ableton!! Whats wrong with it.

[steevio]

You can make almost anything sound like it's hardware just by knowing how to eq the sound right.

IMO thats too much of a generalisation mate, like theres just one issue, the difference between the sound of hardware and software.
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.

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.
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.

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 !!
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 ???

[532nm]

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.

sorry, but i believe that's untrue, they're simply different colors. i'm sure this rumor may be due to the fact that analog synths seldom sound exactly the same from unit to unit. i mean do you think on the assembly line they're like "ok guys, we got a red batch comming through, lets swap out resistor #56, and turn pot #144 a 1/4 turn to the right"?

as far as ableton sound quality is concerend, i cant see why this modern piece of music software would color the sound if you have warping turned off. i mean it's all high quality digital right?

and speaking of warping, you dont even have to turn warping off to eliminate artifacts, you just have to set the warp mode to 'repitch'(i think that's what it's called) instead of letting ableton pitch-correct your audio.

that and just make sure that you have all of highest options selected when you render.

i will however due a test at home. i will record a test piece of music into ableton and examine the before and after waveforms in wavelab after it's rendered. i will then import the same music into ableton and render it and examine it. i will post the waveforms so we can see if there's any difference.

[Torque]

Ok i'm going to answer both of the last two in the same post.
The only explaination i'v heard for the SH-101 is that all the different colors of 101's were not made at the same time and there are people i know that have opened them up to repair them and found that not all the parts were uniform. Apparently when roland ran out of one kind of capasitor they just switched to another and the machines varied through time. this was true with allot of their cheap synths like the 303, no two 303s act alike.

As for synths no being defined by their overall eq sound riddle me this.
If all EQ's are just a series of filters (Or VCF's) with amplitude (VCA)controls routed after them in the signal path then that basicly breaks down your synth into only 2 things that truely define it's raw sound.
1. The ocillator
2. The EQ

With nothing but an EQ and a few ocillators you can make any sound. Contrary to what most people are told to believe a sine wave is still a sine wave no matter how expensive the ocillator was that made it, a saw wave is a saw wave, a square wave is a square wave and a noise wave is just a noise wave no matter what made it.

The reason i even brought it up in the fist place was to make a point. What i see allot of on this board are people asking questions about the equipment while very few actually bring up questions related to the music itself. It just makes me think sometimes that allot of the newer producers i know and have met are starting to view making electronic music as battle with machines and have been trying to fight the will of the machine to control the way your music flows and is created. What i'm trying to say i essence is that the machines do not have a will and you can twist them into anything you want whenever you decide to. If people really want to understand the tools they are using they should start at the beginning with the principals of synthesis. Everybody do yourselves a favor and find yourself a software mod like Reaktor ,Synthmaker or Synthedit and take some time and teach yourself to build a synth after that everything you work with you will see in a different light. Don't look at the blackboard, look at the writing on it.
I really don't expect anybody to understand my rantings, but they make sense to me.

[steevio]

Ok i'm going to answer both of the last two in the same post.
The only explaination i'v heard for the SH-101 is that all the different colors of 101's were not made at the same time and there are people i know that have opened them up to repair them and found that not all the parts were uniform. Apparently when roland ran out of one kind of capasitor they just switched to another and the machines varied through time. this was true with allot of their cheap synths like the 303, no two 303s act alike.

As for synths no being defined by their overall eq sound riddle me this.
If all EQ's are just a series of filters (Or VCF's) with amplitude (VCA)controls routed after them in the signal path then that basicly breaks down your synth into only 2 things that truely define it's raw sound.
1. The ocillator
2. The EQ

With nothing but an EQ and a few ocillators you can make any sound. Contrary to what most people are told to believe a sine wave is still a sine wave no matter how expensive the ocillator was that made it, a saw wave is a saw wave, a square wave is a square wave and a noise wave is just a noise wave no matter what made it.

The reason i even brought it up in the fist place was to make a point. What i see allot of on this board are people asking questions about the equipment while very few actually bring up questions related to the music itself. It just makes me think sometimes that allot of the newer producers i know and have met are starting to view making electronic music as battle with machines and have been trying to fight the will of the machine to control the way your music flows and is created. What i'm trying to say i essence is that the machines do not have a will and you can twist them into anything you want whenever you decide to. If people really want to understand the tools they are using they should start at the beginning with the principals of synthesis. Everybody do yourselves a favor and find yourself a software mod like Reaktor ,Synthmaker or Synthedit and take some time and teach yourself to build a synth after that everything you work with you will see in a different light. Don't look at the blackboard, look at the writing on it.
I really don't expect anybody to understand my rantings, but they make sense to me.

when i mentioned my two 101s sounding different, i wasnt intending to start an argument about quality control at Roland ( by the way both my 101s are boring grey models) i was trying to illustrate the point that analogue synths all have characters of their own even different examples of the same synth, and that you cant just put that down to EQ alone. synths have 'voices' and their voices are all different. you couldnt make two human voices sound the same by using a multi-band compressor.
a multi-band compressor is a very crude device that hacks away at the sound, whereas the sound is the highly complex and idiosyncratic end product of, in some cases thousands of processes.

you say that 'only 2 things that truely define it's raw sound. 1. The ocillator
2. The EQ '
what do you mean by 'its raw sound' does a synth not have envelopes and filters ? they have a massive bearing on the sound that comes out at the end, i dont know how you can argue against that.
and what you say about sine waves / sawtooths i have to disagree.
i've spent many hours over the years looking at the wave forms from synths and modules on my oscilloscope, its one of my passions (i know, its sad but i do this because i build many of my sounds using additive synthesis, building my own harmonic structures out of nothing but sinewaves, rather than using pure mathematical forms such as sawtooths and squares ) and i rarely see a perfect waveshape.
and noise isnt just noise, it comes in thousands of flavours. certain synths produce nice noise, others nasty noise.
its sounds like you're bringing it all down to theory, but its not like that in the real world of analogue synths which gently undulate with temperature etc.

i'll totally agree with you about beginners learning about synthesis by trying programs such as Reaktor, it's made several of my friends want to go out and get the real thing.

[Brian Ffar]

I haven't read all three pages yet, but did you consider your AD/DA converters and audio interface might have something to do with it before blaming the software?

[532nm]

^^^good point

torque- as far as the 101's, i see what you're saying and yes, i would say that sound feasible.

[Torque]

steevio:

I'm not arguing with the fact that fileter and envelopes play a part in the sound. If you read my post you will see that. Envelopes are just ocillators that are triggered by a gate, Filters in series with VCA's = EQ

We actually agree but you must not understand what i'm talking. It's ok, i tend to speak in martian at times.

[steevio]

steevio:

I'm not arguing with the fact that fileter and envelopes play a part in the sound. If you read my post you will see that. Envelopes are just ocillators that are triggered by a gate, Filters in series with VCA's = EQ

We actually agree but you must not understand what i'm talking. It's ok, i tend to speak in martian at times.

no worries, its hard to communicate on forums mate, i can never explain myself properly either.