I'm not convinced of that. There are clear technological hurdles that have not been overcome in softsynths yet and the leading developers will tell you as much. Go read the recent thread on DCAM where it's modular abilities are discussed. If you want to talk about diminishing returns for a particular investment, I agree completely. If you want to say that many low end analogs aren't really flexible enough to not be easily trumped by softsynths, then I'd agree there too.Teksonik wrote:That would be none....they were outdated when I used to sell synths in the late 80's and are simply obsolete now. Time to move on people........Vectorman wrote: It's made me start re-thinking which analog synths are really worth messing with for me in 2012.
But to say that ALL analog synths are obsolete I think overstates the historic aspect and understates what they actually represent.
The reason we used to focus on analog and now focus on digital is almost entirely driven by cost. Analog is not the old version of what's new, it's simply a technology that's too expensive, for the most part, today. Or, said differently, digital was too expensive, for the most part, yesterday.
All analog synths are, in general (yes I know that there are exceptions, go away pedants), are a realization of the subtractive synthesis model. This model is as valid today as it has ever been. Most (yes, there are exceptions here also, even more, in fact) soft synths are also simply realizations of the subtractive model.
Realizations of the subtractive model all have limitations. For pure hardware (i.e. not firmware in a hardware softsynth) synths, these limitations tend to be about replication of subcircuits and routings, as the marginal cost of another LFO or EG is quite far away from zero. In software, this isn't true, the marginal cost of adding another LFO is fairly low. The limitations in this domain are largely driven by available CPU power, and have to with sampling rates of both audio and control signals, as well as algorithmic limitations that prevent perfect mimicry of a particular module's analog counterpart.
Whether any of these limitations are relevant musically is a different question, but there can be no denial that each realization does, in fact, have limitations, and those realizations do, in fact, affect the ability of that realization to produce particular sounds.
What have your parents done??
