Mogwai wrote:AnDrOiD wrote:The rest of the software emulations out there are named after famous synths to sell, sell, sell and to be downloaded. Soundwise they lack both power and the character of the originals.
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But without such Software,the general Public would not have access to the actual sound and interface,unless you had a bottomless pit of money to buy the hardware.And in most cases most people would have never experienced the Real thing.
A big name and famous product will always sell well,regardless of how many disguises and different forms it has been bred into over several decades,you could say that about every other Hardware synth thats ever carried a sound of an Arp or emulated a minimoog,and why people actually bought it for that emulation irrespestive of it having new forms of synthesis on board,its a Cornerstone to which all standards are judged by and people can relate to that,Just look at how many Romplers contain Emulations of such instruments.
The Arturia VSTs are nothing new,but its giving that actual Cornerstone sound in a digital world to many people who have never experienced the real thing,giving them a fresh approach to a real synthesizer.
I'm a Hardware fan but I recognise the importance and evolution of software,for years in the Hardware digital world we have simply been embracing that software,in an unconscious way but its been hidden inside the Hardware that we didn't connect it as a virtual synthesizer.VSTs are simply the Software synth without the whole Hardware casing.
It maybe nothing new in terms of synthesis methods,but what is?????Infact synthesis hasn't changed at all since the days of the first methods,nothing that can be considered innovative and fresh today,pretty much every type of synthesis has been exploited time and again and just simply rebadged as New products,to many users into Virtual synthesizers it is something new.Its giving the Idea of a new way of working in a virtual way,this is why many feel it's nothing new,your only removing the necessity of the hardware,but it is a new way of working,this type of conception would have only been in the dreams of scifi writers,I'm sure Bob Moog would have thought somebody was insane if they had this vision of synthesizers,when the first Minimoog or ARP was conceived,yet look at what we have technology wise,we have advanced so much,but almost everything is based on an Old concept,like we kind of need to look to the past for vision of the future,thats how its always been,throughout any concept or idea, so I'm sure that in a further 20 years,the synthesis will still work on the same principle its just our interaction with the devices that will change.
when you look back over the history of synthesizers,thats all that has changed..our interaction with them,A piano is still played the same way irrespective of it being Digital or a traditional Piano,yet you can emulate the Piano realistically within a VST,all that your taking away is the Physical Motion,the act of interaction.
For years we had knob and slider laiden synths,the child like interaction of immediate connection to sound methods,this was replaced with the Japanese "All in one box" with a sterile interface,where we no longer considered the physical connection as important in synthesis and programmed via a small LCD and a couple of Buttons,then it came full circle,we now have the VA interface,this has now given way to no real interaction whatsoever but via a mouse,yet through all of it,the Synthesis is still based on the original Osc/Filter/ADSR approach,all that has altered is the Quality of the Audio.
I'm sure in future there will be some form of thought Process which allows us to communicate with Synthesizers in a totally telepathic way.giving us a totally Virtual world.
The only real innovation in musical instruments is our own perception of how we deal with them.Synthesizers hardware or software are still the same it just giving us a new Approach and idea of working with sound.