4 ms·

A lot of the best commercial softsynths now support all kinds of audio-rate modulations everywhere in the signal chain. I guess they must just be throwing CPU p

• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Basically - yes. There's now enough CPU to do this. But there's more to that analog sound. The opamps and the rest of the circuitry, including supposedly passive elements like resistors and capacitors, all add tiny amounts of distortion and other parasitic interaction with the rest of the synth which varies with frequency content, level, and dynamics. Human ears are incredibly sensitive to these variations, and the circuits in 70s and 80s synths had a lot of components, all adding their own colour. Which is why if you A/B the hardware with the software, the software rarely wins. In DSP terms there are differences between functional/abstract models, component-level models, and component-level models that include these complications and imperfections. There hasn't been a lot of work done on the latter, and if they were modelled accurately they would likely need an order of magnitude more DSP cycles than current VSTs.
  • cageface 6y ago
    This is true although I find that the current emulations are good enough for a lot of sounds, especially when they’re buried in a mix and played back on a low bit rate stream on bad speakers.