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Analogue, vs Digital, vs, er… Environmental Destruction?
We all know the old and feeble arguments between “that warm and energetic authentique of real transistors” vs the DSP and even component modelling of digital. We all probably know it makes nearly no difference to the listener on the radio, they don’t care any more than people in the 70s cared about virtuoso prog rock drum solos. It’s not the important part of the song.
[ I hesitate to type that, I’m not looking forward to counter-arguments - look, nobody cares about drum solos, let’s leave it at that ]
Anyway the point of this missive is that there’s a more important facet of the anal/digi dichotomy. Which synths have the least environmental impact?
Yes – which synths have the least environmental impact?
I would argue (I may be incorrect, but off the top of my head it seems to be the following) that you can pretty much sweep all analogue synths ever made straight off the table immediately. Almost all real vintage analogue synths have power consumptions that are frankly inappropriate for the 21st century (and should’ve been for the 20th c, that’s half of why we’re where we are now).
Are iOS/iPadOS synths basically the most environmentally friendly? Or, to put it another way, the least environmentally harmful?
Comments
As an example, I have three Oberheim Matrix 1000 synths, each is a 1U rack, each contains a hefty and impressive toroidal transformer. Total power consumption per synth is about 25W. There’s plenty of synths that are far higher consumption, equiv to about running an old incandescent light bulb for however long it’s on. I don’t use the Matrix 1000s much nowadays purely for electricity bill reasons, and certainly not all three at once.
. sorry, please delete this comment .
Imo hardware still exists and being developed because there IS a difference… for some it’s the sound, for others it’s the tactile interface/workflow, anything stands really… I never measured the environmental impact of my hw analog vs hw digital vs pc vs ipad, but I wouldn’t consider it as a viable pointer to switch either way. Who knows what the future holds, maybe one day…
Also, have you considered the impact of these devices? Production, recycling, disposal… or the more and more obvious, less than ideal conditions of app development?
I am questioning the environmental impact of drum solos.
Yes, we want drum pooling instead
How about people picking up their ipad, then jumping in their gas-guzzling SUVs and driving to the park to "make a beat" while sitting in the grass, as they saw it in the ads? At least the heavy duty analog gear doesn't lend itself to that kind of environmental mischief.
Maybe switch to an energy provider that offers 100% renewable electricity and pay for that (yes, it generally costs a bit more to ensure your money only pays for renewable sources)?
I have also wondered about this topic, but I have never heard it mentioned until now. Whenever I see a studio filled with walls of gear lit up like a Christmas tree, I wonder about how much electrical power all that stuff is consuming. I think that this is just another one of the many reasons for 21st century electronic musicians to favor software instruments and effects.
If you keep gear powered constantly, it will fail less often (most of it running idle/standby anyway, and not consuming peak power as printed on cases).
Hence less resources, less transportation. Consider „hidden“ energy demands
The power demands of studio gear are almost negligible compared to regular household devices like dishwasher, laundry dryers, washing machines etc, let alone if water is electrically heated by these convenient boxes.
ps: forgot the opposite of heating, refrigderator and freezer... devices running all year. Air conditioning at home, in transportation.
The latter triggers that transportation has moved classical storage to the road, energy cost for movement is lower than costs for buildings...
But the „crown of creation“ are energy saving led bulbs: the regulator inside to make them compatible to existing powerlines probably emits at least 1000 times more heat than light is a part of planned obsolence. The LEDs could literally last forever, if power would be provided inductively.
You may ask yourself if your car is powered appropriately, if size fits what‘s (really) needed, if your style of driving is influenced more by fun or energy efficiency...
Then, and only then you may frown about some vintage electronic devices
Thinking about all the digital versus analog music making devices I own, all the digital ones draw far more power. Guitar pedals, all sitting at 9V, digital is between 300mA to over 1A where analog is on the order of 3mA to maybe 20mA.
On a rack type system one of the major things you've got to take into account is if you are going to use digital devices in them because those generally need lots more power.
Adding up the power supplies on my analog noise making area I get maybe 2-3 times the power usage of my iPad. But, I'm not including the power for the USB hub and anything I've got plugged into that at the time. If I compare to my (old Intel) iMac, the analog setup wins by quite a bit. If I were to compare an average desktop system being used for music making, I'd bet a full band's worth of Marshall stacks and Ampeg Bass rigs would draw less power. (I may be exaggerating a bit there.)
But, most of my music noodling is done with my archtop acoustic not plugged in and drawing zero power. I wonder how much energy/resources I've used up over the years in strings though.
Interesting, where abouts are you that this is an option?
I just remembered something that gives me a bit of perspective on just how low the power draw on analog devices can be. When I wanted to stop using up batteries on my active pickup guitars I designed a little battery boost circuit for LiPo's based on some standard low power DC/DC converter parts I had on hand. The current draw from the combined pickups was so low that the DC/DC converter couldn't maintain a stable voltage. These are converters designed for very low power usage. I ended up having to hack a new circuit using some TI controllers and regulators with a tiny little transformer to get something that worked. The power draw from those pickups is minuscule.
Interesting topic. I found a blog post that compares the environmental cost of playing music from printed sheet music vs an iPad that can also serve as reference. Depletion of rare earth materials and the cost of running cloud services are big concerns where the analog synths have less impact on.
Obsolence of digital hardware especially Apple’s is a major concern too, as the older units get progressively abandoned. I have two iPad mini (2 and 3gen) and I’m always trying to see what to do with them but I get frustrated pretty quickly. Analog and especially vintage synths invite fixing and adapting with added value as opposed to fast moving production chains for iDevices.
The couple that develops Orca is a radical and pretty inspiring take on this: they live in a sailboat and only develop in and for low energy consumption devices. https://100r.co/site/mission.html this is why we don’t have Orca for iPad haha!
If that’s for me, I don’t drive. I don’t even know how to drive. Never have, never will. I hate cars. Cars kill people slowly and sometimes quickly.
I was wondering what on earth this is, also. There’s probably only going to be about six energy companies by the end of the year anyway. Personally I’d like to be in a situation where I have my own micro-stellarator or micro-tokamak buried in the garden providing ample power. I also resent having to pay money to the council to take away my rubbish and recycling. I want to be in a situation where they pay me to take it away, or better still, the highest market bid pays me in return for the piles of separated atoms.
This is a point I worry about too. The iPad can become a wide range of really good synths. However, within about 5 years it is time to upgrade to a new iPad, apparently. Even 10 years is too much to expect. On the other hand, a lot of the vintage gear I have or have had is many decades old.
If an iPad loaded with synths is wide in terms of diversity of synths it offers, it isn’t very long in the longevity dimension. Same goes with desktops and laptops I suppose. I’ve had some superb Macs throughout my professional life, but the 68030 ones which were superb are no longer viable, nor the PowerPC ones that replaced those. Their overall lifetime is far shorter than a typical 70s or 80s analogue synth, as we’re seeing.
How long before this becomes a Bitcoin thread?
Apple's iPads use 10W or 12W USB or 18W or 20W USB-C power adapters. The higher power tends to
reduce the re-charge time so it's how often you plug in and for how long. We have the high ground
against the laptop/desktop users.
PC power supplies range from 125W to 750W models... we are the good guys here.
Laptop power adapters range from 67W to 140W... let's some those Logic Pro X and Ableton users.
Now, Bitcoin mining uses racks of high powered servers that never stop running at full crunch.
But 1 coin mined can be worth a lot. Bitcoiners are buying coal mines for the cooling and "potentially"
the onsite power generation. Increasing the ecological impact.
Think about that when you release your art as an NFT which requires cryptocurrency tokens.
It's not that much in some coutries - especially in EU because of strong push from Brusel for using renewable sources on large scale.
I basically pay just symbolic 1€/month (of course on top of my usuall electricity bill which is around 150€/month) for having fully "renewable sources" electricity for my house...
i guess it's because of state subsidies to electricity provider, so at the end it's payed collectively by tax payers, which is abit unfair.. but it is like it is, i pay 1€ for fully renewables electricity
people should stop also using money, it is estimated that world consumption of all banking system is twice as much as bitcoin..
Also all products containing gold - not just jewellery but also electronics - because impact of gold mining on enviroment is just horrible. Same as cobalt and lithium mining for your super "enviromental friendly" EV's
who cares about enviroment should also avoid using air condition, washing machines , microwave owens, electric heating, whirpools, any cars including public transportation, including trains, airplanes and so on..
ideally they should return back to cave and eat just vegetables and fruits.
No seriously. I think true way is to search for clean energy sources (fussion is ultimate goal, until hen also classic fission plants are best we have) and limit using things which really matters, without being distracted by things what really doesn't matter (like if my synth is consuming 25 watts - sorry that's just ridiculous)
let's solve this:
Your local politician is lying to you and it is trying to convince you that small thing does matter just to keep you distracted from BIG things which he doesn't want to change, which actually matters.
Just to be clear - as i said we ha e fully renewables peoduxed electricity in our house, we are recycling everything, we are trying do not waste anyhing, we preffere shoppimg in local small stores and from local producers to support small people and avoiding big shopping markets.
But. As i said. There are things which really matters on large scale and there are things which are just distraction made by people who wants you to be distracted, so they can stay with their busimess model without need of change anything.
Please not again this nonsense. It's not just untrue (yes there was one or two cases when some company bough old coal powerplant with intention to convert it to natural gas burning one to power bitcoin mine. This happens, but it is not generally used at large scale - plus it's on goverment role to push on complete shut down of follsile burning powerplants. So you're knocking on wrong door)
By default bitcoin miners are strongly preffering renewable resources (mostly hydroelectricity, but also other sources) - simly by their busimess model they are trying to lower expenses on electricity, so they're searching places where is abundance of peoduced electricity, somit is cheap - which are (not coincidently) renewable sources.
But it doesn't end there. Bitcoin mining can serve as catalysator for deploying more renewable resources by solving main problem of renewable resources - they are not capable of profiding constant power - they work more in peaks (like solar - in sunny days they produce more electricity than necessary). Bitcoin mining, thanks to it's unique feature not seen in any other industry - they can switch off anytime without any significant expenses or losses - is helping to stabilise electric grid by using overproduced electricity when it is not needed by grid, while they can swich off when grid needs more electricity. Which makes renewable sources more economically profitable.
Of course you hear in your favourite mainstream media just about one case when some dark olayer wanted to buy coal powerplant for mining crypto. But you don't hear there about vast majority of miners with very different approach. Did you for example hear about america alliance of bitcoin miners, founded this year with intention to push on maximising of use of clean energy for mining ? Pretty sure you don't, because mainstream media aren't allowed to talk about positive things related to Bitcoin. Or did you hear about El Salvador startimg to use hydrotermal volcanic energy for bitcoin mining ? I'm sure you did not.
one article at the end of my rant:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/20/bitcoin-mining-environmental-impact-new-study.html
Here are two quite interesting articles that look at the energy and resource consumption of CD, vinyl and music streaming. that also has something to do with analog vs. digital.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190207-why-streaming-music-may-be-bad-for-climate-change
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/28/vinyl-record-revival-environmental-impact-music-industry-streaming
Also quite interesting is this musician's album. He tried to produce a CO2 neutral album. The whole thing certainly has more symbolic character, but still makes you think.
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/eco-musician-makes-worlds-first-carbon-neutral-album-17439
It is interesting how different the electricity markets are. In Germany, the electricity market was liberalized in the 1990s. Here, it is now possible to purchase electricity from suppliers who generate it from 100% renewable energy sources. It is also possible to produce your own electricity and feed it profitably into the power grid.
I would be interested to know how the electricity market is organized in other countries.
we pay taxes on the products & the 9 times out of 10 unnecessary packaging, we pay taxes to councils to take it away, who then sell it at a profit, or dump it offshore. another great C21st business model.
in a nutshell, this ^^^
Oh. That’s interesting for me as well. I just assumed this was an option in many places but maybe it isn’t. I’m in Australia and you can get this from nearly all providers.
Check this out (it’s a federal government website): https://www.greenpower.gov.au/get-greenpower
So while Australia might otherwise be an environmentally criminal nation with a lunatic prime minister there is at least this, I guess.
The problem discussed here is not really the amount of electricity used but how it’s generated.
Good to see Germany at least offers this too. In Australia we also have feed-in tariffs for people who generate their own electricity. In Queensland in particular this is not uncommon at all (lots of sun and installed solar panels).
That’s a surprising positive regarding Oz. I say that not entirely from an outsider, I did my last year of secondary school in Melbourne in the late 70s and it was politically fucked even back then. But, those were the years that my school teachers successfully indoctrinated me with all their hippie values – save the whale, stop pollution, etc. Consequently I decided never to drive an internal combustion engine vehicle and, now at age 60 that still holds true, so thanks Oz hippie schoolteachers for showing me the future.
The „you“ was meant in general context... no car in this household, too
I am not sure about all of Canada but where I am (in the province of British Columbia) it sounds like 75% is generated
by the province ( BC Hydro) with the remainder being private. I don’t know if those private companies are options for consumers in particular areas (maybe for industrial use?) or if they have government contracts etc. Here also, people can generate a surplus of their own power and feed it back into the grid.