How good are the SCOPE modular synths...

Anything about the Scope modular synths

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SPOTS
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How good are the SCOPE modular synths...

Post by SPOTS »

...vs the best emulation plug-ins on the market?

I don't know anything about the SCOPE modular synths (at least not yet), but I read a lot of good comments about the Prodyssey, the Modular II, etc...

I have quite a few plug-ins of vintage recreations (CS-80V, Minimoog V and Prophet V from Arturia ; TimewARP2600 from WayoutWare ; Oddity, Minimonsta, and impOSCar from GMedia ; PRO 5.3 from NI ; etc.).

And I am basically wondering how good are the SCOPE modular synths in comparison (not talking of the fact that they are DSP based). Did any of you have a chance to make A/B tests and conclude how they stand the comparison?

Also do the sampler have something specific/unique to it? Will it add something to my Mach Five 2 and EXS 24?

Thanks a lot for your input! ;)
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Mr Arkadin
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Post by Mr Arkadin »

Well the Scope Modular III isn't emulating anything - it's its own modular synth, so can't really be judged on that front (emulation). As a modular synth it's brilliant, add the Adern FleXor modules and tons of free modules available here and frankly i doubt there's anything you couldn't make.

As to the other stuff, well i own M-Tron, impOSCar, Oddity as i think GMedia are great, but Arturia leave me cold. Minimonsta is good, but i have Minimax and it wasn't any better than that so remains the only GMedia plug i haven't got (VSM and M-Tron Pro coming to me soon).

Profit-5 frankly poops all over the NI's Pro series (i tried the Scope version against an NI demo - not impressed). proTone (Pro One) has no software equivalent as far as i know and is different enough to Profit-5 to warrant a purchase. B-2003 is a superlative B3 emulation.
Last edited by Mr Arkadin on Sat Feb 16, 2008 1:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
SPOTS
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Post by SPOTS »

Thanks Mr Arkadin,

I am a bit confused with a couple of things you said. May you please help me with that? (it's good - I'll improve my english here).
Minimonsta is good, but i have Minimax and it wasn't any better than that.
Do you mean that Minimax was not that good, or the other way around?

In regards with the Profit-5, which version did not impress you: the Scope or NI version?

I have VSM and M-Tron too. The M-Tron Pro really seems to be a nice update.
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Post by Lima »

Hi Spots!
You have to listen to them to belive.

I've tried the CS80V and the MiniMoogV and I was sincerely happy until I've played with the Pro12 the Minimax and the Prodissey.
The first time I've played with them I was shocked: I've really understood what FAT means!

for the modular side I have to say that the sound is less fat, because we don't have antialiased oscillators. BUT the possibilities offered by the modules are enormous, AND there are tons of patches already done by the Planetz users!

If you want to compare with other virtual modular synths, maybe the more similar is the Clavia Nord Modular. Well Kamil (JLS here on Z) have done an incredible porting of the NordModular patches before starting his modular-mathematical quest. This huge contribution tells you once again that the CW modular is really powerfull (more than some commercial hardware devices)

About the cons:
- it has a patch bug that occurs at someone: some times it don't save the preset correctly.
- requires bit of skill to take pleasure on making patches
-insterface for big patches cound be chaotic. But some devs have done some particular modules that gives you a new interface and some kind of "macro" to improve the usability (downloadable for free obviously... ;-) )

hope it helps! :-)
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Mr Arkadin
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Post by Mr Arkadin »

SPOTS wrote:
Minimonsta is good, but i have Minimax and it wasn't any better than that.
Do you mean that Minimax was not that good, or the other way around?

In regards with the Profit-5, which version did not impress you: the Scope or NI version?
Sorry, i wrote that post under the influence of alcohol. i meant Minimonsta wasn't any better than Minimax, so i didn't buy Minimonsta. In fact Minimax just sounded that little bit better. i would have bought Minimonsta if it had sounded better than Minimax but it didn't (i did side by side comparisons). i'm not bothered about having the Melohman functions either.

i compared Profit-5 with NI's Pro-52 and was left deeply unimpressed with Pro-52, it sounded very weak. The Pro-53 update may be better than Pro-52 but i doubt it comes near the sound of Profit-5 (and John Bowen/Zarg also has some good Prophet 5 synths with added features).

PS. You're English seems very good to me.
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ehasting
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Post by ehasting »

i played quiet much on the pro-53 from NI, hoping it would work as a softsynth for my use.. but after extensive testing, i just couldn't find any life. that synth sounds SOOO dull. The synth was lacking of musicality.

But i dont have the profit or minimax :( so i cant say if they sound good. but my opinion on creamware stuff is that they often are more musical then much of the software i have heard.

Regarding the sampler. I would not go there, at least thats my opinion. i found it fare to buggy, so i got me an Emu Ultra sampler :).

Just as a side note. after using the pro-53, i was so frustrated that i got my self an ooooold G4 (400mhz) mac with os 9, and putted my creamware card inside that on, to use it as a dedicated "synth". (i had to put the card away after moving from pc to imac). And i can tell you that i am very happy with it.

Hopefully i can afford some of the other good creamware synths. (pro-one, profit or maybe adern modules).

Regarding the modular. It compares very good to the nord modular. except that the nord sounds like a nord. More clean cut-through oscillators. I owned a Nord Modular, but sold it so i could afford the Emu Ultra. One thing that gives the creamware modular a pluss over the nord is the Waldorf XT oscillator :)

Sound sounds, made on diffrent creamware and pro-53: http://www.higen.org/archives/67 (have a pad example there)..
SPOTS
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Post by SPOTS »

Thanks for all the feedback.

NI had improved the emulation a lot from Pro 5.2 to Pro 5.3 but I assume it is still shy compared to something like the plugs you mentioned (which I find confusing... it seems there are so many of the Prophet line to choose from: Profit 5, Pro-One, Prophet Plus, etc.).

I remember the Zarg synths from the Korg OASYS-PCI time... with John Bowen and Harm Visser. They already proposed great stuff at the time.

It's good that there are so many good plug-ins available for the SFP systems... just hard to know which to choose! :P
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at0m
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Post by at0m »

SPOTS wrote:It's good that there are so many good plug-ins available for the SFP systems... just hard to know which to choose! :P
It may be easier if you look at what's unique on Scope - there's nothing like modular, to name a collection of plugins, in native world. Combine that with the IO flexibility of Scope, and you'll never go without again :)
more has been done with less
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Post by hifiboom »

I see scope from a different side. I try to explain:

(1) its more or less one big modular system...

so the whole system has roughly spoken "its sound", and to clear things up, I think soundwise its the among the best I`ve heard across all digital stuff I`ve put my hands on.

That said, yes I think if you patch a modular synth for example in mod3 shell it easily can compete with commercial vst stuff emulations (in most cases these are no real emulations at all!)
And in my opinion it even sounds better. So for me its much bang for the bug.

(2) you have to divide into 2-3 sections of synths:

- first of all creamwares newest synth creations like minimax, Pro-12 and Prodyssey that have special designed atoms to model the sound of the real units. Especially filter and oscillator atoms.

- second all the rest: u-know, prisma, blue, and modular3 all share the same or similar atoms and so they have a similar overall sound.

- the John Bowen stuff is somewhat a special case as for example the solaris plug-in is able to load various of cw high class atoms, like minimax filters, cem filters, different oscillator models, and so on.

there really isn`t much missing.
Even the basic oscillators are almost aliasing free, because they are bandlimited and thats just my small critics point:

the bandlimitation (especially on the saw oscillator) is some sort of compromise: it reduces aliasing at the upper range octaves at the cost of high frequency content in the lower octaves.
I would like to see SC modelling some kind of high quality saw oscillator, that
->is aliasing free in the upper range octaves but
->don`t suffer from damping side effects on high frequencies in the lower octaves range.
this would result in a bit fresher sounding bass sounds.

One of my current projects at the moment is such a modular saw oscillator and I try to implement a technique of interpolation to solve this little issue... But it seems difficult because scope is a realtime environment.

At least I`ve already managed to build a non-bandlimited saw oscillator from math atoms, so thats a good starting point already.

another workaround could be to load a non-bandlimited saw osc and a bandlimited one at once, sync them, so that they are phase corrected and have same tune and blend over to the non-bandlimiting osc in the lower octaves and blend over to the bandlimited in the higher octaves domain, which will some sort of full spectrum aliasing free oscillator. This workaround for sure would consume twice at much power as one basic saw oscillator.
Did any of you have a chance to make A/B tests and conclude how they stand the comparison?
for sure I did A/B many VSTi stuff with the scope synths and the modular.
And in almost any case the scope version sounded better.

Even if I patched some synth layouts of commercial VSTis in the mod3 shell I could reach at least equal but in most cases much better results.

To bring it to the point: Since I have my scope cards for ~ 1year, I almost don`t use any VSTi at all. I even go that far that I don`t install them anymore, so they don`t blow up my DAW sequencers loading time. :)


A little down side is that CW didn`t build much exclusive or modern stuff. Most of the synth stuff is based on Saw/Sin/Square/Pulse/Tri Oscillators.
The only special stuff is the Waldorf oscillator that can step through the oscillator tables like the original waldorf synths and another wavetable oscillator.
So Scope is more a classical sounding environment.

There is where I really wish to see some little innovations from SC for Scope 5 or just i the future.
Last edited by hifiboom on Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
Lima
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Post by Lima »

Thanks Hifi for the explanation about that atoms. Really informative and interesting! :-)

Good luck with the new antialiasing oscillator too!!!
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Post by mr. prawn »

looking forward to that oscillator, hifi!
i would add that the flexor modules have a significantly different quality (i dont mean better or worse - just different) to anything else you can get out of the platform. probably my favorite thing about scope.
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Post by faxinadu »

to me the modular system and flexor extention is the highlight of SFP
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