Is virtual analog an advertising ploy?

[vurt]

I suppose this is like the legendary demo effect, where an original rough recording of a song made purely for demo purposes contains magic that couldn’t be reproduced with more time, care and quality. Maybe that doesn’t happen so much any more, since a rough project can be endlessly imported and tweaked.

this is why i gave up on midi.
even using vsti, i track to audio, as then it sounds like "me".
if i play then edit midi or draw in the notes, everything sounds too perfect.

using (some) analogue equipment, adds a different kind of "life" to a recording, that often a totally itb mix (midi drawn in too) sounds dead no matter how hi fi

[vurt]

as an analogy, the nostromo looks more realistic than the enterprise does.

[noiseboyuk]

I suppose this is like the legendary demo effect, where an original rough recording of a song made purely for demo purposes contains magic that couldn’t be reproduced with more time, care and quality. Maybe that doesn’t happen so much any more, since a rough project can be endlessly imported and tweaked.

this is why i gave up on midi.
even using vsti, i track to audio, as then it sounds like "me".
if i play then edit midi or draw in the notes, everything sounds too perfect.

using (some) analogue equipment, adds a different kind of "life" to a recording, that often a totally itb mix (midi drawn in too) sounds dead no matter how hi fi

You know, I sorta get that, esp with older dodgier analogue synths.

[_leras]

I suppose this is like the legendary demo effect, where an original rough recording of a song made purely for demo purposes contains magic that couldn’t be reproduced with more time, care and quality. Maybe that doesn’t happen so much any more, since a rough project can be endlessly imported and tweaked.

I'd say this is more when recording with real instruments and/or doing live takes, but definitely it's not always possible to go back to a vibe if it was left too long.

But still with electronic and sequenced music sometime the idea you capture has a bit of luck where you get a sound that leads you to a particular riff or melody. Sometimes you can tweak a change it after, but often it's the combination of sound and music that makes you capture it in the first place.

I once spent ages swapping out a clean Cubase delay for a tape echo for a bunch of parts, but then hearing it all together realised the clean Cubase delay was integral to the sound I had liked and I had to spend just as long swapping them all back.

[BONES]

I read it but considered it utter rubbish - I still do - you come here talking about others having no clue - oh the cheek, the sheer cheek of it!

So you are telling me that everything about that recording is great - the sounds, the production, all of it - despite the fact that the artists who created it clearly didn't think so and re-recorded it when they had the chance to a better job? And the fact I can see their point makes me clueless? Really? Then again, you also said they were professionals and youo were completely wrongon that front, so I shouldn't be surprised you continue to get this wrong, too.

If you would ask me for the best examples of what is great about analog synthesizers, this (i.e. beilg boiled) would certainly be one of the first things coming to my mind. I chose this original version over the newer one because you can hear the synth dry in all of its own pure glorious greatness. But I am not suprised that this went straight over your head.

That's because what you call "greatness" is, in reality, quite ordinary. The System 100 drums are pathetic and they stopped using it for that almost immediately after, or at laeast learned how to use it more effectively, and while the main synth line sounds OK, it's nothing to write home about and would have almost certainly benefited fromnot being so dry. I assume it was done with their 700s but it doesn't stand out in any way to me, unlike some of the great 700s leads I've heard (can't think of an example right now, as usual). Interestingly, Heaven 17 still perform the Travelogue version and they still use the 700s, but not for the same part. It seems to just get a cameo in the song intro -



When I'm looking for great synth sounds from that era, I think more of Billie Curry's amazing Odyssey solos, Wall of Voodoo's version of Ring of Fire or, for a good range of sounds all in one song, I can't go past Magazine's Definitive Gaze which, again, would mostly have been Odyssey, I think. The lead line certainly has that character to it and Dave Formula was using an Odyssey when I saw them in 1980 or '81. But nothing from back then makes me yearn for any of those old sounds, except maybe Jump's OB-Xa. We can do way, way better things with the technology we have now. We can turn any rubbish synth into somemthing amazing almost without effort.

The Being Boiled thing is funny. The original version linked is the one that everyone plays now, the original (and best).

Everyone but the guys who wrote and first performed it (see video above). Also, as I mentioned yesterday, KMFDM covered the later version, not the original.

They suffered from the same issue as Bones, in hearing only the flaws where others heard something original and distinctive.

I forgive it all its flaws, I think it's a f**king great song, despite them.

[melomood]

I fancy a bit of Gary meself

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TaPzt0vK7Ok

[BONES]

Another amazing Billy Currie Odyssey solo, everything else sounds pretty bad.

[noiseboyuk]

Men arguing about which version of a 40 year old synth song is better. This is why the internet was created.

[BONES]

That's not what we're arguing about at all. I'm with the other guys, I prefer the original. But the re-make definitely "sounds' better.

[noiseboyuk]

That's not what we're arguing about at all. I'm with the other guys, I prefer the original. But the re-make definitely "sounds' better.

Oh. Cool!

[vurt]

That's not what we're arguing about at all. I'm with the other guys, I prefer the original. But the re-make definitely "sounds' better.

so sounds better in fidelity terms?

may i ask, why you prefer the original?
is it the "one time performance" aspect? as in you can hear it's been played not programmed? ie the energy that brings to a recording?

or is it just the nostalgia factor as that was the first you heard?

[vurt]

for me personally when i think "sounds better" i tend to go with the one i prefer, but i can see where you might be coming from if you mean just the fidelity.

but some music, isn't supposed to be hi fi, fair enough if people don't like it, no rule says we have to, but we have to understand that sometimes it's a chosen aesthetic.
more so nowadays, as it is possible even on the smallest budget to create a clean hi fi mix.
and im certainly not suggesting everyone/anyone goes full analogue.
tape is a pain in the arse.
not to mention a big part of the issues people faced with noise, was the layering of several pieces that all added more noise.
a couple of layers of analogue with several digital, in to a host, best of all worlds when you want that touch of analogue, of course, not everyone will, or will agree, some may do full analogue. and good luck to them

it's like coldplay are quite obviously musically and recorded better, than the shaggs. but id rather listen to the shaggs than coldplay.
in fact, id rather lay on a bed of nails, with you jumping up and down on a board on my chest, singing the theme from benny hill, than listen to coldplay.

[BONES]

I think a lot of the reason I didn't have any interest in music prior to Punk was about production. A lot of music wasn't full enough and the stuff I gravitated twoards was stuff with big orchestral arrangenments that gave it a really full sound. Things like earlier ELO and Rick Wakemen's concept albums (Journey to the Centre of the Earth, King Arthur, etc.). But Punk changed my perception of music completely.

so sounds better in fidelity terms?

It uses better synth sounds, it sounds fuller and better produced. Interestingly, as I type this I am listening to Heaven 17's Naked As Advertised - Versions 08 and it contains a 2008 remake of Being Boiled which, again, is more like the Travelogue version than the original. OTOH, the version of Empire State Human on the album is kinda weird, I'm not sure what they were trying to do with it but I don't think it works. Not convinced by their cover of Party Fears Two, either. But it has versions of a lot of the songs I like and, overall, it's not too bad.

may i ask, why you prefer the original?

I find the brass arrangment in the re-recording a bit tacky. It kinda wrecks the vibe.

is it the "one time performance" aspect? as in you can hear it's been played not programmed? ie the energy that brings to a recording?

Actually, I don't hear that at all. It's not something that I would be listening for or that I'd notice unless the timing was really bad. It's a muso thing and I'm not a muso, nor do I have much appreciation of musicianship.

The other thing with Being Boiled is that it's not the song I'd have picked to talk about. I much prefer Circus of Death but I'm not really a fan of Human League at all. The early stuff isn't anything I was ever into and their later stuff is just pop. I'm much more a Speak and Spell guy than a Reproduction guy, although I'm not a big Depeche Mode fan, either.

[melomood]

I can definitely relate there. I hated the rerecording of Eurovision by Telex that added the extra lead bit

[jens]

Yeah and they were so pleased with it they completely re-recorded it a couple of years later (on Travelogue). And, for the record, it sounds pretty f**king awful. The drums, in particular, are really, really bad and the synths are weak, too, much like my early stuff. I got this song in 1979 on the Fast Product sampler LP. I'm still not 100% happy with my version but it definitely soudns way better than the original.

And this is beyond analogue, they recorded it live to a two-track tape, by disabling the erase head on their Sony reel-to-reel, overdubbing each part as they went, in the front room of someone's house. Imagine how many times they'd have had to start again from scratch. It's incredible what they managed to achieve like that and Circus of Death is even better (but they re-recorded that, too). I reckon there was at least one serious perfectionist in that crew.

Exactly my point. It sounds marvellous because they knew exactly what they were doing - a really gifted bunch of musos there...

Did you even read my post? It sounds awful. Really, really awful. It's a great song but that recording is really bad. And they had no idea what they were doing. They were a couple of computer nerds who had taught themselves to play a Korg 700s and a vocalist who owned a saxaphone he couldn't play. And, as I said, they re-recorded Being Boiled a couple of years later, so they obviously weren't too thrilled with the way it sounded, either. It's a song that's amazing, considering how it was done, but that's very different to it actually sounding amazing.

I couldn't hear any of that at all in the original 1978 album version I posted here, so I wondered what on earth you were on about and thus did some reading up.

This (the stuff you posted about Breing Boiled) is a prime example of the pitfalls of superficial knowledge. You think you know something, you read or heard this or that there - and then you apply it to something you assume it is fitting to. Since you don't really know, chances are you won't realize that it doesn't really fit or apply to the context at hand for some reason. And then you keep arguing and arguing based on the apparent facts in your posession and while doing so, you talk more and more out of your arse. until, at some point it eventually all implodes on you.... that moment is now:


This is the original Being Boiled production from 1978 you talked about above:



It's the demo version which indeed is pretty crappy, so they had to redo it for ORIGINAL 1978 release, which is the one I posted earlier here in this thread.



It doesn't sound the way you claim it sounds because it has not been produced the way you claim it has. You thought the 1982 version was the re-recording of the demo. I however always assumed the 1982 version was much rather a remix than an actual re-recording. It sounds much closer to the 1978 release than both versions sound to the original 1978 demo. (I can see to reading up on that too if you like.)