Beiträge von nms

I'm confused as well here. You can send midi out of any midi interface in/out of the virus for normal midi controlled operation. In ableton for instance you just send the midi to Virus Synth instead of Virus MIDI.

are we talking like campfire crackling? or Rice Krispies crackling?

88.2khz is an exotic sample rate? lol.. alright that's my cue.. I'm out. You can hang out and post in this topic but it's relating to something beyond your needs or understanding. You seem to have too much time on your hands but you could attempt to do other people the courtesy of instead involving yourself in discussions relating to things that DO tie into your needs and understanding.

I'm not going to bother bringing up sample rates again in this forum. The people who are concerned with that are generally not sitting around on the Virus forum killing time. .

Right.. so then you'll have no problem explaining how this happens then? You seem to have selectively skipped over this in your reply quotes:

Virus vs Sylenth aliasing.

Is that the perfect design you speak of at work with the more than generous guard band?

What I said isn't arrogant at all to assume. It's true. The majority of professionals (clarify- well regarded artists commercially releasing music of high sounding quality) aren't using the Virus for more than one or two sounds (not notes, different patches) in a track.
This is a reality, not an assumption. You say "some polyphony is appreciated".. well the TI (especially the TI2) is equipped with a LOT of polyphony and if you halved that you'd still have plenty to work with especially since you commonly don't have a huge mess of sounds all playing at once.

I won't go into the mau5's opinion of the virus' fx but again it comes down to an issue of quality vs the latest vst offerings. There are obviously plenty of delay & reverb plugins that are far better in their sound & flexibility.

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I would be upset if Access came along and said hey we've quartered the polyphony on the virus just to satisfy a couple of nutters... can you imagine??

Can I imagine Access removing all other clock rates in order to add one additional rate in the options of 88khz? Uh... no.. and the fact you would even mention that as if that's what anyone was ever asking (or would be necessary in order to add functionality) really paints a clear picture of your logic & contribution to this topic.

Zitat von Ace17

as Marc also said, not all sound processing methods will benefit equally from oversampling.
For example, physical modelling greatly benefits from oversampling : that's why the VSTs you're talking about have such options.

You mean like the modelling in a virtual analog synth called the Virus? Were you trying to imply that the Virus doesn't need what those other synths need and have?

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memory is a scarce resource on the Virus (not so much on PCs).

For who? Snow users? Niether polyphony nor memory have ever been an issue with my Ti2. My PC has to handle an infinitely heavier load in comparison.

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The point is, blindly oversampling the whole synth is far from optimal. In terms of memory, in terms of polyphony, and in terms of quality.

As mentioned, polyphony & memory are a non issue to me. The majority of professionals aren't using the Virus for more than one or two sounds in a track. We really lose nothing of interest by running the entire thing at 88khz but the gains where applicable would give a better sounding result. The pursuit of quality often does not share the same path as quantity. This is nothing new. As an example do you know how deadmau5 recommends using the Virus? Use it on one sound at a time, bounce it down to audio, and don't use the onboard FX.

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As Marc said, some parts of the Virus already use oversampling. Why not let those who know, i.e the Access Team, make these choices for us?

There's no polite way to say this, but are you aware of how brainwashed that sounds? You know how many times you could find virus & alias in the same review/sentence if you googled it? I bought my Ti2 new in a store in 2009... yet it came hampered with USB 1.1 which was superseded back in 2000. While there are many things I love about my virus, it has always had its flaws and I don't swallow the "I'm sure they got the design right all those yrs ago" notion. My Ti2 came with a USB cable and manual but I didn't get the magic Kool-Aid.

I paid $3450 for my Ti2 new but that's never given me any reason to put my head in the sand when it comes to knowing its strengths & weaknesses.This forum is probably the wrong place for discussing higher quality audio for studio recording applications though I'm realizing so I'm going to drop it.

Does this sound to you like the perfect design and pinnacle of performance? Virus vs Sylenth aliasing.

Hey Antony.. care to explain that one?

Does anyone here actually understand aliasing?

I can't help but shake my head when I hear the oblivious comments about not needing to capture audio above what we hear and how it's a waste. It's not about that.

It's about having enough bandwidth to keep the stuff just above your hearing limit from being reflected back down well into your hearing range... and not having to interfere with your audible range with the necessary filtering to prevent it. It's also about avoiding phase distortion. The further away your fitlers are, the less chance of phase distortion.

That top one (the Virus) isn't actually it's raw saw tooth. You've got the analog boost on there which causes that lower dip. For aliasing you'd want to use a spectral analyzer and your ears though not s(m)exscope..

Here's one example of aliasing done with the Virus where you can hear it breaking up the higher it goes. The second half was done with Sylenth.
To recreate: init patch, Lfo section: Lfo1 rate 13, osc modulation 100%, hold down C5 and listen to it sweep through the top range.

Unfortunately this didn't improve much when tested at 48khz.

I really just wish the Virus was coded as well as well as the vsts I mentioned. I find the hardware, plugin interface, & programmability a hundred times better to use than any softsynths. This is where the Virus shines, as well as the wavetables.
I get that the average noob working away on a pair of Rokkits may not know the difference, and that the Virus internally is getting up there in the yrs now where dsp is concerned, but any upgrade to its core sound would be nice because I'd rather not have to use those other soft synths. Aside from their sound quality I find them irritating to use compared to the user interface I get with my Virus.

You know Hans Zimmer will spend days working on ONE sound sometimes? Do you know some of the lengths people went to in recording some of the most sonically impressive sounding results over history? Think Thriller was just tossed together by some guys going "bah.. forget all that technical stuff it's the music that matters!" Personally, if I can hear a difference on my iphone playing over speakerphone, I think that's probably something worth concerning myself with. Let's be realistic here.. these days people don't rave about how well the raw Virus oscillators are coded and they don't stand up to current offerings like Diva, Strobe, Massive, or Sylenth. They just don't. The Virus wins by its other merits and deep programmability combined with the user interface. I just wish I had the interface & programmability of my Virus with the raw oscillator quality of today's modern coded offerings. The #1 way a user can improve the sound of older software synths is running them at higher sample rates.

Zitat von Ace17

Here are my questions then :
5- Are there good reasons for wanting an output sampling rate higher than 48kHz?
6- Wouldn't running the virus at 96kHz (internally) enhance synthesis/processing quality?
7- What about processing latency? A lot of processing can't be done in parallel, so halving the polyphony may not suffice. I mean, if one of your processing units is sequential and can only process up to 60k samples every second, no matter what you do to polyphony, you can't achieve real-time performance in 96kHz.

5. Yes, obviously for compatibility. If you work at 88khz which is in fact scientifically proven to be the best SR to work at for digital music production for several reasons then you can't get the Virus operating at higher than 44khz internally if you have a USB plugged into it.
6. Yes
7. The 88/96k environment reduces latency, it doesn't add to it. A 44k synth oversampling to 88k then back down to 44k will have more latency than an 88khz synth going about its business at 88khz.. The 2 issues are the digital audio bandwidth through the virus digital outputs due to usb 1.1 restrictions and the processing power needed. You would be unable to host 3 stereo outs at 88/96k, but you could easily host one over USB, one over S/PDIF, plus your analog outs. As far as internal processing goes, the Ti2 is MORE than sufficiently capable of running at 88/96. People wanting a higher sample rate option for studio recording would trade half their polyphony in the blink of an eye to do it if such a mode were available.

Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about here (ie, absolutely not AntonyB) and the majority of developers who make all our best vst instruments and processing will recommend working at higher sample rates. We're talking about the people who as a matter of fact know better. Even where recording audio is concerned, take Dan Lavry for instance (one of the industry leaders in high end AD/DA conversion) who has openly stated that the ideal sample rate to use in recording is 60khz - and the ideal rate of any that are in current use would be the closest thing up from that which is 88khz.

All of this info is freely available to any of you guys on the internet. There's no excuse for living in the dark about it if you're actually interested in knowing. Go read what industry leaders like Andy from Cytomic (developer of D-CAM Synth Squad, The Glue, etc) or Dan Lavry say about it.

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I think arguments based on what recent gear do are irrelevant here.

What the current market offers is far from irrelevant. If you don't understand gear at all I can see how manufacturer offerings would be confusing or misleading but anyone who knows what they're doing knows that more isn't always better. I don't need 16 channels of conversion to run 3 synths and I don't need converters that work at 192 or 384khz in order to do my work at 88khz. Lavry for example refuses to offer AD/DA converters that work higher than 96khz. If you spent $8000 on their top of the line Lavry Gold DAC you're still not going to be able to record higher than 96k. Why? Because they know what they're doing and don't encourage recording at higher rates based on evidence showing that going beyond 96k causes converters to be less accurate and not more..

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And for chilly7; a feature you're not using can still hurt you. I'm a software developer, and I know that a lot of bugs appear when features interact, even with disabled ones. AtonyB is perfectly legitimate not to want this option on his synthesizer. BTW, I think AtonyB's goal is a lot more noble : he believes you're making a mistake and tries to explain his understanding to you (after all, he may teach DSP very soon!).

Yes and I might be teaching nuclear physics at Harvard. There is absolutely nothing noble about his involvement here whatsoever. He's trolling a thread arguing about a subject he does not understand and hasn't tested. It doesn't matter how many big words or terms he throws around or how suddenly for internet argument's sake he's finishing a PhD in dsp. It makes zero difference at all when he tries to keep up in a conversation about things he's not qualified to dispute due to not having taken the time to test it on the relevant gear in question. This is why he doesn't know any better. Some people would rather come to a debate with a lot of hot air though rather than take the time to back it up. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. If you're going to waste people's time you'll wear out your welcome.

A lot of people can sound like they know what they're talking about, but ask them to prove their words or back it up and it's a whole other story.

Zitat von AtonyB

If you have audible aliasing at 44.1 kHz you are doing something wrong

So now aliasing doesn't exist? Access nailed alias free digital synthesis (that needs no help from running the synth at a higher rate) 15 yrs ago? Are you serious? Are you aware of the statement that's been made that the wavetables are significantly more alias free than the 15 yr old classic oscillators? Do you live under a rock oblivious to how much progress has been made in the last 10-15 yrs on digital synths and that aliasing is one of the biggest areas of improvement?

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The memory and processing power requirements of increasing the sample rate are devastating

Dcam synth squad and The Glue (2 of the highest regarded plugins ever made) both offer realtime oversampling up to 32x. Welcome to 2012. And you're acting like 88khz is overkill and "devastating" to implement? Seriously, no offense intended I just genuinely want to know.. do you actually live under a rock?

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At any rate I don't appreciate the offensive language and it's not in the spirit of this place - I'd spend more time demonstrating why you are wrong and how ignorant and foolish you look by being so rude

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Beyond that you are full of shit.

Classic.

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All the while forgetting that almost nobody can hear 18 kHz, let alone 20kHz anyway!

Cool! And how about the blanketed top end of those comparison files? I can hear the difference playing off my iphone speaker.

It's obvious to anyone reading that you passed the point of annoying long ago and have genuinely no business in this thread or any thread where people are expressing their desire for 88 or 96k operation of the Virus. None at all. You want to tell people that they shouldn't want what they want, but you are absolutely no one of any status or experience level to be telling them they're wrong for wanting it. If you find me rude it's because you've been an anoyying fly buzzing around this issue for ages spouting crap and backing up your words with nothing when you have no interest in having this functionality for your own use. I like my Virus too, but I don't feel the need to go "THAT'S A FEATURE NOT A LIMITATION!" when it comes to its shortcomings as if it's the most perfect synth that will ever grace the earth. Do you think the next Virus won't be able to operate at 88 or 96k internally? Guess again! Not in today's market.

No, I know how to pick 2 proper samples for comparing, which is exactly why I did it out of 15 or so hits and had a spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, and tuner on the signal to confirm. Handling that kind of thing is a walk in the park for me. What I should have done was made it easier by turning on the OSC retrigger (osc phase init) but like I said this was a while back and I gapped on that. The brightness at 48khz is absolutely not added aliasing. Aliasing works the other way around, lower sample rates = more aliasing in the audible band. High and clarity/openness/air are the most commonly observed attributes when people compare 44khz vs higher SR. On 44khz the antialias filters are affecting the audible band. At 48khz the filters are raised enough that it's a lot less audible. At 88khz the filters & aliasing are raised so high out of hearing rangte that they disappear.

While the wavetables do alias less, the filter on the Virus might play the biggest part here since you can't open the filter as much at 44khz as you can at 48khz. It has to work within its limtations.

Make sure to enable an input in VC in the patch utility section.

wtf? difficulty in reproducing it? You really don't seem very good at understanding things man and I have no idea what on earth you are doing repeatedly involving yourself in the topic in this and other threads. Pick a topic you actually know about if you feel the need to comment. It keeps things focused and saves the time of people having to correct you.

Recording a bunch of notes and then taking care to select the brightest one recorded at each sample rate just allowed for accurate comparison. It might have just needed retrigger to be turned on to make that part easier but I can't remember as I recorded that ages ago. It would be better to do with retrigger on. .

I know you're slow and seem to like being corrected, but being limited by the filters at 44khz vs 48khz is a PHYSICAL LIMITATION. It's the primary limitation you are hearing on that sound which isn't even a high sound. It's a 147hz saw. I often end up having to use filters with less poles just to keep the blanket off the top end. The 4 pole sounds great but is often just too dark for me to be able to use.

hey... no I haven't gone any further in depth with it really as I've had my hands full with other stuff. If setting up listening tests though I suppose a thing to keep in mind is trying to do it in ways where it's easy for you to focus.. ie, perhaps the same chord or note in repetition playing from a midi file. When I did the test above I recorded many hits using a spectral analyzer as reference to select the brightest ones to compare so I wasn't foolishly just comparing a bright take with a darker one. How much tonal variation there can be between hits depends on the patch though. Maybe I didn't have retrigger on. Anyhow.. dive in there and see if you can expand on that area!

Here's one example of differences, though this was done with a 147hz saw just to show that it extends down a fair ways. It shows the darker more filtered off sound. Virus-Saw-44k-vs-48k-source-downsampled.wav

I should do one of these for a more high freq sound but that's all I took the time for to see what the filter was doing. If you are doing these kind of tests you have to do it carefully. Repeated key presses won't be exactly the same. I used a spec analyzer zoomed in at highest res so I could be sure I was selecting the brightest/purest hit that each sample rate produced and then compared them against each other.
I downsampled the 48k version using a top quality offline SRC so they could both be listened to at 44khz to similate where it all ends up at the finished product.

The differences are there and we can perceive them no problem. Whether or not you are conscious of it or distracted by the musical changes to articulate it is what fools most. When you focus in on aspects you can more easily compare. A test like the one above makes it simple and obvious as it's one note playing, back to back seamlessly where the only difference present is that produced by the different internal sample rate. What you just heard certainly would explain the well known "darker" sound people speak of with the Virus. The sonic palette opens up for more air & clarity on the top end. Whether or not you will want this for each sound you use is up to you, but having the choice beats not having it any day.

yeah It's not so much a matter of personal beliefs as it is facts that are easily measured and audible to anyone who knows what they're doing.

Definitely not. Just go in and make sure it's sending sync to "Virus synth" which should be listed as a port.

What I mean is that at 44khz the Virus just has a darker sound by design. At 48khz or any higher rate (if added) it would allow you to get a brighter more open sound but you could still easily get the darker sound simply using the filter. The sonic palette extends further when using it above 44khz.
You can always filter out, but putting back what's already been filtered out doesn't work so well.

Gary uses the Virus religiously.

I'm not saying I have a bank of his tour sounds from a few years ago. But if I did it would be on my TI2 right now including the Polymoog recreation

Interesting. That was a good explanation of it. I've never adjusted that before but will have to try it out.

that pitch doubling trick could yield some interesting results. In theory this should replicate the effects although it obviously doesn't adress the big issue of just wanting that kind of performance to stream live out of the machine to reference while you work and save the time of workarounds. As that file above indicates, there's significant difference between 44 and 48. None of us really has any idea how much improvement we'd see from running it at 88 or 96k without actually doing it. I'm going to have to do some tests.

Sure you can capture and then upsample.. but if the top end sheen is filtered off and a little aliased at the source then there lies the issue. The virus is well documented for having a darker sound, which would disappear when operating at higher sample rates making the darker sound an option rather than automatic.

Does it really need a rewrite to enable a couple of higher clock settings to the selection screen for those who don't care about the polyphony or output trade off?

People grossly misuse Nyquist with assumptions that were never EVER intended to be made. Nyquist holds water only where capturing audio is concerned and taking liberties with it in a digital production environment will give you wrong answers. 16bit is the distributable format, but we don't work in 16 bit now do we? Why is that? Obviously it's because working with more allows for less loss to inadvertently take place[u ]throughout the course of the digital production environment.[/u] It's a fool's move to accept 24bit (or 32bit FP for that matter) without question but deny working above 44k mistakenly citing Nyquist.

The wavetables of the Virus are more alias free than the classic oscillators which are really old now and haven't been updated. Yes, Synth Squad runs circles around it where aliasing and sonic quality are concerned but the interface of the Virus & mod matrix are better than any VST synth I ever used. The GUI and programmability are what makes me feel like I won't part ways with my Virus and just wish I could get that bit extra from it at my 88khz working rate without half assed work arounds that cut into productivity & ease of use.

I've posted this before, but this little experiment shows there is most certainly a difference using the Virus above 44khz. First half is 44khz, second half is generated at 48khz then downsampled to 44.

Virus-Saw-44k-vs-48k-source-downsampled.wav (right click, save as)

It's like taking a blanket off the tweeter and we are talking about a 147hz sawtooth with filter wide open. Oscilloscope & spectrum analyzer used in selecting the takes from many repeated hits to ensure the brightest & purest at each setting, as the virus varies with that.

The reality is, after speaking with Jorg it sounds like we won't see operation above 48k in the foreseeable future. He mentioned their priority with polyphony but I've always prefered quality over quantity and sure would enjoy my Ti2 getting the extra clock modes.
It'd be nice if they found some way to strengthen the core oscillators or (since I know backwards compatibility is importat to them) introduce a fresh set and filter activity that allows you to get the sound of the second half of that sample above even if working at 44 or 88.