Waldorf Quantum vs Analogue
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- Опубліковано 14 вер 2019
- Here is my fifth short video on the Waldorf Quantum hybrid synthesiser. In this video I consider how the Quantum might stack up against a fully analogue synth such as the Prophet 6 in terms of sound qualities.
Volumes not matched. Also, you recorded the OB6 with pan spread enabled, while the Q was mono.
Just picked up my Quantum this last week and your videos have been awesome in learning some of the finer details. Very well done and a good mix between theory and function. Thank you for all the work on these videos! Hoping to see that other oscillators that you had talked about.
Great video! Now try to replicate a wavetable patch from the Quantum on the Prophet 6.. lol ;)
who cares about wavetables lol... analog 💪🏻 wavetables just remind me of boring old virus ti witch I've not powered up of many moons 😀
@@johnbaker1988 The real question is "who cares about your music?"
again a really great video with clear speach and explanations! Thank you
Tim I must say, I've put down my aspiration/dream to do something with my music for a long time (yet it keeps slumbering somewhere).
Simply looking to your videos, and listening to your music is really inspiring me!
I do know I have the skills to do make a living out of this, and besides skills I also got the equipment to make it happen.
Thank you for your videos!
This was super insightful and revealing! Thanks for your time and vey loving attention!
The volume should always be matched when doing any comparison. In this regard the Quantum has a much lower volume the the P6 and is put in a bad light. Then there also is a clear stereo spread for the prophet that anybody can hear while the Quantum is dead center mono. That can also bee seen on the waveforms where the Prophets differ (giving a stereo effect) and the Quantum seems more or less the same for the right and left channels.
Two very important things for that kind of string pad!
Still, disregarding this, I can still can hear that the quantum souns more sterlie/less lively than the P6 that sounds more "unstable" and warm. At least with that programmed patch...
I was a little bit wtf too.... if you crank up the iridium it is right there.
Veeery informative videos you make thank you.. and you made me need a Quantum in my life
Would love to see this same exercise with the Kyra
Thx for the comparison!
Great video Tim. I found adding bottom end EQ on my Iridium helped a lot... also adding very subtle modulations to the waveforms and adjusting the skew of the waveforms... definitely one of the best synthesizers I've ever used. I might try and do some A/B with my Prophet 5 and see how close I can get. I especially love the effects on the Waldorf...
Update?
Another great video - thanks Tim. For per-voice pan-spread on quantum, couldn't you set up a mod source of random bi-polar/s&h LFO routed to the analog filter pan? It's not a sophisticated thing, but it does individually "place" the voices in the stereo field. It is worth noting that there are a lot more ways to bring in analog-eque randomness than just pitchvar and envelopevar - we have a ton of per-voice modulators and mod destinations to do this and we can also use different waveforms in a user wavetable/multi-sample to provide proximity and subtle variation in the source timbre.
Gorgeous! Thank you...!
This is a great video. In a mix, I wouldn’t be able to really tell the difference unless it’s pointed out to me. The Prophet sounds more saturated and raw.... I wonder if a plugin like Decapitator might add some grit to the Quantum.
One problem I see on your comparison is that the quantum volume is considerably lower than the Prophet. Not only hearing the difference but looking at the wave data on your screen shot. Had you balanced the two, it is my guess you would not have heard any difference.
I noticed that on the second example.
I wonder if it is because the Prophet 6 has a brighter sound with more high frequencies to it, cutting through the mix, and making it sound louder. And the Waldorf has more bass, making sound fuller on its own, but when in a mix, it does not pop as much.
@@TheArtisticFlavor I'd think that too
this was very helpful
Modern VCOs are so precise, in large part, because they use high precision DACs to generate the voltage. DACs have been used for polysynths for ages (Jupiter 8, etc.), but were not as precise. Classic monosynths like the Minimoog use voltage sent through resistors in the keyboard matrix, where you end up getting a whole lot of variability due to the components used, stability of power supply, etc.
I do agree that when you get to that level, VCO/DCO is a fairly useless comparison. The current crop of polysynths are so much more behaved, and so easier to use. Old VCOs could sound awesome in polys, but folks forget just how irritatingly unstable many of those were; and not out of tune in just fun ways, but in really annoying "sounds like crap on stage" kinds of ways. That's one of many reasons why so many 80s touring bands ended up using samplers on stage (like that enormous Kurzweil K250 Van Halen used), and why workstations became such a thing later on.
CS80 on Black Napkins from Zappa’s Baby Snakes. It was about a step flat…
Good video. Any plans on reviewing the Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave?
Would love to take a look but they'll need to lend me one first!
Quantum sounds nice and warm to me, and I'm a p6 owner.
Funkbutterfly Completely agree. P6 owner too. You can make it sound warm, you can make it sound cold.
New Quantum mk2 on the market... with new next level features. I hope that you will look into it and make a comparison 🤘🤘
As an owner of mk1 I just wished 16 note polyhony expansion to my Quantum. The other new features go with the mk2, fair and square
Great video! What if you addressed 4 or more mono synths or mono vioces in a ploysynth via MIDI channels 1-4, 1-6 or 1-whatever, via round robin? Say 1234, then 1324, then1423 etc, say changing order every time 2 or more notes are played. Each mono synth voice with slightly diferent tune, drive, filter, envelope settings and effect sends. Done with a device like a Bomebox or Cirklon. What do you think?
Very very informative video, thank you. I had also realized with my synths that it is nearly impossible to sound two the same, although they have the same sound architecture.. I think one should not judge the pure sound of two different synths, instead one should judge the different musical roles they could play.
Interesting comparison. I’ve long said that in a general range you can often get synths to sound very similar, even between analog and digital synths. It’s when you push towards the extreme settings that the differences become more apparent. There’s maybe a hair more wool on the Prophet, but whether that’s worth it to you is up to you. Where the Prophet 6 shines is when you start hitting that poly mod section, which has no real equivalent in the Quantum.
Tim, will be interesting to hear you opinion on the Modal Argon8 when you get your hands on one. I was able to demo it here in Chicago @ Knobcon last weekend. Wonderfully full warm harmonics for a digital wavetable Synth ; with FX fully bypassed. ;)
Lower Midrange frequencies on the Prophet sound a little more pronounced while the Quantum's higher, high frequencies sound brighter a little bit, and tinge of high frequency artifact almost (very very subtle after-tone though). They are so close otherwise. Great video.
Two Evolver desktops and a Poly Evolver in the background 🙂
to me it almost sounds the quantum sits nicer in the mix more than the prophet. I'm sure there are some additional FX could could put on the Quantum to make it sound a little "screamer" like the prophet if thats what you wanted to do.
modulating quantum envelope by itself can give you the gentle exponential curves you're looking for I assume (dose the modulation).
That was huge The waldorf Had a softer sound And the prophet seemed to be very rich
The Prophet certainly has more bite and sizzle, and I love the pan spread feature (basically invented by Oberheim).
However, as a pad sound, I prefer the Quantum patch; it’s smoother, rounder, just ‘paddier’.
Any thoughts on the Waldorf M?
Is it possible the difference between the Quantum and Prophet 6 timbre is the outputs sound themselves? In other words, all synths outputs are not created equal. And often from the same manufacturer I hear a major difference between their hardware in the outputs. Some outputs are better than others and sound more transparent. Other outputs are darker. Perhaps the Prophet 6 outputs sound more clear, more transparent than the Quantum. The Quantum sounds darker, with more bottom end like you said, which is likely in the filters like you said. But I am guessing there is a very basic difference in the output electronics and that is at least 50% of the synths sound differences.
In regards to VCOs, the Prophet 6 has patch memories and therefore some things are quantized to fit the digital control. However , synths such as the Vermona 14, Vermona perFOURmer or Dreadbox Abyss do not have any patch memory. Granted the Vermona are fairly precise VCOs. The Dreadbox Abyss not so much. I think it fair to say each VCO synth has its own unique character. In modern days, the Abyss floats around its tuning point, but it never always there. The Vermona gear seems to keep its tuning points closer.
Not a synth user Tim, but doesn't the Quantum let you use your finger on the touch screen to change the attack/decay? I guess from a musicians take, trying to recreate one thing, on something else, can be fiddly and in-part frustrating. Yet, in its own right, the Waldorf Quantum is a unique/poweful flagship regardless. Nice series btw...
I think that the Waldorf triangular waves sounded deeper and seemed to have more body
Own both synths being compared here. Great review. I will say though that the Virus or Nord Lead sounds closer to the P6 than the Quantum. The Quantum sounds very digital. Good, but digital.
Aside from the unpredictability of the analog oscillators, in my mind it's primarily the filters that are responsible for the analogue sound that we all love, would you agree? So something like Peak, where the only thing digital is the oscillators and effects (although distortion is analogue) is really no different to any other modern analogue synth in terms of 'analogue-ness'. I'm happy to hear opposing views on this.
While filters impart a critical and unique character to the overall timbre, I tend to think this is typically thought of as the most important factor largely because there is such a wide spectrum of tones and sound qualities that different filters can provide. But it would be a mistake to downplay the importance of the oscillator. This is the source of the actual sound, the foundation of the whole signal chain. So while its surely debatable whether analog inherently sounds BETTER than digital, a synth with a digital oscillator is, without question, less analog. And the Peak is an especially curious choice to compare it to, because every time I've spent time with a Peak, it has been very clear to my ears that it didn't sound remotely like an analog synth. Nor did it really sound like any other other digital synth I can think of. And my guess as to why that is? The use of both sampled wavetables and innovative Field Programmable Gate Array OSCILLATORS, which are quite unique to the Peak and Summit. It's a very interesting sound, but it is extremely different than, say, a classic Arp or Moog (or even modern Moogs, which use digital control but 100% analog audio signal paths). But that difference should be celebrated as the Peak's unique character, and the yardstick of "analogue-ness" should be cast aside when discussing its merits. After all, with its wavetables, digital oscillators, LFOs, effects, envelopes, and mod matrix routings, really the only things analog about it are the filters and VCAs (and both of those are controlled via 8-bit digital modulation, which is significantly lower resolution than the 14-bit MIDI CCs used to modulate the filter of, say, a Moog Sub37).
The Quantum oscillators sounded digital to me. They reminded me of the Blofeld.
Sounds like the Quantum is in mono and Prophet in stereo no?
I might be a bit biased because I own a Prophet 6 but to me the Prophet has more presence.
Hey back when you could actually see the walls of your studio before all new bits of kit.
Haha. Modular is a drug!
Question for everyone, hydrasynth, quantum, all the wave synths out and coming out, which has the warmest tone? I am getting the hydra right now. Many say wave synths are cold and dont akways sit in the mix.
derek jurovich I have the quantum I don’t think it is warm.....it is bold and can be giant the fx section is world class and wavetables can be harsh ....the waveforms have a very neutral sound like tim demonstrates early in this video....the hydra sounds very good to me and is a special synth...but can’t tell if it’s warmer.....I don’t care for wave form comparison videos where oscillators are isolated and compared without modulation or fx .....because they all sound very similar in this fashion ....I have the prophet 6 and the two are worlds apart in real word use ....not a ding on tim his videos are great
@@indiefilmcomposer thanks for responding, how well does the quantum fit with prophet in a mix ? Yeah, i am excited to get the hydra and see what it can do.
derek jurovich very good .......the pan spread of the prophet and analog character give it separation but the prophet is interesting in that it also can sound very different depending on the settings dialed in
wonderful video, educational for folks that might not be informed, entertaining dive for those that do.
Now , despite the idea from the video , coming from this QvsPro6 concept , i'd rather use both at the same time to create cool sounds !
Quantum: 1500 cc, 4 turbochargers, 7500 rpm, 500 horsepower.
Prophet 6: 5000 cc, suction engine, 4000 rpm, 500 horsepower.
Which one would you go to for a gig 3,000 kilometers away?
the sound of the exhaust note coming out the Prophet hitting full boost on meth sounds way more pleasing 😂
Quantum
I can see why you would try to replicate an analog synth with the quantum, but my advise would be make new sounds with tje quantum and use its power to make sounds that its good at, and im sure its a very nice sounding unit.
DSI is known for making analogue synths that sound more lo-fi than $50 casios
Wana know why the M is 🔥? Same reason... badass gui... +everyone puts valhalla on the track anyways...
Nice video Tim! The P6 took the Quantum for a ride, at least in this comparison. P6 has more sizzle! I’m sure the Quantum is able to sounds incredible in its own right when it plays to its particular strengths as a digital synth.
Yes agreed about the sizzle. But I think some of that has to do with the envelope reset behaviour on the P6, with the speed of the chord changes in my example you are hearing the P6 filter mostly at the open end, but you are hearing the Quantum filter closed down most of the time. This makes the Quantum sound duller. I really should have changed the Quantum patch to compensate for this, but that would make the opening chord sound very wrong. Basically, impossible to replicate the P6, it's unique! :)
Tim Shoebridge I see, very interesting. Thanks for the reply and explanation Tim, I really enjoy watching this kind of comparison. This is just another great example to bring up when people ask my why my living room is full of synthesizers.
I wonder what it would sound like if you layered a warm analog Prophet 6 pad with a cold and ethereal Quantum pad?
Not silly, informative! - you could get creative with mod sources for the Quantums voice pan to emulate the Prophet pan spread - & the Prophet probably uses truncated exponential envelope slopes (cem3310 emulation)
There’s no replacement for displacement;)
Quantum sounds swallowed and prophet 6 more dynamic range, and punches through mix better.
I cant stand the envelope behavior on DSI / Sequential synths. The attack phase always gets truncates killing sounds with a slow attack. You can hear this clearly at 17:52 .
Isn't that voice stealing? It's a 6 voice. Normally short attacks get priority.
It’s not voice stealing, It’s the way the envelope retriggers as it cycles through the voices. It can reset to the initial attack phase or start at the amplitude it is sustained at. The latter can be smooth sounding but DSI’s envelope retriggering has always sounded very abrupt to me. I sold my polyevolver and p08 because of this.
@@FrankManhands Yeah that envelope behavior is better for some styles and situations, but def worse for others. Really often a personal taste thing I guess. Personally I've never really clicked with Dave Smith stuff too much myself either, but to be fair I've never owned a DSI / Sequential myself so perhaps haven't given them a fair chance.
the quantum is stunning - is it you favourite
seeyouintheeighties It is my favourite digital synth. Well it’s a hybrid technically but I rarely use the analogue filters if I’m honest. I personally think Waldorf should have kept the Quantum 100% digital and given us huge polyphony/multitimbrality instead. But it is what it is, no regrets.
@@TimShoebridge I totally agree with you !
Seems like you got your wish with analogue filters as well 😂
Prophet sounds perfect. The Quantum, both fuller and richer and less distinct. The kind of sound that is great in the room live, but in the mix ends up overcrowding the space.
Dear Mr. Shoebridge,
As a first-time viewer of your most excellent channel, congratulations on what I presume to be yet another great video and whilst I'm a bit late to the party apparently, (in February 2022), I immediately subscribed at first sound and at the risk of appearing to be a paid shill or professional scam artist leading up to a request for contact via Whatsapp or Telegram, (partly because literally no-one else on UA-cam takes the time to compose such well presented, if apparently pretentious comments, being blessed as I was with a very strict English teacher at school, one late Edward Dean, who would demand absolute silence, particularly whenever he left the classroom for some reason!), so please let me explain the reason for my lengthy diatribe or is it monologue?;
Those with deeper pockets than you or I may laugh at the foolishness to follow but this could literally be a defining moment in your musical career as it pertains to your choice of studio equipment and is by no means a personal criticism, quite the opposite.
Apart from your obviously exquisite elocution, (at which I am truly appalling in person btw, being somewhat "Working class, if you know what I mean, Harry?"), there's noticeably better vocal quality eminating from your rather intimidating looking mini-machine gun style microphone slash keyboard slash ground penetrating scalar wave, beam focussing military satellite based weapons platform compared to most if not all other channels I've heard and speaking of noticeable improvements in sound quality and wearing what I believe to be superior headphones, correct me if I'm wrong but I think I see that you're wearing AKG K702's in this video unless their top end model used the same exact colour combo and identical structural components, (exactly the same as my pair of K702's by the look of them), in black and silver but not currently on my head as they've been relegated to the PS5 and actually may never be used again.
I thought they were the canine's proverbials myself until I finally gave in to years of nagging curiosity and bought some now quite rare Q701 Quincy Jones Signature Edition headphones on eBay recently.
Three pairs in fact if you count the equally excellent Q350 earbuds though they won't stay in place regardless of silicone plug size and I'd be happy for you to audition a pair of Q701's at your leisure if you like but I have yet to see any of your other videos and you may be in no need of an 'upGrado'. Like many popular UA-camrs, you probably have manufacturers throwing them at you for review.
AKG/Harman made plenty of Q701's but people don't seem to be selling them that often. I used to wonder why as they couldn't be that much better than K702's for reference work, surely? You're only paying for the name and maybe a bright green colour if you're into shocking people, though I have both green and black versions but even they have green headband stitching and a green lead. I doubt that Quincy Jones, (whoever he is these days anyway), even visited the factory, right?
To hint at the difference, I even felt guilty outbidding someone else by only a few pounds when I'd just bought a good used pair of Q701's and was quite prepared to let the second ones go so didn't even watch the auction end, thinking that I'd easily be outbid and was very surprised when I wasn't. I only paid GBP £109 plus delivery and luckily they're almost like new minus the original box. I think they sold new for well over £200 in 2016.
I already had some overly bright and clear K550's back then, (excellent btw for muffled speech in a boomy room that has way too much natural bass reverb from a wooden floor echoing off the untreated walls so you can't even hear what's being said like in Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham's classic and profoundly enlightening 'Trialogues' found at the following location if you're into caring about the state of the world, what stands for so-called human intelligence and thinking way too much for your own good; www.sheldrake.org/videos/videos-of-the-mckenna-abraham-sheldrake-trialogues). If, like most, you didn't read this far, don't worry, you probably wouldn't understand anyway. Neither would you realise that you wouldn't have understood and will go on your merry way, as Terence would have said.
I digress; I thought my new K550's were amazing compared to anything else I'd ever heard, especially with really rich and detailed bass which they can definitely reproduce if you crank it up on an E.Q. or hit 'Super Mega Bass Boost' on your stereo system and with incredible bass note separation too, (as out of the box and unbiased toward more low end they're extremely toppy or tinny despite being a fully closed back design, evidence that Harman went overboard with the open-backed imitation), so being blissfully ignorant, I didn't take the plunge earlier on some new Q701's thinking I couldn't possibly justify the extra expense for what I thought would be a marginal improvement in listening pleasure.
As a result, when I bought the K702's a couple of years ago, about when you made this video Tim, (not that you're reading this I'm sure), I went, "Wow, they're the greatest headphones!", just like Sister Sledge - or was it Chic? (Nile Rodgers fans will know) - but the problem is, the extra warmth sounds artificial and colours the whole frequency range, which is fine for watching scratchy or hissy audio to tone the unwanted sparkle down but for studio reference purposes or plugging directly into a keyboard I wouldn't use them now, as my K702's sound muddy in comparison to Q701's, (based upon the K701 model which have a very wide frequency response from 5Hz-40KHz iirc but the Q's manage to remain finely balanced with nothing in particular dominating).
Both of my Q701's sound identical though being used, a pair had a one metre Van Damme silver plated OFC cable which sounds no better to me than standard and though I may be considered bat sh!t crazy, writing hundreds of TL;DR comments like this one over the years in the vain hope that someone out there appreciates them, I'm not a cave-dwelling fruit bat so what would I know about sonic fidelity? As they say, "Sub-aural beauty is in the earlobe of the beholder".
Whilst the K702 model is still very detailed and you're not necessarily missing anything per se, you have to listen much more carefully for it as they're nowhere near as forward in the mid to upper frequencies or as 'high gain' or spacious sounding as Q701's and the difference in clarity and separation across the entire soundstage is dramatic with Q701's. I thought they might be a bit overpriced and gimmicky when they launched but if anyone knows of significantly more vivid and 'there in the same room' headphones worth the presumably significant price difference, by all means let everyone know?
It doesn't matter how old they are as long as they're still readily available.....
We're all eras!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I know you can pay three grand or more for planar magnetic's or somesuch but I cannot imagine that it's worth paying that much more for them in comparison unless money is no object, at least for my knackered eardrums. Then again, I'm just a consumer grade amateur who hasn't been spoilt yet by the finer things in life. If crypto's continue to outperform as they have, that may well change......
That's why I watched this upmarket video as being a mere Plebian Prole getting ideas way above his pay grade, I just bought a mind and note bendingly awesome ex-demo Yamaha MODX 6 on eBay, (of course!), and saw a few Waldorf Quantums or correctly, Quanta or maybe Quanti for four times the price at £2500 used, the cheapest new one being £3,333.
Now I just need someone who's owned both to try and convince me that, (like the Q701 headphones compared to K702's), it's worth the extra investment in a Waldorf for the casual home user still learning to play keyboard over the amazing and incredibly capable MODX 6!??
The Waldorf sure looks beautifully made though.....
I'll probably buy one used in a few years once I can play The Entertainer all the way through without screwing it up!
hei , in this case Prophet 6 has better physical signature natural sound quality and frequency stability than Waldorf Quantum ,... sound of Waldorf Quantum sound is more compressed and frequencies are destabilized by its electroacoustic space capacity limitation and it has higher percentage of harmonic distortion , and at same settings as Prophet 6 , Waldorf will be less spaceopen and frequencies will sound brighter and ringing at higher frequency peak and it will not achieve same bass depth as Prophet 6, .... no matter of the price , in this case Waldorf is lower quality tool with lot of make up , but all make up in the world which surfs inside that Waldorf cannot improve its sound quality to beat Prophet 6 in this video , ... people should know also that each model of Prophet or Waldorf or any other electronic instrument have different frequency characteristics ,..... in this case i am of course talking about models you use in your video , ..... however theres are some possible theoretical and maybe practical fix workarounds around that kind of quality deterioration issues ... ...
Likes to taLK
I will tell you absolutely why the iridium blows the doors off the prophet.... and I have both... programming...PROGRAMMING! the iridium is worth it just for the interface (gui) you can make the iridium stand on its head...and tons more synthesis.... i copy a lot of serum ideas into my iridium envelopes to lfos...all kinds of modulations... the iridium will embarrass the prophet for modern music + iridium has drive, gain, and eq... nuff said...BOOYAKA!
always a more expensive instrument sounds better ... This is a psychosomatic perception. Seriously both sounds sound like, from a $ 100 korg
Bullshit