What is it with this Virus sound?

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by LivePsy

I'm intrigued with the Nords if they don't alias.

I think the NL3 run at an internal sample rate of 96K - that would put the main aliasing tones well outside audiable range.

I remember a recent discussion on the Korg forums about odd tones on the Radias. Turns out there is actually a quirk in OSC 2 in that it simply doesnt produce such a perfect waveform as OSC 1 and the extra high frequency tones come from that - and if you listen carefully there are definately harmonics and not just unrelated tones.

So its worth checking out the waveforms in a wave editor.

[-X-]

Originally Posted by Khazul

I think the NL3 run at an internal sample rate of 96K - that would put the main aliasing tones well outside audiable range.

I thought it was the NL1/2 that runs at 96kHz sampling frequency. The NL3 runs at 48kHz thus has more features.

Access must have done some heavy processing with the oscillator implementing phase shifts and random pitch changes to make it sound so big. I guess the tradeoff is that they kept the sampling frequency lower (I read somewhere it is around 28kHz). This is a shame to a certain extend since the filter can process (external) sounds with higher pitch just fine without the annoying aliasing.

Anyway, it is a matter of features versus quality I guess. And the trend is not changing with the TI, using the two DSPs rather for efx and new oscillator modes instead of using the increased power to build up quality.

Note, the PPG/VS has aliasing to the gazoo as well, but it never sounds bad, rather interesting. I guess keeping it all in the digital world has some disadvantages.