Massive X Does NOT Alias
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- There's been quite a few videos about how Massive X aliases. This video will show you that it does in fact, NOT alias.
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#massivex #synthtutorial #nativeinstrumentsmassivex
"Ah shit here we go again"
In the future there will be a plug-in That adds Alius to your synth. Like vinyl crackle and tape hiss... Lmfao
Introducing“Vintage vsti synth 4”
I actually wasnt sure how to spell aliasing...but thanks
They already exist
Thank you for putting this out. I did beta test and do some factory library presets for Massive X. Plenty of thoughts on what needs updating and improvement in future versions, but the fundamental sound engine is not one of them. When you spend hours working on presets, your ears get fatigued, and I didn't run into that problem as quickly with Massive X. Love Serum and original Massive, but people forget that they griped about shortcomings of both of those as well. I do hope NI, amongst other updates, will consider a draft mode like Serum has. For the average user's setup, it can be super CPU hungry, especially with patches that use a lot of voices, modulation and FX. Anyway, thanks for posting this video. As always, helpful and constructive.
Patrick P. Yeah that’s true man! The sound engine is good. Glad you liked the video
dude i trust your professional opinion so much, all i needed to see was the headline oh AND NI SHOULD PAY U
Steven J haha thanks man!
@Mxz lots of paid shills on TH-cam. Discerning paid or unpaid opinions gets annoying. I'm just saying his video is the best I've seen on the topic. But doesn't really matter much to me as I hardly use massive.
Looks like NI payed him - synth is full of bugs, raw, had no manual, delayed release, now NI shut down their community and support so you can't complain anymore lol, besides that sound engine IS pretty good and I personally like Massive X, but with all that NI attitude I would never pay theme a penny anymore and I will.
Glad someone finally said something. I saw a lot of top level producers falling for that bs.
Slawth i agree! That’s why I made this video, usually don’t like getting involved in this sort of stuff
Top level producers are not necessarily educated sound engineers
FYI, aliasing that is most undesirable and detectable is generally inharmonic, and is a function of the oscillator or A/D's sampling frequency as defined by the Nyquist frequency (i.e. Fs > F/2) for that channel within the signal to noise constraints and related capacity as per Shannon's Limit ( WLog2 (1 + S/N)).
That said, not all aliasing is inharmonic, in fact, harmonic aliasing is created when a nonlinear operation are performed on a discrete signal during creation or in conversion between the analog and digital domains, as is common in fields like mixing and master and audio engineering in general. There is a difference in how harmonic vs inharmonic aliases can be handled. Inharmonic aliasing has nonlinear structure, but can be thought of as effectove;u random, and cannot be effectively eliminated post sampling or generation. In contrast, harmonic aliasing can often be dealt with post creation, as long as you have an algorithm or reference signal to help you determine which portions of the generated signal are the natural harmonics and which are the nonlinearly generated alias artifact harmonic.
I hope this makes some sense, as I have a somewhat deep background in nonlinear math as it relates to signal processing, etc and can sometimes gloss over what may be useful explanatory information.
Nice video The first thing I noticed about Massive X was how good it sounds so far its one of the best sounding synths Iv heard. That and Diva.
Please make presets for MASSIVE X asap!
It would be awesome to see your workflow and thought process when you make presets for Massive X. would buy
Massive X has some of the best oscillators out there. It sounds beefy as hell. Filters too. And the distortion devices are incredible. The more I use it the more I love it. I think I just had to get over the interface at first.
I don’t like the fact that there are no read outs on any of the parameters. Also it would be nice to see the modulation as it’s happening (as in other synths) other than that it is great.
IF a synth sounds great, you will use it so much that you get used to the GUI, IMO it doesn't look bad. Including the selection of skins for it, it looks quite nice. the most important thing in music is originality and quality of sound and how many tracks you write, so if this synth sounds great, people will use it regardless of the tiny GUI discrepancies.
I think the mod visual feedback is fixed by now, I've seen it in some tutorials if I'm not wrong
Thanks for clearing this up for us all. I didn't really buy that it had problematic aliasing because it sounded way too clean to me.
Correct. However some of the filters are distorting when inactive, an that’s some sloppy seconds.
Yeah man I agree, the Asimov filter does some weird stuff. I was just touching on the oscillator aliasing and the sine wave thing. It's by far a perfect synth ha. I give it a 7.5 out of 10.
Shane I love you for this video. I learned so much!!🔥🔥🔥
I feel this is a good response to a certain TH-cam tutorial hero of mine, thanks Shane, it almost felt like I was taking a class. I have been a fan of MasX from the get-go, it is the first softsynth in a while which actually has this unique sound (which I cant yet pinpoint exactly but its there)....
the best responses to his false claims are posted on the KVR forum where members showed him exactly why and where he was wrong and he just ignored everyone.
www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=510962&start=2565
As far as I know, Sadowick's original videos are still unlisted. I don't think he ever publicly acknowledged he was wrong.
dude i really love your content, i value what you have to say, i believe in your products, you're great and have made a big impact on my music career. KEEP IT UP
whats a good controller for massive x. I want to be hands on but I want a basic way to start
Finally!! Someone talking sense ;) Can't wait for some more massive x tutorials & presets. thanks
sorry. I am beginner. Can you tell me why there's no `alias` bad???
연금술사 no alias = good. Aliasing is bad
@@EchoSoundWorks Thank you master. So How about original massive and serum?? They have no alias too?
@@kwangyasavage If you go to the global tab in Serum, you can turn up the oversampling rate to 4x, that won't alias at all. Even at 1x there's hardly any. Original Massive might Alias a little bit. This video was in response to another TH-cam video that incorrectly stated Massive X aliases when it does not.
Thanks for clearing this up Shane. I have no idea why NI decided to use imperfect sine waves. I guess it's just the factory wavetables?
I think it's just an artefact from the wavetable interpolation. If you move the WT position knob, the harmonics increase as it morphs into the other waves.
It probably has a lot to do with the character of the sound. Pure waves are very useful and are attainable as had been demonstrated but additional harmonics mimics the effects analog circuits produce.
@@lambd01d I think that's probably it. Or it has more to do with that harmonic filter.
And Kill The Noise actually had so many good things to say about it, I appreciate that video he made recently a lot!
It still won't let me use my own wavetable......
I never even knew what Aliasing was in a Synthesizer, until you talked about it. Thanks for the video!
You’re welcome!!
a question about the draft mode of serum, i suspect it means no oversampling it will use the sample rate of the host (a host doesn't have to be a DAW...).
still why does serum aliases? a pure sine wave, has no harmonics, we know fourier... (so massive x does already something with a pure sine, no prob, it doesn't have to). because a pure sine wave, yes yes, is it's own fundamental...
serum is bandlimited by using FFT calculations (FFF/iFFT), so how can a single cycle wave, that is calculated with the before mentioned method, produce aliasing???
it is me thinks broken down into 1024 bins (partials), it is bandlimited by design.
strange...
disclaimer: don't own serum, do have massive x. i have a "serum" like wavetable synth (and of course others, that aren't that serum..), that produces, without oversampling a pure sine wave. but that is same method as serum, and a lot of wavetable synths.
but great video, aliasing it can be a problem, but it has become a great hype (although some synths did it wrong...), like, what are or were the other hypes?
don't believe the hype! simple tests, and if it sounds right it sounds right, even if there is aliasing, at a low levels... you can't hear it. but see it...
"I hate this HIT record! All the great sounding synth patches on it are aliasing!" - No one, ....Ever. #EarsNotEyes
legend is my favorite synth !!
Steven J one of mine too
Nice examples man! I learned some stuff I didn't know. I already thought Massive X sounded pretty awesome, although definitely more interested after seeing this definitive proof of non-aliasing.
Great video Echo Sound Works, I wonder how many people would even hear those harmonics if it weren't for visual meters showing they are there? Are eyes making a more rash judgement over ears?
It does get tedious seeing TH-camrs launch Pro-Q 3 in every synth video, hunting for artifacts.
@@bonchbonch I might be wrong but I doubt that Gary Newman, Vangelis, Deadmau5 spent too much time worrying about artefacts over making great music with great sounds. Good that Echo Sound Works is highlighting this here :)
There should be videos about the lack of visual feedback, the lack of importing tables/noises and the lack of saving performance modulations and other quality of life "presets". I have and use Massive X, it's wonderful but it's insane what they left out. I'm hoping updates will fix this.
Chris Woolf I have a video talking about that. I think it’s coming in an update
thank you echo. that other guy thinks he cant ever be wrong 🤫
I think that they did a secret update cause if you look at sadowicks TH-cam he did the same exact thing and got aliasing. Even in the Fx Osc.
John Brooks I know it’s not updated because mine still says beta at the top! When I watched that video, i didn’t see aliasing, I just saw an impure sine wave. I don’t know if I watched the whole thing though
@@EchoSoundWorks probably should watch the whole thing, theres band-limiting problems everywhere
SadowickProduction i wanted to but it got removed when I came back to watch it
@@SadowickProduction There is not. We went over this in the KVR forums already, didn't we Sadowick? You're _entirely_ clueless about the shit you're talking about. Only a doofus like you could be looking at an exciter and evaluate it with an oscilloscope (which is not what exciters do, they give an impulse across the frequency spectrum, which is why you have the "F" in the graphic).
Not to mention, you hid your pathetic video in lieu of embarrassment and here you are asking others to watch it. Isn't it amazing that this guy, who claims that he doesn't even know that much about the mathematics behind aliasing (well, the DSP behind aliasing morelike), still manages to make a better video than you do in regards to aliasing?
dude that's been the biggest problem with massive x ... this is sounds incredible and has so many features that people don't know about or how to use it. kids writing hate comments and making fools of them selfs in videos showing how they have no idea what there talking about... everyone will see this is one of the best synths out... they just need someone to show them how bad ass this thing is.
It would have been great if NI bothered to write a manual for it before release.
How do I find that Serum skin??!!
im looking for the same thing lol...im all on the xfer site checking for updates and everything..
Great video I agree
But one thing I don’t think you showed was the sine waves partials via serum (normally) in pro- Q3
Along with the sines fundamental Only one additional harmonic shows up..
which is much closer to a text book pure sine wave::: But it’s not a pure sine wave either then if there is an additional partial? I could be wrong but I’m literally in the harmonic content chapter of “a practical guide to music synthesis”
So is it correct both wavetable synths are unable to create a pure sine wave ?
Hey echo,I need a help,whenever I'm making a lfo bass or any sound with lfo on it,there is always a little delay whenever I play it,I checked all the adsr (especially attack) but I didn't find anything that's effecting and causing this problem.I hope you can help me here....
phew! now that we got that out of the way...
NI Massive X does have audible aliasing. But I have it and I like it - not my go to synth.
How do I get that beautiful serum skin you have?
do you teach anywhere else? i always learn something
The oscillator doesn't produce any aliasing. The filter does. Load up the "Init - Massive X" preset (which has an Asimov filter in line between the oscillator and output). Play a very very high note, and look at it on the scope. Or just listen. It has the characteristic "radio tuning" effect if you apply a little pitch mod to the oscillator with an LFO because the reflected harmonics move in the opposite direction as the non-reflected harmonics. Crank up the "gain" on the filter and it'll be even more pronounced. Now, is that actually a problem? How often are you pushing a C#9 note into a low-pass filter that's wide open with the gain turned up? That's another question. The "Distortion" and "Folder" inserts also produce aliasing, as well the master stereo "Nonlinear Labs" effect, although those all have a HQ button that reduces the aliasing. The bit crusher does too, of course, but that's expected.
tothefinlandstation I know that filter mode is an emulation of TB303. Wonder if that’s why. Maybe the original behaved similarly
@@EchoSoundWorks The 303's analog filter wouldn't have aliasing. Aliasing is a fundamentally digital artifact. And all the filter modes on Massive X have aliasing when wide open, with a very high frequency wave going through them (most noticeable with some pitch mod via LFO on the oscillator). Again, not sure this is actually a problem for 99.9% of musical use cases.
Thank you for making this and putting the bogus misinformation out there to rest.
Hi there, good vid, but wanted to point out some terminology misconception. Enharmonic tones/notes are simply notes that have the same fundamental frequency, but are called two different names (e.g. C# and Db) I'm sure you know this, because what you're talking about are INharmonic overtones, which is quite confusing because of the unfortunate nature of how those words are said.
Just might be nice to have some clarification there
I guess I don't know shit nowadays cuase I've neverrrr heard of aliasing.
But I learned something with your vid ..thanks
Say it again for the people in the back 🗣 also....how do u get that serum skin?
Preppy it’s included in our pack the X keys as a bonus product 👍
Why anyone would want a pure sine wave for any purpose except research is beyond me.
I haven't seen any of the videos claiming there's aliasing but there clearly isn't any. If there was any it would, as you demonstrated, be most prominent when playing close to Nyquist and appear below the fundamental.
On the off chance that there is it looks like it'll be negligible unless you use way too many instances of it.
pure sines are good to bounce out and use as subs for rolling basses. but maybe the bouncing out part is just superstition left over from when i wasnt sure if a synth would actually retrigger perfectly lol. some people (like craig connelly) get a pure sine playing at 30Hz and just throw that under their sub but i dont know if that truly makes much of a difference
Thank you for your explanation!
6:15 my left ear didn’t hear that but my right ear heard it a little too well :)
who else feels guilty wasting their time with this aliasing debate
me
SadowickProduction 😂 legend!!!
Good information, thanks!
10:07 that's what the keytracking on the filter is supposed to prevent.
Hi! A sin wave shouldn't have any extra harmonics. It should be just the fundamental.
Now you can get rid of those harmonics on the main oscillators in MX using the oscillators' filter as you demonstrate. But now, activate one of the subsidiary oscillators in the A/B/C fx section and set it to sin. in the routing section disable the main oscillators and route the subsidiary oscillator direct to output. See that those pesky harmonics are still there?
How do you get rid of those without using the main filter?
And say I want to use that oscillator as an input to the filter FM, then won;t the harmonics compromise the modulation? Probably not by much, but still, for a $299.00 soft synth you'ld think they could supply a pure sin wave. Its not a massive gripe, and its been blown out of proportion. But it is a little messy.
Chris Peck you make some good points!
Easy fix is to just make a pure sine wave table like you mentioned.
@@EchoSoundWorks I wouldn't be able to import them though ... You can in Serum/Pigments/Hive etc! :) I haven't checked if the filters self oscillate. That would be another way. I don't think they do though. Ah well... Still that oscillator section is cool, huh?
Chris Peck some of the filters do self oscillate!
And yeah I quite like the oscillators in MX
You can lead a horse to signal programing but you can make him think it!
And What? After this Massive X will sounds worster? not sure...it's fucking hard for learing and doing own sounds synth but i like it and like the way how you can change the sound with it.
That Serum skin is juicy
where can i get it?
It is a bonus in X Keys I do believe!
@@SabastianWeaver ok thx!
@@nicebluejay it's very similar to the free Anthracite skins
@@prspktvmusic thx!! just downloaded them and they look great
Is that the problem that hold you back from making music?
What?
Sadowick shows it when he plays the very high notes. Most synth will- my nord lead 1 has beautiful artifacts. Massive x is aliasing too. Play higher notes 😂
Good tutorial ..
Very nice, Shane! Think people are just being a little too cruel!
Azure Eyes yeah it’s a solid synth, NI is held to a HIGH standard so anything less than a grand slam was going to get shit. But it’s a good sounding synth that is fun to use. What more do you want at the end of the day?
Echo Sound Works it is! I do see people's issues with it though. Like needing an AVX compatible CPU is kind of a big problem for old Mac users! I also have a feeling we'll see a plethora of updates and features coming throughout the months for it! It's a fun synth to program. Might hit you up on some presets!
Played with massive x a lot already, freaking love this vst. I also like the possibility to have a clean digital sound (reset of oscillators, filters, effects, envelopes) or analog drift emulation.. in either case, it sounds unlike any VST and the onboard effects are stunning. A lot is wrong with it too, it seems very rushed release, a lot of features are missing.
Still, most of the idiots that immediately jumped on the MassiveX hate train are just NPC's that can't form their own opinion. And hate is always the easier option to go with.. if you are a skilled sound designer, you can turn farts into godly, angelic pads, so I really cant understand how people completely shit on this synth when there's so much good stuff in it too...
You can get a perfectly pure sine wave with just 1 harmonic, in Serum....you should know that, LOL
Why are you still using the beta of Massive X?
Check the filter...stop protecting a bad release...
Spero I wouldn’t say I’m protecting it. I have no collateral interest in propping up the reputation of massive x. I just wanted to touch on the pure sine wave/aliasing in the oscillators.
If I was the CEO of NI, I wouldn’t have released this version of the synth for what it’s worth
@@EchoSoundWorks What you did in this video is exactly what I was seeing in my own testing with a DAW-based EQ plugin. I was thinking the "aliasing" was the harmonics. But as you said, you can't hear any artifacts. I'm really trying to figure out: Is there a synth plugin out there that actually aliases really bad that can be used as a reference? And you gave the example with the Legend & also provided a workaround for aliasing using the Monarch. Cool stuff & thank you.
So, it's not aliasing, just unwanted harmonics.
I don't think it's unwanted harmonics, it's probably something NI did by design to emulate some older synths, but i'm guessing.
It’s not unwanted. It’s actually modeling analog synths just naturally added in some coloration/Harmonics. You can just turned them down or off with the harmonic filter
no not unwanted, the sine wave in massive seems to be modeled after an analog sine, the additional harmonics are a product of "imperfection" if you will, but pleasant imperfection. i have a bunch of hardware synths, most of them don't even provide sine waves, and if they do, like my prophet 12, they are also not 100% clean. people need to relax smh
If you wanna have that pure sine wave, filter the harmonics out, and see for yourself that the difference in sound with a blind test is inaudible in most cases.
If you want a digitally perfect sine wave, there's plenty of synths that provide that, like the Meldaproduction synth MSoundfactory or MPowersynth, they have 100% aliasing free oscillators, even when you do wave transformation or scanning through wave forms, with up to 16x oversampling. It can bring down every computer to its knees.
Massive just doesn't go there, because analog organic sound is their first choice I guess...and I love every bit of it!!
Cool. I'll stick with Serum though. Rather have something else for the money instead of another synth.
Sadowick talked about this
Yes Sadowick was mad cause massive x alliasing,here we know i'ts not aliassing but is harmonics
@@wizmos74 not quite th-cam.com/video/ErSBnEEk-M4/w-d-xo.html
Please keep making presets original massive
Not all aliasing are equal.. Run the sine wave on massive x at 192 and see if the so called harmonics are still there.
192k won't do any difference because the sound engine of MX runs perpetually at 88.2k, it's downsampled or upsampled depending on your host SR.
I think the term producers is now anyone with an opinion.
You really think kids of today are listening to music that closely?
Unless it’s classical played on quality equipment, your never going to hear it on air pods
Good video
Jim Poobear haha yeah I can’t even hear those harmonics in the sine wave on my monitors and sub. So they aren’t showing up on phone speakers 😂
My problem with shadowick is that he pumps out a lot of videos but clearly doesn't do enough research before releasing them. I think he has a lot of good content, don't get me wrong; but I just wish he would suck it up, apologise and make his mistake public.
Timothy West I love Brent’s channel, seems like a good guy who loves all things audio.
Your'e right and he has gone back on a lot that he's said I learnt to take a lot of his content with a grain of salt many years ago. He seems to pump our content with out any filtering this will inevitably lead to the type of things we've seen. He puts out so much it almost seems like live streaming.
He made a follow-up video about the Massive X discussion. Here it is: th-cam.com/video/ErSBnEEk-M4/w-d-xo.html and well, he is clearly right.
Finally some sense!
I never expected it to be aliasing because it’s a god damned CPU hog 🤣
🍿
This is a prime example as to why there is hardly any good music. Majority of our time spent on sine waves and frequencies. And don’t give me this being expert. You forgot the reason why this was created for. MAKE QUALITY MUSIC instead of dumpster hashing.
Ok, boomer.
It's just not good like most NI products. Bad design, timid feature list, too few oscillators, no AI implementation, nothing interesting, just another basic b synth.
Wrong
lot of haters in the game
you can't reproduce o simple sine wave on massive x (even if it is not "aliasing") and you try to defend the sine wave ? overall massive x has potential but is not ready ...
That's not true, you can produce a simple sine wave. Turn down the harmonic filter and you have a simple sine wave. You can't produce a simple sine wave on a lot of vintage synths, like Moog. And that didn't/doesn't stop people from using those synths.
if you can't produce a sinewave on massive x then i suggest you quit trying.maybe it is easy for the rest of the world and impossible just to you and sadowick productions.but it is clear that u CAN produce a single sine wave.
I think you didn't watch the video all the way through. You absolutely can produce a pure sine wave.
And where is Shadowick with his apology? Hm.
First !!!
A pure sine wave only has a fundamental. It shouldn't have harmonics
Then turn the oscillator filter down to get a pure sine. That's what it's for.
@@bonchbonch I was talking about a PURE SINE. I know turning the filter down gets rid of harmonics on other waveforms. A pure sine doesn't have any harmonics it is just a fundamental frequency- look up the definition. I've nothing more to say on it.
@@karma133 You didn't watch the video all the way through. Turning down the oscillator filter on a sine waveform removes the harmonics and produces a pure sine. This is demonstrated in the video.
@@bonchbonch I repeat a sine wave does not have any harmonics. That's what a sine wave is- a fundamental frequency. If it has harmonics it is not a sine. I really don't know why I bothered replying to you again. Why not check out what you are saying? I'm done now.
@@karma133 You keep repeating that a pure sine wave has no harmonics even though nobody ever said otherwise. You're not correcting anybody. It's like you have no idea what this video is even about, and you're just posting to make yourself feel smart. I'm glad you're "done now" because you have nothing worthwhile to say.
Massive x sucks. Period. Don’t defend it. There’s so many things wrong with it. More bad things than good things. Huge fail. Won’t be nearly as popular as the original massive. They still haven’t made any updates to fix issues. Who cares if there’s no aliasing. What do you think about that horrendous GUI? 🚮
Omaticdream don’t get it twisted, I’m not saying it’s a perfect synth. Check out my first look video and you will see what I mean. I am defending this whole aliasing and pure sine thing because that’s ridiculous. I have 4 hardware synths that don’t have a pure sine wave. And I’m weird, I don’t mind sterile GUI, but I get it’s not a look that everyone likes
Echo Sound Works love your soundpacks and presets. Not trying to sound so negative. But it’s nothing towards you. It’s just super disappointing how things were hyped up for this to be so buggy and mediocre. I can’t even run this thing on my machine. That’s another reason why I can’t talk about anything good about it.
Omaticdream thanks for the kind words! I understand your perspective completely. Hopefully it gets better with an update. Or we get Serum 2 from Steve Duda haha