ORIGINAL: mosspa

Without getting into what Korg calls its latest ROMpler technology, what are the differences between a Triton and an M1? Also, I'm not talking about user interfaces, LCD screens or slider counts.

I don't know. I'm a Yamaha user myself. But a Triton sounds much better than the M1 . Isn't that all that matters in the end?

ORIGINAL: Infinite5ths

I should add that many Dimension Pro demos sound pretty impressive. If the presets are as good as the demos make them sound, then Cakewalk has succeed here where many soft-synth designers fall short.

Dimension bored the hell out of me. I was initially excited to go through such a huge library of sounds, but, they just didn't do it for me. Definitely some usable "background" filler sounds though.

I agree almost. Some soft synths do have great patches. Arturia (some patches by me), NI, Spectrasonics (obviously), and RGC/Cakewalk synths are great. But, they are not workstations because they were not designed to be such. I guess since everything in software has to be called an emulation, there has been no soft synth emulation of a workstation. That you can get better sounding bits and pieces of a workstation misses the point. We applaud when a soft synth gets the quirks of an analog emulation correctly. As noted by Rain, workstation quirks have become classic, and need to be emulated, because they have a sound.

Using NI's Kore might be a lot closer to the hardware experience, and I find Cakewalk's Dimension synth to have many similarities to a workstation, but with more. But it's not a hip/hop urban synth. Neither are any soft synths really. I think this has something to do with the location and focus of most soft synth developers. They're generally not tuned in to that market. Korg is. They'd actually sell more soft synths if they would cater to that market, because it is where a lot of the action is in the U.S.

ORIGINAL: WhyBe

D. Triny, I am with you all the way.

Earlier in the thread, I refered to the musicality of synths. Perhaps this is a foreign concept to many. It's refreshing for someone else to understand that some people are looking for GREAT patches. The Triton's, Motifs, and Fantoms, excel at making those great sounding, inspirational patches that drive urban/hip hop music. Unfortunately many softsynths fail at these type of inspiring sounds. Are softsynths technically capable of these types of sounds?...perhaps. I just haven't heard many.

The realism of a softsynth instrument emulation does not mean it is a great patch. Like stated earlier, Perhaps Korg, Yamaha, Roland and others have the best patch programmers available to them whereas most softsynth manufacturers seem content a dolling out realistic, yet, mediocre patches with their products.

I think the urban/hiphop market will fully dive into the softsynth "thing" when the softsynth manufacturers start putting great, inspirational patches in these things instead of the bland stuff.

ORIGINAL: WhyBe
Dimension bored the hell out of me. I was initially excited to go through such a huge library of sounds, but, they just didn't do it for me. Definitely some usable "background" filler sounds though.

Well that's good to know. I hate hearing demos that sound amazing, only to try the product live myself and find out that 95% of the stuff is a HUGE disappointment. I will be certain to get a live demo with Dim Pro before I consider purchasing.

I know it's unreasonable to assume that I'll like every patch on a "good" synth....but with keyboards from the big three I can at least count on finding 3 or 4 patches per category/bank that I like and can use right away.

...just another thought:

To me, 3 things make soft-synths stand out above hardware. I wish that designers would work on consistently nailing these areas and using them to greatest advantage:

1) Signal routing -- no cabling, no gain-staging, multiple outputs, separate FX outputs, scalability (i.e. multiple instances), etc.

2) GUI -- easier and more efficient access to ALL of the sound parameters (I find that I'm FAR more likely to tweak obscure parameters in a soft-synth, just because I can find them quickly and do some trial-and-error testing) and AUTOMATION

3) Preset & config recall -- [along with the GUI stuff mentioned above] - nearly instant recall of total setup & configuration data - nearly unlimited preset save options (i.e I'm not limited to 12 "User Preset" banks, or something like that)


So many synths either miss one of these things altogether, or implement them in such a convoluted/incomplete way that the advantages disappear.

ORIGINAL: Howdy
I was the only person to mention a Fantom, and I am hardly a Fantom fanboy.

No, I mentioned mine. And yes, I'm a fan..
The debate seems to have centred round quality or otherwise of sounds. I'm reasonably happy with the sounds I can get from softs. But my point was their poor design and sloppy programming that makes them far too annoying to set up, configure, etc. Plugin? Don't make me laugh. In my view they're usually rushed to the market in order to start generating income, with the makers sure in the knowledge we're all software suckers well-used to 'upates', 'new versions', etc. If hardware was launched like this the manufacturers would be castigated big time.

Sid Viscous is correct in principal -software supplied on a soft synth DVD and software on a PCB in a hardware synth - no real difference. But the BIG difference is that the fomer is invariably flaky and the latter stable. As I said before, Sonar and my Fantom X6 play very nicely together, Hypersonic 2... hopeless.

Mike,
This is the diametrically opposed view to yours! I guess that's why there are both soft and hardware synths!

Well, then.

Diametrically? Not quite that different. I like 'em all.

ORIGINAL: Skyline In The Office

ORIGINAL: Howdy
I was the only person to mention a Fantom, and I am hardly a Fantom fanboy.

No, I mentioned mine. And yes, I'm a fan..
The debate seems to have centred round quality or otherwise of sounds. I'm reasonably happy with the sounds I can get from softs. But my point was their poor design and sloppy programming that makes them far too annoying to set up, configure, etc. Plugin? Don't make me laugh. In my view they're usually rushed to the market in order to start generating income, with the makers sure in the knowledge we're all software suckers well-used to 'upates', 'new versions', etc. If hardware was launched like this the manufacturers would be castigated big time.

Sid Viscous is correct in principal -software supplied on a soft synth DVD and software on a PCB in a hardware synth - no real difference. But the BIG difference is that the fomer is invariably flaky and the latter stable. As I said before, Sonar and my Fantom X6 play very nicely together, Hypersonic 2... hopeless.

Mike,
This is the diametrically opposed view to yours! I guess that's why there are both soft and hardware synths!

ORIGINAL: Infinite5ths

I should add that many Dimension Pro demos sound pretty impressive. If the presets are as good as the demos make them sound, then Cakewalk has succeed here where many soft-synth designers fall short.

I think the whole debate about sound is always going to be subjective especially when to comes to synths, hardware or software. It does make for good reading though.

He he..FWIW I think Dimension Pro is fantastic.

Skyline,

If I'm the "Mike" in question....

Yup...that's why there are both. I hate cabling and packing up huge boxes every time I go somewhere and real-time recording and incessant gain-staging and noise floors and hardware that takes up huge amounts of space and always needing MORE hardware and having to practically give/throw away good hardware because I can't get enough on the used market and buying more power strips and knowing that I'll never use all of the features because it takes too much time to access/configure/reconfigure them and reorganizing tons of stuff in the studio and and and and and and and and...........

You probably have a similar list for software. On the other hand, I read about the Windows XP registry in my spare time for entertainment.


Interestingly, when I record professionally (live or otherwise) I use my Yamaha AW16G HDD rec system. Why....? It's never flakey.

But several of you guys have touched on a point that has puzzled me greatly. How come all my hardware boxes, with extremely limited memory can sound so good, so often and many of my softsynths driving gigabytes of instruments frequently sound so...well...blah? Great programming springs to mind. Shame there hasn't been more of that in this bright new virtual world, eh?