Hey There Jeremy,
First off, I agree that Tom's accumulated experience with synth
design created an incredibly sounding synth.
I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure this out myself.
Bottom line: The Oscillators are always slightly out of tune and out
of sync with each other. As PeWe has pointed out in other posts you
can pile up digital emulations and all you get is a louder version of
the tone. Doing this with the M12/expander creates a sound which
seems to be almost alive, as the waves drift with each other and
never lock up in a synchronous way. BTW Every once in awhile they
will go 180 degrees out of phase with each other which will almost
mute the tone. Re-tuning or Layering two voices together will fix
this most of the time
Experiment:
Set up a drone patch by turning the VCA2 all the way up. Go to master
page turn all but one of the voices off. Trigger a tone in the lower
octave. Run an autotune and listen carefully. As time goes on the
oscillators will slowly drift in tuning creating a wonderful
chorusing sound. The rate at which this happens is not a constant
thing. Depending on warm up time and ambient temperature the rate at
which this happens will be different. This will cause each note
played on an analog synth to be slightly different. So your ear does
not get bored with sound. The digital emulations try to model this
but I suspect other feature in the design take first chair.
This motion of the sound gives all analog synths their distinct
sound. Back in the 80's there was a lot of complaining about this,
because guys who were trying to synthesize an orchestra could not
pile up more than a few voices before the sound became muddy.
Demanding more precision in their instrument's tuning, pushed
designers to the DCO and finally complete digital emulation.
Karl
--- In xpantastic@..., Jeremy Smith <jeremy@...> wrote:
Hi,
I was wondering why the Xpander, made from 'crummy' Curtis chips,
can
out-sound any of the VST soft synths I've heard.
The conclusion I came to is this: The right pair of ears, but not
just
that - enough technological knowledge to influence prototyping.
As an example, Stevie Wonder was instrumental in some synth
creations.
Kraftwerk were too. And Thomas Dolby. And I guess Tom Oberheim has
great
ears.
Are the soft synth creators not using the best producer's or
artist's
ears? Or is analogue circuitry just better-sounding? Or have I just
not
heard the best soft synths?
Jeremy.
