dude i dont doubt that you know a fair bit about these things, but the EQ at the end of the line alone, doesnt give a synthesizer its unique charcter, come on bro, what about the oscillators, the envelopes, the filters, the amps, the quality of components, the design !!Torque wrote:Well i personally love the SH-101 just because of the way it's set up alone But i can make the same sounds with software and you couldn't tell the difference.steevio wrote:IMO thats too much of a generalisation mate, like theres just one issue, the difference between the sound of hardware and software.Torque wrote:You can make almost anything sound like it's hardware just by knowing how to eq the sound right.
theres huge differences in the sound of individual pieces of kit. Virtual analogues dont sound like analogues, theres even differences between identical analogue machines. i've got two SH101 's and i prefer the sound of one of them, it's indefinable, but i prefer to use one over the other.
no amount of eqing is going to make them sound the same.
all analogue machines have a character of their own. EQ isnt the only issue that makes them sound different from their software counterparts, they are individual alive instruments, and they cant be truly compared to software instruments.
and i'm not necessarily saying that software instruments are the poor relation, theres some nasty sounding analogue machines.
As crazy as this may sound some some of you that have been indoctrinated to believe that only hardware can sound like hardware there is only few real differences between hardware and software.
Sometimes software will sound crappy because the person that made it was not able to keep it from aliasing and hardware is manufactured with solid math so it doesn't alias. Another difference is that right before the output on almost every peice of hardware there is an eq. The eq of the sound coming out of a piece of hardware is usually it's calling card. Sometimes it not only has an eq before the output it may also have a compressor usually set to a ratio of around 2.5/1 which really makes it a multiband compressor that is preset to only the setting that they want on that hardware.
With a multiband compressor and a good ear you can eq even the most washed out shitty free cheap ass plugin sound to sound like it came out of hardware but it takes a good ear.
As for the SH-101 i know there are differences in the way they sound from machine to machine and it's susally dictated by the color. I'v heard the blue ones are shitty. Most of the people i know seek out the red ones because they have a phatter low end. I guess they had quality control issues with the 101.
youre writing off 50 years of developement by thousands of people who have 'a good ear'
ask anyone who has used synthesizers to make serious music in the last 40 years, and they'll tell you what their favourite filters/ oscillators/ envelopes are.
putting it down to just EQ is nonesense.
should i sell my beloved analogue machines and buy a multi-band compressor and a bunch of shitty ass plug-ins ???