[sdiy] Guy researches and talks about how aging components change the sound of a synth

[Gordonjcp]

On Tue, Sep 01, 2026 at 05:16:59AM +0200, cheater cheater via Synth-diy wrote:
> >  I kind of feel like his thesis feels like AI, too. Like a drum plugin that traces all behavior back to a component drawn on the schematic, that's something claude or chad would think is important
> 
> this has been the defining theme in physical component modelling in
> virtual analog synthesizers since the late 00's. i know people who
> build some of the best VSTs of that type and this is exactly the line
> of thinking that was explained to me, sometime around 2010. long
> before LLMs existed.
 
It's easy to become blind to the function of a circuit when you study the details too long. I've talked to someone who is trying to come up with a really "exact" model of a TB303 filter and they're getting deep into how why it has "low pass filters" everywhere - they're talking about the supply decoupling.

Yeah, that's not why the 303 sounds the way it does.

> > Yeah, old drum machines have lots of variance
> 
> he's saying the opposite. they don't have a lot of variance. they
> differ from the schematic, but they all differ in the same way.

In the article he mentions that a capacitor is 83% lower in value or something. That is well within spec for the components used in a TR909, all Roland's stuff uses cheap crappy components and you have to remember that back then an extremely high-grade electrolytic would be *at best* about 20% tolerance, regardless of what it said on the packet.

It's kind of like transistors now and then - any two random cheap Chinese allegedly-BC548s you pull out of the bag will be pretty damn close, today, but we used to have to get up to all sorts of tricks to match the really really expensive low-tolerance ones in the olden days.

> > all of that still reads like I'm criticizing you for sharing, heh, but I'm not! Thank you for sharing. I am criticizing that guy for posting weird AI stuff on reddit
> 
> it's easy to fall into the habit of criticizing output that seems like
> AI to you, but in this case the criticism just doesn't apply.

It does read kind of AI-y to me as well but it may have been written by someone for whom English isn't a first language. Das erwarte Ich, mein Deutsch ist etwas seltsam klingend für Muttersprachler ;-)

-- 
Gordonjcp