Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Analog Oscillator Comparison
YouTube via AutomaticGainsay
"It is often stated that all oscillators sound alike, and that it is really difficult to discern one oscillator from another, be them analog or digital. I have received a lot of flack regarding my statement that the triangle wave on the Minimoog is special.
So, as a result, I thought it might be interesting to take three of the most popular analog synthesizers and put their oscillators (and filters) to the test.
And you! Can you tell which is which?
The first part of the video demonstrates the waveforms of each synth without naming them. See if you can guess.
Moog Minimoog
ARP 2600
Korg MS-20
State your findings in the comments!"
11 comments:
To reduce spam, comments for posts older than one week are not displayed until approved, usually same day. Do not insult people. For items for sale, do not ask if it is still available. Check the auction link and search for the item. Auctions are from various sellers and expire over time. Posts remain for the pics and historical purposes. This site is meant to be a daily snapshot of some of what was out there in the world of synths.
PREVIOUS PAGE
NEXT PAGE
HOME
© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The jittery distortion, which I assume is a result of being compressed for YouTube, make this comparison sort of silly, IMO.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that one of them isn't tuned to the same note is also distracting.
Right. Judging those little difference by using compressed audio is not fun.
ReplyDeleteAnd the pitch and the volume has to be adjusted perfect for a good A/B test.
And should the mixer channel for this oscillator inside the synth set to max or at 70% volume? This also changes the sound very much.
I know one person who is inside synths that can tell me what Small Stone I used. And both were the black russian version. There are still people with good ears. Even in the age of 99% compressed music around us.
What would make it silly would be if there wasn't a discernable difference between the various sounds due to the compression, etc. However, the point of the video is that there are differences TIMBRALLY, despite audio quality, or even pitch. The video demonstrates these timbral differences effectively despite the mangling that YouTube enacts.
ReplyDeleteAs far as pitch goes, it is definitely distracting, but it is also true... that's what analog synths do. The sort of precision required to make sure every single tested note is perfectly in tune is contrary to that which gives analog sound its variable character.
my guess:
ReplyDeleteA - moog
B - korg
C - arp
did i win?
revised:
ReplyDeleteA-korg
B-moog
C-arp
DOH! i guess i shoulda watched it all the way thru. oh well, glad to see my second take was correct.
ReplyDeletecarry on.
For sure your ARP is not well tuned!!!
ReplyDeleteYou should have recorded DIgital VCO to compare the poor audio quality of Youtube !!!
i had my minimoog on an oscilloscope once. the triangle is a normal triangle waveform but for some reason it sounds better than other triangle waveforms. also you can see that when you do a filter sweep bob moog liked his bass sounds because you can see the enhancement on the lower freqs.
ReplyDeleteSounded like the filters were EGed. I'd of prob guessed C right.
ReplyDeleteDidn't bother with the ARP side of things, but the Mini and MS triangle shaper designs seem to look (in schematics, assuming I found the right ones) about as different as possible, with the MS looking like an engineer's brute-force design and the Mini looking more like some piece of artistic minimalism (read: beyond me).
ReplyDeleteMS got saw through dc-blocking cap into two diodes switching an op-amp between inverting and non-inverting amplifier (as far as I understand anything about electronics).
The Mini got two transistors. :o
Oh and about the jittery distortion: any cycle-to-cycle variance seems to cause that (even with decent encoder.. I often get that with LAME at 160kbps ABR or more), while the same encoder might manage totally clean/stable digital version of the same waveform (even looped single cycle sample of the problematic one) just fine.
Kinda sad actually that more interesting sound starts sounding worse once compressed like is so common nowadays.
First off, thanks for making this video Marc. It is really helpful to hear side by side comparisons of raw waveforms with the same processing.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I was surprised that I did indeed like the sound of the Mini best. In particular, when comparing triangles.
Does the MF-107 sound like the Model D? The Voyager?