Analog or digital ?

[tehlord]

This whole thread is bollocks

Or in digital.....

This whole thread is 01000010 01001111 01001100 01001100 01001111 01000011 01001011 01010011

[rob_lee]

Triple Bollocks

[Kriminal]

Triple Bollocks

can i suggest you leave your nuts alone and do some sound designing

[Aroused by JarJar]

I knew that phrase would be taken out of context.

Oh it's far too late be sorry. You said 'marketing' and that's all the excuse I need to write tons of bollocks. I like hardware bollocks, full on analog, and the no bollocks like marketing bollocks.

Marketing is a supremely vague term that covers a whole bunch of different specialisations. There's marketing proper, which is the identification of nascent product niches and the exploitation thereof. In the sense of an activity that creates more sales in an existing niche, a fundamental idea in marketing is the identification of marginal loyalty. Take hardware analog synths: you either love them, hate them or don't give much of a hoot either way. The natural constituency for marketing analogs is the people who don't give a hoot. If you love analogs you've already bought too many and are probably broke, if you hate them no amount of persuasion will change your mind. It's the people in the middle, who might buy hard but then again might buy soft, the marginal market, who you really need to market to.

Now all synth vendors would rather sell hardware. Not only is your IP totally protected against warez activity, you have a marginal lock-in against other vendors. That's why Yamaha keeps some of its tech totally out of the soft domains, such as the multi-operator FM/FS tech and the patented Sondius physical modelling algorithms. If you want that stuff, you have to buy hard. Secondly the greater inherent profitability of hardware allows the vendor to lavish big dollars on intangibles, such as the design of the core presets and the wavetables. Very few soft vendors can afford to bring the kind of talent on board that Korg and Yamaha can, and it's the very same sound designers who mostly run the few software companies that can.

Next, most musicians are, well, technically challenged when it comes to all the ditzy techno blarg you have to go through with soft. It can be a real nightmare dealing with all the loony toon issues there are in building up a DAW from scratch. And in fact the people who most support the software model actually make this problem about twenty thousand times worse than it needs to be by being such religious fundamentalists. The old Apple Mac was nearly run into bankruptcy by the Macatollahs driving the newbies out with their sheer foaming-at-the-mouth hysterics.

If you already know absolutely everything, soft is an irresistible and compelling solution to musical production that is much cheaper and yet so very good you can argue endlessly about which is better. Most musicians just want music, not an argument, and there's a very nice man down the Yamaha dealership will sell you what you want. You plug it in. It works! No psychos or nerdodrama involved. You gotta say yes.

Next, soft has a wet hole. It's the human user interface that lets the hard boys back into the game, with controllers of all kinds. The Korg Kaoss thingie was a work of marketing genius. The inverse side of this is why Yamaha bought Steinborg. Who cares about DAW sales FFS, it's the packaging with the synth that counts. Yamaha had this great twenty-year plan to take the world over with mLan and a distributed control system based on small computers. The soft market buggered all that (snigger snigger).

Finally there's the Aston Martin factor. If you're a zillionaire are you going to drive Skoda? I mean really? Next to a period DB6 at the golf club? Tackeee.

So the question is, where is the money going to come from? There's four fundamental market segments: unsigned musicians, signed and struggling, signed and successful and stars. Well, stars, woof woof, lots of cash but there's not very many of them, and software vendors usually grovel very nicely with freebies and infinite support whenever a real star hoves into view. Signed and successful, well a good market but hard to market into, whatever these musos did that got them successful, they're going to carry on doing it. Signed and struggling: this is the natural market. Not only do they have a strong motivation to go for the less expensive options, their management will usually keep them honest and paying the license fees. The big black hole is unsigned musos: there's gazillions of these but they're not monetizing the music they make. They pay for their gear with a day job.

The old CM magazine is the best example of failing to monetize unsigned musicians. The essential premise of CM was 'you too can be a star if you only you have…' That market has gone. It's gone partly because the world is awash with unmonetizable free music. In my genre alone, ambient, there is more soundscape already out there than any person could listen to in a lifetime. By the time you've read this sentence there'll be another gigabyte and a half already. It's also gone partly because software vendors didn't adequately distinguish between people using soft production for fun and people using it seriously. Kids who download somebody else's DAW and dick around for a few weeks before moving on to BioShock aren't a market. Arseholes running under-the-arches studios are. But the mass market has really gone mostly because the MAGIX Corporation owns it lock, stock and compressor.

There's a web site that claims to use search engine results to prove that Cubase is more popular than Sonar. One of the tools we use in marketing to actually asses Internet mindshare is www.alexa.com (free and no sign up). Alexa aggregates data from ISPs to determine the actual volume of web traffic that (almost) every web site in the world is actually generating. I haven't looked lately but the MAGIX Music Maker web is The Monster, it has a bigger global mindshare than Yamaha. It's usually around 8,500 in the global web ranking. Next biggest is Native Instruments. Yes, that's right, the mindshare for a synth vendor outranks all the famous DAWS at around 17,000. Cakewalk comes in around 30,000 and Steinberg at around 40,000. Half of Cakewalk's traffic comes from the USA, one fifth of Steinberg's does. Steinberg gets a quarter of all its traffic from Germany. Samplitude makes it in at around 2 million.

What does this prove? Selling cheap, cheerful and easy to use music software at mallware prices makes more money than the whole of the 'professional' software market. That's why MAGIX did an IPO in a global recession. Music software as a form of computer game needs to be priced and promoted accordingly. Look at that guitar solo crap on the Wii.

Next, way to go NI! What are they doing so right? Well firstly, they've thrown the legacy fest out of the window. NI's products are products in their own right, have reputations in their own right and feck other people's fame. Secondly, they've covered all the bases in all the genres with professional quality offerings that leverage marginally across an optional hardware Kore. Thirdly, they use cheap copy protection. Note that I said cheap, not weak. The dongle is a painful base unit cost that NI don't have. They've not gotten all anal compulsive about locking out the McJob earning scuzballs, they just make sure the monetized musos pay their rightful share. They've occupied the signed and struggling niche all the way up to the real stars. They are no Aston Martin, but they sure are a BMW. And you know you've made it when you get to show off your first bought-as-new Beamer, right?

Samplitude at 2 million? It's (together with Sequoia) a pro product sold at pro prices into a very selective and well-identified niche. This is the rocket science DAW that gets sliced and diced into Music Maker. It's the bull to all those cash cows. Who needs to market?

Fanatics of full frontal software should be wary of what they wish for. There are only two, repeat two methods to expand the VST market. The first is to sell the product for peanuts, and cheaper than everybody else's peanuts, forget about copy protection using a product (preferably the same product) that has a mass market price and a pro price - in other words: Reaper. Blow as a big and cheap a hole as you can in the biggest market. The other method? Monetize musicians and their music. If you want more cash in the customer's kitty you have to induce more cash into the music market that's tied to your product. Otherwise: it's every brand for itself in a gradually contracting horizontal middle market already filled with aggressive personal hygene challenged competitors.

Very interesting indeed! Thanks for taking the time to write this.

Glad to hear about Magix, having been a Samplitude user for some ten years. It must be said that the Magix "toys" are excellent for what they are and I applaud the company's overall approach and success.

What do you think of the soft-for-hard approach, like Creamware (very specifically platform specific)? I have no feeling for how well this market is doing, as it is quite rare in my world/acquaintance.

[Gamma-UT]

Stop trolling, please.

It's a serious question. I'd like to know how music detracts from a demo of a musical instrument.

Between 30 and 80 %.

Trolling. Is that an irregular verb? You know "You troll; he trolls; they troll; I write lucid commentary"?

[rob_lee]

Triple Bollocks

can i suggest you leave your nuts alone and do some sound designing

lol dave

what i should say is that who on earth gives a flying FNUCK about analog and digital?
do clubbers pissed out their heads and bouncing around to your tracks at 4am give monkeys if a sound is analog or digital?Me finks not
And i just finished the Fabfilter Twin 2 and Blue factory banks and ive done 20 for yours up to now

anyway crap topic coz analog and digital rock..just a matter of choice of the user but i don't think the average joe gives a hoot.

Rob

[IncarnateX]

The interesting parts of these threads are not their trivial topics but the amount of people who participate in the threads with comments about the stupidity of participating in such threads.

[Gamma-UT]

The interesting parts of these threads are not their trivial topics but the amount of people who participate in the threads with comments about the stupidity of participating in such threads.

It's the "someone on the Internet is wrong" thing. And there's something oddly compelling about these go-nowhere threads.

But it's gone 30 pages without any hint of Godwin's Law so it's not all bad.

[kilon]

Triple Bollocks

can i suggest you leave your nuts alone and do some sound designing

lol dave

what i should say is that who on earth gives a flying FNUCK about analog and digital?
do clubbers pissed out their heads and bouncing around to your tracks at 4am give monkeys if a sound is analog or digital?Me finks not

Valid , but also a valid point would be , why a musician will give a funk what clubbers ,drunk to their head unable to distinguish good from bad music but also where the funking door is, think about his/her music.

So I guess its a matter of perspective.

Personal I dont think "VS" threads are crap, or bollocks, the arguments in them maybe , but there are dilemas that a beginner or a pro has to face everyday.

Of course the answere is not a simple "yes" or "now" and it highly depends on the workflow of the person.

Some things are done easily on an anologue synth, while other are done easier on a digital synth. Everything has its pros and cons .

[Urs]

Ok. Quick blind test.

http://www.u-he.com/music/DorA.wav

9 x the same non-distracting bass line.

Are there any analogue synths used?
Are there any digital synths used?
Are there any plugins used?
But most importantly: Which is which?

[yellowfever]

This whole thread is bollocks

Or in digital.....
This whole thread is 01000010 01001111 01001100 01001100 01001111 01000011 01001011 01010011

and I bet the sad thing is, you actually looked it up! You missed out a 1 in the K

[b-pole]

big or small girlies

[whyterabbyt]

Which is which?

I can tell without listening that the other one doesnt have any blue LEDs.

[UltraJv]

Which is which?

I can tell without listening that the other one doesnt have any blue LEDs.

But are they analogue or digital LEDs?

[kilon]

Ok. Quick blind test.

http://www.u-he.com/music/DorA.wav

9 x the same non-distracting bass line.

Are there any analogue synths used?
Are there any digital synths used?
Are there any plugins used?
But most importantly: Which is which?

The first one sounds like analogue to me and the fourth. For the rest I am not so sure. The second sounds digital to me.


I dont think its hard for a digital synth to sound analogue though with some careful programming.

Of course I dont think its possible to distinguish between a VA and a VST. At least not possible for my ears.

Nice test though, cant wait for the results.