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

[ghettosynth]

I'm ready for Taylor Swift and friends to be yesterday's news.

Just remember, without pop culture, there can be no underground culture.

I don't want pop culture to go away, I just want it to shift to something new. Hell, I'd take Nirvana and Sir Mix A Lot over Swift.

[Bunny_boy]

I'm ready for Taylor Swift and friends to be yesterday's news.

Just remember, without pop culture, there can be no underground culture.

I don't want pop culture to go away, I just want it to shift to something new. Hell, I'd take Nirvana and Sir Mix A Lot over Swift.

But but but Nirvana and Sir Mix-A-Lot are old music!!

Check out Hexed! by aya if you want some new pop music. If it's a shift in overall pop music, I'd rather have Taylor Swift than Boyzone, Westlife, and all that bland, processed, cover-heavy pap of the 90s and 2000s

[chagzuki]

Music isn't particularly the tool that coordinates social space (predominantly for the young) anymore. Social media and the proliferation of media in general has taken its place. I don't think there's such intergenerational rifts as there used to be, either, whereby young people would have to carve out their own symbolic space in line with the technological and social changes that there were growing up in.
The lowered costs of publishing and producing has led to such an over-abundance of media that it's hard to know what to do with it all, and the ability of AI to resynthesize that whole historic bank of styles means that it's possible to generate a whole piece of music for something as ephemeral as a social media post. I.e. anyone who wants to e.g. poke fun at the government in a topical way can do so by generating AI video and music, and that means you can have very high production standards for a flippant joke that will be irrelevant by the next day as the news cycle moves on. And actually there's not really a singular news cycle any more, since there are media channels covering every conceivable subject, so there are zillions of media cycles occurring simultaneously.
It's a different world. Underground culture means what at this point?

I see via YouTube that people are still coding games for the ZX Spectrum 128k, and all other historic platforms. I guess that's underground culture... there's every conceivable option to spend time and nothing particularly to rebel/react against, except perhaps commodification in general, and the social and economic pressure to create value. Maybe doing nothing, eliminating stress as much as possible, and enjoying whatever good things exist in nature is the way to go in a world where long history of media creation has already created way more shit than anyone could know what to do with.

[pdxindy]

Look, this isn't about my music was better than your music. It's a matter of taking production to extreme measures to polish it into a shiny orb. I do think that this relates to the topic in this thread, abstractly. It's not even completely about playing live instruments, although that is a part of it, it's about the ability to polish and a-priori construct every emotional moment.

And when every moment is built to land just right, it gets too smooth. There's no space for mistakes, or for the voice to crack, or for tension to build on its own. It’s not just that it’s fake, it’s that it’s all planned out ahead of time. Even the chaos is pre-approved. It gets tiring.

For me, when every moment is built to land just right, it doesn't land at all. It's boring (and manipulative). Also, if there is no space for mistakes, then there is also no space for magic.

[pdxindy]

It's a different world. Underground culture means what at this point?

Doesn't mean much these days cause nearly everyone is socially conditioned by the same homogenous patterns. If the underlying thinking is the same, then outer difference starts to become affectation.

[ghettosynth]

For me, when every moment is built to land just right, it doesn't land at all. It's boring (and manipulative). Also, if there is no space for mistakes, then there is also no space for magic.

Absolutely, but, the producers of that work don't see that and, at the moment, neither does their audience.

[chagzuki]

Doesn't mean much these days cause nearly everyone is socially conditioned by the same homogenous patterns. If the underlying thinking is the same, then outer difference starts to become affectation.

Which homogenous patterns? I see never-ending discussions across countless media platforms covering social and political theory, i.e. the questions about how to assess the shape of society, or rather all the different societies currently existing. People align with different explanatory systems and draw different conclusions, and are able to explore all these things with freedom/no barriers to entry.

But also I did click on a link to Ed Sheeran's latest track recently, and it was as bad as expected, and also had millions of views. That faction of the industry has sounded like AI for years, and so being replaced by AI would make perfect sense.
But that's just one of infinite options people have to engage with media content, it's not monolithic, it just happens to be popular. It's not forced on people in the way it used to be when there were only a few TV channels and radio stations. 'Underground' music was typically a response to a situation whereby the media was monolithic. I suppose now it could be claimed that what's monolithic is the incentive structure of social media platforms, and how that manipulates the users.

[pdxindy]

For me, when every moment is built to land just right, it doesn't land at all. It's boring (and manipulative). Also, if there is no space for mistakes, then there is also no space for magic.

Absolutely, but, the producers of that work don't see that and, at the moment, neither does their audience.

That's a broad social trend over some decades now... western society as a whole is more controlled and uptight and less spontaneous. In particular, the smartphone culture where there are always people recording has created a different form of self-consciousness that wasn't there in the past.

[HAL76]

For me, when every moment is built to land just right, it doesn't land at all. It's boring (and manipulative). Also, if there is no space for mistakes, then there is also no space for magic.

Absolutely, but, the producers of that work don't see that and, at the moment, neither does their audience.

That's a broad social trend over some decades now... western society as a whole is more controlled and uptight and less spontaneous. In particular, the smartphone culture where there are always people recording has created a different form of self-consciousness that wasn't there in the past.

That´s "critical theory", isn´t it? But I have never heard about these thesises yet. Do you relly think that people can be more uptight than they have been in the 80s?

[HAL76]

We need a new forum like the DOA for our nerdy millenials on VST!

[Bunny_boy]

We need a new forum like the DOA for our nerdy millenials on VST!

I honestly don't understand that video - what am I missing?

DOA - Dogs On Acid? That used to be a drum n bass forum, didn't it?

[HAL76]

We need a new forum like the DOA for our nerdy millenials on VST!

I honestly don't understand that video - what am I missing?

DOA - Dogs On Acid? That used to be a drum n bass forum, didn't it?

The video just shows a maybe not that talentet young man demonstrating the tremendous power of modern digital signal processing with an impressing result.

DOA still IS a DnB Forum were all those high 90s bad boys hang around. Maybe

But honestly - just skipped throught some other vids he has made - he´s a harmonic guy. ilike!

[aanano]

Did the thread title change?
I thought it was software vs hardware. and I couldn't figure out how anyone has one without the other.
If the title changed - shouldn't it be analog hardware vs digital hardware? Software still needs hardware to run it.

The 1988 Korg M1 was hardware and software, and definitely not analog, digital all through, which is why the Software version can be identical. An analog synth uses smooth electrical voltage, and has to housed in a hardware box of some sort.

And a computer is hardware. And so is a controller. And so is the interface. And so are the speakers.

[zerocrossing]

Did the thread title change?
I thought it was software vs hardware. and I couldn't figure out how anyone has one without the other.
If the title changed - shouldn't it be analog hardware vs digital hardware? Software still needs hardware to run it.

The 1988 Korg M1 was hardware and software, and definitely not analog, digital all through, which is why the Software version can be identical. An analog synth uses smooth electrical voltage, and has to housed in a hardware box of some sort.

And a computer is hardware. And so is a controller. And so is the interface. And so are the speakers.

And voltage isn’t smooth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant

[ghettosynth]

Did the thread title change?
I thought it was software vs hardware. and I couldn't figure out how anyone has one without the other.
If the title changed - shouldn't it be analog hardware vs digital hardware? Software still needs hardware to run it.

The 1988 Korg M1 was hardware and software, and definitely not analog, digital all through, which is why the Software version can be identical. An analog synth uses smooth electrical voltage, and has to housed in a hardware box of some sort.

And a computer is hardware. And so is a controller. And so is the interface. And so are the speakers.

And voltage isn’t smooth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant

Boring. The debate is largely about analog vs virtual analog. Nobody considers the crude DSP non-resonant filters to be virtual analog in any kind of contemporary sense.