Synthesis Vs. Recorded

[FreezeFlame(Alchemy)]

Synthesizers can reproduce the sounds of multiple types of sounds (even instruments,most known being the Bass),which makes them more reliable.

Hand/Industrial made Instruments (not counting synthesizer's) are there own source for producing sounds that can only be done with them,something that is hard to copy on an synthesizer,plus very time consuming to achive.

I use an mix between Recorded instruments(play Bongos,some special type of russian Bongo and on an mini Conga),and synthesized sounds(Synth1 mostly) for most of my modules(the ones i haven't posted in the forum,and i do not plan it till all of them are finished).

Full Post Edit:It was originaly themed around sweets,changed it to an more musical topic.

[djkurzman]

I think Synth vs Recorded is dependent on the goal of the audio. Obviously, if you are into making instrumental music, your best sound will always come from live instruments. Wavesynth hybrids have come a long way since I started playing around with VSTi's way back when. I was extremely impressed with what C418 (Minecraft) did with with his Stilbruch track. Even though he was using pro-grade sampled instruments, you can still hear some little noise bits on certain piano keys in the beginning. What I think he excels at is knowing where to use synth and where to use sample.

Synth is clean. It's created on the fly. Synth can give you an enormous variety of sound. It's also incredibly hard to get a synth to sound exactly like an acoustic guitar. Even an electronic device like a TB303 produces a distinctive sound based on the hard circuitry of the machine. Even though it's basic audio generation is simple to replicate, many 303 software clones just don't sound the same because of that missing hardware.

I guess when it comes to favorites, I am a break-beat, acid/industrial type of designer. I go for live drums, vinyl loops and abrasive dirty noise samples. I prefer my percussive instruments to be sample over synth. I don't like using sampled stringed instruments and prefer full live recording. VST synths tend to have a richer sound, but being an old-school tracker, I tend to enjoy the control I get out of using samples for different things.

[LPChip]

Good synthesizers will basically have huge sample libraries and use those as the primary sound and add effects to spice them up.

So I guess a good synthesizer will be in both worlds. If you don't know what I mean, go look up youtube videos of Yamaha's Motif XF8. Softsynths that produce great sounds there there too. For example Camel Audio's Alchemy creates really rich sounds by using sampled sounds, and with a bit of tweaking, you can bring the original recordings back. I have been able to get good original instrument sounds back with it. And then of course there are the plugins that are literally made to emulate the real instrument. A few examples are: 4Front TruPiano's, SpicyGuitar (look this one up on youtube, its free).

The only thing that you won't get with a real instrument is the fact that there are so many ways an instrument can be played, that you'll get all the sounds. But the ones who emulate often give enough variation to give you the feeling it is a real instrument.

[Saga Musix]

Good synthesizers will basically have huge sample libraries and use those as the primary sound and add effects to spice them up.

You are confusing "good synthesizers" with "ROMplers". Yes, most synthesizers these days are basically ROMplers with huge sample banks, but that's not what makes them "good". I'm pretty sure djkurzman was thinking more of the traditional definition of synthesizer, which would be more focussed on actual synthesis instead of ROM playing.

[LPChip]

I'm not confusing them, but if you look up what the Motif is, they say its a synthesizer workstation. Given that this term is used for the Motif, I thought it was good to bring it to the mix of comparison, because others who are less technical might do the same.

True, those are not synthesizers who are based on simple waveforms as the old ones are, but they share the same principle. Have a sound and lots of parameters to change the sound in a lot of ways.

[djkurzman]

I actually just checked out Spicyguitar after my post and was very impressed with it's sound. It's definitely not 100%, but could easily fool an untrained ear if used correctly. In regard to the Motif series, I agree with both both LP and Saga. It really is a big beefy sample playback machine with some synthesis effects underneath. Whatever it's called in the end depends on how the manufacturer wants to market it. Calling it a synthesizer gives the impression of rich audio sound, then it presents itself with a realistic quality that most don't think about when they hear the word sampler. In the end, I can use the same principal with a commercial soundfont and some mild chorus and reverb effects. The mad geniuses of audio engineering have been working on ways of completely reproducing acoustic sound with all of the intricacies of the instrument and performer. In that process, we've made much more realistic virtual instruments that combine recording and synthetic sound reproduction. The math behind it is way over my head, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

In terms of how a true synth is used, it really depends on the synth. Anyone can create a sample of a sinewave, play it back on numerous keys and it won't sound any different than a synthesizer reproducing the same waveform. Adding layers and modulation to the sound can quickly complicate how well it can be sampled, mostly because that synth is performing real-time calculations while the sampler is simply 'play recording at defined pitch'. I personally don't see much point in using recorded synthesizers when good VSTi's are so plentiful.

Again, it really just depends on the goal.