Roland V-Synth can't do "analog"?

As an owner and avid user of the Roland V-Synth, there is one thing I hear very often about it that I take particular exception to: “the V-Synth can’t do good analog-style sounds”. I would like to take this time to show how much more capable the instrument is for this task than people like to give credit.

To do this though, we must first outline a few points that most people center on when they think of the “analog” sound. Quite obviously, the absence of aliasing in the audio is a necessity, as that is the trademark of a digital signal. Beyond that though, it tends to get far more subjective: typically, the pitch of oscillators is unstable (such that it has slight fluctuations around the main pitch it is tuned to), the tone of the oscillators is more raw and full-sounding, and the filter has more grunt to it, really starting to come into its own when the resonance setting is cranked up. It would take many books worth of investigation and exploration to explain what the actual science is that causes these characteristics present in the older true analog synthesizers, but saving that, we will focus on those main points to show how the V-Synth is every bit as capable as any true analog synth of pumping out warm, lush, fat, large, and otherwise *insert industry lingo for “pleasant sounding” here* sounding tones.

Aliasing:

I would be negligent if I were to say the V-Synth was free of aliasing. In fact, in the higher registers, it’s fairly awful. As paramount as it is to not have aliasing in order to have that “analog” sound, this synth doesn’t have to have it’s oscillators pushed too high in frequency to have that facet of its character show through. Thankfully though, some of the other critical components of the sound generation process, such as the oscillators and especially filters, breathe enough life into the instrument to give it that “analog” feel that’s only lost in the highest of frequency registers.

Oscillators:

The V-Synth has all the basic analog-style oscillator waveforms (saw, pulse, triangle) as well as some variations on them (supersaw, essentially a multitude of stacked and detuned saw waves, and x-mod, a unique Roland model based on cross-modulation of oscillators.) One very useful parameter of each oscillator is the “random” parameter for pitch. While technically not faithful to analog synths due to the actual underlying reasons for pitch instability (all of which I hope to cover in future blog posts), it provides a convenient passable way to inject the not-precisely-consistent nature of analog circuits into your sound; this entire idea is usually what most in the field consider to be “organic” sounding.

Filters:

In my opinion, the filter of a subtractive synth is the single most important aspect of the character it has, let alone its contribution to the analog sound. The V-Synth has many different options when it comes to filters, in both type and number. Unlike traditional analog synthesizers, the V-Synth offers three unique signal path options, so even aside from being able to run 2 separate filters at once, they can be arranged in multiple ways as well, running parallel to each other, in series, or even a sort of hybrid of the two. Aside from the more typical state-variable filter (or as Roland calls them, time-variable filter), which offers a very nice -24dB low-pass filter as one of its types, there is also a special filter called “TB filter”, which is designed to emulate the punchy sound of the TB-303 filter. As it turns out, with zero resonance applied, the TB filter is a fantastic filter for full and rich analog style bass sounds, and even with brass style patches and other analog style pads it is a very rich and full sounding filter.

Audio Samples:

              Having looked at the handful of areas mentioned above, let’s proceed to an audio demo. I’ve done some comparison patches on the V-Synth based on the factory presets of the Roland Super JX (JX10), which was essentially the last analog synth Roland built, as well as a made-from-scratch patch on the V-Synth in the style of vintage analog synthesizers and akin to the sound that an artist like Vangelis might employ in some of his works. Can you spot the real analog from the digital counterpart?

Vsynth analog demo by Mr Blu Gruv