konceptG
ILLIEN
ill o.g.
well analog gear = hardware so i dont see your point... but even hardware romplers and VAs sound better to me than softsynths... and yes i understand that they are just computers inside of hardware but they still sound more full than softsynths.. i dont wanna argue but people will say all day that softsynths sound as good or better than hardware but the music doesnt support their claim.. i still hear the same thin stuff ... now i agree that softsynths/samplers can and do sound good and have their use in production, but what i dont agree with is the whole idea of doing "everything" on computer and having it sound equivalent to using quality hardware pices. maybe one day but not anytime soon. someone mentioned just blaze and jdilla... those guys have more hardware than i would know what to do with. yeah blaze uses logic (for conveince, not sound and he admitted to it in an interview) but he also runs his sounds through an ssl board... and there is no denying his pre-logic work sounds fuller and punches harder.. listen to kingdom come's sonics then back it up to blueprint,dynasty era.. way punchier drums and livelier sound in the blueprint/dynasty era.the ears dont lie.
No. Analog may be hardware, but it's the way that hardware produces sounds that differs from everything else. I've owned a few Sequential boards in my time (Prophet V, Prophet 10, Multi-Trak, and MAX) and the true analog boards have a VST counterpart, NI's Pro52/Pro53. While you can program Pro53 precicely the same way you can a real Prophet V, side-by-side you'll always be able to tell the two apart. The difference is that the Prophet used voltage controlled ocsillators and they were imperfect. The oscillators were prone to drift off frequency (this is true of ALL VCO based analogs) and that helped to create unique harmonics that really can't be recreated in software. In fact, many performers have noted that patches created on old analogs often don't sound the same from board to board due to ever so slight differences in the underlying hardware. It can also be said that a patch created on one machine might not sound exactly the same way on that very same machine depending on the temperature of the room! These are things that VA cannot faithfully recreate. What software CAN fairly accurately recreate are those analog boards that were based on digitally controlled oscillators (usually Curtis/CEM DCO's ans necessary in order to implement MIDI) which were not prone to such drift. Therefore, of my old SCI boards, only the Multi-Trak and MAX can have near perfect software versions should someone choose to write it.
Hardware romplers and VA's only sound as good as the software that controls them allows them to. Romplers rely on the same stuff that software samplers do: Good samples and good d/a conversions. If Roland were to take the same sample data from a Fantom and write software to playback that sample data in the same fashion as a Fantom, it will sound precicely the same as a Fantom. Proof of this is seen in the way that the Korg M1 sounds identical to the Korg Legacy Digital Collection's M1 VST (I've owned the Korg M3R in the past, which was nothing more than the M1 minus the keyboard and sequencer). It's so identical, that the VST can even import patch data and sysex created for an M1. The same holds true for the Wavestation VST; it sounds identical and can use the data meant for the hardware piece.
As for the stuff sounding "fuller" or drums sounding "punchy", that's up to the engineer for the most part but could also be on the producer for changing drum samples and whatnot. The whole "xxx sounds fuller" thing is really subjective. As I've said, using the M1 VST or keyboard gives you an identical sound. If it sounded "full" on the keyboard, then it'll sound the same on the VST. Since we really don't have access to the same sample set that Roland and the like uses for their contemporary keyboards and modules, we have to rely on other sources for your samples and therefore cannot truthfully compare the two. Roland, however, does have a huge series of sample CD's for the old S760 sampler and Kontakt can read them, patch data and all. I would like to see the results of a side-by-side comparison using a real S760 and a PC with Kontakt using the exact same samples. I can pretty much guarantee that they'll sound the same OR Kontakt may actually expose flaws in the samples, especially if the PC is outfitted with an audio card with superior dac's to those found on the S760.