From Kenneth Elhardt Sent Sun, Dec 7th 2008, 01:27
From Kenneth Elhardt Sent Sun, Dec 7th 2008, 01:27
Soundcollector, >>i think what you say below goes for most modern synth developments to some degree , this quest for perfection lead us the other way creatively into a perfect world of numbers and perfect circuits. No flaws in the diamond and it fails to refract pretty colours , its just white light and bland ' generic ' sound<< I see. Vintage analog = good. Modern analog = bland colorless sound. Got it. In my house however, that's not the case, so I suppose it depends on what synths you own, whether you're just repeating analog (now vintage analog) dogma, and whether you know how to program a synth. My modern Doepfer and Andromeda are both rather squirrelly and not perfect, while my JP-8's are overly stable and clinical sounding. I can get my Supernova to sound exactly like my JP-8 in a side-by-side test, so what does that mean? Either the supernova sounds like a vintage analog synth or the JP-8 sounds like a VA synth. I've gotten more colorful, varied, musical, interesting and complex sounds out of my modern synths than I've ever heard come from any Arp2600. I've always noticed that indirect insults are allowed on this list for some reason, but I get annoyed at people calling the stuff I do on modern synths as sounding bland, generic, sterile, or whatever other term they apply to a specific synth I use. >>is it me or do all vsti synths sound the same ? or have that same total ' non-ness for instance - i mention vsti as they are the ultimate dumbing down in this way , perfection for convenience and 'product perfection' leading to sterility<< It's just you. Everybody does it differently, and that includes randomized pitch and filter fluctuations. They sound different from each other just as different VA synths do. When somebody asked what the most analog sounding vsti synth was on some forum, most people said Poly-Ana. IIRC, after listening to some of the demos, I wished some of my analogs sounded like it. Most vintage synths were dumbed down designs because of cost contraints. Moving beyond vintage to more power architectures is where you get more interesting sounds. >>Modern day electronic engineers probably look at arp circuits and shake there head in disgust , its all so untidy and non perfect and not the done thing now .In trying to 'perfect' we lose the magic...this is it - people number crunching and looking at specs , these improvments cost in other ways. Theres a beauty in age that we seem to be trying to erradicate.<< The reason people are designing analog synths these days is to not be perfect, otherwise they'd be doing everything digital. They even replicate old designs, so you can put an Arp filter in your Studio Electronics synth for example. Unfortunately, you're forgetting (just like everybody else) that when people put up blind hearing tests everybody just keeps failing them. So I don't know what the issue is. If virtually everybody on this list thought an A6 sounded more like a Minimoog, than a Minimoog did, what more do you expect from Alesis? You could always replace modern opamps with crappy old 741's or use old recording techniques. Maybe that's what you're looking for. -Elhardt