robertlazarski <robertlazarski(a)gmail.com> writes: [...] I think you're not giving converters these days enough credit. I have an RME card, but really these days even the cheap ones are sounding pretty accurate now. And I'm pretty hard to please when it comes to analog tone, but even I can't complain much. (Now, get me on the subject of how everybody seems to be ditching high performance dependable PCI-E cards for USB stuff, now that's another story. At least that has nothing to do with converter quality.) I think the reason you get more of an impression of what an instrument sounds like when it's you playing it in your studio, rather than on someone's recorded music, is because you can play it by itself, with no effects, and completely control what you're wanting to hear it do. When you listen to someone's song or demo, you've got their mix, their effects, their playing, their patch settings, maybe even other instrument tracks in the same mix crowding it out. You never really get to hear the instrument. It's different when it's you driving. You can hear every little nuance, and you even expect to hear it, because you played every note yourself. So you can come away with the impression that the recording lost that experience, possibly because the converters weren't good enough, but really, you were never going to get that experience from listening to someone else's track. I have the Behringer D, and I have found it to be pretty good at Minimoog bass. On the highs, it really doesn't sing like the real thing. I've found that Synthesizers.com modular gear actually does have a very Minimoog quality to it (oscillators and filters both), so if you want that sound, it may be worth considering that for about $4000 or so (just a little more than a real Mini costs), you could have something with a nearly indistinguishable sound that's way more patchable and expandable than a Mini, and also not forty years old. -- - Brent Busby + =============================================== + "The introduction of a new kind of music must -- Studio -- + be shunned as imperiling the whole state, for -- Amadeus/ -- + styles of music are never disturbed without -- Keycorner -- + without affecting the most important political -- Recording -- + institutions." --Plato, "Republic" ----------------+ ===============================================

Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> writes: I think one thing hard to keep track of is nonlinear processing. If you take a triangular signal and lowpass-filter at 20kHz and reproduce digitally in the proper manner, you will not hear a difference in the audible frequencies. If you square that signal or limit it or distort it, the results in the audible domain will be different depending on whether you do that operation on the original signal, on the low-pass filtered signal, or on the digitally sampled low-pass signal. You can compensate for that if you _synthesize_ your original signal and take good care of what you do. If what you start with is a _sampled_ signal in the first place (maybe in order to better reflect the imperfections of the analog implementation) you don't have the high frequency content/information anymore in order to determine how it folds back into the audible domain when doing non-linear processing. I'd expect this kind of effect to be probably audible with 48kHz samples. Probably a quite less so with 96kHz. Of course it isn't relevant for mere recording and replay: it's only non-linear processing that has a direct effect. Well, actually... Simple low-order _linear_ filter devices usually are transformed into the digital domain using the bilinear transform, and the bilinear transform has less linear phase and frequency relations the closer you come to the sampling frequency. So again, for modelling simple analog circuits, you are better off using sampling rates that may seem silly for mere reproduction. So it's my expectation that reimplementing simple analog synthesizers (that have waveforms reasonably close to what they are supposed to be in theory) in a convincing manner will likely warrant investing higher sample rates than you'd usually consider sensible bargaining for, either when synthesizing or when working from sampled versions of the original oscillators. So there are some reasons that the "pure snake oil" realm is a bit further with regard to analog synths than one would like to think. Of course it's still out there somewhere. -- David Kastrup

robertlazarski <robertlazarski(a)gmail.com> writes: I don't know enough of the setup to say anything definite here but I am skeptical when we are talking about something that is represented by a few lines running to static speakers/amps. A symphony orchestra tends to be quite more transparent in a reasonable price range of seats than a really good recording of it. Even a bunch of instrument amps is more transparent than a good recording since the amps all have their own "throwing" characteristics you can make use of when moving your head. This is extremely so with Leslie (rotary) speakers, of course. Microphone and mix it, whether for creating a recording or for retransmission through a PA, and the magic is gone. What is left is reproducible perfectly. That's one reason that concerts with ten thousands of visitors make little acoustic sense: the necessity of PA use makes the acoustics indistinguishable from recordings blasted over a humongous speaker system. If you want to really enjoy some Hammond/Leslie sound, the sound reaching you has to come from the Leslie cabinet, not a PA. -- David Kastrup

On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 11:40:28AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote: Indeed. And where that matters, it is the sound engineeer's job to try and capture at least some of that magic, even if can't be reproduced correctly. There is even no way to tell how it should sound, except when the original amp / speaker system is considered part of the instrument. Ciao, -- FA

On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 9:40 AM, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote: Had to delay my response due to internet issues ... I look at digital audio capture and digital audio production of sounds differently, the former I don't really have a problem with besides its not a good way to compare analog signals. Here's some API lunchboxes, ARP 2600 TTSH clone, Moog D and Oberheim TVS together: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1x3XFCfv91_IacdqdiyAndnmxjBXro1BH I see a lot of pop shows with my family and I can definitely tell when a synth is sampled, especially analog synths with some of the hipper artists. Sounds like a "Virtual analog" synth. I believe these analog synths and effects are best heard live. For synth audio production , modulation and LFO's with CV just sounds different and is more flexible as I see it. Not everyone agrees which is why most people use midi. CV sources can modulate each other, and CV sources can be combined. CV can be easily adjusted, inverted, and stretched in any which way. Very fast. Not stepped. I use midi for some things as it can be easily stored, but only with a stand alone step sequencer. Here's a quick example of what I am talking about. Some analog oscillators of VCO style can self oscillate. The Vermona Retroverb is a spring reverb / multi mode Filter / LFO that supports CV, so I use a Moog drum machine (DFAM) to trigger the Retroverb 'sample and hold' thru its self oscillating band pass filter. The DFAM is going thru a Moog 500 series delay and Moog Ladder HPF with the resonance on max, creating a low end rumble and some high end to the beat ... however a lot of that was lost in the recording - you had to be there in the same room at least this in this example. The synth is a Studio Electronics CODE 8 analog poly synth, which in this case is using CS80 inspired filters as a strings instrument. The effect is an analog stereo chorus ensemble, the Elkorus. All gear going thru its own API compressor and EQ channel, the API 2500, 525, 550a and 5500 if you are in to that sort of thing. The sample and hold is going thru a LA3A compressor with no eq. The synth also goes thru an Elysia Karacter 500 series distortion / saturation module. Trying to be relevant to LAU .... while the sounds and video were recorded on a couple Zoom Q8 cameras and a F8, the final video was auto edited via a Bash script using FFMPEG and ltcdump on my OpenSuse leap 42 Zareason notebook ... some of the FFMPEG commands were inspired by the debug output of Ardour. I like using LTC audio to sync multi cam video and this is an example, created by this script. This video was put together in a few spare minutes I had yesterday so no post production, the camera angles need some work, mix isn't perfect but anyways ... a 1 minute video and smaller wav. script: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6lkxftwjk1vhkqy/parseLTC.sh?dl=0 Video (200 mb) https://www.dropbox.com/s/wzsfu5q2adws878/output.mov?dl=0 wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/sgh8v50c6scd9vv/f8t.wav?dl=0 Best regards, Robert

PS: There are discussions regarding fairness. Is it fair that Behringer provides a Model D clone? Is it fair that Moog's reissued Model D is that expensive? Is it fair that companies get money for providing clones of discontinued synth? Is it fair that companies discontinue iconic synth? There are more or less no discussions regarding possible differences of the sound quality. Those discussions are not about weak FLOSS emulations. Again! Important parts sometimes are real analog parts, no software at all. CV often is provided. Btw. my Roland GR-55 not only provides samples, but also modeling. A real sitar or a real resonator guitar sounds different to using my electric guitars with the modeling of a sitar or resonator guitar, but it is an option, less expensive than buying a sitar and resonator guitar and very important to me, it requires less floor space. Some of my music gear is unused in my kitchen, unused in my bedroom and used by a friend a few streets away. Floor space in my music room is limited. While I agree that virtual synth often can't compare to original synth, they sometimes could or are they are at least good enough and sometimes they are simply a less expensive alternative, even if they should sound less good.

On Tue, 19 Jun 2018 21:56:26 -1000, david wrote: You also could be e.g. a keyboard who owns a house, a real Hammond with Leslie, a real grand piano, a real Rhodes, a real D6, 20 Moogs, Oberheims and Co. in flight cases and a Mellotron. If you need all those sounds for a gig, would you like to transport all those real things, excepted of the house? Btw. I'm a disgusting bad keyboarder, while there are some instruments unsuitable to be played by even the latest Roland guitar synth, playing a rock organ works quite good and this in two different ways, it's possible to play it by guitar in an organist's way or to play the organ sound in a guitarist's kind of style. Keep in mind, I'm a fan of real Curtis CEM based analog synth as well as I like real non-analog iconic synth, such as the real old DX7 or the TG33 with it's vector control. With modern emulations you can't get all those original sounds, it at least does feel different when playing those beasts live, compared to virtual synth, OTOH emulations become better and better. Arturia and Nord are amazing PC/tablet PC synth and/or stand alone hardware synth. At the moment I usually prefer latest emulations over original synth. Not all oldish analog synth provide the nice controls mentioned by robertlazarski. I own an Oberheim Matrix-1000, it only provides MIDI IOs and an audio output and the only potentiometer is to control the volume. A lot of people replaced a lot of analog synth with a few Oberheim Matrix-1000 in the end of the 80s, just using the factory presets, without a MIDI controller. Nowadays a lot of those sounds are provided by soft synth, too. It's just not true that even experimental music requires all kinds of controls. Most important is to get a lot of basic sounds. For one or the other speical experimental sound, it could be enough to use one or two real old synth, but the 20 other synth could be replaced by something like the Oberheim Matrix-1000 in the past and today a lot of those sounds could be replaced by e.g. a Nord, not all of those sounds, but OTOH a Nord provides sounds a Matrix-1000 doesn't provide.

On Wed, 2018-06-20 at 20:17 +0200, David Kastrup wrote: A real Hammond without a Leslie: http://www.b3hammond.com/images/organmain.jpg Depending on the size of your screen, the picture might not display the original size of the organ. A Roland GR-55, is just a small guitar floorboard, in addition to the floor board you need a guitar, it provides the Hammond and a Leslie: https://static.roland.com/assets/images/products/main/gr-55-bk_top_main.jpg There are keyboard based Hammond replacements available, too. If you want something close to e.g. a Bernie Worrell alike organ sound, a modern keyboard or guitar synth with emulations, is easier to transport than a Hammond. Isn't it?

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 12:42 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote: We are really getting off topic now, but can't help but mention that is Leo Nocentelli from the Meters next to him in the photo. Seen the Meters last year. I didn't know these guys collaborated, thanks for the link. When I last seen Deep Purple a few years ago, their current keyboard player Don Airey had the expected Hammond, I would have asked for my money back if he used a VA :-) . Best regards, Robert _______________________________________________

Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> writes: Huh. My violin was built before Bismarck went to school, in reckless disregard of iPad 2 compatibility. Probably some sort of Saxonian boycott of Apple. My accordion was completed in 1960. As opposed to its predecessor (from the late 30s I think) in the Harmonikamuseum in Trossingen, its free bass section is compatible with modern players, being a 3-row C system (as opposed to a 2-row upside down system like its predecessors). While it still sports a few incompatibilities to modern instruments, they are reasonably worked around with some practice. I have a Solton MS40 from the 90s. Its Midi is pretty configurable and the QIC connections pretty common. The main worry for incompatibility is its 3½" disk drive (which is actually already HD, namely 1440kiB) because media and drive are getting unreliable. I swapped it for a USB drive which is sort of a hassle to deal with (and, using the raw floppy interface, not actually faster) but keeps 1000 disks on it. It cooperates nicely with various controllers, not having a keyboard of its own. Including present-day ones. You sound as if nothing but emulations of any instrument existed at all. Where do you think the emulations are even coming from? Emulations are an affordable option to get, well, an emulation. Nobody states "due to missing spare parts as well as it could be completely being impossible [sic] to get one of several iconic moon landers", "emulation are the only options we have got" to get to the moon. I mean, that sounds like moon landing hoax conspiracy level stuff. -- David Kastrup

robertlazarski <robertlazarski(a)gmail.com> writes: The Polysix emulator dies with its host. Something like an iPad 2 is less longlived than a hardware synth. -- David Kastrup

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 12:14 PM, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote: That is what midi and digital audio is good at. For me I am on computers too much already so for that I use an Access Virus and a Korg workstation sequencer. That's cool you have a Matrix-1000. About those Curtis Chips ... This is where I have hope for Behringer as a few years ago they bought a big chip company. The sweet and short poly analogs of the 80's - Oberheim Xpander and Matrix 12, Roland Jupiter 4 and 8 etc - to varying degrees were analog chip based. I have a hard time seeing how a chip based clone could come up short. For example. this is the Xpander. This is the one I want to see come back: *Xpander <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberheim_Xpander>*: 6x CEM3374 Dual VCO, 6x CEM3372 Filter/Mix/VCA Best regards, Robert

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 12:24 AM, david &lt;gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com&gt; wrote: Ah but the Korg Oasys shown in the video I posted as a MIDI controller to the SE CODE 8, has a 10 inch touch screen. And as someone who spent 15 hours in VI yesterday and recently wrote a script to auto edit multicam videos so I don't need a UI, a mouse never really jelled with me. As a piano / keyboard player its more of a natural environment for me. Definitely ymmv. Regards, Robert

On Tue, 19 Jun 2018 12:53:28 -0600, robertlazarski wrote: This is utter nonsense! Likely most people neither use MIDI nor CV/gate, but more likely they are using Inter-App Audio and similar approaches. What "most" people are actually using depends on the "market". The "market" is a blackbox, the output of this blackbox depends on interaction between companies and customers. Even a lot of iconic analog synth don't provide the versatility you describe, let alone that very often such versatility isn't needed at all. Instead for example Inter-App Audio allows to simply sync LFOs to BPM, something that is impossible to do with several iconic analog synth and much more often wanted, than experimental stuff, that could be only heard when listening to the synth live and that anyway gets lost, when you record those synth. "A look at how the Behringer Model D compares with the Minimoog" provides exactly the information it should provide. This video isn't about pros and cons of different approaches. _Everybody_ talented or not talented, making music for 40 decades and more, is aware about the advantages and drawbacks of different approaches. Old musicians sometimes could have different opinions, but they all made more or less equal experiences. You claims are at best half of the full story, but I even doubt this. Seemingly the Behringer Model D could provide a lot of sounds, a lot of people need for recordings, while no touch screen or mouse is required to use the knobs. Even while I didn't watch the whole video, I've seen a part where the Behringer Model D did not produce the same sound as the original Minimoog does. The only important information this video is missing are experiences related to durability. Sure, the Behringer Model D can't be used with Inter-App Audio and similar approachers, but IIUC it is at least partial a real analog synth, even using structurally identical semiconductors as used for the original Minimoog. I read reviews, one musician owns 2 original Minimoogs from the 70s and 1 Behringer Model D. All three synth do sound different, but all sound like real Minimoog, not surprising for the real Minimoogs from the 70s, but it's surprising that it's also seems to be true for the Behringer Model D. Even the miniature knobs seems to be usable without causing problems. The Behringer Model D seemingly provides CV IOs.

On Mon, 18 Jun 2018 07:50:57 -0600, robertlazarski wrote: I don't know the reissued Moogs, but I know a lot of really old original synth, among them original Moog synth and I know virtual synth from Moog, too. This means I own a few old synth myself and have got friends who own old synth, too. The old original Moog synth provide an unique sound, but also could come with serious issues, such as tuning problems or no MIDI interface. Virtual synth from Moog, e.g. the Animoog are very good, too, but they are using too much computer resources, while an Arturia iMini is as good, as an Animoog, without needing that much resources. The costs for a reissued, as well as for an original Minimoog are much too high. Btw. this also applies to Moog software. The Animoog does cost much more than an Arturia iMini, let alone that after you already bought the Animoog, you still need to purchase sounds, before you even could edit your own sounds. In short, Moog provides something more or less very good, "less" since it comes with very bad pitfalls, for too much money. Other synth, emulations of e.g. a Minimoog for the bad, but also for the good, are different to an original Moog. I know the Behringer Model D only since today and only from this video, not from "real live", so I can't comment on the Behringer Model D, but I don't like the pitfalls of original Moog and also not of original Sequential Circuits gear, the cost-benefit ratio of original old Roland and Oberheim synth IMO is much better. Even if money and pitfalls shouldn't matter, floor space and weight of original synth could be an issue, too.