Aliasing oscillators?
 

I know this has been discussed here before but...

I'm seriously considering purchasing a Virus TI 2 and have never owned a Virus before. The only thing making me hesitate is the complaints I've heard on some forums about how badly the Virus aliases at higher frequencies. I was surprised to hear this because I thought aliasing oscillators were no longer an issue on most modern digital synths. I can't understand why Access would not have addressed this by now. I can understand not wanting to alter the classic Virus sound, but it seems like they could simply add additional non-aliasing oscillators as an option to choose from (yes, I've heard the super-saw is supposed to be alias free).

Am I making a bigger issue out of this than it actually is? The Virus is obviously one of the most used VA's around, so a lot of people must not think the aliasing is an issue. Would it be possible for someone to post an audio clip demonstrating this aliasing issue. I've tried going to my local Guitar Centers to demo the Virus, but neither of them had a working one in stock. Any helpful opinions or comments would be appreciated.

the supersaw wave, as well as eat pulse (pulse wave replacement) and sine wavetables dont alias anywhere near as much as the classic oscillators

honestly i haven't noticed much in the way of aliasing. TI is by far the best experience I've had w/ a VA in that regard.

"anywhere near" i don't understand. do you hear aliasing when using the Sine wavetable?

marc

sure, my TI2 might have more aliasing when directly compared to other synths, but i'm also making more melodies with the sweeter sounding TI2, go figure.

Well, it whistles at an unwanted additional frequency when the pitch is modulated with an LFO and the TI is plays a high note.

could you please supply a patch which illustrates that?

thanks, marc

i should have just said there isnt any

A pure sine wave is the one waveform that you would ordinarily expect would never give rise to aliasing. The fundamental frequency is the only frequency component in a sine wave, so unless you attempted to set the fundamental itself to greater than the Nyquist frequency (and that's ordinarily impossible due to the range of MIDI notes), you should not be able to cause aliasing using only a sine wavetable.

It is the waveforms that have frequency components higher than the fundamental frequency, i.e., anything other than a sine wave, where aliasing becomes a possibility, ordinarily.

-luddy

Well, it still could be artifacts cause by interpolation, since I don't expect that the virus is doing the additive synthesis needed for wavetable synthesis on the fly.

@Marc

Patch as described, it was the first thing I tested when I got my TI about 2 1/2 years ago, all saturation/distortion functions set to off, but haven't rechecked that for a while,...