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what sealed the deal for me on the analog vs digital debate...
i've gone back and forth on this for years but sonically i can't say either is superior anymore. as a player, nothing beats playing a moog and twisting one of those big knobs, or playing a dsi and everything is so luxurious, etc. but sound....
my 2 favorite electronic music producers are max cooper and recondite. their sound, melodies, beats, everything. first (after being amazed at the level of production and sound) i looked up what gear recondite uses and was taken aback that he does EVERYTHING inside of ableton using the operator synth to create each sound. only "real" instrument he uses is a 303 copy sometimes. sounds phenomenal.
exhibit a:
next, this weekend i was doing some stuff in the kitchen and put on a max cooper "how he makes music" video and in the interview he lets out that he has never even had a synthesizer. all is done in a computer and 2 controllers. any slight hesitation i had is out the door. he did say that he has nothing against synths and eventually he will probably get some, but any extra money he has had has gone into making his mixing room sound great.
exhibit b:
anyhoo, my reason for this is not to start a debate, etc, just to share an epiphany i had..still have a couple analog pieces, and i love them and think they sound great, but i am certainly way more open to any type of synthesis.
Comments
Whatever works.
*not meant dismissively.
Water Will Flow
Oh, and thanks for the artist recommendations!
You got it.
Just enjoyed listening to Max Cooper for the last hour on Spotify. Thanks for the tip!
It will never be about the quality of the tools you use but much more likely the quality you put into the tools you use
So good
Yup
+1 Some Plaid-like sounds here, very nice indeed
I’ll see your Max Cooper (fantastic artist BTW) and raise you a Jon Hopkins. The work he did on his Immunity album is always an inspiration.
On the greater subject of this post, I agree with your statements. In the right hands the A vs. D debate does not exist. Not today. An aside, one of the greatest pieces of advice I’ve received in all this.....your “quantize strength” value can do wonders when it’s reduced far below what you’re comfortable with. That and distort literally everything.
Yes and no.
Simple. A talented person might make great things with not so good tools but could be also better even with better tools.
Some tools just sound not good, whatever you do.
But today most tools are good or very good anyway.
Also all those artist mix and master (or let others pros do that) the shit out of it.
Good FX makes even more difference than the source often.
Is there actually an Analog vs. Digital debate outside of the echo chamber of Gearslutz?
More interested in how someone works, than what they work with. Sure, sometimes the two are inextricably linked, but mostly, tools are tools. The what that makes the what special is the who.
No.
Everybody knows that modern software is even better
Just moving real knobs and nuances you get while tweaking might be more fun with hardware.
Hardware is also affordable too these days.
Not really a debate anymore. Now everyone(including and mostly newcomers who dont know what analog is) wants analog only. Then there are some who say that good vst is the same or at least close enough for them not to hear difference. And then there are the chosen few who understand the good sides in all, vst, digital hardware and analog and often have some of all 3 or understand that they dont need all and use what they need, but also see the other side of things.
Don't forget the self-entitled whine wall of Synthtopia comments.
I don't think A vs D has anything to do with the quality of music produced but it can affect the quality of the music. (non English as a first language speakers, sorry). Exhibit A: Survive.
@brambos To me the point is moot anymore to nearly everything we musicians/producers use in creating music.
I think everyone can agree if a sound/instrument is acoustic (piano, guitar, acoustic drums, etc) of course we'd all prefer an incredible mic recording that instrument in a good sounding room. But for most of us stereo micing a nice baby grand in our home studios is impossible. That's where digital sampling steps in. And although years ago maybe one could kick the stuffing out of sampled instruments over their quality, today it's incredible how good even budget VI's sound.
The actual recording process/medium was a huge bone of contention for many in the early days of digital and a lot of it was justifiable as the early digital recording systems did not sound as good as they do today. But now, and this is from a guy who loves analog recording, the difference is so slight I seriously doubt even good engineers could tell them apart in a blind test. 24 bit at even just 44.1 with the myriad of plug in tape saturation, compression & limiting plugins can sound incredible. With the ability to use hybrid systems as well the A vs. D question in recording is silly.
So I know @vpich's post deals with synthesis but I wanted to reference the A vs. D question in instruments & recording media to show that synthesis is the area it REALLY should not matter. The entire process of manipulating electric signals perfectly illustrates how shortsighted the A vs. D debate can be. The GOAL is to alter/mangle the signal, so doing it with digital filters, etc or analog filters, etc should just be a matter of taste. That's the beauty of synths, sounds can be so varied & unique because both analog & digital can be used simultaneously or in concert. Don't choose, use both.
As long as the cabling is gold.
There are some areas where digital still can't emulate analog, but it's a shrinking list.
Ha. I have friends arguing that constantly. And the look of disdain when i mention i make some stuff solely on an ipad?? Or arguing that the tr-08 is vastly inferior to the 808 kick.??
Anyways i’m not trying to say one is better than the other just saying i stopped caring, after being moved dnough to research what these people i admire so much use and seeing it was all digital.
I got rid of most of my synths for another reason. They don’t fit inside the screenshots for my video
Yup. And when you choose digital don’t feel shame.
It's not about the sound, it's about physical movement, feeling and inspiration while using "the real thing".
To some it makes no difference, to others it's a world of new ideas because they have to think and use it differently.
I started out on analogue, building my own partial ran-out-of-money synth based on Digisound 80 modules, in the early 80s, having grown up playing with synths in music shops in the 70s. I bought my first actual proper commercial synth in the mid 80s – a Yamaha CX5m (with the big keyboard), as FM had just launched and I could see it had far greater potential than the extant subtractive analogue synths of the time (plus an FB-01 and Roland TR-505). Later I’d get a Yamaha SY77 and then Emu Proteus and the usual drum machines of the day. In the mid 90s I started to buy most of the analogue synths I’d lusted after when I was young, playing with that sort of thing in music shops in the 70s. Before long I was almost fully analogue (apart from a Korg 05R/W and Korg S1), and no computer at all for sequencing.
One thing I first noticed when I got the analogues back into my life, the ‘animate’ nature of the sounds, when controlled from a digital sequencer, alongside the digital sources I had that could produce very similar sounds. With my Oberheim Matrix 1000s (several of them) sounds would continue far beyond a bar or a group of four bars, and importantly, an evolving sound would continue to evolve irrespective of note, beat, bar limits. Almost all of the digital sources would give the feeling of ‘resetting’ to an initial state for each new note, or each new grouping of timing. Not just the sample-playing synths, but also the synthesising digital synths. The difference seemed to be that of a free-running feeling of many parameters unconnected with note events.
Nowadays, most good digital synths have that aspect down properly, too, so I’m satisfied. Apart from the ‘power’ (plugging in an analogue synth to replace an iPad or Mac synth part seems to result in a bit more balls, sometimes, but I suspect that is partly because I’m coming in through a mixer) I now regard digital sourcing as about equivalent to analogue sourcing, or at least, I don’t care about any difference.
this is one of my personal benchmarks, a full analog production on a Tascam 8 track cassette thing
https://elsewhere.bandcamp.com/album/mrs-oscillator-her-pocket-calculator-limited-vinyl
imho it's quite tough to get that dense kind of sound in a DAW production.
Indeed, I have to agree! To get this sound on a Computer, you have to do a bit more than just record. Cool example.
I see analog and digital as differing colors, shades, hues, and mediums that all work like a painter's palette full of various colors. We've got various types of synthesis--subtractive, additive, wavetable, vector, granular, FM, etc... We've got digital and analog instruments--neither is better, just different. We've got a lot of great stuff that helps us create unique and interesting music, which is the whole point anyway.
yes, I fully second this attitude - and even wouldn't want to miss the different digital colors in various environments.
The example above was mostly to show the challenge a 'good' analogue production may still present to fairly sophisticated digital setups.
Yes and no. If you try to reinvent the wheel every time you pull out a sound it definitely is yes but if you are able to build that perfect saturation, filtering, compress, limit, saturate again and so on chain which gets to that very same result at the cost of a click for chain recall then you could do much more precise mixing editing those precise steps would it be first sat or eq or compression stage. Then if you like analog flaws you should just go analog but digital processing is here because it works, professionally speaking. The tools are all there, most of the times is about knowing the sound you are aftrr
My only problem with the original posts, is that when I listened to the two artists mentioned in the original, I found them dull. Lack of melody, lack of harmonic structure, dull rhythmically. I'm not an electronic music guy. But I find too much music built on loops to be like that. I keep looking, thinking that with all the amazing tools and sounds available, something will really grab me. So far, I haven't found anything I really want to listen to again. I come from a prog, classical, finger style guitar, instrumental background. I guess I just have different expectations from instrumental music, that don't mesh with what's being produced today.