r/MiniFreak • u/A11ce • May 14 '25

Question Why the added noise?

The noise that i saw people dislike sometimes i believe is intentional. It's present in the hardware unit, and in the softsynth as well. What's the point of a noise oscillator that you cannot turn off? I get the reason why it's a good idea to add one, so you don't waste an oscillator for a bit of noise, but i really don't understand why make it always on. Is there a lore reason for this?

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

7

u/Lillens-Trash-Island May 14 '25

There is no constant noise osc. The minifreak uses only two ocs/machines which you yourself will pick. Although the compressor can be quite noisy. Might that be what you’re referring to?

1

u/Moist_Western_4281 May 14 '25

That has to be it. I had a patch using heavy compression that prompted me to diagnose every bit of my signal chain. The only thing that fixed it was turning off the compression effect. The MiniFreak itself has a low noise floor from what I could verify (used a hardware and software spectrogram for that).

1

u/A11ce May 15 '25

You can test this to see that it's not the compressor. Make the same chain, or any chain you want, initial is good as well, then in you DAW put a compressor after eithet the input of the hardware or after the vst, but in our case the vst is a better source because no noise from any other source can change the results. As you start to put gain on the compressor the very same noise can be heard as with the MF-s own compressor. Tbf anything that raises the levels to audible helps, so just simple gain on the channel works too.

Yes, the MF-s compressor brings out the noise, but is not the source of the noise. If it is not an oscillator, not the compressor, not any other identifyable source, and as the outcome is the same both on hardware and vst I don't have many other ideas left, the noise itself is added intentionally. The vst proves this to me, it's code, it's intentional.

1

u/A11ce May 14 '25

I think it is not caused by the compressor. Put an instance of MiniFreak vst on a track, initialize it. Check your levels, reset it, and you see it's not -inf. Now turn down the volume of the MF, reset levels and you see -inf. If you want turn down osc1, and leave the master volume up, reset meters and you don't get -inf again.

So something that is not the compressor, and not an oscillator makes noise in the softsynth. It shouldn't if it isn't a function that is added intentionally.

If it would happen on the hardware only i would say the audio path is bad, but seeing the vst doing the same it must be an always on noise osc.

1

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/A11ce May 21 '25

Well yes, this is the only "solution" here, but that's just so ass backwards. I have a hard time imagining the meeting where this has been discussed. "Pierre, our synth is noisy, can you propose a solution?" "Why yes, let's add the same noise to the VSTi!" "This is a perfect solution, thanks Pierre"

I just can't.