Yes, but why stop there? If we take a look at Universal Audio's offers, some of them are quite demanding as well. Simply because they can afford the luxury of using more complex code in their products that would otherwise be a nightmare to use for mixing purposes. Actually, I wonder why Universal Audio hasn't put out some synthesizers yet. But maybe they will if they pay attention to the market. I mean, most people these days are demanding more and more quality in their instruments. That's the sole reason analogue has returned - quality and interaction with the instrument of course. And all of that without making the cpu ask for mercy.

I wondered about this as well. When something like the quad-core Apollo interface costs something like $3000 with the thunderbolt card, why not go ahead and turn it into a full-fledged instrument with synth plug-ins that run on it? Maybe they are headed in that direction. I guess they figured all the really good synth developers are already self-employed and creating their own VSTs, and that hiring someone mediocre to develop a synth just to say they have one in their product line up isn't going to result in top-notch brand recognition. Its only a theory but one possibility.

I've been thinking more about why nobody has made a more firm commitment/organization investment to audio on CUDA, and again I've come up with a possibility that would give me pause as a developer. It doesn't mean it's THE reason, it's just one that could be a showstopper: Basically if I, as a developer decide to invest heavily in CUDA (let's say I invest enough man hours learning their SDK, then developing a synth), I might end up spending something like 1000 man-hours, either my own labor or contracted out, to do so. That's a major investment of time, money or both. Nvidia drivers of course are always evolving, and getting updated. They do backward compatibility testing for games every time they do a driver update, but what's to say they are going to add my synth to the list of apps to test for backward compatibility when they do a new driver release? Probably not much at the current stage, because they are in the graphics business rather than the music business. For the type of investment it would take to develop the synth, I would need some level of assurance that they are not going to blow my synth out of the water with a single driver update, and honestly right now they are probably not going to be able to provide that to a synth company. Maybe a larger company could form some sort of partnership with them and get it done, but it would be a very risky move for a small developer to invest so much only to have their eggs in one basket.

The good thing about dedicated audio hardware is that if you've got a stable setup, there's usually nothing pressing that says you must install every update for every piece of software as it comes out, and there's really nothing about the standard automatic Windows or OSX updates that is going to make core changes to the way audio is handled at the kernel level, or something else that could affect code at a higher layer up like the VST API. That's the beauty of the VST API, it is designed for audio technology, thus very conducive to creating synths. From what I hear about CUDA, not so much in its current form. Also, most people will update their graphics drivers regularly just as a matter of maintenance, and would not think about the possible impact to their music setup of updating a newer driver, then having all their synths go tits up or whatever.

You're probably right. Nvidia is pushing for better gaming performance above everything else. I think this CUDA thing is also some form of publicity: they're glad that some scientists find other uses for their powerful hardware and all of that, but they're certainly not making efforts to make their day. The same goes to audio applications. But what about Open CL? I know that's some kind of standard for such things, isn't it? I remember Steve Jobs making a big deal out of it when it was introduced to Mac OS, and thinking: what happened to this revolution? How come I never saw it being used?

OpenCL 1.0 has been released with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. According to an Apple press release:[6]

Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard.

Same story we're talking about here. The technology seems to be there and we certainly have more power in our machines then ever before, but the industry has interests of its own and it's very hard to come to terms and create standards or give developers the kind of assurance you mentioned. I feel that's the case for almost everything.

Actually, much more is happening with CUDA beyond just gaming applications. Most folks are only familiar with the GeForce line of products, but check out the Tesla line of cards, for example:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla-s...solutions.html

However, some of their Tesla-line cards cost thousands of dollars. Sometimes you look at one of their scientific-use cards and wonder why, if the paper specs are the same, they cost so much more than the consumer gaming card that uses mostly the same internals?

Part of that comes down to things I alluded to before, like backward compatibility with regard to what its used for. The GeForce line allows them to focus on gamers, and only be concerned with driver compatibility for games. With the Tesla line they can optimize for scientific uses and such, without worrying about goals for the gaming market.

For example, if you've ever looked at a big PC maker like Dell or HP, they typically have their website divided up into consumer and business models. If you look at the technical specs, a given consumer laptop that costs $1500 might be the equivalent of a similar business model laptop that costs $2500 or more. What's the difference? Why wouldn't a business just buy the cheaper consumer version?

Most of that comes down to availability of parts. If you're a large corporation ordering 500 of those laptops, you want to be damn sure that if you need to replace parts a couple of years down the road, that those parts are still available quickly (i.e. overnight shipment) from the manufacturer. Its critical when you have that many assets of the same type in the field. So, with the business-grade models you are guaranteed a certain level of part availability. Consumer models are meant to be sold onesy-twosey and there's no guarantee the consumer can get a replacement part quickly direct from manufacturer past the 1 year warranty, or if there is, it is supplemented with extra warranty cost and wait times.

It might seem we're drifting far from music related discussion here, but the concepts are the same with regard to CUDA. It's definitely a real technology that has valid uses, it's just that the scientific uses are niche enough that they need to pay a premium for same hardware, the primary difference being drivers that are optimized for their use instead of gaming. This would all be fine for audio, except that it would be a hard sell to a synth lover that they need to spend $3k-6k on a GPU to use it as an auxiliary synth or FX processor, the value starts to decline. The real value is in using the GPU that folks already have and I can see some hurdles to that.

I'll have a look see - gotta admit im pretty happy with QL Spaces atm for simple convolution verbs. And now at work I am learning to use this - and god damn it sounds good...

http://www.bricasti.com/m7.html

Jeez I hope so, those things don't come cheap! Totally jealous!

From EvilDragon at the Gearslutz forum:

I can fully believe not all audio applications lend themselves to parallelism, but considering the amount of polygon rendering that can be passed between multiple GPU threads with insanely low latency, I have to believe there are at least some audio applications that could be handled very effectively using CUDA.

Thanks for posting his message for him, but if he can't be bothered to register (I don't own a Virus at the moment either, BTW), then I'd say there's not much value in a drive-by post like that unless he wants to stick around and discuss exactly what is different about them, and what kind of math needs to be done in audio that GPUs are not good at. I would certainly listen.

So alright, I registered. :) Hello!


Yes, CUDA is great for highly parallel operations. Convolution will lend itself great to this, that's why one of first audio uses of CUDA (or, better said, GPGPU - we have OpenCL as well) was precisely convolution. There are things which won't work as well, because they depend on linearly executed algorithms - like delays, algorithmic reverbs, lookahead compressors/limiters and most filter designs. Why? Because they depend on previously calculated samples, and with this high level of parallelism that we have in GPGPUs, there is a problem of returning values consistently in time, which is highly relevant for linear operations.

So, this means that you cannot simply port the whole synth structure to a GPU, because things depend on each other - oscillators precede mixers which precede filters etc. This is what would actually cause greater latency than when using a regular CPU which has special registers to help with fast calculation of certain operations (MMX, SSE, AltiVec, etc.). And that is why GPGPU is not yet used for offloading whole synth architectures from the main CPU.

Now, SOME things can be offloaded to them, and when they are done well, it's a splendid thing. For example, the analytic zero-feedback delay filter calculation that's done in u-he Diva could be parallelized on a GPU to great extent - but this is not yet in u-he's plans.

There is also a problem with compatibility and lack of proper standard: we have CUDA, OpenCL and Microsoft's Direct Compute. As if it's not enough to support VST, AU, RTAS and AAX? :)

Hi, welcome, and thanks for registering :)

The problem of returning values with consistent timng is one that GPU developers are fairly accustomed to dealing with I think.... recently there has been somewhat of a spotlight on frame time variance and latency with regard to rendering complex 3D scenes on multiple GPUs.

What's odd about mentioning MMX and SSE for example, as features of a CPU that exclude doing same on a GPU, is that these extensions were originally created to do 3D graphics type operations; something seems at odds there.

I've never developed using CUDA, so to some extent my guesses here are admittedly uneducated, but even given the understanding that some algorithms are simply serial in nature, I still don't see why each oscillator couldn't have its own thread, reverb1 has its own thread, reverb2 has its own, and so on. One of the big selling points of the DSP in the Virus is specialized parallel filter processers, so lets say those are paralleled on the GPU or worst case scenario each filter and envelop gets their own thread.

In other words, to the best of my knowledge most plugins on the CPU today are not achieving more efficient use of multi-core CPUs by using parallelism to solve math problems that are serial in nature, they are simply using additional threads to divvy up the workload of separate features.

I hear ya on the lack of proper standard, although my original thought on CUDA is really the same as the old Virus plugin on TCE Powercore cards... that was certainly not a standard, but a proprietary solution dependent on owning that card. The difference I see with NVidia is that an insane number of people already have these in their systems, going unused for the most part while making music.

The thing is that CUDA cores really do just relatively simple operations. They are nowhere near the scope of math operations that regular and specialized CPU registers can do. And while MMX, SSE and others were introduced to add to 3D rendering performance, that's not the only thing they were good at doing. SSE and AltiVec do a lot for FFT processing as well.

And ultimately, this is a major difference: GPUs need to calculate a lot of pixels for a couple dozen frames per second. That's a couple dozen. Audio operations need at least 44100 times per second. Or more, in case of oversampling. This is where that "returning values consistently" problem is occuring.

CUDA can do insanely complex stuff. Think PhysX calculations and fluid dynamics. Stuff that makes audio algorithms look like childs play, comparatively speaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeblWU0pV5E

Really, physics and audio DSP are very different beasts to tackle. What looks visually impressive and "complex" there in that demo doesn't mean that CUDA can do equally complex audio DSP algorithms at the same level of facility...

Perhaps, but the fact that there are audio plugins like reverb that exist proves it can be done. That demo is just one example. Physics calculations such as fluid dynamics ARE complex, period... we don't need eye candy to establish that.

My personal theory is that the real barrier is the learning curve of the CUDA SDK, or perhaps that NVidia has not given proper attention to documenting and/or accommodating certain features, but that the processing capability is fully there. There is a huge amount of unutilized potential.

now if I may make an uneducated guess, I think the point is we've got this cards with some processing on them already in our computers and we're debating here if any use could be found for that little extra that usually just takes a nap while we're making music and audio related stuff. TC PowerCore or Universal Audio have specialized dsp cards, we all know that. But since Apple, for example, sells Mac Pros with a lot of audio people in mind (not only, but also a lot) how come hasn't something like the two examples I mentioned come with such computers as some kind of open dsp card for any developer to make use of? why wouldn't this benefit the industry? it would instantly create a new market for better plug-ins while boosting the performance at the same time. This is a recurrent thought I have. Maybe it conflicts with the market interests, where everyone's trying to pull the profits on their own, I guess. But if the user experience was the priority, such a thing would make perfect sense. We have the super sound cards - even non gamers - in our computers, we could just as well have something dedicated to proper dsp usage, it's just my logical conclusion.

We're seeing more and more technology being implemented as CPUs begin to offer the capacity to work their way into copping with it. Like zero feedback latency filters, which are very demanding to process - I take that for granted, even after some experiments with Reaktor I've done myself. So what I'm saying is: more quality is possible, we're not getting the best we could unless we're paying the BIG buck for it and that renders us totally dependable on some brands and their support and dedication for updates. TC has died, plain and simple. Universal Audio doesn't extend their product's range to instruments, which is somewhat weird for my mind, but, there's this big whole on the market today which could be filled with something else. And the lack of a standard is something we've talked about here, this could all be history with this so called "no brand dsp dedicated cards". my 2 cents

Well in a way I guess we're discussing the same thing -- but that DSP card already exists in the form of a graphics card that isn't used during most folk's music making.

It's not a "no-brand" solution in the sense that one vendor supplies the graphics cards, but as far as I know the software SDK for CUDA is completely free/open and available to anyone... I see lots of hobbyists working with it... example here: http://www.theover.org/Cuda

There's also a tremendously flexible range of power to choose from among GPUs. You can pay $50 for a graphics card or you can pay $1000 depending on how much processing power you want (i.e. think plugin instances). You can buy one of them today and add a second or third later and scale linearly. The guy above is working with low-end (by today's standard) GPUs and getting results.

Now EvilDragon's position is that there are technical reasons that some types of audio applications won't work on CUDA, and I'm not completely denying the possibility, I'm just looking for answers to what they are that I can digest, because the evidence I see seems contrary.

As far as someone coming out with a card that is not proprietary and is designed for open use.... well the problem there is the level of R&D required to produce the hardware and software to do something like that is insane... tens of... no probably hundreds of millions of dollars. If someone invests that kind of money, there needs to be some return in it for them, they cannot just invest it as an act of goodwill to give to the community.

So we end up back at the folks like TC Powercore... someone there bit the bullet and invested some money and took a gamble. Apparently there wasn't enough money in it for them to sustain.

So I think what we are more likely to see are less-ambitious, specialized devices utilizing DSP. Actually that's all the Ultranova is, a DSP with an audio interface and software plugin.... but for a few more bucks why not add keyboards and knobs and call it a synth. Much cheaper to support a single-purpose hardware synth than a complete computing platform like CUDA.

You're saying that this card would cost a whole lot of money and possibly produce no returns. That's possibly true, but only until it becomes a standard - made an integral part of a high end computer. It doesn't seem totally impossible to my mind. Some years ago it wasn't even standard for computers to come with a sound card at all, for example. As soon as they show up, more applications came to fill this increased multimedia potential in computers, not only that but the OS themselves have grown more mature with that move. So I think that, naturally, only big companies could pull this off, like Apple which I mentioned above. They can make the whole world use touch phones, why couldn't they do something like this? And sell the products for their all to special Logic X (more like XI) in their dearest App Store, making everyone make some bucks. I think this open card doesn't mean there can't be competition and profit, that's only relegated to software perhaps. But making such a thing become as ordinary as RAM memory or the graphics card would be great. It could also, I think, serve the gaming industry. We don't often talk about that, but rendering real audio in games in real time still has a long way to go to, there's room for improvement. And the games have proven useful for pushing the industry into greater innovation and for financing it even. Just a thought of course.

But no one would deny this would be useful for the pro user. I mean, the new mac pro they're about to sell looks like a turbine from a space ship, has all the looks and specs of a great machine, except... well, you really need to buy a decent sound card, an Universal Audio card to, maybe an Apogee Rosetta pcie (if you're running a bit shinny biz), so forth and so on. So, let me think it through here... Mac what? Pro? Reaaallyyy? Just an ordinary computer with nothing more then your laptop on it, except more of the same (literaly). If this is what the market economy has to offer us, then I say that innovation is being halted more then helped by it, that's all.

And if we're honest, that's happening every single day. Have you seen an Imac on the inside? They could easily made them more resistant and better constructed but what's the point in making a great product that would last forever? No point! Except, of course, the user. This is were we're at at this point in evolution, but it makes me sick. I like to think that more resources for computing within a computer so as to enable creativity is worth it, simply that. What the economy needs to pull it off is really not the point. I mean, it's done a lousy job at making people keep their jobs in my country, it's out sourcing our most successful stuff to the third world bypassing all sorts of laws that give people their rights, including care for the environment, children in factories, so forth and so on... Screw the economy, we're talking evolution here. We just need to stop pretending that Mac Pros really live up to their name, because they don't. :twisted:

But Apple and companies like them are not interested in creating open-standards, they are interested in highly proprietary devices and defending their design patents like pit bulls.

Its hard for me to understand your position from your message, it seems like it starts off that you'd rather Apple be the holder of a standard like CUDA but then later in the message it seems you're dissatisfied with Apple?

Anyway one of the things that helped Apple get back on their feet, aside from a major influx of money from Microsoft, was when Jobs was put back in charge and he trimmed their product portfolio down to focus on only a few things. In other words I doubt we're going to see them expand into music hardware.

You're right. I was saying that only those companies would be capable of achieving such a treat, but they're focus seems to be else where these days. I'm not totally unsatisfied with Apple. I really like the software and the overall reliability of it. However, that doesn't stop me from judging their current priorities - which is the portable devices, namely phones and tablets.

I just read on the news that Microsoft will release another windows 8 version later this year for the same reasons: most of their costumer base weren't happy with the more oriented towards touch devices interface. They're actually being punished for doing what Apple's been doing, successfully, so to speak.

I think this companies, like you say, are interested in creating "highly proprietary devices" and that doesn't help the user community in many cases. I was also stressing the point that there's a big marketing hype surrounding some products like "high end computer workstations". You need those, plus all the other equipment to release the computer from the "inside the box" form - like another jail - so as to be able to use it creatively.

For graphics you need a graphic pen, for audio you need plenty of stuff. For such a big buck, you'd expect a system with a proper audio card at least. And this card I keep talking about is just another way of saying: I feel there's room for more innovation that would hopefully become a standard. Standards are good for one thing: they mean the vast majority of people gets to use these. The music industry in general fears this massive expansion of people using more serious tools to give life to their own creations and being able to present those online with the same level of presentation and to the same standards that only a few studios could a just a few decades ago. I think of that as evolution, it's good that more people are able to be creative. I don't even care that some people feel they can't make revenues like the rock starts used to. So less ego, and more community. While we see that where you have a community working you get good results: think of how MAX has expanded the usability of Live to the point they've decided to integrate it fully to their software. They know, just as we do, that some hobbyists can actually bring more value to their product. Same goes for Reaktor.

I remember you saying these are not "native" languages. But implementing new hardware with an open language that could be used by any developer out there - and the hobbyists - for bringing more demanding audio (maybe not just audio...) applications to life would be great. If this was shared across all the digital audio workstations out there, a new standard like midi, perhaps, they could all through a big part of their plug-ins processing power to that board and thus produce a big performance boost to all audio workstations. What's wrong with that?

Read on the latest issue of Music Tech's mag - dedicated to Logic Pro - that they'll update their Audio Unit format in ways VST3 already has. This is a double effort for the same thing taking place, another of the sub products of this ego/brand centered economy we live in that also doesn't help the user much. Moving on, another point mentioned is they're aiming for better thread distribution among the cores. That's good of course!

You developers go ahead and tell me. I think our CPUs aren't being used to their full potential just as well, right? It's all good and great if you listen to the marketing hype: 4x more performance in everything gets you thrilled quite fast. But how do these new features in CPU technology being translated into actual performance for the user? Many times it takes some time. One of the reasons I don't jump on the new OS as soon as it shows up: they have this nasty tendency to dive to new features while leaving others behind them, just after they got to the point where they're working properly for the first time ever. I'm not basing this on any detailed draft of information, just on my own subjective experience with computers.

I personally think CPU technology has hit a ceiling (actually its been hovering around the ceiling for many years now). They are adding more cores, which is good for certain types of applications, but as has been discussed here before some computing tasks are serial in nature and do not lend themselves completely to parallelism. Thermal limitations, among other things, prevent CPUs from getting much faster.

GPUs on the other hand still seem to be enjoying big performance gains, generation over generation, while finding ways to do so with lower temperatures and less power consumption. Exciting times in GPU-land, not so much on the CPU side of things.

All of that aside for a moment, and taking into consideration what you've brought up about Apple's diminished focus on desktops: Lots of the buyers of Apple computers for music making purposes go with laptops or iMacs, partially for value but more likely for mobility. DJs and musicians are on the go more than ever. That presents a problem for makers of, for example a DSP card like the TC Powercore since there's no where to put the card. What's more, high-end GPUs need a desktop as well for thermal reasons, better airflow is required. You mentioned the possibility of an external box, but then you we the benefit of a bus directly on the motherboard, and its back to the streaming over USB/Firewire etc. Of course, this can be done, but we've seen it can be flaky and come with drawbacks of its own like latency.

Did you ever look at the Openlabs stuff? They still sell the Meko, although I can't say I know of anyone that uses one. It's kind of like what you've described, a separate box (just happens to have a keyboard) with its own DSP... well actually better than a DSP -- rather a full blown PC running Windows and lots of soft synths http://openlabs.com/LxdPage

Yep, I've seen them listed on music stores. These are dedicated audio workstations, right? I think even Roland/Cakewalk sells some complete solutions as well. But I think it would be a lot better for high end computers - the mac pro is just an example of this, of course - should incorporate some of this high end features within their main configurations. A better, more reliable sound card is just the obvious improvement I'd like to see implemented. I mean, there's great internal sound cards that can be expanded with external interfaces for extra connectivity from vendors like RME or Apogee for example. This two offer really high end low latency, very impressive word clocks for syncing hardware devices and top notch audio quality.

To some extent, what I've been ranting about here is that the standards should be placed higher. It's easy to convince people to buy a new computer based on the looks alone (like the majority of Apple's computers), but if we're serious about making computers better suited for demanding applications, they could just as well come packed with higher quality components overall. My idea of introducing a new component at this "basic configuration level" is another way of saying that we should be getting more for granted based on the price tag of such computers and even that the industry should focus on setting new standards - because ultimately it would help the programmers (not having to translate the same plug-in to different formats) and the users because we'd be getting better software with access to more resources and ultimately a performance and quality boost.

It's easy enough to say this, but if we take into account how the market works it seems a daunting task. I'm going to stress again that it isn't positive when the interests of particular brands surpass the interests of the user or even go against him. Making profit is not only an objective here, but also a surviving necessity - that's granted. But to which extent are we willing to go before we start making more compromises that would allow better solutions to be achieved? It's like politics, diplomacy is much needed here! No one can win alone, and if no one steps back just a little bit, we'll be seeing this plenty of standards, protecting trade secrets versus open attitude - even for users and hobbyists - stretch beyond reason.

I agree with you about CPU, even though the performance has been getting higher non the less.

Cheers

I just saw this article and thought about this discussion:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013...pu-technology/

"In turn, licensees will receive designs, collateral, and support from the company."

Holy shit, how much more incentive does one need? Obviously, this is not something NVidia is specifically targeting audio-related uses for, but to my knowledge there is no other platform (combination of hardware+software dev kit) out there this capable of fulfilling the kind of need we're talking about here.

Nice! Thanks! Yep, I guess they're promoting this seeing that it would be an advantage for them as well - making it easier to reach more devices.

We forgot to talk about tablets and their potential - that will certainly rise - for acting out as synthesizers and what not. Maybe because we feel that the quality doesn't cut it when compared to other solutions, yet. But if this evolves - like it's presumable to do - this can be the answer to our needs. Once again, however, we're talking about super proprietary items here, unless Android or Ubuntu conquers a bright future somehow. There's something to it, though, and most music magazines are paying a lot of attention to it. Some of it is just plain marketing hype of course, but even serious players like Moog have made special products for this new market - and they do sound good and take profit from the technology. Still a long way to go, of course, but it's kind of cool (perhaps nothing more then that XD)...

On another note: do you guys feel that the synthesizers we're currently using will be rendered completely old by more and more improvement on features and specially quality as the processing capacities of newer computers will allow for greater implementation of more demanding features? And holding that thought, that some of the software instruments we use today will be regarded as classics the same way a Mini Moog is today, like vintage synth's website seems to believe by introducing some of them among their hardware cousins?

And how will our Virus (if that's the case eheh) hold up against more capable software synthesizers? I don't mean future incarnations of the Virus (whenever they decide to show up XD) but the current ones we have?

There is something about most tangible, manufactured items that make them magical and of higher value once they are not longer being produced. When it comes to certain types of items like musical instruments, that "magical value" goes through the roof, vintage keyboards for example.

It won't really matter how well they hold up (musically I mean, not physically), they will still be desirable for nostalgic reasons. I've seen people selling their vintage gear like Jupiter-8 or Prophet V for example because they A/B'ed the Arturia plug-in side by side and found them indistinguishable (the plugin being of course easier to work with). Vince Clark, founder of Depeche Mode, Yaz and Erasure put most of his hardware gear up on eBay the moment soft-synths crossed the equality threshold, and he was known for having one of the best synth studios (partially underground bunker) in the industry.

I think software is already there, it's just that there is still something to be said about a hardware synth that is a self-contained instrument with no dependency on a DAW, PC or additional controller, and hardware synths that are no longer in production have a particular mystique. I'd love to have a Kawai K5 again -- not because it was really a great synth, its considered by many to be the most difficult synth to program ever created, and I never even thought the sound was all that great, but I have a lot of fond memories of music creation with it, so there's a nostalgia value there.

So, I'm not sure synths ever become obsolete until they physically stop working, or in the case of software just fall into the unsupported graveyard (Albino is an example of that which has come up before).

About tablets and there potential... To me the value there is strictly in the mobility of it (very important for some, less important for me). I see a tablet has having all the limitation of a laptop, except much worse. Airflow, thermal limitations and overall computing power do not put them in the league of the hardware I'm currently interested in as a primary means of music creation. But, when you're sitting in a hotel room bored or whatever, pulling out the tablet and tapping out a riff can be satisfying.

Yep, I also feel that software quality has gone through the roof lately. One of the things we don't talk about much here: compressors, equalizers - specially those that you use to color the sound or shape it's tone, rather then surgical stuff; reverb is really much better then when I first started using music software, there's some lush sounding ones out there. Things like Melodyne... I mean, it's just black magic. Now there's also a great audio to midi thing in Ableton that's also amazing. Being able to use such a thing as Monark or Diva - I think it sounds even better then Arturia's Mini Moog V, even though the movement thing on Arturia's can lead to places you can't go with the others... - and earing those filters gives me the chills sometimes. I mean, we're able to do stuff today that is just simply amazing, like having access to tons of high quality samples for drums or whatever we can choose on the fly - I'm thinking Kontakt here - and replace drums as we wish to test things out or whatever. That thing alone puts almost any hardware sampler - even the really expensive ones - to shame, and that's undebatable.

I have to agree with you when it comes to physical objects and instruments holding their value more. The Virus is great to tweak and get inspired, it's not all just about the sound. And there's a tendency for me to explore it more because it's just right there. But it's not just synthesizers. I don't really feel the need to invest in a Neve equalizer or even the Eventide fx unit or something. For such a big buck, I'd rather take my chances with software even though I know this things are still killer but... I feel compressors used to be lame and now they behave like the real stuff, same goes for Equalizers. Which ones do you guys like best here?

For me in modern times, compressors and equalizers all come in the form of software, slapped onto a mixer channel of a DAW -- but no doubt hardware versions have allure of their own. On that topic I'd rather sit back and hear from those in the know than pretend I do...