A little music related fun

It’s an enharmonic password I guess? :rofl:

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But @faydout they both won silver medals in their respective disciplines at the Olympics :man_shrugging:

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Accurate as they sound identical

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Just a question, no opinion from my side: do they really?

I remember that I played with my Quasimidi 309 (a digital/analog emulation of a TR-808, 909 and TB-303) many many many years ago, and my analog synth friends said that it will NEVER sound like the originals, as they don’t have quirks like “sounding different when they get warmer” etc.
I liked my Quasimidi, but gave up that hobby.
What sticks with me though, is that I never found a good answer to this discussion. Can you solve that once and for all?

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Actually - technically it’s much easier to make the amp sims sound better than the tube amps. Properly miking speakers and getting the sound as good as what a good sim will get you is not trivial.

The way I would say this is if you get everything perfect with the amp you can sound great and maybe a little better than the sim, but the sim is much easier to make sound great.

Will they be truly identical? Well no, but who cares? Certainly not your listeners.

Check out d16 Nepheton, Drumazon, and Phoscyon for modern versions of these that are ridiculously close to the original 808. 909, and 303 respectively. And if they are not the same exactly, who cares? All that matters is they sound awesome.

Modern sims can do this.

Let me put it this way. I have a Sequential Pro-One sim called Repro.

You can tune it with the tuning knob just like the original. You can tell its oscillators to drift like analog synths maddeningly do. And, you can pop off the cover and tweak its trim pots like the original:

This is a very accurate sim.

I have another sim with a “vintage” knob. Turning it up simulates aging the electronic components in the sim, making it drift more and just get generally shittier for accuracy like real analog synths do over the years.

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Ah, “drift” … that was the word they were using all the time and I was looking for now. Totally forgot about that.

They really loved their drift!

My opinion about it was this: “making it drift more and just get generally shittier for accuracy” :slight_smile:
So 100% agreement with you!

But it was hard to argue with guys that had several 100k’s € worth of vintage equipment in their garage (they were in the illegal substance sales business and could easily afford anything). And I did not have the stamina discussing stuff like I have nowadays (“modding”, anyone? ^^).

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There is a clip with Keith Emerson (I think from a live performance of Pictures at an Exhibition in the early 70s; can’t find it right now) where you can see him frantically re-tuning his big old Moog while they are already playing the tune and the synth motif is about to come in and he just barely gets it tuned before he needs to start playing on the Moog. Talk about live performance stress levels… :laughing:

(The heat from those stage lights sure did a number on those vintage analog behemoths)

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Yeah, the guys I knew then were always “frantically” doing anything … maybe that was the reason they liked drifting :slight_smile:

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Diva goes so deep that it lets you tweak both the static detuning and the drift variance for each polyphonic voice per oscillator, in this little drift/detuning matrix. It’s kind of next level.

This is a nice model for a quirk in real analog synth polyphony, where each polyphonic voice implied its own separate oscillator, filter, and envelope hardware components per voice. And since electronics components have varying tolerances, each voice would sound very very slightly different for the same note.

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That’s the short answer. :point_up:

Why do we still use tube amps (and hardware amps in general) ?

  • it’s the real thing
  • there are real pots to actually turn
  • hardware can be tweaked (especially with changing tubes)
  • it’s cool

But in 2024, say 25 years after the first modelers, the technology has become really excellent, and modeling is a 100% legit option.

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Yep. All great reasons to stick with them if you like them. And no denying they are cool; I’m still tempted by my own hardware love (preamps) even after going all software.

It infected management in places that waterfall is the only thing that makes sense, like when you’re buying 7 figures of tooling to build the product. I’d be happy to never hear about agile project management again TBH

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The SGT has cured me of that, other than I might buy a 2nd one so I’ve got a spare.

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That’s because you haven’t tried actual tube preamps yet :slight_smile:

And then there’s the Gallien-Kruger sound, probably my favorite sound for solid state preamps. Quite different from ampeg.

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In that case, I’m glad I don’t know the GK sound well enough to GAS over it. :upside_down_face:

New one is finding an all in one multi effect box (like the Headrush Core or Hotone Ampero stage 2) that replaces everything between the guitar and the DAI.

I have been neglecting my fishing…

So, me gets an email this morning from a business that I have not purchased from in a long time…
…and then I realise it is not what I thought:

image

(I actually thought it was a new business related to the instrument) :crazy_face:

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