Quote:
Originally Posted by billcarroll  |
Sorry guys i have to confess to something publicly. My sincere apologies.
Mike and i were chatting (ANA's developer) when ANA was in beta and he sent it to me to try. I was VERY ill (completely paralyzed from waist down at that time, but WITH the pain), and to be honest that was a period i gave up music. Mike and i had plans to release some plugins and because we had known eachother as internet acquaintances i decided to put a one line sentence in (of my own volition) to bump the topic for him. Because i am a huge fan of Mike's work(sonic timeworks,ssl,phonoxone, now camel audio) i automatically expected ANA to be of absolute superb quality anyway.
I had never even installed the beta he sent me and our other plans were cancelled (amicably). When i wrote this line here about ANA, i had never hear or demoed ANA in my life ( I am sure the seller can cross check this with my IP).
What i did was very very wrong, and i have done it three times in my internet life, just said something was great without really knowing. That's over ten thousand posts at KVR and almost 2 thousand here, but i am absolutely ashamed even three of those were dishonest so to speak.
Today this came and bit me in the behind and i have learned a very valuable lesson. And i assure you all i will never do it again. I also assure you the line with ANA here was the very final time i ever did that.. Gearslutz is my absolute favourite community as trolling is not allowed, and we are welcomed to test the actual inherent quality of a product. I am not talking about whether we use and like something, but the actual technical quality.
Now since this is an ANA topic. I find ANA to have the worst actual quality of a modern virtual synth i have heard in the last decade. I compare it to Model E type quality and ES2, but at easily 10x the cpu usage.. (i was floored to be playing a one note bass using half a sandy bridge core and full of aliasing) I put that in bold to certify that is my one, 100% honest opinion of the product, as it stands, from a few days ago when i tested it's quality thoroughly.
I started a topic at KVR about this quality, some agreed, some were neutral, and a few went into character assassination, and obviously crossposting my gearslutz "one liner" here. (and then quoting it here so i couldn't change it). I feel much better coming out with the truth anyway, i plugged, erm, a plug, once here, for an internet friend, and i am as i said truly ashamed.
What i did was present a bunch of audio files at KVR at 44.1 and 96k and try to rummage through all the personal abuse.
A few weeks ago i wanted to buy a synth. I don't have a huge deal of them since i have gone back to using logic ex reason. I felt like an impulse buy, and it had to be inexpensive. I tried ANA for around 20 minutes and thought "this is OK". Bear in mind, i have complete one sided deafness (fact), so i sometimes miss things that people with 2 ears wouldn't. I thought "presets sound ok, will give it a go" so i bought it. I played with a few leads and picked one for a track (i like starting with presets) a couple weeks later i was listening to my track on my laptop speakers and picked up this aliasing frequency that was taking away from the song. I pinned it down to ANA and then went and did a bunch of tests, and found it has the worst aliasing of any synth i have personally used since i have been working in the box. It disappears completely at 96 k so i realised that it was not a feature of the sound by design. Ana is so cpu hungry i can barely run it at 44 let alone at 96, so i said on the forum at KVR that the synth had shocking programming ( i looked at that as low quality with high cpu usage).
The topic got deleted completely into space, i am sorry that happened but it was not my call, the moderator did it cause of the quoting from gearslutz and the piling on of assault. Another topic was opened by someone else and it almost began again, and the mod nipped it quickly in the bud and told people to stop piling it on me.
Unfortunately, i asked the developer how a license transfer would work, and he responded within minutes saying he had refunded me and i was to delete the synth from my machine immediately. I begrudgingly thanked him, i guess he didn't want me to provide any more sound demos, and i had some messages prepared for the magazines that praised the synth to see if they had picked up on the aliasing. I was FORCED into a refund, i NEVER asked for one, i wanted to sell it in my own time, i had a legal license, and he had no right to do that without asking me if that was ok, and now all the work i did and had set up has gone to dust, as i had the next test scenario set up for the next batch of audio files... but i am not a thief so i deleted the synth as per his request.
What i am telling you is the absolute truth, and i am coming clean about my indiscretion because i love it here, and i was sorry to see someone quoting me from a year ago, to use it against me at another forum (again, lesson learned!).
I at least still have the audio files i had bounced so FAR before i had to delete the synth. If you guys are interested, cause i know you are sticklers for quality, i am happy to provide them. I would love to know what you think, about the SYNTH and it's QUALITY, not me as a person, or hating on me for thinking ANA is a low quality product.
Once again my sincerest apologies, and excuses for the long post, but as Bill quoted my one line comment from a YEAR ago, i had to actually explain that i do not like ANA *at all* and why i had written that one line that i did, when in reality having never heard it at that stage.
Again i hope you forgive me for this, and i have learned my lesson, i assure you. I have learned that things from the past can come back to haunt you, so always, absolutely, tell the truth without question. (which is the right thing to do anyway).
I refuse to get myself into personal attacks at this forum, so I will avoid any further discussion as such, but am happy to answer anything else i know about ANA itself from my brief experience with the product.
Regards,
Theo
PS:
1) i only brought up the health situation to explain i wasn't even really making music at that time and in no condition to be testing ANA, as i was highly medicated (legally). for the worst pain i have ever felt, and i also was very out of it.. i regret alot of actions during that period.
2) Some attacked me at KVR for not noticing the aliasing in the demo, but my reply simply was, i have one ear, not two, and the top reviewers at three publications who liked ANA alot did not notice it either. I never complained about spending money on it, i simply wanted to talk about the quality. If i had demoed it and NOT purchased it, i still would have started the topic about it's quality being poor, the purchase was irrelevant. i simply want to know what others think about the aliasing and particularly vs high cpu usage ratio.
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Sonic Academy ANA Synth 
