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

[ghettosynth]

The differences sum up btw. You often don´t hear that much of a difference if you play just a single sound. So if you ask yourself once again when something is wrong with your mix which plugin does the trick better think twice and don´t go on feeding the VST cheaters.

Yep. I recall a thread on some forum, maybe a mailing list. Someone was asking about how to the general vibe of a Boards of Canada sound and the response was "a room full of analog hardware." Yes it was a bit flippant, but, we shouldn't dismiss it so quickly in the same way that we don't dismiss the sound of analog consoles and outboard vintage gear. In isolation emulations are very convincing. However, if that were all there is to it, then why do we need plugins to simulate subtle channel differences?

We don’t… unless we want to sound like a band that’s been living off residuals for a very long time. I can also point out Grammy Award winning pop albums that have out sold every single BoC album by a factor of 10 that were made on a UAD Apollo and a laptop.

To be clear, I don't need them, but some people feel that we/they do.

I will say that a good preamp emulation after a plugin instrument, even if it’s not an analog emulation, can help make it pop.

What exactly is popping? All that you're saying is that you can hear one element. Other people can perhaps hear things that you can't, or perhaps not, I don't know, but you have to accept that is a possibility.

The argument, whether one agrees with it or not, is that the small differences are summative. That's it. It's not about small differences between one plugin and another, it's the differences between an analog circuit and its emulation.

Citing grammy albums that don't use analog is not a counter to that argument. The point isn't that you can make something that people like, the point is that if you want that sound, you won't get it with an Apollo. Again, I'm not making that point, per se, but that is the argument that people make.

[ghettosynth]

He was quick to move on from the Envelope test and based on his look and talking around it made it look like he was trying to cover up the flaw in the Softube envelopes.

You can clearly hear how lifeless and weird the envelope on the software sound in comparison to the Juno if you go to 26:26 in that video.

I don't think he wanted to cover up anything and my suspicion is that he is focusing on the whole.

There has been an awful lot of ink spilled about MiniMoog bass. You can find endless arguments about how the envelopes are a part of this online. Whether he was trying to cover it up or not is one thing, but that it comes across as sloppy evaluation is not really debatable IMO.

[Ah_Dziz]

I don't really follow why "software" = "emulations" in all these conversations. If you want analog, you can get analog, especially if you make your living off of music (being able to buy whatever gear you want and write it off on your taxes is great).
There are very few situations where I don't think software can kick the shit out of analog circuitry for sound generation or modification, especially when the developers aren't just trying to create a direct clone of something that already exists. Even for emulations I don't ever miss any of the Junos or Moogs I ever had with the variety of options in the software market. The other amazing bonus to working digitally in the box is that loss of sound quality is optional. It's all well and good to want to drastically reduce your dynamic range with the type of distortion that tape causes or to run your signal through a high pass filter and multiple nonlinearities that add noise at every stage of processing, but it gets old very quickly when that is your only option. For me the same goes with all the simple vintage synths that everyone here keeps bringing up. I have some old 4 track mixdowns of pretty ambient music that I made with a Juno 106, a cz1, and an er1 and they are obscenely noisy. I knew this at the time, but it sticks out a crazy amount compared to anything modern. Even budget mixing gear was pretty disturbingly bad before the late 90s when it came to noise and bandwidth issues. All these bits of "vintageness" are less endearing when you can't avoid them. Anyway, software is better 99.9 percent of the time for me and my work.

[Papuzzo]

I don't really follow why "software" = "emulations" in all these conversations. If you want analog, you can get analog, especially if you make your living off of music (being able to buy whatever gear you want and write it off on your taxes is great).
There are very few situations where I don't think software can kick the shit out of analog circuitry for sound generation or modification, especially when the developers aren't just trying to create a direct clone of something that already exists. Even for emulations I don't ever miss any of the Junos or Moogs I ever had with the variety of options in the software market. The other amazing bonus to working digitally in the box is that loss of sound quality is optional. It's all well and good to want to drastically reduce your dynamic range with the type of distortion that tape causes or to run your signal through a high pass filter and multiple nonlinearities that add noise at every stage of processing, but it gets old very quickly when that is your only option. For me the same goes with all the simple vintage synths that everyone here keeps bringing up. I have some old 4 track mixdowns of pretty ambient music that I made with a Juno 106, a cz1, and an er1 and they are obscenely noisy. I knew this at the time, but it sticks out a crazy amount compared to anything modern. Even budget mixing gear was pretty disturbingly bad before the late 90s when it came to noise and bandwidth issues. All these bits of "vintageness" are less endearing when you can't avoid them. Anyway, software is better 99.9 percent of the time for me and my work.

I posted a thought a while ago but it should be repeated. Imagine you could take your existing ITB setup back in time to 1985. Imagine showing them that one person in their bedroom could produce, mix and master a complete album. Show them how powerful synths like Omnisphere have become, then show them Kontakt, Amplitube, the FabFilter bundle, Ozone and then show them Ableton Live. My band and I made a demo tape in a decent studio in 1982 and it cost an arm and a leg and a few kidneys. And by today's standards it sounded like shit. That's what makes me ignore the hardware and old school afficionados today. We have it damn good today and the only thing that is lacking is musical talent.

[DrGonzo]

the only thing that is lacking is musical talent.

I think it's more lack of focus and determination to stay with an idea.

[zerocrossing]

Seriously. Isn't EVERY clone or replication inferior? It wouldn't surprise me if Black Corporation Deckard´s Dream isn't even capturing every nuance of the CS80.

It’s not a cut and dry question. Is a copy always inferior? Well, clearly the wonky out of tune filters in Carr’s Juno are different from a brand new Juno… or are they? He clearly at one point admires the results of poor calibration. I’ve used offsets to get that effect in software that’s not supposed to be an analog emulation. The modern Prophet 5 uses software to create the same effect, because modern electronics are stable and uniform.

I don’t own anything that’s been emulated, but I have run into issues where the software produces a better result than the hardware. Often an analog VCO synth doesn’t track pitch across a full range, which can lead to poor results.

[DrGonzo]

Seriously. Isn't EVERY clone or replication inferior? It wouldn't surprise me if Black Corporation Deckard´s Dream isn't even capturing every nuance of the CS80.

It’s not a cut and dry question. Is a copy always inferior?

Sorry. I wasn't clear enough. With inferior, I meant the perfection of replicating the original to its tiniest details. Not inferior as a less good product.

[El°HYM]

Chimpanzees are also 98% there; yet they look & sound nothing like homo sapiens.

Did a chimp write this, because that’s the level of intelligence I’m seeing.

Some chimpanzees have a better sense of humor than the proclaimed humanoid. This has been scientifically proven many times, especially on #kvr.

[D-Fusion]

He was quick to move on from the Envelope test and based on his look and talking around it made it look like he was trying to cover up the flaw in the Softube envelopes.

You can clearly hear how lifeless and weird the envelope on the software sound in comparison to the Juno if you go to 26:26 in that video.

When it comes to noticing details like 1:1 envelope behaviour, I first want to congratulate you for developing a personal taste and being able to notice things like that. As much as this is a super power it's also a bit of a curse, getting yourself hung up on details like that. I've had that seeking-for-perfection trait in me as well and looking back it never ever did me anything good.

I don't care about tiny differences either if it sounds close enough and I just mentioned it because of the difference that I heard and I tried to get closer to his example by adding a tiny bit of Attack on the envelope and it got much closer to his example on the OG Juno.

Sometimes you can get around the stiffness on certain vst's by adding a tiny bit of attack to mimic the more open and loose behavior on a older Hardware synth envelope.

It was just a sloppy comparison on that part and i noticed that he almost looked annoyed and frustrated as soon as he started to mention the Envelopes and blew past that part as fast as he could and he really had to point out how much more interesting the next thing he did was compared to the envelopes.

The 6 minutes he used on comparing waveforms is much more boring since it can sound similar on many different synths.
Wish the Synthfluencers would take more time to recreate similar patches on both instead of showing endless waveforms and filter sweep comparisons in every video.

I also own all the synths from Softube so I am not a snob and I like them for what they can do And I even use the Legend HZ more than my Model D because it sounds good enough for me on the sounds I like to use + It doesn't need constant retuning.

So it doesn't matter where I get my sounds from as long i like the sound and sometimes i prefer the sound on my Hardware and sometimes I like the preset i recreated on my vst emulation more.

[D-Fusion]

Chimpanzees are also 98% there; yet they look & sound nothing like homo sapiens.

People share 100% and we still don't look or behave or sound the same either

[crimsonwarlock]

I meant the perfection of replicating the original to its tiniest details.

In what sense does that even matter? If you replace any hardware synth in a track, with a software emulation, nobody listening to the track would mind it one way or another, or even notice it.

Back in the eighties I replaced a Korg Delta with an ESQ-1, in every song we played, and nobody ever came to me asking why the Delta was missing in a song

[El°HYM]

Chimpanzees are also 98% there; yet they look & sound nothing like homo sapiens.

People share 100% and we still don't look or behave or sound the same either

...its sad, isnt it.

[dellboy]

What we have learnt from this thread is that people who own hardware are quite happy to use software as well. The opposite does not seem to apply to those who use software. They prefer to stay entirely in the digital domain and entirely reject the use of hardware. Without a poll there is no way to determine if the balance has shifted one way or the other in 2025.

[Gamma-UT]

What we have learnt from this thread is that people who own hardware are quite happy to use software as well. The opposite does not seem to apply to those who use software. They prefer to stay entirely in the digital domain and entirely reject the use of hardware.

Not only is that a complete logic fail - just read it back to yourself - it doesn’t even reflect what people have said.

[dellboy]

What we have learnt from this thread is that people who own hardware are quite happy to use software as well. The opposite does not seem to apply to those who use software. They prefer to stay entirely in the digital domain and entirely reject the use of hardware.

Not only is that a complete logic fail - just read it back to yourself - it doesn’t even reflect what people have said.

Your answer is unclear, it would be helpful if you explained what I have misread in this thread. I do not remember a single person in this entire thread who is entirely hardware based. Several have said that they are entirely in the box. Is this not correct?