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

[dellboy]

OK, right so.
Fully on topic: Has the balance shifted?
Yes! It shifted from not being able to afford quality tools decades ago to rediculously good software and hardware that partly is rediculously cheap.
Synclavier, OBXa, MemoryMoog, Prophet5, blabla: Available in software and in very high quality.
Nina, Behringer, TEO5, Polybrute, all the funky Eurorack stuff!
Some is high priced, some is crazy cheap while sounding great!

Some people want a V8, some want it all electric.
Politics aside it is a matter of taste.

I still see lotsa space to grow in both areas.
Hardware controllers that are screens with physical knobs/faders/button upon and they can be placed anywhere and in any amount. Configurations would change according to situations.
The controls (knobs/faders etc.) could be automatically stored in a department that would open and close automatically for and after the automated reconfigurations.
I would pay real money for that. Probably will when available.
Such a controller could be used to control software AND hardware synths, FX processors, etc.
Food for thoughts.

Yes, its the controller for software that is still missing.

[damoog]

I’ve been indecisive over the years on which I prefer between software and hardware

The results will be the same as everybody else’s so I won’t bore you all but I’ve come to the inclusion that my hardware synths still win on sound and personally I find that they sound way better in a mix (I’m using a clarett interface btw) ,they simply stand out

I also like committing to audio nowadays as I find that working with midi / piano rolls can be an endless chore seeing if different notes work better in a track ,with audio I just leave it ,be happy with the end result and move on to the next track

Also it’s worth mentioning that at age 49 and after years of staring at a screen that I’ve just got to enjoy the process of writing music ,i also agree with Lisa Bella Donna’s outlook on composition -‘commitment to moments in time’ (in regards to composition)

[_leras]

Not hard. I could build a Liepzig v3 in Softube Module. I couldn't find anything built with the Moog modules, but this was done with the Yamaha modules and some others.

It sounds fine and usable, but it didn't sound like Leipzig V3 at all. It's just not close viscerally.

To counter heres a small peice from a very small modular setup. The softube is nowhere near to this...

[IvyBirds]

Not hard. I could build a Liepzig v3 in Softube Module. I couldn't find anything built with the Moog modules, but this was done with the Yamaha modules and some others.

It sounds fine and usable, but it didn't sound like Leipzig V3 at all. It's just not close viscerally.

To counter heres a small peice from a very small modular setup. The softube is nowhere near to this...

There is nothing in that demo video that can't be done in Softube, VCV rack, Cardinal, or Voltage Modular

To claim Softube is "nowhere near to this" is just wrong, what exactly about that demo is Softube "nowhere near"?

[zerocrossing]

Has the balance shifted? Yes! It shifted from not being able to afford quality tools decades ago to rediculously good software and hardware that partly is rediculously cheap.
Synclavier, OBXa, MemoryMoog, Prophet5, blabla: Available in software and in very high quality. Nina, Behringer, TEO5, Polybrute, all the funky Eurorack stuff!
Some is high priced, some is crazy cheap while sounding great!

There it is in a nutshell. When I was starting out, a "budget" synth, like the Juno 106, set us back $2000 in 1983 dollars. That's $8,424.24 in current value. No one I knew in my s-hole town could afford that, so 4 of us had to pool our money to get one. (fun fact: my brother later admitted that a large part of his portion had been stolen from me. ) We passed it around, giving each one of us a week before we sent it off to the next in line. I recorded it using a Yamaha MT-44 cassette recorder, also owned by my brother and I. (Maybe just me? ) We had no sequencer, so it was all performed live.

Now for $650, you can buy a MacBook and find some free software and you'll have more synthesis options than the entire keyboard/synth department in Rondo Music, the first music store I ever worked in, or, as you stated, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars on the hardware gear of your dreams. In the middle of that is commercial software and inexpensive hardware instruments. This is very different than even 20 years ago, when new hardware analog synths were few and far between.

So do what you want, or can. I think all of us can agree that there's never been a better time to get into electronic music, regardless as to your gear preferences. My curse is, I love it all. WEEP FOR ME!

[zerocrossing]

Not hard. I could build a Liepzig v3 in Softube Module. I couldn't find anything built with the Moog modules, but this was done with the Yamaha modules and some others.

It sounds fine and usable, but it didn't sound like Leipzig V3 at all. It's just not close viscerally.

To counter heres a small peice from a very small modular setup. The softube is nowhere near to this...

Hard disagree, though obviously the Softube demo was not meant to sound like the Leipzig, it was just supposed to show how analog it can sound. In my opinion, you're listening with your eyes, not your ears. If you feel like it, download the demo and compare for yourself.

[Vortifex]

There it is in a nutshell. When I was starting out, a "budget" synth, like the Juno 106, set us back $2000 in 1983 dollars. That's $8,424.24 in current value.

Ackshually the 106 was around $1195 USD which would be around $3850-ish today. But your point still stands.

[BBFG#]

There it is in a nutshell. When I was starting out, a "budget" synth, like the Juno 106, set us back $2000 in 1983 dollars. That's $8,424.24 in current value.

Ackshually the 106 was around $1195 USD which would be around $3850-ish today. But your point still stands.

Sold a lot of them in 1983, and if you paid more than $800 for a new, in the box A stock, then you were just an easy mark.

[zerocrossing]

Not hard. I could build a Liepzig v3 in Softube Module. I couldn't find anything built with the Moog modules, but this was done with the Yamaha modules and some others.

It sounds fine and usable, but it didn't sound like Leipzig V3 at all. It's just not close viscerally.

To counter heres a small peice from a very small modular setup. The softube is nowhere near to this...

There is nothing in that demo video that can't be done in Softube, VCV rack, Cardinal, or Voltage Modular

To claim Softube is "nowhere near to this" is just wrong, what exactly about that demo is Softube "nowhere near"?

I would append to that that VCV/Cardinal and Voltage Modular are steps below the quality of the Softube modules, which becomes more apparent with audio rate modulation and distortion. I once went on a survey of filters in VCV, and even the commercial add-ons from Vult don't do as good a job at overdriven sounds as Softube and Reaktor do, and that test was pushing it to 4x my 48 kHz sample rate. There must be some internal oversampling happening that just makes them sound better. For most garden variety sounds, they're fine, though. Unless you're triggering very high notes like C5 and up, you probably wouldn't notice it. I turn to VCV when I'm looking for polyphonic modular stuff, which Softube does as well, but to a lesser degree and a higher CPU load.

As I've said earlier, when I decided to sell my kick-ass Dominion 1, I was very discerning about making sure software could equal it. I would have kept it, despite it's awkward size, if I couldn't get very good alternate sounds out of the software, and that meant me really doing the kinds of sounds that break a lot of software, and doing it in extremes, that frankly I'd probably never do in the actual hardware, like heavily distorted, audio-rate modulated sounds at C6. Anything that even sounded somewhat muted or aliased was rejected. I wasn't able to completely get there with VCV, but I was with Softube Modular and Reaktor Blocks. I'm also looking at things on a spectrum analyzer, to see if there is maybe stuff happening beyond my range of hearing. There wasn't. So this idea that there's some "presence" in analog synths that can't be replicated with software is hogwash. That nut was cracked 10 years ago.

[zerocrossing]

There it is in a nutshell. When I was starting out, a "budget" synth, like the Juno 106, set us back $2000 in 1983 dollars. That's $8,424.24 in current value.

Ackshually the 106 was around $1195 USD which would be around $3850-ish today. But your point still stands.

Sold a lot of them in 1983, and if you paid more than $800 for a new, in the box A stock, then you were just an easy mark.

I actually bought it with my employee discount... so maybe I am misremembering that price, but you get the idea. Maybe I am thinking of the DX-7, which was another synth we were considering.

[ghettosynth]

I’ve been indecisive over the years on which I prefer between software and hardware

The results will be the same as everybody else’s so I won’t bore you all but I’ve come to the inclusion that my hardware synths still win on sound and personally I find that they sound way better in a mix (I’m using a clarett interface btw) ,they simply stand out

I also like committing to audio nowadays as I find that working with midi / piano rolls can be an endless chore seeing if different notes work better in a track ,with audio I just leave it ,be happy with the end result and move on to the next track

Also it’s worth mentioning that at age 49 and after years of staring at a screen that I’ve just got to enjoy the process of writing music ,i also agree with Lisa Bella Donna’s outlook on composition -‘commitment to moments in time’ (in regards to composition)

100%. I think that these debates over subtle differences are something of a waste of energy. I do think that there are some subtle sonic advantages of analog in some contexts. I also don't agree that the Erica Black demo is what I'm talking about, and yes, I do own a number of Erica Black modules and like them just fine. I have not heard software that sounds like the FM'd 2040 filter on my Octave Cat, or, in reference to Erica Synths, the Polyvoks filter. I don't care about arguing about it, and I don't care about proving it or not. That's my perception and I think when we get near the non-linear edges there is still some advantage to analog. That said, modern synths are great and the Ace/Diva releases marked a turning point for me where one could work ITB for most things if one preferred that. I did for a number of years. Before that any rapid modulation of digital filters revealed that plasticy character if the sample rate wasn't high enough. I bought the first Nord Modular sight unseen and, for years, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread for me. Not more analog than my analogs from a DSP modeling POV, but very much so from a usability and flexibility POV. It became the core of my live rig, because, even though I could hear some differences, much of my audience could not.

Today though, beyond analog, and in fact, much of many modular synths is digital anyway. it's less about the sound that one could "potentially" achieve than it is about the difference in sounds that one practically achieves. It's hard to quantify the value of fingers and physicality. You aren't going to reduce it to a simple myopic lab test.

As an example, I have MI Rings in three places. I have it in VCV, I have it in Poly Hector, and I have it in a standalone module. The module is recent. Hector is great and Rings is software. Rings has the same interface in physical form as it does in VCV. So one could argue that it should behave similarly. It has a different interface from Hector, but the Hector interface is very usable.

I prefer the physical module and the music that I can achieve by just reaching with my fingers and touching it is more enjoyable, hence better, to me. I weigh these decisions carefully, I really like digital modular systems like Hector, Max, Reaktor, etc., and sometimes they are actually preferable in a practical way, they reduce the surface area of a system and fit it into a compact space, but sometimes they aren't.

All of these effects are subtle. I had a fully constructed live playback system with midi controllers and Maschine some time back, it was very usable. I had roughly 80 controls mapped. However, there was a slight latency and while it was mostly fine, and sometimes improved the output as it changes things smoothly, it was often simply not responsive enough.

You're never going to convince people that your way is the only way, never. What is best for any particular performer/composer is highly context dependent. One of my own turning points to go back to hardware was when I heard Richie Hawtin express a frustration that I have related to over the years related to live machine composition vs more constructed composition and the output that he could achieve. This doesn't mean that some other artists can't use a different approach, it means that it didn't work for him. Similarly, it doesn't work for me to create certain kinds of techno ITB.

Related, is this idea of trying to save every single knob move via midi, or notes via midi. It's not free to set that up, it takes time, and it is often inflexible. Yes, it's ultimately flexible in that you can modify any part of it, but that breaks the flow and requires you to switch into a different workspace. This is the same driving thought behind how much more powerful Rings is, for me, as a standalone module than it is having it in Hector. Yes, I can map controls, and yes, I can even lay them out similar to Rings. However, short of building a controller that uses a Rings front panel, I still lose something beyond the time of farting around with all of that. I lose whatever value I get from associating the graphics on the panel and the size of the knobs with my compositional process. Maybe this doesn't matter to you, but I have found that it does. I learned this early with the Nord Modular. I thought that it was great that it had all of those controls, but, it never replaced my SH-101 live, not because of the sound, but because of the immediacy of the interface.

Ok, this is already a wall of text, and I don't do this very often anymore. So, ignore or not at your leisure, and we now take you back to your regularly scheduled counting of the number of angels that fit on the head of a pin.

[IvyBirds]

Not hard. I could build a Liepzig v3 in Softube Module. I couldn't find anything built with the Moog modules, but this was done with the Yamaha modules and some others.

It sounds fine and usable, but it didn't sound like Leipzig V3 at all. It's just not close viscerally.

To counter heres a small peice from a very small modular setup. The softube is nowhere near to this...

There is nothing in that demo video that can't be done in Softube, VCV rack, Cardinal, or Voltage Modular

To claim Softube is "nowhere near to this" is just wrong, what exactly about that demo is Softube "nowhere near"?

I would append to that that VCV/Cardinal and Voltage Modular are steps below the quality of the Softube modules, which becomes more apparent with audio rate modulation and distortion.

I have all of them, all of them have strengths and weaknesses which is why I own all of them. Of course hardware modular setups will have strengths and weaknesses also

If you need saturation and distortions Softube is the way to go.

If you want to have an insane amount of modules that can do practically anything VCV Rack/Cardinal is the way to go. Cardinal is just a collection of the free modules from VCV rack but that is still over 1,000.

Voltage Modular really shines when you host other plugins inside of it turning them into "modules" and want to use it in a polyphonic way

[pekbro]

Actually, voltage modular falls pretty short of a real modular rig in as much as they don’t really
work the same way. There’s also the cpu bottleneck that separates them even further.

[IvyBirds]

Actually, voltage modular falls pretty short of a real modular rig in as much as they don’t really
work the same way.

Which is what makes it the better choice to host other VSTs

[pekbro]

Ok whatever u say…