What makes analog so analog?

[Sam C Spacey]

Ok, I found this. At 44.1khz vsti's sound shit...they do, and can't really be changed without a shit load of oversamplig and alisaing filters. At 96khz things start to sound a whole lot better.

Get a decent analog synth, I know it's a cliche... but the minimoog I used to make a Kotakt sample cd used to make the studio door shake with 1 osc fairly quite. At 44.1khz any vsti with similair sound i.e Moog Modular, Oscar etc... had to be a far greater volume to have the same effect. At 96khz it shook the door a lot quieter.... the bass end was so much more focused andaliasing was not a problem when playing higher notes. It still didn't shake the door as much as the Minimoog single osc but sounded far more real than 44.1khz.

Sometimes just recording vsti's through my analog phaser or filters sound much better, or even to cassete and back into Nuendo. Vsti's are lacking something in the randomness of analog but it's also about power without volume.

[valley]

what the f**k is this all about again?

"how a butterfly can flap its wings, and then you wake up in Australia with no asshole"

with apologies to McLilith.

[Robert Randolph]

what the f**k is this all about again?

"how a butterfly can flap its wings, and then you wake up in Australia with no asshole"

with apologies to McLilith.

Oh. with that said, this whole thread makes more sense now

[Rabid]

Ok, I found this. At 44.1khz vsti's sound shit...they do, and can't really be changed without a shit load of oversamplig and alisaing filters. At 96khz things start to sound a whole lot better.
...

I always appreciated the ability in Reaktor to change the process rate. You can set it to 44.1, or even lower when composing, then change to 96 khz and record each track. It does sound much better at higher rates.

Robert

[McLilith]

This thread is all about the management of chaos.

Note: (That statement works on many different levels.)


take care,
McLilith

[Svante]

Get a decent analog synth, I know it's a cliche... but the minimoog I used to make a Kotakt sample cd used to make the studio door shake with 1 osc fairly quite. At 44.1khz any vsti with similair sound i.e Moog Modular, Oscar etc... had to be a far greater volume to have the same effect. At 96khz it shook the door a lot quieter.... the bass end was so much more focused andaliasing was not a problem when playing higher notes. It still didn't shake the door as much as the Minimoog single osc but sounded far more real than 44.1khz.

I'm sorry but this door-shaking argument was just plain silly

I assure you I can get that door shaking with a soundblaster 16 at a lower sound level than your minimoog ... just excite the frequencies of the resonant modes of the room + door.

(sorry for this OT post, but as a scientist I just had to reply to this)

[whyterabbyt]

Rabid
Thanks for the correction.

That's okay, I just wasn't sure that I hadn't misunderstood you.

Now I will try to explain my statement on a level you can understand.

How very charming of you.

Alternately you could have just explained it at all rather than declaring it a de facto 'explanation'.

The Moire effect is relevant when you consider that digital music is forced into a two dimensional grid with resolution of bit rate and bit size.

Firstly, and with no intention to piss you off, surely its not actually 'bit size' but 'bit depth'.
Secondly, it is not really 'forced into' a grid with certain resolutions. It is composed of discrete numeric values, a certain number per timeframe, with limits on the accuracy of transition between one amplitude value and the next possible amplitude value. But those numeric values have to be converted into an analogue signal to be observed as audio.

Morie effect can be demonstrated by overlaying two screens (each a two dimensional grid) and moving one of those screens around.

It can be demonstrated that way, yes. However it is not an effect that occurs solely with grids, but in any repeating patterns.

The same works with pictures made up of pixels.

Not just with pixels...

We have all seen what happens to someone on TV when they wear a pin strip suit.You might consider this an illusion, but when that picture is captured then the pin stripe suit is no longer a picture of a pin stripe suit.

Firstly, TV is (still mostly) not a digital system, so you've just proven that the Moire effect is not an artefact of 'grids' but becomes visible in analogue systems as well. In which case, it isnt really an explanation of 'what can happen to digital music'. Its an explanation of what can happen to any physical phenomena with repeating patterns.

The same thing happens to digital music, to some extent.

And any electronic system, and therefore analogue music, to some extent.

I presume you mean spreadsheets, not spreedsheets.

No, I meant spreedsheets, honest.

The company I work for has a 20 million dollar annual budget, has 200 cost centers, serves 14,000 clients and performs 350,000 services each year. Inject service codes, program codes, locations, guarantors, cost, reimbursement rates, etc… You have quite a lot going on inside Excel. We have one auditor that insists the spreadsheets be printed in dollar and cents format, and then he cannot understand why pennies are off.

I really think your company should invest in software designed to handle currency properly.

Although if I were auditing a 20-million dollar company which used Excel for its financial operations, I'd be bloody surprised if there were only a few pennies off.


Some people may not think it amounts to much, but one sly programmer managed to skim millions from a large banking system by diverting those fractions of cents into a bank account before he was caught.

I've heard that story so often that it either occurs regularly or is purely apocryphal. Richard Prior's character did the same thing in Superman III, I believe.

I guess audio is not different. Some people cannot hear digital artifacts and so to them, it does not exist. Some people can hear it, and it does exist.

I'll stick with that blind test idea in the meantme, though.

The two people can either argue about whether or not the artifacts exist, or they can listen to the music.

Very true.

[McLilith]

I'm sorry but this door-shaking argument was just plain silly

That's pretty much what I was thinking, until I thought that maybe some of the VSTi synths he was using (or his computer sound card, amplifier, and speaker system) had either poor low frequency response, or the oscillators in those VSTi synths had more powerful overtones, when played at the resonant frequency of the door being rattled. Either way, the overtones of the VSTi synths would be louder in proportion to the fundamental, and therefore it would seem like a louder sound was required to rattle the door.

That's the best I can make sense of his story. I can definitely say that I've seen some digital synths that were lacking in bass. The Kawai K4 has much less bass than a Yamaha TG77 for example. I suppose it's possible that his VSTi synths could also be lacking in bass--maybe.


take care,
McLilith

[clueless]

what the f**k is this all about again?

"how a butterfly can flap its wings, and then you wake up in Australia with no asshole"

with apologies to McLilith.

hmmm..is that anything like waking up in Liverpool with a shithead?

[McLilith]

hmmm..is that anything like waking up in Liverpool with a shithead?

Hmmm... Possibly... but only if it's the result of some sort of flapping activity.


take care,
McLilith

[foosnark]

Ok, I found this. At 44.1khz vsti's sound shit...they do, and can't really be changed without a shit load of oversamplig and alisaing filters. At 96khz things start to sound a whole lot better.

What about CD players then, do they all sound like shit too? They're 44.1khz

[bastien]

The question is: IS IT FEASABLE TO MAKE AN ANALOG / DIGITAL HYBRID SYNTH?

Yes.

The Ensoinq ESQ1 - it came out in about 1986, it was 8 part polyphonic/multitimbral, it had an 8 track sequencer, it had a choice of many digital waves plus an analogue filter chip for each voice, plus a really good modulation matrix. It sounded great, but unfortunately mine has died because the patch memory battery ran out...

Next question?

[Meffy]

My guess? More like waking up in a wading pool minus a kidney.

Meffy

[McLilith]

What about CD players then, do they all sound like shit too? They're 44.1khz

As a matter of fact, I do think that most CD players sound a bit harsh, especially in the way they reproduce the higher frequencies. Playing 96 kHz audio from my computer definitely sounds smoother to me.


later,
McLilith

[valley]

What about CD players then, do they all sound like shit too? They're 44.1khz

As a matter of fact, I do think that most CD players sound a bit harsh, especially in the way they reproduce the higher frequencies. Playing 96 kHz audio from my computer definitely sounds smoother to me.

My understanding is that this is more to do with the requirement for a lowpass filter to be placed at the cutoff frequency inside the CD Player than the theoretic nature of 44.1k sound.