The Logic Off Topic list

>--- In logic-ot@y..., LogicBaby <basharar@m...> wrote:

>> I am not questioning the viability or the richness of virtual analogs, My
>> MS2000 is a great sounding machine despite its 4 notes of gorgeous
>> polyphony, but after  playing the real thing I can say that it sounds more
>> organic, even a DCO drifts more than its DSP counterpart, there is a certain
>> buzziness/flanging in the sound that I have yet to hear in a virtual synth,
>> it sounds more like real electricity shaped into sound,  its tiny silly
>> little things that speaks REAL analog to my ears, I have just been alerted!

 yoonchinet@... wrote:

>Can you, or anyone else who can, explain to me what that 'analogue' sound is?
>I don't seem to understand it, :-). I've listened to a Roland Juno 60, a
>Roland
>Jx8-p, a Roland Jupiter 8 and a Korg Poly Six. These are synths of the early
>80's. I also know the sound of that Matrix 1000. The only thing I can say of
>the sound of these synths is: they have a certain 'oohmp'. That fast attack
>thing you get on analogue synths. IMO that's due to the analogue circuits
>that do the envelopes.

As Logic baby implied above, I'd say that the biggest difference between
analogue and analogue modelling in digital synths is largely due to the 'non
linearities' that creep into the system in the various stages of a real
analogue
synth. Even the best designed circuits will have some limits as to how far
they
can minimise 'problems' like power supply fluctuations, drift in capacitors
and inductors, and the various waveshaping distortions (often unintentionally)
introduced in virtually every transistor in a circuit. As a consequence,
these
'deficiencies' give many anasynths the character and quality of sound that so
many people love(d) about them.  Warmth, fatness, grit, etc... I would bet
however, that if they could have, many  designers would have willingly chosen
to avoid the distortions and  irrgularities if it were possible to do so
when the
synths  were designed  and built. Maybe it's lucky in many cases that they
couldn't do that ...until digital...

A digital emulation of the same circuit isn't prone to the same design
flaws once realized, though the territory comes with it's own problems
and there are often limits placed on the behaviour of modules so they don't
'misbehave' (Usually resulting in out of range values, etc). In any case,
the little flaws that may plague an analogue circuit would literally have
to be designed in, (witness the numerous tape saturation  and analog
circuit plugins and similar fuctions on some recent synth plugins recently
 available). How successful these 'designed flaws' are is debatable, but
nevertheless they are all attempts at reducing the relentless  'linearity'
and 'regularity' of digital processes that manage to offend many an ear...

>Agreed, you can also get that 'warm' sound on these synths, but you can
>also get this sound on digital synths, to my knowledge. The thing that bugs
>me is that people who complain about digital synths are just people who
>only play presets on synths and don't know their synths.

This may be true, but I'm sure that there are also a lot of people who
voice this opinion that have probably spent a lot of time in both 'camps'
before making such claims. In any case it is a subjective issue above all. I
personally have no problem with digital synths or signal processing as
long as the sound suits. In fact I rarely, if ever, use a real analog synth...

>Btw, from the analogue synths mentioned above I only like the Korg Poly
>Six, the Roland Jupiter 8 and the Matrix 1000. The Juno and Jx8-P
>sound 'cheesy' IMO. They are nice to cut through the mix. Or am I wrong
>here; I spent a couple of hours noodling with a Juno 60, Jx8-P and a
>Poly Six and decided to go for a Yamaha CS1x(digital) syth after all, :-).

Though I have limited 'knowledge' of the sound of many analogue synths,
some are not really that good IMHO. Why anyone would want to hang on to
them (for practical use at least) or worse still, make a virtual model of
them (ala Reaktor) is as much the result of getting on some bandwagon due
to a lack of imagination as anything else. There are some nice analog beasts
around, the product  of a golden age for some, but AFAI am concerned, the
*new* possibilities that digital  offers are too great  to worry about which
analog synth I should have, or worse, which analog synth to digitally
resurrect
next...

S.