KVR Audio

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 4:46 am

pdxindy wrote: There are certain qualities and characteristics in real analog that digital cannot match.

On the other hand, those qualities and characteristics were preserved in an MP3, which is completely digital.

mao · Post by **mao** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 5:45 am

zerocrossing wrote:So... what have we learned here? The example we (mostly) all thought was analog was the analog one and the one we thought was digital was the digital one.

I don't know if it's only a bad example but the answer was so obvious...

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 5:46 am

james0tucson wrote:
pdxindy wrote: There are certain qualities and characteristics in real analog that digital cannot match.
On the other hand, those qualities and characteristics were preserved in an MP3, which is completely digital.

Different thing altogether

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 5:53 am

pdxindy wrote:
james0tucson wrote:
pdxindy wrote: There are certain qualities and characteristics in real analog that digital cannot match.
On the other hand, those qualities and characteristics were preserved in an MP3, which is completely digital.
Different thing altogether

If you say so. I say the lines are not as absolute as they are made out to be.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:14 am

james0tucson wrote:
pdxindy wrote:
james0tucson wrote:
pdxindy wrote: There are certain qualities and characteristics in real analog that digital cannot match.
On the other hand, those qualities and characteristics were preserved in an MP3, which is completely digital.
Different thing altogether
If you say so. I say the lines are not as absolute as they are made out to be.

oh, I agree with that. I am only talking about current practice, not ultimate reality!

Recording the analog synth is not nearly as complex as digitally generating the sound of an analog synth. It is just a matter of realtime cpu power. If cpu's were 100 times faster developers would close the gap fast.

uvacom · Post by **uvacom** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:18 am

I'm surprised I'm the only one who thought the really obvious stepping on the filter sweep sounded like garbage on the jupiter 6. I've listened over and over and I'm starting to think that perhaps the filter is a little too strident on Cypher (although that's still good for some things) but I stand by what I said, overall the Jupiter 6 doesn't sound that great.

Usually a much more obvious way to show how different analog and digital can sound is to do true cross-modulation or filter FM, that tends to really show what a digital algorithm can and can't handle.

funkadil · Post by **funkadil** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:27 am

They both sound really nice. the highs are more defined in the 2nd example, and the first example has more background noise.

WMP · Post by **WMP** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:07 am

Hey.... how come I don't get any points for being one of the first to get it correct

I think I might do a similar test with the Oddity vs the Odyssey, who's up for that?

cosmosis · Post by **cosmosis** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:13 am

living sounds · Post by **living sounds** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:41 am

One thing to stress is that the J6 is one of the pretty good sounding vintage analogs. I've got a modern discrete analog synth here that is free of aliasing and other artifacts, but it's also mostly free of the mojo that many of the vintage synths have. With this one it would be quite a lot harder to determine which one is the analog with a lot of sounds (although you still can if you know what to look for).
I'm convinced that quite a lot of that good sound vintage sound has to do with distortion in the right places, which isn't very easy to recreate digitally. A P08 doesn't sound good, but a 1980 Moog also sounds better than a 2008 Moog (at least to my ears and many others).

hakey · Post by **hakey** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:49 am

mm_FX wrote:Cypher isn't a model of the JP6 so ultimately any comparison is moot.

Well, the question in the OP was which was analog and which was digital, not how close a facsimile one was of the the other, so not really moot in this particular case. And, given that the big USP of D-Cam is the most detailed analog modelling, the comparison has some relevance.

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:55 am

Lotuzia wrote:Lets play

1- Analog
2- Digital

To me 1 sounds far better. Reminds me the way my own analog machines can sound.

This said, it might be possible to make analog sounds very average and digital sounds fine, isnt it ?

But 1 all the way

I agree that regarding certain settings both sound (briefly) rather similar. In drastic transitions, and extreme settings, I prefered one. By far.

Interesting test anyway. Thanks for the little game JP8

LtZ

Now would you admit, Jupiter8, that there IS a difference between true analog and VA, and that some people can ACTUALLY hear the difference, and detect the emulation from the real thing ?

Thanks anyway for the little test,

LtZ

hakey · Post by **hakey** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:57 am

pdxindy wrote:Recording the analog synth is not nearly as complex as digitally generating the sound of an analog synth. It is just a matter of realtime cpu power. If cpu's were 100 times faster developers would close the gap fast.

On Moore's Law a 100* increase in CPU speed should take about 7 years. OTOH, when this kind of thing has been discussed before, I seem to remember that it'll be 30 years or so before running real-time SPICE type circuit emulation becomes feasible

.

IncarnateX · Post by **IncarnateX** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:59 am

I sure would ot know. Both sound pretty MP3 flakey to me and therefore very "digital".

Personally I do not think the analog-digital debate makes much sense if it is about whether you can be fooled by MP3s. From various tests, it seems like most people can. However, when you fire them up side by side, playing them, then what? For all I know my JP8000 sounds pretty different from my Juno 1 in a digital-analog sense that is hard to describe. Nevertheless, I am sure some type of sounds will sound very close when converted to MP3s.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 9:10 am

If the answer is right or wrong does that make it digital?

Analog or digital ?