Software vs. Analog in 2025 – Has the Balance Shifted?

[SLiC]

It's 2025 and it's impossible to go wrong with whatever you choose

This is so damn true and so painfully obvious that I keep on forgetting it.

(that being said - having a wall of outboard gear and synthesizers and blinking lights and cables with big complicated connectors gives the illusion of "holy-sh!t-this-guy-knows-what-he-does". it's like a totem / armour of protection that works wonders for clients, impressing girls, keeping the singer pampered - but most of all it can make you feel like you are a playa for real. it's like a sales person wearing a proper suit. it brings security and calmness into both the wearer and the client. it's all bs of course, but then again. who cares? if it works - it works - and no girls ever get impressed you have a laptop )

I’m glad someone else said this…my studio looks like a studio - big mixer. Drum kits, amps, guitars, modular, rack of synths…I like it that way, I like to walk in to it- I resent any time I spend sitting in front of a computer, it feels like work…the other stuff feels like play. As the old saying goes…you play music, you don’t work it…but ultimately If it’s your ‘job’ then you do what makes you effective, if it’s your hobby, do what makes you happy (and what you can afford!)

[IvyBirds]

On the stage or in the studio or on your couch,or sitting on the toilet, no matter where you are patch recall is always faster as it instantaneous. Not having that and building every patch by hand will always take more time

Not if you use the same patches

Awesome so let's spend thousands on hardware synths, program a patch on it, and then go Pink Floyd on it and glue all the knobs and faders in position and never ever change the patch

[zerocrossing]

Yes and no. I think when you're dealing with sounds that rely on saturated VCAs and VCFs, you find few plugins that can recreate that magic, and when they do (and I do feel like some do) they are computationally hungry. So, for a lot of things I think something like Massive X, Serum 2 or multi/poly hold their own with hardware hybrids, you can easily run out of resources on a crowded track. Having some hardware to play lead roles (not just leads) in a track is helpful. I'd honestly put Korg's 2600 up against any modern hardware analog, but again it's not computationally cheap.

I love Massive X. It sounds great, has a huge range of sounds and I use it all the time.

But if I put it up against even my cheapest synth a (cough) behr Cat, whilst the cat has a much more limited range it definitely has a range of sounds that are just more present.

I think real synths still do make a difference in some music, and especially in a world of 'the same few softsynths' can make a more distinctive sound.

Just yesterday I was listening to the latest things from Bicep (chroma 10). They have a pretty distinctive high arpeggiated synths sound they use. That sounds could be done fairly well in a soft synth, but it wouldn't be as nice.

Well, I've got quite a few hardware synths, but nothing from Behringer, and I've done some pretty deep head-to-head comparisons, and I think you may be succumbing to cognitive bias, or hearing your audio interface or mixer's input getting hit hard, which adds a bit of saturation.

That said, Massive X is a vastly different instrument than an analog mono, which it really isn't supposed to be. Maybe you should put the Cat up against something more similar. You could just prefer analog style sounds. I think Cherry Audio stuff is not the gold standard to compare anything to, so I'd disregard that emulation. Their stuff does tend to have a roll off in the high frequencies that make them sound a bit dark. If you talk about it in terms of generic analog vs. generic analog and ignore specific character, I think you'd be hard pressed to pick out the analog in a blind test, but I'm talking about emulations from Softube, Korg (newer) and UAD. Lots of demos by Starsky Carr show this.

[zerocrossing]

It's 2025 and it's impossible to go wrong with whatever you choose

This is so damn true and so painfully obvious that I keep on forgetting it.

(that being said - having a wall of outboard gear and synthesizers and blinking lights and cables with big complicated connectors gives the illusion of "holy-sh!t-this-guy-knows-what-he-does". it's like a totem / armour of protection that works wonders for clients, impressing girls, keeping the singer pampered - but most of all it can make you feel like you are a playa for real. it's like a sales person wearing a proper suit. it brings security and calmness into both the wearer and the client. it's all bs of course, but then again. who cares? if it works - it works - and no girls ever get impressed you have a laptop )

I’m glad someone else said this…my studio looks like a studio - big mixer. Drum kits, amps, guitars, modular, rack of synths…I like it that way, I like to walk in to it- I resent any time I spend sitting in front of a computer, it feels like work…the other stuff feels like play. As the old saying goes…you play music, you don’t work it…but ultimately If it’s your ‘job’ then you do what makes you effective, if it’s your hobby, do what makes you happy (and what you can afford!)

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and what your studio looks like is eating, but you're cooking only for yourself. That's not nothing, of course, this is art and art is not supposed to be logical, but it also is subjective, and what some people see as a fun traditional studio, some see as an awkward mess, especially if you only have a small spare room to use.

That said, I'd be lying if I didn't position my cam for Zoom meetings with clients with my stuff prominently displayed in the background. It absolutely does trick the uninitiated with the feeling that I'm a "professional," even though what I end up making for them is done totally with software.

[pdxindy]

it's all bs of course, but then again. who cares? if it works - it works - and no girls ever get impressed you have a laptop )

I can confirm... no girls ever get impressed by a laptop.

Plus hardware is naturally interactive. I invite someone to see my studio and I turn on a hardware synth. I can play it and make eye contact with them, or two people can sit at the synth together and try stuff.

The computer is a jealous device that demands ones attention and doesn't share

[pdxindy]

On the stage or in the studio or on your couch,or sitting on the toilet, no matter where you are patch recall is always faster as it instantaneous. Not having that and building every patch by hand will always take more time

It's just a question of where you put the time. Saving patches, naming them, organizing them, remembering where they are all takes time and mental energy. And of course one doesn't always know what patch one wants, so hunting through long lists of presets can also take considerable time.

Oh, and most synths, patch recall isn't actually instantaneous. My Elektron boxes are pretty damn close though.

[IvyBirds]

On the stage or in the studio or on your couch,or sitting on the toilet, no matter where you are patch recall is always faster as it instantaneous. Not having that and building every patch by hand will always take more time

It's just a question of where you put the time. Saving patches, naming them, organizing them, remembering where they are all takes time and mental energy. And of course one doesn't always know what patch one wants, so hunting through long lists of presets can also take considerable time.

Oh, and most synths, patch recall isn't actually instantaneous. My Elektron boxes are pretty damn close though.

So you are saying naming a patch and recalling it takes more time and mental energy than trying to remember how to manually rebuild a patch over and over and over again

That makes zero sense. Even trying to remember a handful of patches and how to build them with precision would take far more time and energy

[vurt]

a patch is but one moment in time, theres always a new patch

[IvyBirds]

a patch is but one moment in time, theres always a new patch

True if you never want to recall anything, but if that's the case the patch recall is irrelevant and certainly doesn't slow you down does it as it simply becomes a feature you are not using

So maybe you can explain how not using patch recall is faster in anyway?

Again it was stated that recall is slower, explain how that is the case

[vurt]

explain how that is the case

no. its sunday, its a stupid thread, im not here to take this kind of argument seriously!
by all means, you do whatever you do. but please dont try to tell me what to do.
you are not my father.


obi one told me you killed my father

[nanostream]

I’ve bought, patched, sampled and sold a 400 hp modular synth on reverb dot com since this thread started, I can’t even comprehend what patch recall is for.

[electro]

Analog hardware is primarily about 2 things

1.Tactile UI (no mousing around)
2.Latency free

These influence the way you create. You can get close with surface controllers and well written low latency drivers

[Terrafractyl]

Bit of a Silly thread. But I'll play,
About 10 years ago I made a conscious decision to stop saving / collecting and caring about presets AT ALL.
Was a seriously good decision.
There are a handful of synths I now know backwards and upside down and can recreate many presets in like 2 minutes.
Often when collaborating other artists cannot believe I don't have ANY synth
presets saved but I honestly don't feel like it loses me much time when producing and I make all my sounds from scratch whilst writing music... it works for me!

I also have a decently sized hardware modular, I love it. Both for the hands on approach and the way it forces me to do certain things with what I have available...but also anyone with anyh
where near half decent ears has always agreed with me that certain things (mostly audio rate fm type things) still sound way better than anything that comes of of a soft synth. I stand by that in 2025. Not everybody uses these sounds on the regular, but If you do want sounds that sound like this imo there is no reason to not want to have some hardware.
(My first experience getting my hands on a modular: as soon as I set a tiptop z2040 to self oscillate and fm'ed it with an osc - it sounded like pure electrical current pouring out of my speakers no matter what i did .... I was sold)

[bmanic]

2.Latency free

.. only if you listen through it directly (or through an analogue mixer that goes into an analogue amp + speaker).

There are surprisingly many places where people add a bit of latency to things. For instance quite a few active monitors actually pass through AD-DA converters for digital crossover filters.. and of course many people use hybrid mixing desks that have ad-da conversion all over them.

And if you monitor through your DAW software you actually end up with slightly more latency than a software synth due to the added latency of the AD converter (whereas the software only goes through the DA converter).

So latency free isn't always a given.

[IvyBirds]

Bit of a Silly thread. But I'll play,
About 10 years ago I made a conscious decision to stop saving / collecting and caring about presets AT ALL.
Was a seriously good decision.
There are a handful of synths I now know backwards and upside down and can recreate many presets in like 2 minutes.
Often when collaborating other artists cannot believe I don't have ANY synth
presets saved but I honestly don't feel like it loses me much time when producing and I make all my sounds from scratch whilst writing music... it works for me!

I also have a decently sized hardware modular, I love it. Both for the hands on approach and the way it forces me to do certain things with what I have available...but also anyone with anyh
where near half decent ears has always agreed with me that certain things (mostly audio rate fm type things) still sound way better than anything that comes of of a soft synth. I stand by that in 2025. Not everybody uses these sounds on the regular, but If you do want sounds that sound like this imo there is no reason to not want to have some hardware.
(My first experience getting my hands on a modular: as soon as I set a tiptop z2040 to self oscillate and fm'ed it with an osc - it sounded like pure electrical current pouring out of my speakers no matter what i did .... I was sold)

That's awesome but isn't 2 minutes a lot longer to recall your patch manually than just loading a preset?

The entire premise of Synths without recall being faster is bizarre

I get the fact that people might not want to use presets or patch recall for various reasons, but speed is not one of them