"Vintage" Akai Sine Wave Keygroup for MPCs

So there's a bit of hype about the sine wave built into the old Akais from the '80s, particularly the S900/S950. Some people love making sub basses with it and swear it sounds fatter than a pure sine wave. I have an old Akai X7000 keyboard, which as far as I'm aware has the same D/A, sample engine, filter etc as the S900 (it certainly sounds like an S900 when I chop breaks into it). And it has that same sine wave built in as well. So I used the Autosampler in my MPC One to make a keygroup program of the "fat" sine wave for everyone to check out.

It includes every note from C0 up to C2 sampled for 5 seconds each. IMO it's not really any different from any other sine wave, except for a bit of background noise and some faint high-pitched aliasing, which reminds me a bit of the NES triangle wave. Nothing that particularly stands out in a mix. But that's just my opinion, and I'm curious to hear how you guys like it and what you make with it. Cheers!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qd6mdd ... sp=sharing

Neurone wrote:

and swear it sounds fatter than a pure sine wave

I know. I feel the same way. But google s950 test tone or sine wave and there's some threads where people say it's fatter cuz of the d/a or whatever

Huh, yeah I guess it's at least different from a sine wave on an FM synth. Has more low end around the 200hz range.

jabberwalky wrote:

Huh, yeah I guess it's at least different from a sine wave on an FM synth. Has more low end around the 200hz range.

stock EQ on reaper is so good I love reaper.

Harmoncj wrote:

jabberwalky wrote:

Huh, yeah I guess it's at least different from a sine wave on an FM synth. Has more low end around the 200hz range.

stock EQ on reaper is so good I love reaper.

Yes it' nice but have you tried the reeq js plugin? My goto EQ (of course for certain issues I use other EQs too. For example Qrange and Nova)

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=213501

Is "fatter" just EQ ?
If you add distortion (i,e, uncontrolled harmonics) to a "pure" sinewave, is it still pure ?
If it isn't, then surely, it doesn't matter how pure it was in the first place (a WHOLE other discussion), it's just determined by the range, amount and mixture of harmonics you do add to it.
And if a square wave is just a sinewave with an inifinite number of odd harmonics added to it, how do make that "fatter"...do you phase invert against a spectra of even harmonics ?

And by the way, what, exactly....is "fatter".
I'm not sure, but people seem to love it.

Yes by "fatter" I mean there's supposedly some added overtones due to the lower bit depth, sample rate, A/D conversion etc compared to a sine wave created on a modern computer, which should for all intents and purposes be a pure tone (no harmonics/overtones above or below the fundamental). I'm actually a bit surprised by the results of the spectrum analysis jabberwalky did. In the past I just did a volume-matched A/B test with a sine wave generated on a computer and I couldn't pick out one to be any harmonically "thicker" than the other in the low end when just judging by ear. This is why I shared the keygroup; for everyone to be able to compare and contrast for themselves. The results are already interesting IMO

old post resurrection, but i did some tests today and in fact on my analyzers it looks like there is some energy on the 2nd and 3rd harmonic (octave and octave+fifth), especially if you crank up loudness in both sample and program editor. there are other partials showing up, but the more relevant are those two.