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Originally Posted by jaykay  Funnily enough when I was studying I did my thesis on just this topic. A comparative analysis/study between softs and analogues. I used a control group for obvious reasons and my findings were a lot closer than you would imagine.
The analogue did come out on top overall but a lot of the sample groups used were most of the time unable to perceive any audible difference.  |
You need to spend time with them to learn the difference. I'm not surprised when people do an AB test that it's difficult to tell them apart.
Start using them in context on a regular basis and the differences become more and more apparent. The lack of detail and dimension in the softsynths becomes very obvious if you try to use them exclusively for a song. Break out the sounds to external synths and the song takes on an entire new life.
I do this all the time. I start out an arrangement using mostily Sonik Synth, Atmosphere etc but then when it's time to get serious I go to the memorymoog, midimoog, prophet, Rolands etc and even the new synths like Fantom, Virus, Motif. That makes all the difference. Sometimes layering these along with the softsynths provides the best of both worlds.
For the record, even my Virus TI, which is an awsome and exciting synth (pure software based) shares a bit of this lack of resoution compared to real analog. It has it's place, certainly, but as I use it more and more I'm aware of it's shortcommings as well.
I find external sample based synths like the Fantom and Motif to be somewhere in between. For some reason they do have more dimension than pure softsynths, but they are not as fat as the pure analog synths.
Of course the downside to the analog synths, especially vintage is that they don't have any of the modern bells and whistles -no effects, arpeggiators etc so you have to either use them for the more simple sounds (pads, stabs, leads, bass) or spend some serious time programming if you want the Virus kind of thing.
I end up using external effects, of course with the analog synths, but I think it would be cool to have a dedicated KSP-8 or Eventide 8000 hooked up to the memorymoog to act as the effects system. Now that would be the all time killer setup (with eventide's presets changing with each moog preset).