[A6] What is fat anyway?

[Ioannis Kazlaris]

Hi people,

if you crank up the gain knob in your mixer/amplifier, with Background tuning set to Off, play a sound and let it decay to silence. WIth some patches, after the sound has faded, you can still hear the oscillators. The effect is quite pronounced so that it can't be masked by noise.

When I was new to synthesizers, I was always wondering what is exactly the difference between analog and digital. To this day, no-one has been able to answer that question properly and probably no-one will ever do. Digital was the game and many people, including me, thought that it would be a waste of money to cash in on analog. I used to get some replies like organic, smooth, fat blah blah.... Well, what is organic? I have always been getting the same answer: If you program some instability to the sound.. like a random voltage and maybe some noise modulating the oscillators and so on. Then you go grab a digital synthesizer, program all of the above and Poah! suddenly this is organic too.

What exactly is fat? Loud perhaps? Unisoned perhaps? Who said so? If I crank up the volume and play some notes in the lower registers will that be fat? I have noticed that fat is always associated with bass, so the above assumption must be true. But then again people always complain about lack of bass in digital synthesizers. So is there something else we need to consider? What if we combine loud and organic? Both of these can be implemented very well in good digital synthesizers. Anything else? Anyone?

Well, apart from the obvious - electronic difference between VCOs and DCOs, VCFs and digital ones, it always seemed to me that, though there is a difference, it is very difficult for me to say exactly what it is. Is it a psycho-acoustic phenomenon? Is it the listener's pre-supposition that he indeed plays an analog instrument and should be expected to get far more pleasing sounds? I have made some patches on a JP 8000 that are so fat, they are impossible to mix. Who said that fat is always what you need? And when is it that fat is TOO fat? There are a couple of people who can't work with Minimoogs (3 VCOs) because they are too fat and they resolve using other synthesizers, like SCI-Pro Ones (2 VCOs). So, basically, you're looking for a fat-well balanced mix, not a fat sound per se, unless you're doing something solo. And then you start simplifying things, like different filtering, different EQ, blah blah because you can't mix them. And very frequently, you come up with something that
 resembles very much...digital.

One could argue that on a pure VCO vs DCO comparison, there is an obvious difference in sound quality. The VCO is organic by its nature, but that can be programmed in the DCO. Same thing about the filters. So with digital, it is my guess, that we are trying to emulate what is inherent to analog. I have always wondered why a lot of people don't like digital synthesizers. Everyone is cashing in on analog because there's instant gratification and that sound, but you can get there with digital as well. He he... the proof of that is the term "Virtual Analog". Well there isn't such thing. It's digital. Period. I haven't heard anyone describing Moogs, ARPs, Oberheims as Virtual Digital. How come?

We all have an idea about fat, smooth, crispy, blah blah and we all have different equipment, different listening environments and so on. Which only make things worst when you try to compare.

These are just some thoughts I always have and thought that it would be a nice idea to share them here, now.

Yannis


		
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