SH-201 Aliasing

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realtrance
Posts: 128
Joined: 16:39, 8 April 2005

SH-201 Aliasing

Post by realtrance »

Ok, not a complaint, every digital synth has aliasing and only a few (Virus) compensate.

But quick question regarding the SH-201's design: I was playing one the other day in a quiet place and if you choose the supersaw waveforms, and play in the mid to upper octaves of the keyboard, there's definitely some aliasing noise going on in the background. This is regardless of whether you've multiplied the supersaws with the PWM knob, or turned them down to lowest setting with same.

Can anyone from Roland verify whether this is intended behavior (it does add grunge to the sound, maybe intentionally?) or whether I was playing a defective SH201?

Thanks!
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Artemiy
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Re: SH-201 Aliasing

Post by Artemiy »

Yes, both V-Synth (analog oscillators only) and SH-201 are known to exhibit aliasing, but personally I think this is what makes them sound different, as all those crystal-clear synths sound pretty much the same to me.
realtrance
Posts: 128
Joined: 16:39, 8 April 2005

Re: SH-201 Aliasing

Post by realtrance »

Cool! That's what I figured, just wanted to be sure.

I'm getting this thing, it's the essence of simple, and sounds great!

Oh and I'm not at all worried about "32 user slots," actually it has a gazillion slots for patches, they're just on your hard drive. ;)

Also it has the wonderful benefit of my little old SH-32 of not having an LCD screen, and this time not even an LED screen. Why is that a benefit? Well, there's nothing to fade and go dark and unreadable on the synth over the years!

Plus the plastic case doesn't bug me at all, it'll be nice to have something so frickin' portable -- it apparently outputs both audio and MIDI via USB so it should be easy to record in Sonar, and easy to use as a control interface for Reaktor....

Thanks for the quick reply, Artemio!
syevad2
Posts: 5
Joined: 22:58, 7 August 2020

Re: SH-201 Aliasing

Post by syevad2 »

well...I'd say LOFI makes it more grungy and gritty and if some plugins are sold to lower the bit resolution on purpose.... So, yes give me plenty of aliasing - there should be a dedicated knob!!

Let other synths taking care about being clean...I like the SH201 the way it is (is going to be a classic in 20 years).
Frequalizer
Posts: 30
Joined: 11:46, 7 February 2020

Re: SH-201 Aliasing

Post by Frequalizer »

On the stepping filter subject what I noticed on the MC-808's MFX filter options is if you reduce the slope on the super filter or step filter effect in the software editor from -36dB downward to -24dB, or -12dB it helps a with -12dB sounding the least aliased to the ear and -36dB the most aliased to the ear. So you can kind of tweak it and adjust it how you like somewhat. So that is defiantly something to keep in mind. I think by hardware default the MFX and the slope on the MC-808 was set to -36dB on both those filters effects as well.

Basically if you widen the gap difference from the original sound level with the digital filter effect the further from it the more aliased it's going to sound and more pronounced at lower sample and bit rates of course naturally.
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