The Lost World Rediscovered

Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Brian Smithers

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. When it comes to synthesis, that statement certainly seems to be true. Names such as Moog and ARP come up in conversation as often as they did 30 years ago. This time around, however, the discussion is tempered by decades of improvements and conveniences in synthesizer design, such as patch memory, MIDI controllers, and computer synthesis.

The era of software synthesizers is in full bloom. Although many original synthesizers are being built entirely in software, numerous others are intended to emulate classic instruments from days gone by. EM decided it was time to check the state of the art in synthesizer emulation, so I tucked a computer under my arm and headed off to the synthesizer retirement home (yeah, I live in Florida) to do some comparisons.

The retirement home in question is the Audio Playground Synthesizer Museum in Winter Park, Florida (www.keyboardmuseum.com). Founder and curator Joseph Rivers has assembled an awe-inspiring collection of synthesizers and drum machines, from the classics to the curiosities. In actuality, retirement home is an inadequate description because the museum is housed in a full-fledged modern recording studio and features many of the latest synthesizers right next to the oldies.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

The matchups for our comparison consisted of an ARP 2600 with Arturia's 2600V and Way Out Ware's TimewARP 2600; a Minimoog with Arturia's Minimoog V (and a Minimoog Voyager just for fun); a Roland TB-303 with Muon's Tau Bassline Mk2; a Korg MS-20, a Polysix, and a Wavestation with their counterparts in the Korg Legacy Collection; and a Yamaha CS-80 with Arturia's CS-80V.

Our goal was to find how closely the virtual instruments sounded like their namesakes, therefore blind comparisons were in order. It was immediately apparent that numerous challenges had to be addressed. Some older instruments clearly gave themselves away by the level of hum and other noise they produced even before I played a note. To minimize the prejudicial effect of that unavoidable reality, we kept the real instruments live while playing the virtual instruments, so the virtual ones were heard with the same background noise as the real ones.

One of the most challenging parts of the comparison process was trying to ensure that any bonus features of the virtual instruments didn't leave telltale signs. I played everything in mono, turned off all effects, watched for unison modes where none originally existed, and matched polyphony carefully. Some virtual instruments made that easier than others. For example, Arturia's documentation usually identifies virtual-only features clearly for those obsessed with veracity.

Another noteworthy aspect of the testing was that the wilder the sounds got, the harder it was to make comparisons. For one thing, many of the (usually excellent) presets that ship with the virtual instruments under our microscope make a point of using built-in effects such as chorus and delay and using extra oscillators or modulation matrices. Turning those features off often robbed the patch of its essence, so it was often not useful to start a comparison from a preset. Because of that, in some cases the comparisons start with a single oscillator and build from there.

Similarly, the range of certain controls was often quite different between the real and virtual instruments. That could be attributable to age-related drift in the real instruments or to shortcomings in the design of the virtual instruments. In some cases it was possible to match sounds closely by using different settings, such as a filter cutoff set significantly lower and with much less resonance on one instrument than on its counterpart.

The first round of comparisons, which included the 2600s, Minimoogs, TB-303s, and MS-20s, took place in Audio Playground's Studio B, which fittingly features more than 1,000 active MIDI channels connecting 80 or more keyboards and synth modules. Of course, given the vintage synths under examination, we used none of those channels.

I set up in the producer-performer area at the back of the room, and the esteemed panel of experts (see Fig. 1) sat at the console. An improvised screen shielded my activities from their eyes while allowing easy communication. Occasionally, panelists would ask to hear an example repeated or suggest a variation. The entire session was recorded in Pro Tools, and Web Clips are available online for most of the comparisons.

To keep the playing field as level as possible, all but one of the virtual instruments was played from the Open Labs OpenSynth neKo 64 keyboard workstation at 24-bit, 96 kHz resolution. The Way Out Ware TimewARP 2600 was available only as an RTAS plug-in at the time (AU and VST versions are in the works), so it was played through a Digidesign Mbox at 24-bit, 48 kHz resolution. Real and virtual instruments were patched to the console in mono and panned dead center. Levels were hand-matched carefully and often had to be changed from one patch to the next.

The first round was besieged by a number of time-consuming difficulties with the vintage instruments (score one for the virtual instruments), so a second round had to be completed remotely. I returned to the museum to record the comparisons for the Wavestation, CS-80, and Polysix, and I posted uncompressed mono files online for the panelists to analyze.

As the operator, I have to confess an unbridled preference for the virtual instruments. In fact, after spending many hours wrestling with drifting oscillators, sticky sliders, noisy outputs, faded silkscreens, persnickety connectors, and other assorted electronic maladies, I felt the need to spend a good solid week playing my bamboo flutes barefoot high in a tree just for balance. Certainly enough time and money would make playing the vintage instruments less like playing Russian Roulette, but for me the cost-benefit analysis weighs heavily in favor of spending that money on a fast CPU and a low-latency audio interface so I can spend my time making music with the soft synths. Our priority here is the accuracy of the emulation, however, so let's see what the guys with the golden ears thought.

Be wary of drawing inferences of superiority based on descriptive terms such as warmer or brighter. We each had preferences here and there, but they were often based on analyses more complex than isolated timbral distinctions.