're being facetious or obtuse here.

My point is that all tools have their limitations. If you give a violinist a tuba, it would be reasonable for them to say they can't play an orchestral violin part - it's not reasonable to say they're a bad musician if they can't use a tool they're not completely comfortable with.

Man, Massive and DX7 are two different worlds. Universes I would even say. Original DX7 is awfully difficult and unpleasant to program. In Massive you have all knobs and faders in front of you +-1 window switch with quite basic architecture. While DX7 is probably no.1 of the most user not friendly synths ever made and at the time of release it introduces new unfriendly architecture that is hard to understand for many even today. If you know basic subtractive synthesis (which is base to work with any synth) then you can create sounds in Massive instantly which cannot be said about DX7. Massive is like violin to violinist while DX7 is like broken tuba for violinist

[pixel85]

Massive easily stands to the today's standards. But well... Hard to argue with someone who wrote so much bs about Moog filter

BS? Are you telling me the bottom end doesn't roll off as you increase resonance? That's my only complaint about the Moog Ladder filter and it's an easily verifiable fact not disputed by anyone.

To just use one quote:

Of course they are objectively terrible - nobody can argue that when you turn the resonance up, the bottom end drops out of the sound. That's not supposed to happen and is, therefore, objectively terrible filter design/implementation.

You're calling a filter terrible because it does more than you wish it would do.Like lowpass filter can't decrease low end because it can serve only one function and no more. There's multiple different lowpass filters in which they treat freq spectrum differently and every one have its use. 'That's not supposed to happen' - it's to designer to decide if it is or not, not to you. You can only speculate except if designer said it officially that it wasn't supposed to act that way.
Beside that what about Funk tracks with resonating minimoog basslines? It works perfectly there and bass is still there. Not that bad for 'terrible' lpf.

[grommon]

Does anyone know if Massive users are getting a discount for X? What would be the most exciting feature you've heard about X?

[liv]

Does anyone know if Massive users are getting a discount for X?

According to the Massive X product page faq, yes.

[BONES]

You're calling a filter terrible because it does more than you wish it would do.

No, it is terrible because it doesn't do the job a filter is supposed to do. How would you feel about that behaviour if it was an EQ instead? i.e. If you changed the settings on the high or mid band and it affected the low frequencies as well. Are you honestly going to put up with that? Of course you're not so why would you put up with it in a synth filter? Maybe you can find a use for that behaviour, fine, that doesn't make it anything except a terrible filter that you can find a few uses for anyway.

Like lowpass filter can't decrease low end because it can serve only one function and no more.

If you turn the cutoff down low enough, it affects the low end. In fact, that's part of what makes a good filter good - if you set the cutoff at zero and use an envelope or LFO to open and close the filter, resonance can emphasise the lowest frequencies, giving your basslines serious oomph. THAT's what everyone should expect from a good filter.

'That's not supposed to happen' - it's to designer to decide if it is or not, not to you. You can only speculate except if designer said it officially that it wasn't supposed to act that way.

I am pretty sure Bob Moog acknowledged it himself as something he just had to accept as part of the design, not something he deliberately built into it. If I had a week I could find the reference but I'm sure I read it somewhere, many years ago.

Beside that what about Funk tracks with resonating minimoog basslines? It works perfectly there and bass is still there. Not that bad for 'terrible' lpf.

Perfectly? Now that's a subjective viewpoint. I think they sound terrible (assuming we're thinking about the same thing). In any event, who knows how much EQ or other studio trickery they had to dial in to get them to sound that way? Or how much better they might have sounded with a different synth?

[EvilDragon]

There are many vintage EQs that have non-linear interaction between their bands, and that gave them their "oomph" and are much loved by everyone. Seriously you should stop digging yourself deeper.

[BONES]

Really? Surely nothing as completely obvious and bass destroying as a Moog Ladder Filter? It would be unusable. But if what you're saying is true, then it really just proves my point that people are idiots because if I had an EQ like that I'd throw it out the window.

Anyway, I was just watching Nick Batt's Uno review and came across something extremely interesting -
https://youtu.be/NnC6KedrinM?t=413

The bit I'm referring to is at 6:54, if you copy and paste the link it will go straight to that point. Note his use of the word "advantage", as opposed to something like "characteristic" or "feature". Clearly he believes a ladder filter to be an inferior design. So I suppose now you'll tell us all what a twat Nick Batt is and how he doesn't know what he's talking about, either. Because the point he makes is exactly my issue with ladder filters.

[DJ Warmonger]

The problem with Internet is that it lets dumb people talk no matter how wrong they are. In real life Bones would either be oscractized or punched in a face already.

If you personally don't like this filter - that's alright. But telling everyone that they are wrong because they think otherwise - it's just trolling. Unless you're some kind of dictator, you can't tell strangers what they should like or not like