So how would you describe the difference between an analog synth and an VSTi synth?

[MarkyGoldstein]

Now that we have both co-existing..

For example the difference between a
Moog Voyager
and an
Arturia Moog (Emulation)

For example, does the analog go deeper and smoother in the bass?

Any difference?

Please only write those who really know

[numrologst]

It is hard to describe the difference without being cliche.

Difference in this and that is truly subjective.

Soundwise some may say the voyager is thicker, beefier, fatter, than the emulations.

I say they sound close, but there is just something about a real synthesizer that just makes it better.

The bigger deal in my opinion is the controls and the board itself. I couldn't stand programming a synth on the computer screen, or trying to use a midi controller to control a soft synth.

I guess you could say it's close, but no cigar.

[Mats]

Originally Posted by MarkyGoldstein

Now that we have both co-existing..

For example the difference between a
Moog Voyager
and an
Arturia Moog (Emulation)

For example, does the analog go deeper and smoother in the bass?

Any difference?

Please only write those who really know

I think there´s a couple of software synths out there that do sound really good. Even so, it´s not the same. Analog bass sounds are heavier and sounds in general has rounder/smoother top-end. I think you can spot digital over analog quite easy most of the time. I recently tried the Prophet 08 by Dave Smiths and somehow it didn´t felt like all analog eventhough i know it is. Maybe that´s just reversed placebo.
I used to have a Moog "the source" and it didn´t always do what i told it to do, others had tuning problems or the "sound" would differ sometimes. (and this is sometimes described as charming) With digital it either works or it don´t. Not to mention the sheer joy of creating sounds on real knobs.

[kingofswing]

I would say the differences are pretty obvious.

I own many soft synths including the Arturia (Prophet V and Minimoog V), Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Trilogy, NI synths, etc. I also own some more recent analog hardware synths like the Andromeda, Moog Little Phatty, Oberheim Matrix 1000, and soon the Prophet 08. Also own some nice VA's such as Virus Ti, Novation Supernova and Ion.

The differences are clear enough (seriously), the softsynths sound lighter and weak in comparison, especially bass. Pads are quite static sounding, and the filters are not so great. The combination of analog oscillators, filters and the audio path just makes the whole experience different - more organic, evolving, ballsy, bigger and better. The beating effect of two or more osc's in a typical analog synth is something special to be heard.

Soft synths sound far too static and thin to be direct replacements - not quite there yet. I have never been happy with my mixes using soft synth basses (with exception of one sample playback one) over hardware. Then comes the realtime control and hands on approach, etc, etc.

[dan p]

I have a minimoog model d.i also have some virtual stuff.When running at 24 bit 96 k virtual gets a little better but analog still fills the shades of gray in to deep black more than the vsti's do imo.Thicker,richer and warmer and rounder like a nice big round butt!Not to big though Ha!
I have been playin my mini since i was 16 and i'm 50 now.Happy Passover!

DP

[jho]

Hardware still smokes software!

Software has come a long way but as others mentioned, it can be thinner, weaker, more static, less evolving, involving

I've been using a Receptor with VSTI's at a live gig for the past 6 months and this weekend tried out a Korg M3. Man, what a great sounding keyboard. I'm selling the Receptor. It smokes it in almost every conceivable way and costs less, too. Everyone commented on how much better it sounds that the Receptor (VSTI).

[gregohb]

when i tried out the demo for Arturia's moog it made me immediately remember the sound of a real Moog I had years before. On the other hand, the novation v-station doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the nova hardware. i did a blind test with a bunch of software and hardware pad sounds (about 100 samples, burned in a random order onto a Cd then listened to and rated) and the hardware was better in both cases, but the software had good sounds too - but not as much.

[mikymike]

Try a tape sim or saturater plug after the soft synth, youd be amazed. Colortone pro works great for this!!! jmtc/ymmv

[RCM - Ronan]

My perspective is more as an album mixer than a synth player, but there is something about real synths that sound bigger and more solid and seem to have more detail and texture. The big thing I can say from a mixers perspective is that I find with real synth you can usually push up the fader and its almost done, and the softsynths usually take more work to get them to work in mix. I also find that I can push the real synth up louder in the mix with out fighting the other elements.

[triez]

The real synth sounds like it is in the room with you, the plug-in sounds like it is coming out of the speakers. Sounds like a strange thing to say, but you can only really comment if you play the real and virtual at the same time through the same speakers, then the differences are obvious.

Not to say that VSTi's are bad, but they ARE sonically different. Also there is a BIG difference between playing a Moog or Prophet with instant response, and playing with latency delays, even small ones.

How can I tell? In the room with me at the moment are the following machines:

Yamaha CS-80
Oberheim OBXa
SH5
SH7
ARP Odyssey x2
MS-10
Juno 106
Prophet 5

I have played some of them along side their virtual cousins, I was very impressed at how close the VSTi's usually sound, they are amazing, but I was also aware of how disconnected they felt to play, and how the dimensionality of the sound was lacking.

[miqer]

The difference between the arturia analog synths (arp, moog) and the real once is that the real once have more:

- more harmonic distortion here and there

- more noise, hiss.

I recorded the noise (the hiss) from my Roland jx8p (when the chorus is turned on), and blended that with a vst synth, compressed the 2 sounds together, and the softsynth started to sound way way better.

Then, if you amp it, through a 60ies tube amp, and re record it.... depending on the amp, the vst thing can start to sound really good.

And with good I mean oldskool (brian eno, boards of canada)...

M.

[Kimakaz]

Very interesting thread, with some quality responses.

People have been mainly comparing pure Analogue vs VSti counterpart, how about FM synthesis vs FM7 (for example) or wavetable synths?

I d be curious to know your thoughts on other types of synthesis.

[drBill]

The real thing breathes and is alive. More three dimensional, vs. two. A guitar is a step even more towards 4th dimensional. Think how the pick changes on each note.. How each note is ever so slightly pitched differently due to how hard the string is plucked, etc. A real analog synth is like that - not as much as a guitar, but a bit. the oscillators are changing. They don't hold perfect pitch. The envelopes don't seem perfect every time. There is a little change sometimes. With my Prophet 5, there is a magical time to play it. Not right when turned on, but after the oscillators have been tuned but before they go completely out again. That magic spot where it is fat, chorused,, and very "broad" sounding. A analog sample is like a snare sample. Exactly the same every time you strike it. All this to say......my analogs are going nowhere and will never be replaced with soft synths!!!

Prophet 5
Jupiter 6
Super Jupiter

Yup, they're all staying!!!

bp

[triez]

Don't underestimate the difference between playing with latancy and without. Playing something with fast envelopes and instant response like an Oberheim SEM or a Minimoog is inspiring and punchy. I find the disconnect of having everything playing late with virtual instruments makes the experience disconnected and uninspiring. I can play on a Mini for hours, with VSTi's I never have that desire, it feels like I am at the back of the room with the PA at the other end, laggy and slow. I'm sure that singers feel the same way when some engineer insists that they monitor their own voice through a DAW.

[ari800]

I think the basic difference between hardware and software synth is that the software synths are somehow more about the fundamental frequences and lacks the harmonics - both upper and lower... And that causes lack of character between the sounds and the synths.

...If the sound is somewhat focused on the fundamentals and you stack a whole bunch of them together you end up having a mess. That makes hardware synths more easy to mix and vice versa.

This is just my general feeling about the issue based on countless hours on working with songs made with hardware synths, software synths and both together.

But I don't understand why this is so, hence some of the hardware synths are software inside, but still...

[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.

[Kiwiburger]

Something often overlooked is that many of the desirable analog synths actually had DCOs, not VCOs. Most of the cheaper polyphonic synths from the '80's. There is no doubt that they tend to sound better - but i'm sure a lot of this is what the cheap analog circuits added to the original digital oscillators. Especially on bass notes - the extra harmonics makes boring sinewaves come alive. And noise, and those fat analog chorus effects made a huge difference.

Bearing that in mind, I believe OTB analog processing can go a long way to making virtual synths virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

[chrisso]

Something not mentioned so far and one of the biggest differences between hardware and software synths is the real interface (versus virtual).
You can twiddle several knobs all at one, two or more at a time, on a hardware analog synth.
Virtual synths most often require point and scroll mouse work, and can be less intuitive and slapdash.
I find happy accidents occur all the time on real synths, whereas softsynths require more thought and planning.

[triez]

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.

Did your test subjects do blind listening tests, or did they actually play the instruments. BIG difference. It's easy to confuse someone when you play them "sound a VS Sound B, Which is the virtual and which is the real?", but let the person play the instrument and then see if people can't tell the difference.

[Zep Dude]

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).

[Bassmankr]

The biggest difference that I hear is that the analog has presence and balls that cuts through, especially in a live context. Just run the digital stuff thru a tube amp to beef it up some. In the studio reamp or have an anlog tube pre or DI to run it thru and listen to what it does.

[drBill]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

Something often overlooked is that many of the desirable analog synths actually had DCOs, not VCOs.

I may get blasted for this, but IMO, anything with a DCO is NOT a real analog synth. Like I said before, the drifting analog oscillators is a huge part of the sound.

[Phil Cibley]

Originally Posted by Kimakaz

Very interesting thread, with some quality responses.

People have been mainly comparing pure Analogue vs VSti counterpart, how about FM synthesis vs FM7 (for example) or wavetable synths?

I d be curious to know your thoughts on other types of synthesis.

The FM7 sounds cleaner because the D to A conversion is better and cleaner
than that which is in a DX7. The hiss and quantization noise in my DX7 used
to really bother me back in the '80s. The voices are produced the same way
in both so the D to A and analog playback is what makes the difference.

[Dave Peck]

I have analog monosynths, polysynths, and big modulars and I have VA hardware synths and a few ITB softsynths.

As others have stated, there is often a noticeable difference in the sound of the analogs vs. the various digital emulations, both hardware VA and softsynth. The difference you hear will vary depending on exactly which synths you are comparing, and to a great degree on what type of sound you are patching.

I started using a Nord Modular several years ago, and at first I noticed these same sonic shortcomings when patching the Nord. But the NM is a VERY flexible and capable synth, and I started wondering if it would be possible to use some of that complexity to recreate some of the characteristics that made analog synths sound so distinctive.

Short answer - yes, with enough flexibility in the synth, you can make VA sound very analog.

I recorded some basic filter sweeps from some real analog synths and the NM into the DAW, then analyzed the waveforms and started applying some tips & tricks to make the NM behave more like the analog synths. It required adding some waveshaping to the raw oscs with some tricky audio rate crossfading to round off the tops of the sawtooth wave (but not the bottom), then some spectrum splitting to add some distortion to only some of the harmonics at the filter's output, then some circuits to add random detuning to the oscs pairs on each new note to simulate the way multiple voice cards will have different amounts of detuning in an analog polysynth, then adding a narrow notch filter at about 12kHz to remove the build up of HF hash from all of the transients from the 'too-perfect' digital oscs, etc.

The result - when you bypass all of these extra elements in the patch, it sounds like a VA synth with all of the inherent shortcomings. Switch on the extra stuff and viola! Much more analogish. This made it pretty clear just what is missing in most VA synths - there's no way to add these various tricks to the patches in most of them, so you hear the shortcomings.

BTW many of the tips & tricks I used were not my own ideas, I borrowed some from the guys in the NM forums at electro-music.com. Some of those guys are really sharp patchers.

[Ed Space]

...Long live the BASS!!!

[SoniA]

I use some analog synth and VSTi, for this one I use a dedicated PC that run at 96KHz with good DA converter, the signal run into an hi-end valve preamp and neve compressor (slow att , fast rel 2:1 ratio 2dB gain makeup). Also, I take off the effects into VSTi, that they are cheaper and poor, and use hi-quality VST FX as UAD and Altiverb to replace the stock FX during tracking. This give at the track more fat and warm "like analog" characteristics.



Sonia

[1954U1]

For me, the difference between real analog synths and virtual, is not subtle at all.
Its similar to the difference between playing a so-so acoustic piano and a top-notch sampled one.
The sound of a true analog synth is always more live.
You can hear the oscillators build the sound everywhere from low end to high while you're playing the keyboard and turning knobs.

I'm also convinced that a big part of this sound depends on specifical components,
i.ex the uA726.

And, about the price, there are still around some relatively inexpensive broken, or retune-needing modules of the great IMHO Elektor Formant.
I'm just buying these days a considerable amount of these pieces..
Sure you need some electronical/soldering/wiring skills if you want to go this way..
but its also a good learning practice if you dont have them.

[soultrane]

Originally Posted by kingofswing

Soft synths sound far too static and thin to be direct replacements - not quite there yet. I have never been happy with my mixes using soft synth basses (with exception of one sample playback one) over hardware. Then comes the realtime control and hands on approach, etc, etc.

i agree with this about bass, BUT...

on the rest of the elements of the track

when talking about a dynamic mix, sometimes a static or thin source is exactly what is required...

i've found when i put in a pad from an analog like the a6, i am usually thinning the sound out with eq...

now, it's easier to take out girth than it is to put it in, but my point is, even though i have analogs (and digitals), sometimes i use soft synths too...

although i agree with everything else about the soft synths lacking mojo and being no fun to program...

[kingofswing]

[QUOTE=soultrane;2017992]
when talking about a dynamic mix, sometimes a static or thin source is exactly what is required...QUOTE]

I kind of agree with you in some form about needing static sounds in a mix (like synth bass). Sometimes using an analog synth bass which has a beating cycle, it is not going to be quite as consistent (dynamically), but it can be a desirable effect. I normally use single oscillator bass patches for such reasons. Also i agree about needing to thin out some sounds to fit in the mix, can't let the A6 takeover now

[Goondoc]

hey marky! (sold the sun allready??)

long time no see !!

for me the differences are more than obvious too, if you are really interested just drop by in männedorf sometimes and check it out for yourself.

we're able too compare some of the plugins to its originals! join in for a little shootout! just ask "kubli" he knows where to find us!

shoot out a voyager and a minimoog plug for example and you'll now the differences within max. 5 minutes!

cheers

mike tschudi