Perceived Sound Quality of popular soft-synths (discussion)

[necho]

I always create my own presets in Alchemy. And while it is easy to make great sounds, you have to be aware of its sonic limitations.

[cubehog]

I´m satisfied in terms of workflow. You can create many modulations and still keep an overview of what is going on. I don´t use presets so I can´t comment on that. Often times I put a Fabfilter Volc 2
behind an Alchemy instance when needed. Alchemy is comparable to Absynth if you compare the features and flexibility. Alchemy is much easier to handle than Absynth 2(still good enough for me)

Maybe that´s the trade off.
You get some really new synth methods but you can´t have a simple saw patch in one minute that flashes you. But there are dozens of emulations and Alchemy wouldn´t come to my mind when it is
about heavy basslines. It probably can be done with enough tweaking for sure.

I use Alchemy for additive stuff, granular sounds and spectral manipulation. It does an excellent job in these departments.
Filtering is done with different plugins. Often times I combine an instrument and a filter plugin in bidule. When the cabling and routing is done it feels like one instrument. I like it that way.

[mr.ergonomics]

I always create my own presets in Alchemy. And while it is easy to make great sounds, you have to be aware of its sonic limitations.

and that are? i'm really curious about what you have in mind.

I have problems with absynth, massive. I really try hard with them, because i have limited myself to ni komplete and ableton, but the sounds often have a colour i dont like. i really dont know if its just me or them.

[necho]

as I said before, the quality of the filters and the gain staging, particularly. you have to be very careful about the amplitude of individual oscillators, for example. It is relatively easy to introduce artifacts into the sound.

not saying Alchemy is a bad synth at all - its great. There are just many tasks I use Zebra for instead.

[anybody human]

I use Alchemy for additive stuff, granular sounds and spectral manipulation. It does an excellent job in these departments.
Filtering is done with different plugins. Often times I combine an instrument and a filter plugin in bidule. When the cabling and routing is done it feels like one instrument. I like it that way.

This. When I use Alchemy it's to process imported audio. It's a powerful instrument and quite good at certain things. I don't personally like it as a normal VA/softsynth, oscillators, filters etc. That's not to say you can't get results with it, I just don't think that's a strength. And yes, I'd have to admit it doesn't sound near as good as Omnisphere or Zebra as a VA, and the multisampled material is also a big weakness. I don't love the filters either.

To be fair, Omnisphere got way better IMO when they added the Juicy filter they developed for Trilian. Still, with the notable exception that Alchemy is able to import audio (awesome), I don't think you can even compare the two synths, just different class. I hate to sound so negative because it has some fantastic features and it's a good company w/ integrity, but I've always thought these were pretty glaring issues. I could see these guys doing great things in the future though.

[Khazul]

Must admit while I played around with it when i first got it, in the end it has been pretty much exclusively used for the job it was bought for - software replacement for my v-synth - ie granular mostly abuse (rather than another JP8K wannabe).

Its not that the VA parts of it sounded bad or anything, its more that the resulting sound didnt really grab me that much when I could get more inspiring results easier from other synths that more suited the sound character I tend to be after more these days.

There are alot of aspects of its character that I like, however many times Ive actually thought about those aspects, I have to wonder if its a case of them actually being pleasent sounding faults

Lets face it - one of the nicest sounding digital synths ever sounds the way it does because of trying to mask a bad anti aliasing by some quirky hacky code (that isnt quite a normal low pass filter). - ie the entire Virus family. IMHO they lost alot of its charm when it tried to modernise and become the TI - original B era stuff sounds alot better from it, but like alchemy I find the Virus either is exactly what I want, or over time I have learned that no amount of tweaking or fucking about is ever going to get me what I want out of it if the sound I can get quickly isnt quite what I want.

Alchemy has a really great party trick and it does that really well - I have to be honest, I do sometime think that my v-synth sounds better for alot of granular abuse, but some things of this type alchemy does really well and better. I actually thing its fx sound nice as well (not good or perfect, just nice - enjoyable) when chained right.

Still - a really excellent synth. Yes its got flaws - TBH so have most synths - with the good ones the flaws are a desirable part of the character. With the bads ones the flaws just piss you off.

[mr.ergonomics]

i only demoed alchemy and i really liked the envelopes and the va part. it was easy for me to build sounds, funny.

khazul, which va did you like more in particular? after some month i can finally say i don't click with ni's synth at all.

[:Metaphor:]

OP, I agree 100%. To me, it sounds incredibly phasey and no amount of tweaking has been able to get the top end to open up and sound right to me.

I have demoed Alchemy really hoping to Love it and trying for hours to get a great sound out of it after reading all the positive reviews. However, it just doesn't sound so great to me. There are better options out there for every type of synthesis it offers to my ears. I want to like Alchemy, I really do-- but it just doesn't sound that great to me.

TL:DR-- you are not crazy for finding Alchemy's sound disappointing.

[agent314]

I have to stress how much turning up the master+snapshot volumes can improve the sound quality.

I was playing around with this again last night, and it was amazing how much the sound expanded and opened up with the volume at 100%.

[Khazul]

i only demoed alchemy and i really liked the envelopes and the va part. it was easy for me to build sounds, funny.

khazul, which va did you like more in particular? after some month i can finally say i don't click with ni's synth at all.

Sylenth1 is probably the VA synth I use the most these days followed by ACE. Dont use the Virus TI that much at the mo, but will probably come back to it at some time. Thats more down to how stable I is at any moment in time and whether I can bothered to fight with it.

However for analog and VA synth sounds, I use trillian and omnisphere quite alot and even use Nexus as well (though nexus is more for stuff I do for others cos its quick and cheesy ).

Im not a fan of Massive - nothing wrong with it really, just doesnt grab me at all - same with absynth and fm8, though there are a a couple of absynth patches I quite like. Another good but old VA plugins that I still use sometimes are the novation ones basstation etc.

I still want a pure software virus and pure software v-synth

[Khazul]

I have to stress how much turning up the master+snapshot volumes can improve the sound quality.

I was playing around with this again last night, and it was amazing how much the sound expanded and opened up with the volume at 100%.

Have you tried doing this with a utility immediately after it and macrod to reduce the leve at exactly the same time?

Ie so there is no resulting increase in level to test your perception of source sound quality?

[:Metaphor:]

I have to stress how much turning up the master+snapshot volumes can improve the sound quality.

I was playing around with this again last night, and it was amazing how much the sound expanded and opened up with the volume at 100%.

Now, I don't mean to discount this point, as I believe that our ears can actually percieve subtle differences in sound quality, however....

This is a known psycho-acoustic effect. Even small boosts in volume can cause the exact same sound to be perceived as sounding better-- i.e., warmer, crisper, more punchy, more definition. You shure that this wasn't the case here?

Same's true with live's devices. People complain that they don't as fat as 3rd party plugins (-6 db vs. 0 db that comes standard on most plugs). When turned up, they sound much, much better.

[agent314]

Have you tried doing this with a utility immediately after it and macrod to reduce the leve at exactly the same time?

Ie so there is no resulting increase in level to test your perception of source sound quality?

I made a rack with two chains of Alchemy, both using the default init patch, one with default -12db Master Volume and one with Master Volume set to 0db.
Put a -12db utility after the rack.

Made a 2 bar phrase, duplicated it to 4 bars, automated the chain selector+Utility.
First 2 bars play the default -12db patch with the Utility off, second 2 bars play the default @ 0db with Utility on.

It's subtle, but the second time through you can definitely hear a difference.
Also tried putting them in separate tracks and phase-inverting one, and they don't cancel. They do have an interesting phasing pattern going on - not sure if that's a PDC issue or what, but it's clearly not an identical signal.

[glitchrock-buddha]

I really love Alchemy for certain types of sounds, however I do not think that Camel make good filters. At least not filters that I personally like. I have camelspace for example and think the filters are rather bad. There also seems to be this sort of cheap sounding high end in Alchemy for synth type sounds. However I really do like it for granular and spectral stuff. And the additive section is very powerful and can resynthesis sounds very accurately at times.

[Machinesworking]

Just wanted to add that Alchemy is on the 'to buy' list for me. I own Camel Phat and Camel Space, both pretty good, although I would agree that Camel don't make the best sounding filters. To be fair though Zebra and Urs's other products all have freaking great filters!, can't think of any better. So a comparison to Zebra is like comparing M4L to Reaktors library of synths, Max/MSP hasn't been known in the past for it's extended list of cool soft synths, while Reaktor has.