[LAU] Hardware synths

[David Olofson]

On Saturday 01 December 2007, lanas wrote:
[...]
> That makes me tend to believe that hardware synths sounds are
> still leading in quality, deepness and richness.  Any other
> opinions ?

Theoretically, there shouldn't really be a reason for softsynths to be 
inferior in any way at all these days. If the same algorithms are 
used - and that's well within reach with current CPUs - the results 
are identical.

Obviously, you need to use a serious sound card to do any softsynth 
justice. Actually, you'd probably have an edge over most hardware 
synths if you use a really good 24/96 sound card.

So, why do hardware synths still tend to sound better? (*If* they do, 
that is. I'm out of the loop, so I just don't know what the best of 
the respective worlds sounds like at the moment.)

I believe it comes down to tweaking and polishing. Hardware synths are 
expensive beasts, and all you get is one instance with limited 
polyphony. They *have* to sound better, or be vastly superior in some 
other way, or no one is going to pay that kind of money.

There shouldn't be a problem getting at least as good sound out of a 
softsynth, provided someone actually takes the time to tune the DSP 
to perfection and program a set of really good sounds. I'm not sure 
that is ever going to happen for Free/Open Source synths - but then 
again, it just might if/when the community reaches that particular 
critical mass.


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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