subtractive virtual synths = noise

buzzcock · Post by **buzzcock** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 12:34 pm

Is it me or do a lot of subtractive synth plug ins sound noisy as hell? I'm mixing a bunch of tracks right now and noticing a lot noise and anharominc distortion from:

ImpOscar
Fab Filter One
TauPro
daHornet

A little less so from Arturia Minimoog V.

It's a shame really because I can get some otherwise great sounds out of these.
Anyone suggest alternatives? Use seperate filter plugins?

googoo · Post by **googoo** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 2:01 pm

I'm sure the software's a lot less noisy than the original synths!!!

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:57 pm

buzzcock wrote:Is it me or do a lot of subtractive synth plug ins sound noisy as hell? I'm mixing a bunch of tracks right now and noticing a lot noise and anharominc distortion from:

ImpOscar
Fab Filter One
TauPro
daHornet

A little less so from Arturia Minimoog V.

It's a shame really because I can get some otherwise great sounds out of these.
Anyone suggest alternatives? Use seperate filter plugins?

No problems here with FabFilter1 and DaHornet myself.
Don't know what gives.
Infact FabFilter 1 sounds pretty amazing for a single OSC Vsti IMHO.
DaHornet by design is very buzzy sounding (I wouldn't call it noisy none the less) .
It does capture the character of the original Wasp very well IMHO.
FabFilter can do some of the most uber fucked up bass sounds I've heard.
I've got a couple of patches that are super gnarly and sound like you've sample the original bassline and reversed it which I definately haven't done
BTW.
What sample rate etc are you rendering to for exampple.
I work permanently at 24bit/48khz which seems a good compromise to me sonically.
I wouldn't call them "noisy" none the less.

buzzcock · Post by **buzzcock** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:54 pm

googoo wrote:I'm sure the software's a lot less noisy than the original synths!!!

It's more of a "noise layer" verses a "noise floor" type of thing, if that makes any sense. Whatever it is it sounds like a bunch of high frequency crap. Normally I'm not so nit-picky but when I'm mixing I tend to listen for the problems. I wonder if it's aliasing.

Fax, I'd love to check out those patches if you post them somewhere.

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 10:10 pm

buzzcock wrote:
googoo wrote:I'm sure the software's a lot less noisy than the original synths!!!
It's more of a "noise layer" verses a "noise floor" type of thing, if that makes any sense. Whatever it is it sounds like a bunch of high frequency crap. Normally I'm not so nit-picky but when I'm mixing I tend to listen for the problems. I wonder if it's aliasing.

Fax, I'd love to check out those patches if you post them somewhere.

Throw some low pass eq on it. I wonder if you're picking up an internal sound off your iMac? Is the noise present when the channel is armed but idle?

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 11:50 pm

No direct experience with any of these synths, but perhaps it's "zipper noise" you're hearing, i.e. the stepping of parameter values as they move through incremental numerical steps, rather than true continuously variable analog modulation.

err_fatale · Post by **err_fatale** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:42 am

what sound card/audio interface are you using?

Synthbuilder · Post by **Synthbuilder** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:30 am

buzzcock wrote: It's more of a "noise layer" verses a "noise floor" type of thing, if that makes any sense. Whatever it is it sounds like a bunch of high frequency crap.

This is possibly aliasing, which is particularly noticeable at high resonance and higher hotes. All VSTi do this to a certain extent. The better ones less so. It manifests itself as a high frequency an-harmonic hash all over the sound.

If they feature 'oversampling' and/or bandlimiting oscillators this appears to help. NI's Pro53 with quite severe band limited oscillators sounded less edgy than Pro52, but sounded duller at the same time.

Try working at 88.2kHz/24bit, or at least render the synth at this, and see if this helps. The Reason synths can be improved nicely using this technique.

mr-e · Post by **mr-e** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:30 am

or try the Operator , with it's "tone" control you can adjust how much anti-alising is applied

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 9:42 am

buzzcock wrote:
googoo wrote:I'm sure the software's a lot less noisy than the original synths!!!
Fax, I'd love to check out those patches if you post them somewhere.

I don't share alot of my patches unfortunately.
I do have a patch bank that comes with Concrete FX Kubik 2.0 however , it's the "Ambient Textures" soundbank.
If you have Kubik or try the demo it shows off the slow evolving wavesequencing aspects of the synth very well (it's a full bank of patches).
Alot of custom wavetables are embeded in the patches themselves.
In the lower registers where many of the patches evolve for ages.

I will be doing a set of banks rythmic patterns for Guru once once I get this Cd project finished however.
I've just got to get back to Angus about finding the time to program some insane polyrythmic shit for people to use.

subtractive virtual synths = noise

subtractive virtual synths = noise

Re: subtractive virtual synths = noise