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

[_leras]

The Atari 520ST had MIDI ports and could directly connect to analog & digital synths. That was the last time in history when there was a direct connection between ITB and real Hardware. Since then most people went pure digital, because of the supreme sound quality and dynamic range. They never looked back; I guess this is called evolution.

Whut?

The atari st had no audio capability?
Didn't people need some kind of tascam mutlitrack cassettes recorder to record their external instruments.

[_leras]

If anyone here thinks that the tiny variants between plugins and the real deal are audible in a live situation, they should have their brains scanned for damage.

Not that people can't do a show with softsynths, but I've been lucky enough to see quite a few electronic music shows.

I'm pretty sure Nils Frahm couldn't do his thing with softsynths. The Orbs Moog bass in a large venue was amazing sounding. I could go on and on with that and bore everyone to tears. But I Know!!!

[crimsonwarlock]

Didn't people need some kind of tascam mutlitrack cassettes recorder to record their external instruments.

Yep, that pretty much describes my setup back then: Atari Mega-1 running Cubase sequencer with a Steinberg Midex which gave me 4 additional MIDI outs (giving 80 MIDI channels total) and SMPTE-sync to my Tascam 488 8-track tape deck. I used two Roland A-880 programmable MIDI routers to handle those 80 MIDI channels.

I still have all that stuff floating around here, but it has to go on Reverb in the not-so distant future... except the two A-880s, I'm taking those to my grave

[D-Fusion]

Hallelujah!

[IvyBirds]

If anyone here thinks that the tiny variants between plugins and the real deal are audible in a live situation, they should have their brains scanned for damage.

Not that people can't do a show with softsynths, but I've been lucky enough to see quite a few electronic music shows.

I'm pretty sure Nils Frahm couldn't do his thing with softsynths. The Orbs Moog bass in a large venue was amazing sounding. I could go on and on with that and bore everyone to tears. But I Know!!!

You can run any Moog Bass patch plugin in a large venue with massive subwoofers being driven by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of watts depending on what you think is a large venue and it will sound good

The amount of low frequency energy being driven by massive amps pushing all the air from giant cones sounds and feels fantastic

[SoftSynthLover99]

But do you make art only for the audience? Is every piece of sound / music you make only created for the entertainment of others?

The 3rd Wave was a snooze fest, so bye bye..

Curious what you didn’t like about the 3rd wave?! Everything I’ve heard from it sounds pretty amazing to me and I have that on my radar as a potential next synth. 24 voices of polyphony is very attractive as even most software that sounds worth anything doesn’t reach that high. And the overall sound to me seems very pleasing for a Hybrid!

If you want a hardware PPG Wave get the Behringer one for $700 and save four grand, if you want something that sounds like PPG Wave in a modern plugin get the new Waldorf Microwave Plugin, if you want a deep Wavetable synth with tons of filter and modulation options there are so many phenomenal ones in software it's impossible to count

Behringer Wave and the Microwave plugin both only have 8 voices of polyphony vs the 24 voices on the 3rd wave and can't do virtual analog like the 3rd wave. And the 3rd wave has the "Wavemaker Tool" onboard so you can make your own wavetables from any source via audio-in which is another thing that really peaks my interest. So while the Behringer Wave and Microwave plugin are significantly cheaper, they are significantly more limited than the 3rd wave for my taste.

Also that Dave Possum designed 2140 low-pass resonant filter sounds great to me as well as the digital SEM-oberheim esque filter. This guy has a really good take on the 3rd wave and even said he had packed it up to return it before really getting the hang of it

However something like Kilohearts PhasePlant would be a potential option instead of getting the 3rd wave (I need to dive deeper into PhasePlant however to see). But in my experience having a board in your studio to play yourself is the only real way to know if you'll connect with it or not. Everything else is just window shopping until I get to wake up daily and play the thing lol.

[whassup]

Yeah, heard some seriously cool sounds there.
Semi-fun rant: That Roland thingy in the background has this crazy kiddy light show as a feature that can be turned OFF, right?

[ghettosynth]

If anyone here thinks that the tiny variants between plugins and the real deal are audible in a live situation, they should have their brains scanned for damage.

Not that people can't do a show with softsynths, but I've been lucky enough to see quite a few electronic music shows.

I'm pretty sure Nils Frahm couldn't do his thing with softsynths. The Orbs Moog bass in a large venue was amazing sounding. I could go on and on with that and bore everyone to tears. But I Know!!!

In the 90s when Nord/Virus/AN synths were popular it was very common to hear a terrible filter sweep in live settings. In this context, I mean recorded on a record. Often the harshness of the live sound interacted with the sound of a bad digital filter on high resonance settings such that, in fact, it was more irritating live than in the studio.

I saw Orbital live a few years back and they had a MatrixBrute, it stood out. Again, you can't do the experiment even though you wish that you could. You can't replace the Brute with a softsynth and expect the performance to be the same because other factors will also change the performance. You can't isolate the MatrixBrute and software and say that the lack of differences that you observed would be projected in context in the concert. So, you have to accept perceptions, biases and all. Of course you're free to reject them, but what you're not free to do is gaslight others with respect to the differences that they are hearing. Yes, those differences may only be bias, however, you can't know. This is why the audiophile industry has survived. Yes, I think that much of that is bullshit. However, some of it, at the narrow edge between technology and perception, is not. I think that's also true here.

This sounds great.

[zerocrossing]

Yepp, take that back. Then take this!

Whatever one thinks of this guy, or, thinks about marketing as an explanation, it still remains that there is a claim on the table that a model improved over time which required an update. The assumption is that the model is now, perhaps asymptotically, closer to the thing that it is modeling. Note that it doesn't matter whether that claim is true or not in this case. This is a common story and it has been true for many analog models. That said, while marketing may have had a hand in this, and they're definitely triggering your FOMO, it's very likely that there is some truth to the fact that the model has been improved. Here's a dangerous statement, the model can be further improved. Whether it's audible to most people in a mix is a different question, but it's very unlikely that my statement there is false. It is, in fact, a story that has repeated itself over and over. Artuira claimed back in 2004 that:

But what about the core of the Minimoog, the sound? Thanks to TAE®, Arturia’s proprietary technology for emulating analog circuits, the minimoog V offers an unchallenged quality of sound. Sharp filters, aliasing-free oscillators, soft-clipping guarantee you have the best analog emulation on the market.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040611002 ... oogv.lasso

Well, that's some slippery language there guvnor, no? It's certainly not claiming to be perfect, just the best. Yet, we know that it has been improved at least twice since then, and by improved, I mean remodeled. This necessarily implies that the old model wasn't close enough and there was room to get closer. Of course there was.

And yet, some of you were still claiming, at the time, that software had solved all of your woes over twenty years ago (emphasis mine).

viewtopic.php?p=555489&hilit=Minimoog#p555489

Now, its just simple, un-cluttered, and easy to get on with making music. Software synths sound better to my ears (yes that includes over-blown supposed classics like the minimoog!) and whole orchestras can be loaded into the computer. Best of all - I've been able to convert 30 square floor space into another recording room so I can record the best thing of all - real acoutic instruments.

Its never been better and my output has quadrupled.

Some of you couldn't hear it then because you were playing stuff where it didn't matter, even though at that time it was painfully obvious. It's definitely better than it was in 2004, but you might consider that you are that guy that couldn't hear it then updated to the 2025 edition.

Two things I'd add to this.

First off, any digital model of a physical phenomenon does not have to be perfect to be useful. Meteorologists don't account for every atom in the atmosphere when they predict when and where there hurricane hits. Human hearing is pretty limited, so you only have to model things to a degree where you can fool humans, which is not the same as accurately modeling any analog synthesizer. One could say that Jup-8 is now better than the old Jupiter 8 V, and sonically I'd agree, though it now has fewer of the cool features that Jupiter 8 V had, like the Galaxy Modulator. I still use the older version because it can provide great sound and interesting modulation, even though it is technically not as accurate as the original.

I'll note that I got tricked into buying a SonicCore interface by hardware zealots who swore that the emulations were still by far the best available. They were not. In fact, I'd say they were poor in comparison to plugin technology of that time, and since that time things have gotten even better. Takes all kinds, I guess.

(yes, it is perfectly possible to make a great sounding track on that system)

Second, I'm also often told that synthesizers like the Access Virus or Nord Lead 2x are far superior to anything available as a plugin. This is balderdash. Poppycock! It is quite easy to go head to head with a modern wavetable/VA plugin like Icarus, Dune, etc, and show where the plugin trounces, yes, trounces, the hardware instrument. This doesn't mean that people haven't developed a fondness for these inferior hardware instruments, because it's accepted fact that often we like the way things fail and consider it "character," but if we're talking about sonic quality as in lack of digital artifacts, these popular instruments are not great. I hear less noise out of these people, now that you can run the ROM firmware on an emulator, but not none. "The analog output stage isn't emulated!" they cry, as if this makes a lot of difference. When I had a TI I went back and forth between it's digital out and analog outs, and unless I was slamming my audio interface, I could hear little difference, and preferred the digital output. It's of little consequence to put a good preamp model on a plugin. I do this all the time.

[zerocrossing]

Yeah, heard some seriously cool sounds there.

Cool sounds that are equalled by many modern plugins.

[ghettosynth]

Yepp, take that back. Then take this!

Whatever one thinks of this guy, or, thinks about marketing as an explanation, it still remains that there is a claim on the table that a model improved over time which required an update. The assumption is that the model is now, perhaps asymptotically, closer to the thing that it is modeling. Note that it doesn't matter whether that claim is true or not in this case. This is a common story and it has been true for many analog models. That said, while marketing may have had a hand in this, and they're definitely triggering your FOMO, it's very likely that there is some truth to the fact that the model has been improved. Here's a dangerous statement, the model can be further improved. Whether it's audible to most people in a mix is a different question, but it's very unlikely that my statement there is false. It is, in fact, a story that has repeated itself over and over. Artuira claimed back in 2004 that:

But what about the core of the Minimoog, the sound? Thanks to TAE®, Arturia’s proprietary technology for emulating analog circuits, the minimoog V offers an unchallenged quality of sound. Sharp filters, aliasing-free oscillators, soft-clipping guarantee you have the best analog emulation on the market.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040611002 ... oogv.lasso

Well, that's some slippery language there guvnor, no? It's certainly not claiming to be perfect, just the best. Yet, we know that it has been improved at least twice since then, and by improved, I mean remodeled. This necessarily implies that the old model wasn't close enough and there was room to get closer. Of course there was.

And yet, some of you were still claiming, at the time, that software had solved all of your woes over twenty years ago (emphasis mine).

viewtopic.php?p=555489&hilit=Minimoog#p555489

Now, its just simple, un-cluttered, and easy to get on with making music. Software synths sound better to my ears (yes that includes over-blown supposed classics like the minimoog!) and whole orchestras can be loaded into the computer. Best of all - I've been able to convert 30 square floor space into another recording room so I can record the best thing of all - real acoutic instruments.

Its never been better and my output has quadrupled.

Some of you couldn't hear it then because you were playing stuff where it didn't matter, even though at that time it was painfully obvious. It's definitely better than it was in 2004, but you might consider that you are that guy that couldn't hear it then updated to the 2025 edition.

Two things I'd add to this.

First off, any digital model of a physical phenomenon does not have to be perfect to be useful.

You just restated George Box. That's the point. All models are wrong, some models are useful.

Human hearing is pretty limited, so you only have to model things to a degree where you can fool humans, which is not the same as accurately modeling any analog synthesizer.

Which humans? You can fool some of the people some of the time, and all of that. Ears and perception can be trained with respect to specific phenomenon, sometimes unintentionally. DJs in the 90s, when vinyl was the dominant choice and you had to know how to beat match could much more easily hear when records were out of sync than the average partygoer. In fact, learning to DJ takes some of the pleasure out of the experience because you can hear the details of the mixing more clearly. It becomes less "magical."

Second, I'm also often told that synthesizers like the Access Virus or Nord Lead 2x are far superior to anything available as a plugin. This is balderdash. Poppycock!

Indeed, no disagreement. Why the Nord synths sounded better in some cases, at the time, was simply a function of sample rate. Nord did not have any special sauce on algorithms, nor were they ahead of the game in terms of recent advancements. In fact, they are not as good as current software, without a doubt.

The reason that the Nord Modular changed my (performance) life was related to the flexibility that it provided in terms of building live machines in software that could be taken on stage as hardware. It sounded "good enough" for live settings. The filters were MUCH better than those in the K2000, but, were clearly not as good as the real analog that I had at the time.

Even at the time I had zero interest in any of the many variants of the lead, or for that matter, any VA that wasn't modular in some serious sense. The K2K wasn't fully modular, but, it was a very powerful sampler for the time.

"The analog output stage isn't emulated!" they cry, as if this makes a lot of difference.

Agreed, this is mostly nonsense, as is the discussion of DAC differences in any significant sense. Often I think that these are the last refuge for one of two aspects: 1) the only real difference is bias, or 2) there is a real difference but it's not known what might be causing it and the easiest thing to attribute it to is some unmodeled or decidedly different component.

[SoftSynthLover99]

Yeah, heard some seriously cool sounds there.

Cool sounds that are equalled by many modern plugins.

Not really. The sounds in this video are quite thin and uninspiring for my taste (also nothing close to what I was hearing from the 3rd wave in the other video I posted).

I have the Korg Multi Poly plugin and while a pretty decent software synth it's just that, pretty decent. Not bad at all but not quite top tier IMO. If you have presets for Korg Multi Poly that are equal to the 3rd wave would you mind sharing them?

[pdxindy]

This is huge for me. Going from trying to be commercially successful to just being an artist for my own self enrichment was probably the best thing I ever did for myself. There is nothing in my studio that's there for the sake of being more popular, and if I started doing live shows again, I'd be totally pragmatic about it and build a rig that did the job as efficiently and effectively as possible. If anyone here thinks that the tiny variants between plugins and the real deal are audible in a live situation, they should have their brains scanned for damage.

Most analog synths don't have a plugin emulation. For example, if the Redshift 6, Xerxes and Nina are my favorite synths, there's no equivalent software.

And for the synths that have a good quality emulation, in many cases, there is still a big difference in UI and hands on control. Even if there were a softsynth that emulated the Polybrute 12, there is no midi controller with a comparable keybed, an XYZ pad and a ribbon controller. Without the UI, the softsynth cannot sound like the actual instrument when played live.

And if the Moog Grandmother is a favorite for someone, there is no emulation, and if there was the emulation can at best be partial. I can take the output of the filter and pass it through an analog distortion eurorack module and then back into the Grandmother, something not possible with a softsynth.

If I imagine a live performance setup, I would pick hardware. Let's see... a couple Elektron boxes, a couple analog synth modules, a Linnstrument and a Mic for vocals. There is no laptop with software synths/drum machine and midi controller(s) that can come close to the sound and hands on capabilities of that setup.

[pdxindy]

Behringer Wave and the Microwave plugin both only have 8 voices of polyphony vs the 24 voices on the 3rd wave and can't do virtual analog like the 3rd wave.

The 3rd Wave is also 4 part multi-timbral. Someone could combine the 3rd Wave with an Elektron box and make whole compositions with just those two.

[IvyBirds]

Behringer Wave and the Microwave plugin both only have 8 voices of polyphony vs the 24 voices on the 3rd wave and can't do virtual analog like the 3rd wave.

The 3rd Wave is also 4 part multi-timbral. Someone could combine the 3rd Wave with an Elektron box and make whole compositions with just those two.

And when you do that you get 6 voices of Polyphony per timbre, or you know you could just run multiple instances of a VA or Wavetable plugin on a computer and get way more than that for thousands less