Vintage Emulator Studio recreates 44 legendary synths down to the chip level — free MAME-powered component-level emulation should offer exceedingly accurate sou

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The entire list of emulated synths is below, but it includes iconic entries like the Akai MPC3000 , LinnDrum , Oberheim DMX , and Roland TR-707 — used by names like Dr. Dre, New Order, The Police, INXS, and Prince, among many other high-level acts. There are a total of 44 machines, all with component-level emulation.

What makes VES different from most other synth plugins is that instead of presenting a facsimile of the final output or a hybrid mix of component- and output-stage emulation, it employs — by way of MAME — full component-level emulation . Each processor, tone generator, envelope generator, filter chip, and converter should be faithfully reproduced, potentially resulting in a "perfect" emulation of the gear in question, more or less depending on the status of each driver core.

Notably, on machines whose MAME emulation is farther along, analog and/or digital output stages are faithfully recreated, meaning you won't need additional low-pass filters or any other trickery to make the synth sound like the actual hardware. Additionally, the skeuomorphic, HiDPI-ready UI replicates the units' control panels, dials, buttons, and LCD displays, making them easy to interact with if you're familiar with the real hardware — and probably a nightmare if you're not, as "ease of use" wasn't high on the list of priorities back then. Floppy disk, CD-ROM, and peripheral emulation ought to be included too.

If by now you're thinking this is all too good to be true, there are indeed a couple or three catches. First and foremost, as with any emulator, you'll need to provide your own ROM/firmware, and depending on the synthesizer, any associated sample packs. Although obtaining those is not too difficult, having a copy of that data is a legal gray area if you don't own the original hardware. Although we haven't tested it ourselves, the CPU usage of the plug-in ought to be somewhat high, considering all the work it's doing simulating every single component.

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Reference reading

• https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
• https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/vintage-emulator-studio-recreates-44-legendary-synths-down-to-the-chip-level-free-mame-powered-component-level-emulation-should-offer-exceedingly-accurate-sound#main
• https://www.tomshardware.com/membership

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