the analog warmth myth

[Feltch Academy]

Very anal and very (indisputably in fact ) WRONG

yes it is stupidly anal - but which bit is wrong?

[cptgone]

Very anal and very (indisputably in fact ) WRONG

yes it is stupidly anal - but which bit is wrong?

No no no, warm, not 'wrong'!

Anal log is warm!

[Feltch Academy]

Very anal and very (indisputably in fact ) WRONG

yes it is stupidly anal - but which bit is wrong?

No no no, warm, not 'wrong'!

Anal log is warm!

I'm with this guy too!

[Feltch Academy]

Very anal and very (indisputably in fact ) WRONG

yes it is stupidly anal - but which bit is wrong?

No no no, warm, not 'wrong'!

Anal log is warm!

I'm with this guy too!

woo! its like a hall of mirrors....

[Samb]

Very anal and very (indisputably in fact ) WRONG

yes it is stupidly anal - but which bit is wrong?

Well most digital synths I know of have digital to analogue converters and noise makes a smooth line a very rough line well before the quantum level.

[rockin1]

Maybe someday digital developers will stop trying to emulate, and head straight for the gold? Stop trying to clone or emulate and make things sound good.

Isn't this exactly what Urs is already doing?

There're two ways to answer this. It actually demonstrates my point extremely well.

If you mean Urs the developer who hangs around here, then yes. I would count him among the fortunate few. I doubt anyone will disagree either.

If you mean urs the EQ plugin company, then hell no!
They place their bets on the average joe who is easily fooled with a pretty UI. They sound perfectly average if you skip the chrome.

But of course I mean Urs the developer that hangs out here, not URS the company making modeled EQ!

[omo]

BTW, I know a person who made a couple of hits using an internal sampler and SIR on his SBLive! about 5 years ago. Can't tell you what songs those were but you've all heard them and seen at least one video on MTV. And it also sold huge. Not that it sounded great but taking into account the genre it was a well done project. He still uses Cubase and things like Karlette (or whatever it's called) and internal EQ...

.. SIR, 5 years ago.. I don't think so.

- bManic

oh yea? how come?


or may be it's spelled Seer, Sear or Syr... I don't remember, sorry

[slerbo]

I had to keep it quiet in my studio, so was through sennheiser hd580 phones, esi wt2496 soundcard. I heard the differences ok, but the original mix (CLIP2 - rendered from FL studio I think?) sounded slightly 'better' to me than the one through the Fairchild (passing through, no compression added)! Whoops.. it seemed the most 'airy' sounding and the sounds sat more nicely together than the Fairchild one (wierd but that's my ears).
The compressed one, clip 3, sounds louder and more squashed but even that is v.subtle, but that extra compression doesn't add to the song I feel). A lot of people get very wound up her don't they? In the end, what Mark77 tried to say was first time listeners are what your music needs to be appreciated, and they will not notice the very subtle differences an expensive plug or hardware compressor have mdae at all. He says just put all that energy into writing and arranging the song instead. Make it as great a song as you can by using your writing skills not the gear etc...
But I think, maybe later if you have the time and not trying to do a White Stripes with your cd...well get those plugins out and have a fiddle to see if it can be better!

It makes little difference to the first time listener of song whether you used $20k analogue outboard or $50 FL studio straight to cd..WE can hear it if we try but even then it is unimportant, take it out of the mix, come back to it a couple of weeks later and you and all your eventual listeners will still like te music as much as before - or not.
If you have it, use it happily and know it makes a tiny improvement, but why blow your money on it otherwise? It's nice to have as an option and use appropriately but it's mainly for your own pleasure in listening back t your own work. I have jupiter6 and a roland sh-05 synths and they've gathered much dust...mainly because I got bored with the sound of synths due to the music I am making (except minimoog vsti which still suits), a roland tape echo sits idle too.. much as I love it - emulations get close enough to make it seem too much trouble to run all day (wears the tape, and mechanical noise too).

BUT it always helps to have a bloody good/appropriate vocal mic and decent monitoring for the mix (as was proved by the clips)! Even first time listeners will notice and rate those things very quickly...

[Meffy]

I'll have y'all know that John Mayall and the Blues Breakers have always used analog equipment, and they sound great. Why? Because, as the old proverb says...








... a myth is as good as a Mayall.

[omo]

I'll have y'all know that John Mayall and the Blues Breakers have always used analog equipment, and they sound great. Why? Because, as the old proverb says...
... a myth is as good as a Mayall.

because they know to use those

[omo]

Digital gear was never introduced because it sounds better

I would rather agree with a couple of BUTs. read on.

A Studer analog deck will sound better than a DAW

If you're talking of summing then that's very disputable. If you're after enhancing and colours then probably yes. But I'm afraid you can't compare them in terms of "better or worse" - those are simply different ways of workiing.

Does a vst compressor sound like a $2000 analog compressor? Not exactly.

This is interesting. One thing that I've found comparing digital compression to analog is that most of analog compressors suck for compression big time. Digital ones do a much better job, even VST comps - look ahead, much more tweakable and with better attack/release specs. Also many interesting products like Endorphin and one from Voxengo (forgot its name). What is often great about analog comps is their distortion, colour and all other enhancing qualities which actually have nothing to do with compression. What I like about digital is that I can get a clean compressor that compresses and nothing (or almost) else if I need such - this is pretty heard to find in analog domain even with much more then 2 grand in the pocket.

People are looking for sabstitudes to analog gear with very complex qualities to sound but those don't exist - noone has put enough time and money into some serious research and developement. That's just too expensive and difficult, I guess. There are no sabstitudes but lots of cool other stuff you can't find in digital. It is perfectly possible to make a buatifull and very clean audiphile record staying in digital domain - but it's not always cheap I must add. In any case, today, you really get much more then you pay for comparing to, say, 15 years ago - buy a computer, sampler, some sound modules and a few effects, download lots of sounds and impulses and you're ready to make at least a great demo or if talanted a good ready record for sale - all in all for a few thousand of your money.

Talent and experience are not included with software or hardware, analog or digital. But there are some people who use digital with very analoguish(if you will) results.

[Meffy]

Actually, I made that up about Mayall. Anything for a cheap pun. :-} Might well be true in spite of that, though.

[jmh]

Slerbo Good first post, instead of lashing out about some of the subthemes addressed in the thread, it seems you actually read what had been written, and seems you actually got some of the points mentioned Welcome to KVR btw.

[disclaimer: the rest is meant to be read generally, not as a response to you directly]

Anyways... what the casual listeners hear or don't hear, is a separate issue from what's partially discussed.

Casual listeners won't hear the difference. But we do. And we're discussing whether the difference even exists, before even trying to get to the next step, is the possible difference worth the financial investements it's associated with.

Sadly, people like mark77 fail to see the difference, and negate the second part with the first one. It's flawed argumentation, and no wonder it leads to threads going the way this one has.

Not only that, it leads to the stupid ass generalisations that all the professionals in the world who claim to hear the difference, are clueless dumbasses incapable of doing anything else but believing in myths and going to extremes to first acquire expensive gear and then have nothing else to do but to argue about the difference they claim to hear because they're defending their stupidity in purchasing such gear in the first place.

At least that's the general vibe I get from people arguing about this whole issue who just slap together some practically unrelated arguments and basing their opinions on those =)

(not to mention the simple fact that still hasn't been negated - it's always people lacking the experience with the expensive gear bringing up this discussion about expensive gear's quality being a myth...)

Regards,

JMH

[Feltch Academy]

Well most digital synths I know of have digital to analogue converters and noise makes a smooth line a very rough line well before the quantum level.

Yes you’re quite correct. I am wrong on that point. I didn’t take the implications of noise into account. My example should have been a Theoretical one not an actual one. But in fact if you had a perfect oscillator it still would become lumpy at the quantum level. Regarding the affect of noise – this renders my argument somewhat mute anyway in the real world. Eg. because the movement of a speaker/monitor cone smoothes out a huge amount of digital jagged edges, movement of sound waves in air creates additional noise etc.. If I can just go back to this point and say that- OK yes the whole quantum dilly was over the top, but we all know that a wave from a voltage oscillator is much smoother in detail to a digital wave.

A final thought about my preference for real analogue over digital (particularly signal generation). It was wrong of me to say one is better than the other. These are two different systems with different advantages. I’ll just say for now that I think that My JP8 kicks absynth’s ass for the sounds I want in my music.

[DrummerDude]

Think back to the time BEFORE you started making music, and think of your favourite songs
at the time. You liked those songs because they were good songs, and NOT because you
thought "oh god, i just love that analog warmth on that kick, oh and i love the tape
saturation on that guitar lead.. it's just so warm and fat...!"

I am sorry to disappoint you my friend but this is exactly what I was thinking BEFORE I started recording music.
I didn't know what the terms "fatness" and "warmth" mean in the world of recording but I could still feel them both.
Do not underestimate ordinary music fans - some of them are really fanatical when it comes to sound production and even though they are not "educated" in the recording business, they can still make the difference between a dry digital sound and a warm and juicy analogue one.
As for "warming" plugins: why don't you just record your stuff on tape? Svaes a lot of trouble.