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

[Bunny_boy]

A fella has to have some emergency HP!

Like for when you run out of ketchup?

I read is as he took too much damage and now his HP ran out and he's waiting to respawn.

Mebbes you can top up your HP with HP sauce?

[ghettosynth]

A fella has to have some emergency HP!

Like for when you run out of ketchup?

I read is as he took too much damage and now his HP ran out and he's waiting to respawn.

Um, duh! New modules are an attack on your compositional space. You need to have a spell of compositional expansion at the ready. Although he's from the olden days, just after electricity, Rick Wakeman understood this intuitively, which is why he always wore a cape, ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice.

Some of you really need to brush up on your music history!

Warning, the following clip contains real hardware. You might want to cast a spell of mommy's protection if your soyboy plugins are currently in use.

[zerocrossing]

So, yes, many people did sell off their "analog synths", aka, their keyboards, to buy a better keyboard, the M1. People who actually cared about analog synthesis for the sound, did not sell off their analogs to buy an M1, generally speaking. I'm sure there were cases where a synth hoarder sold off some of their old stuff to get the new thing to put with their old things.

Of course you are right that being able to produce analog synths cheaper plays a big part in the analog resurgence, but it is also in part because people realized over time that analog still has something they value.

I think we also have to see that "the whole game" has changed, especially since the late 90s when DAWs came up. Today a hobbyist can really produce a Song with analog synths. The situation was totally different back then and the workstations (=digital) offered possibilities that contributed a lot to reach musical targets. Despite of sequencing mixing, recording and saving were real challenges. I suppose that analog synths wouldn´t be that interesting anymore today if there wouldn´t be the "infrastructure" built around them to use them effectively. And since we don´t have trouble with all these little or bigger problems anymore we are focussed on the results and the sound. And the sound really still stands out. Even the sounds you can make with cheap analogs like the Pulse 2. I just checked some pads I made with it a while ago (Pulsewave unison poly mode) and they sound so sweet <3

The part you're leaving out, is that the analog resurgence started around 20 years ago. So, yes. At that time there was still a pretty noticeable gap between an emulation and even the least expensive analog synthesizer. Enough for people like me to buy an ATC-1 and Evolver, and later a MoPho and Prophet '08. A lot has happened in twenty years. It's like comparing the digital effects in Revenge Of The Sith to Andor Season 2. The emulation quality is so much better now, that of those mentioned instruments, I only have the ATC, which I upgraded to the -X version. As a former Pulse 2 owner, I assure you, it does not sound that great, though it does have an interesting character.

[zerocrossing]

*it's not that unusual, manual labour will play havoc with your body. Standing up sometimes sounds like jumping on a sheet of bubble wrap. Oh joy...

get on the medical weed like me!
turning my head sounds a bit like that, my neck and shoulders are ruined.

Too much time holding your arms out patching modulars will do that. Seriously. I had crazy debilitating neck and shoulder pain at one point and I figured out that it was coming from programming rack synths and effects for long periods of time.

[vurt]

*it's not that unusual, manual labour will play havoc with your body. Standing up sometimes sounds like jumping on a sheet of bubble wrap. Oh joy...

get on the medical weed like me!
turning my head sounds a bit like that, my neck and shoulders are ruined.

Too much time holding your arms out patching modulars will do that. Seriously. I had crazy debilitating neck and shoulder pain at one point and I figured out that it was coming from programming rack synths and effects for long periods of time.

it predates the modular by about 20 years

[zerocrossing]

I listen to and play a lot of techno, I think it's often pretty easy to pick out hardware sounds.

But yet you posted a bunch of videos that were the sound of software that were supposedly hardware

I mentioned Techno to my daughter, on the way home from Superman (more like Supermeh, amirite? ) and she had no idea what it was so I asked Apple Music for some Techno hits and her response was, "so, it's just a drum machine and some white noise?" I made us suffer through one and a half tracks, and did not hear a single thing that I thought couldn't have been done on my phone.

[zerocrossing]

will the balance shift to the thread with the poll?
should we have a poll to see what we think about that?
ad infinitum.

Probably 50% of the posts in this thread are from one person banging on the software can do anything and sounds as good as hardware in all situations.

Yep. No doubt, the most epic monologue in KVR history

If you're talking about me, thank you for the compliment. Epic is what I strive for. But I never say "in all situations." I'm always pointing out that a lot of plugins have obvious differences, and when doing complex modular stuff, it's pretty easy to max out my i7, so if I was doing a lot of stuff like that, I'd probably have to use a real modular setup.

But for many situations, yes, software can be just as good.

[zerocrossing]

the deeply silly aspect of the whole thread (beyond that it's been done to death hundreds if not thousands of times on here) is the title is a pretense that a wholly subjective matter is objective: a balance shifting; even as there was supposedly a wide enough consensus on page 1 no less, here it is pg 105. There may be a balance for the person who wrote the title, but there must be one for everyone. I don't have a hardware synth. There is no balance to be had on a scale where one side has no weight.

If someone likes the sound a device makes, that's that. If someone likes the use cases of this type rather than the other, that's the end of that story really, isn't it? But nooooooo, one's preference has to be made more than that, with dumbass rhetoric like "In the real world" now. and "people are getting these for the sound" - as opposed to? Someone that thinks differently is not living 'in the real world', is it? People are not getting persuaded either way, if that's expected to be persuasive it's a fantasy of yours. Nothing personal, but get real.

I agree with you completely, but when I read the title, I took it to mean the overall balance of how electronic music is made in 2025. Individuals are always going to have their own take on things, but as a whole, I'd say, yes, the balance has shifted and the vast majority of people making electronic music are using mostly software. A smaller portion of us are doing hybrid setups, and a small, but very vocal portion, are still only using hardware.

[zerocrossing]

A fella has to have some emergency HP!

Like for when you run out of ketchup?

I read is as he took too much damage and now his HP ran out and he's waiting to respawn.

Um, duh! New modules are an attack on your compositional space. You need to have a spell of compositional expansion at the ready. Although he's from the olden days, just after electricity, Rick Wakeman understood this intuitively, which is why he always wore a cape, ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice.

Some of you really need to brush up on your music history!

Warning, the following clip contains real hardware. You might want to cast a spell of mommy's protection if your soyboy plugins are currently in use.

You're saying that as if Mr. Richard Wakeman had a choice of what to use. Modern Rick uses many digital instruments, including plugins.

https://equipboard.com/pros/rick-wakeman

[whassup]

More cowbell.

Uhhhh! Gotta bookmark this one. Maybe even sample it one day. Thank you!

[whassup]

Although he's from the olden days, just after electricity, Rick Wakeman understood this intuitively, which is why he always wore a cape, ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice.

Some of you really need to brush up on your music history!

Warning, the following clip contains real hardware. You might want to cast a spell of mommy's protection if your soyboy plugins are currently in use.

Dang! I grew up a forced soyboy. I was 6 when he played that. Great performance, great sounds, great playing! And surprisingly all without plugins. I wish I'd know what this strange controller keyboard is that he played that Mini Solo on... It looks so real. Thanx for posting such a classic!

[IvyBirds]

A fella has to have some emergency HP!

Like for when you run out of ketchup?

I read is as he took too much damage and now his HP ran out and he's waiting to respawn.

Um, duh! New modules are an attack on your compositional space. You need to have a spell of compositional expansion at the ready. Although he's from the olden days, just after electricity, Rick Wakeman understood this intuitively, which is why he always wore a cape, ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice.

Some of you really need to brush up on your music history!

Warning, the following clip contains real hardware. You might want to cast a spell of mommy's protection if your soyboy plugins are currently in use.

You're saying that as if Mr. Richard Wakeman had a choice of what to use. Modern Rick uses many digital instruments, including plugins.

https://equipboard.com/pros/rick-wakeman

On his most recent tours including the current tour (which I was supposed to see again next week in New Jersey but got postponed due to his recent surgery) he uses a pair of digital synths with a few plugins played via MIDI on a MacBook with Mainstage.

Screenshot_20250719-132945.jpg

The MacBook is connected to the bottom Korg Nautilis via USB, and sits on the stage left wing and is controlled by a tech

Along with them he uses a grand piano either belonging to the venue or rented from a local supply house

My wife and I try to see every classic rock band/artist we can that plays from DC to NYC. It's extremely rare to see any of them use anything other than some kind of Rompler/Workstation and/or a laptop and plugins these days for the synth parts

While they may have used a bunch of analog synths back in the day, they did so because it's all they had

[pdxindy]

I really want Bazille as hardware and completely digital but with each voice running on it's own processor with it's own DAC. This way each voice can be clocked according to the pitch of that voice and any aliasing is related to the fundamental pitch of that voice, like old samplers and wavetable synths. It'll never happen but I can dream, lol!

Bazille is such a remarkable instrument, I'm still finding new ways to make it sound broken. Very few other synths handle feedback patching as well as it does.

I'd love to have your hardware Bazille!

Hardware or software, I consider Bazille one of the top 5 synths ever made.

[zerocrossing]

While they may have used a bunch of analog synths back in the day, they did so because it's all they had

Thats exactly as I would expect, but it’s not going to stop me from writing out all my KVR posts out on parchment with a quill before I transcribe it to my phone.

And yes, I’m wearing a cape during all of it.

[ghettosynth]

A fella has to have some emergency HP!

Like for when you run out of ketchup?

I read is as he took too much damage and now his HP ran out and he's waiting to respawn.

Um, duh! New modules are an attack on your compositional space. You need to have a spell of compositional expansion at the ready. Although he's from the olden days, just after electricity, Rick Wakeman understood this intuitively, which is why he always wore a cape, ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice.

Some of you really need to brush up on your music history!

Warning, the following clip contains real hardware. You might want to cast a spell of mommy's protection if your soyboy plugins are currently in use.

You're saying that as if Mr. Richard Wakeman had a choice of what to use. Modern Rick uses many digital instruments, including plugins.

https://equipboard.com/pros/rick-wakeman

Has he had any hits lately?

case closed.