Hardware vs software – what won? Conclusions then?

In issue 298 of Computer Music we asked if you could tell the difference between hardware and software synths. You answered in your droves – here are the results!

In the September issue of Computer Music we lined up three hardware classic mono synths – the Moog Minimoog, ARP Odyssey and Roland SH-101 – with their software and (where possible) iOS emulations. We put audio from three examples of each of the three synths on FileSilo and asked you to identify which was which.

The results were fascinating in that no one managed to guess the true source of every sound – some people did get a lot correct, but most people were way off with their guesses. Of course, having digitised all of the audio and put it online for you to download, you could easily argue that we evened up the playing field and you weren’t really listening to ‘proper’ analogue vs digital, but if you take that argument to its natural conclusion, you’ll end up going round in circles. The answer really is that it’s all relative and a great sound should still sound great against another sound, even when uploaded.

Well, it’s not exactly a scientific study but the general consensus is that the software sounded every bit as good as the hardware with the GForce Oddity softsynth and Korg iOS app particularly scoring very well with many people believing they were the hardware. Who’d have thought a magazine called Computer Music would have concluded that?

Anyway for everyone who had a go, the actual answers are presented here. And we had such a good response from it that we will continue the feature and next time will be lining a Sequential Prophet-V and Roland Jupiter 8 up with their iOS and softsynth equivalents.