Possible to get rid of "phasey" osc-beating in soft-synths?

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I'm going to describe something I've noticed with software VA's, which I don't really hear when listening to HW demos (e.g., on youtube).

Try making a strings patch with 3 sawtooth oscs, slightly detuned (around 2 cents max). In software, it seems like there's this really obvious beating between the detuned oscs, even after effects like chorus, delay, and reverb are applied (although it's less obvious then). But it seems like when I hear comparable sounds from hardware synths, they don't have this.

Anyone have any experience here?
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Detuning leads to beating, that's just physics. My hardware beats when detuned. Do you have a specific example of "nice hardware detune"?

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yeah beating happens.
i built several oscillators precisely for this.
i say i built, i bought the parts and had someone else do the actual build. safety first :hihi:

its more noticeable in sine waves but does occur accross the board with cycling waves.

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Maybe something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsFfqyRhLo8

Yeah, I get that detuning leads to beating, but it seems somehow muted and/or less obvious/harsh in analog hardware synths.
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vurt wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:42 pm yeah beating happens.
i built several oscillators precisely for this.
i say i built, i bought the parts and had someone else do the actual build. safety first :hihi:

its more noticeable in sine waves but does occur accross the board with cycling waves.
So, you custom-built oscs that can minimize the beating effect? 8)
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JerGoertz wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:45 pm
vurt wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:42 pm yeah beating happens.
i built several oscillators precisely for this.
i say i built, i bought the parts and had someone else do the actual build. safety first :hihi:

its more noticeable in sine waves but does occur accross the board with cycling waves.
So, you custom-built oscs that can minimize the beating effect? 8)
no, to cause beating.
4 osc, all different rates, so the beating is causing a what sounds more random than it is, type beating.
a filter afterwards means i can for example have a kick/bass note that sounds at different intervals.

im not sure there is a way to minimose it, as imrae says, its sound physics.
if you sat in the middle of two amps, one osc on the left, one on the right, detuned, you would still hear the beating effect between the oscillators.

post fx, you could try a delay.
almost as a reverb, so fast/short delay time and a decent amt of feedback.
slowly adjust these to taste :)

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that video, you can hear the beating, but its timed to the notes. so sounds like note expression.
but then there is a good dose of reverb on there too.

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turn off free running osc, and any mods/drift options

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I made a quick 2 osc demo for you: two saw waves into a unity mixer into amplification into one speaker. All analog until the phone microphone.

https://youtu.be/ySLRNFspQOg

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vurt wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:54 pm that video, you can hear the beating, but its timed to the notes. so sounds like note expression.
but then there is a good dose of reverb on there too.
Yeah, I notice the beating in that vid too, but it sounds more "organic" or something. Less regular, softer, silkier, with a hint of vanilla. :party:
AnX wrote:turn off free running osc, and any mods/drift options
Yeah, I hear you on that. I set the phase offsets for the individual oscs and retrigger them, and that certainly helps.
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imrae wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 8:03 pm I made a quick 2 osc demo for you: two saw waves into a unity mixer into amplification into one speaker. All analog until the phone microphone.

https://youtu.be/ySLRNFspQOg
Yep, I hear it. Seems more subdued than on some softsynths.

Or maybe it's part/most/all psychosomatic, who knows.
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maybe the softsynth wavs are just more "hi fi" ie closer to an actual saw than an anlogue one with imperfections that analogue has?

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Possibly also pitch modulation will take the edge off - although the DCOs in the synths in that first video should be pretty stable. But I would not be surprised if the clock accuracy/stability in a soft synth is way higher than an 80s hardware synth.

Lush string sounds on synths can use a fair amount of fast pitch modulation and that's bound to disguise beating.

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Do you also hear this on monosynths? The pad examples are highly polyphonic, and this will go quite some way toward masking individual beats. A lot of the action is also at the top end of the keyboard, and the higher you go, the less 'tone fusion + beating' you get with the same perceived detune amount (because pitch relationships are logarithmic while beat relationships are linear with respect to frequency).

My ear isn't good enough to deconstruct the patches, but string sounds also tend to have the oscillators spaced in octaves with detune rather than directly next to each other with detune, leading to lesser beating as only half of the harmonics will be affected.

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vurt wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 8:10 pm maybe the softsynth wavs are just more "hi fi" ie closer to an actual saw than an anlogue one with imperfections that analogue has?
That was my thinking too. Although surely if that were the case, someone would have modeled it in software by now (not saying somebody hasn't!).
Gamma-UT wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 8:14 pm Possibly also pitch modulation will take the edge off - although the DCOs in the synths in that first video should be pretty stable. But I would not be surprised if the clock accuracy/stability in a soft synth is way higher than an 80s hardware synth.

Lush string sounds on synths can use a fair amount of fast pitch modulation and that's bound to disguise beating.
Thanks, yeah, I agree.
cron wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 8:45 pm Do you also hear this on monosynths? The pad examples are highly polyphonic, and this will go quite some way toward masking individual beats. A lot of the action is also at the top end of the keyboard, and the higher you go, the less 'tone fusion + beating' you get with the same perceived detune amount (because pitch relationships are logarithmic while beat relationships are linear with respect to frequency).

My ear isn't good enough to deconstruct the patches, but string sounds also tend to have the oscillators spaced in octaves with detune rather than directly next to each other with detune, leading to lesser beating as only half of the harmonics will be affected.
Not sure whether I hear this in monosynths. The video that imrae posted was monophonic and had that kind of beating, but, being analog, it seemed "smoother" than softsynths to me. Of course, we could be veering into perceptual bias and all that here.
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