Recently, when Softube released their Model 77, I was already owning all other paid CS80 VSTs and I was wondering whether it's worth buying a fourth emulation, but based on Softube's other excellent emulations, I decided to compare the Model 77 demo to the others. This is a comparison between Softube Model 77, Arturia CS80 V 4, Cherry Audio GX80 and Memorymoon ME80. Just for fun I put also Behringer Deepmind, for which I had programmed a similar patch.
This comparison is based on the lead sound from "Blade Runner Blues" by Vangelis, which is one of CS80's most iconic sounds. The initial patch I bought for Arturia CS80 V and it was sounding excellent, but I have improved it by making it dual layer with slight detuning between the layers. Although the other three CS80 emulations have a similar factory patch, it does not sound and is not programmed the same way among all of them, so I tried to recreate the Arturia CS80 V patch on all others by setting the same parameter values and then tweaking by ear to get them sounding as close as possible to CS80 V. I acknowledge that this methodology is not quite fair to other emulations and also that this sound alone doesn't show the full possibilities of each of the synths - for example a patch with more bass would be nice also to compare, but as this comparison was enough for me to decide on whether to buy Model 77, it is what it is.
The most important in this patch to seems to be setting the filter keyboard tracking in a way to achieve a gentle sizzling in the high notes and a distinctly different sound in the lows, which has more "sh" to it. CS80 V does it great and to me it sounds very convincing with a good reverb, although I have not compared it to the original directly.
It was very close on Model 77, but sounding a little thinner, and was hard to achieve due to the fact that on Model 77 the layout of the controls for filter keyboard tracking and for velocity+aftertouch on filter is different than on the original CS80, and some of the controls seem to be different, which makes it harder to set the same values as on CS80 V. I have asked Softube support exactly how the controls on Model 77 relate to the original CS80 V, and got a reply that they need to forward the question to another person, but two weeks later still there is no reply.
On GX80 the filter keyboard tracking was also pretty close, but again it sounds a little thinner and more metallic. Overall impressive though as my impressions about GX80 so were about a more polished and thinner sound, so it surprised me how close was it to CS80 V.
On ME80 it was hard to achieve the needed result with the filter keyboard tracking - it was either working good for the high notes, or for the lows, but not for both. In the video I configured it for the highs, maybe should have put also lows with both wrong and good configuration, but left them only with the bad configuration.
Deepmind has a different architecture and filter, but was also pretty close and with more tweaking could get even closer. I had to equalize some of the higher frequencies, as with its 2-pole filter it gets either brighter than the rest in the highs, or suddenly goes duller, and it was not possible to fine tune it further with the filter keyboard tracking (a different slope?), so I used external EQ on it.
All synths had their onboard effects turned off, and were fed through a same FX track, which contains Arturia LX-24 (emulation of Lexicon 224, used in the original), Replica XT delay by Native Instruments in vintage mode and some pre-reverb equalization to remove some low and high frequencies. No other processing on the synths except a little equalization on the highs on the Deepmind.
In the section where a mix with strings is compared, XILS Lab V+ was used (emulation of Roland VP330 used in the original), which was fed in another FX track with the same reverb, with less amount on the strings to not introduce too much mud. Some equalization on the strings themselves, to get rid of too much rumble in the lows.
All synths with default values for oversampling/quality.
I accept any suggestions how to further tweak the other 3 emulations, to achieve closer results.
In the first comment there is a link to Cubase 13 project for further tweaking by anyone interested.
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Beginning
Whole performance comparison (solo):
00:02 - Arturia CS80V
00:50 - Softube Model 77
01:38 - Cherry Audio GX80
02:26 - Memorymoon ME80
03:14 - Behringer Deepmind
High notes comparison:
04:02 - Arturia CS80V
4:11 - Softube Model 77
4:20 - Cherry Audio GX80
4:29 - Memorymoon ME80
4:38 - Behringer Deempind
Low notes comparison:
04:48 - Arturia CS80V
4:58 - Softube Model 77
5:09 - Cherry Audio GX80
5:19 - Memorymoon ME80
5:29 - Behringer Deempind
Whole performance comparison (mix with strings):
05:40 - Arturia CS80V
06:39 - Softube Model 77
07:37 - Cherry Audio GX80
08:36 - Memorymoon ME80
09:35 - Behringer Deepmind
10:29 - All synths together and with strings