Analog or digital ?

[justin3am]

Whatever your goals, I would avoid attempting to earn a living in marketing.

...or mixing. I don't know anyone who would hire a person that bases their "expertise" on such pretentious nonsense.

[ozmoz2008]

Good music just distracts from the sound, that's not what a sound demo is about.

This seems so self-serving I'm wondering if you actually read it before posting. Whatever your goals, I would avoid attempting to earn a living in marketing.

30 pages, wow!

The thread title alone is so misleading it doesn't make any sense to discuss this anymore, IMO.

What's the biggest difference between today's productions and older ones is the lack of synchronicity between musicians. There is too many "one man show" these days, and for me, this is THE biggest audible difference both in feel and in sound.

That mid range harshness is a total non sense. Ever heard some 60s hit productions in your loud speakers ?

[themossinator]

I think this guy is obviously trolling now. He has been told Prydz is in the box but refuses to believe - he can "hear" thats it OTB because he has the expertise

@living sounds, i actually feel a bit sorry for you, youd be better off on gearslutz i think, everyone would agree with you over there.

Look at the Prydz (Pianoo) thread at gearslutz, a lot of people there think it's all software. Thing is, those are usually the ones who want to believe that, and also haven't got much experience with the gear.

Why do I think it's gotten outboard treatment? Mainly because of the drums. The way the kickdrum punches, especially in conjuction with the rest. The absence of midrange harshness. The way it sticks all together. The clarity and punch despite the relentless limiting. My guess is that it's a mostly software production that got some hardware treatment at the (stem) mastering stage.

They think its all software, it IS all software, why cant you believe that all the qualities you listed above arent obtainable from software??

Once again its about the person using the tools - not the tools themselves.

[tranel]

OK guys let's go for 30 more pages—come on we can do it!!

I'll start: Software sucks! All software! You absolutely cannot make any form of listenable music with software—or even with *** snicker! *** digital hardware synths. Phaw, just writing "digital" leaves a bad taste in my mouth! To make music of quality, music that speaks of devotion and handicraft, you must use vintage hardware analog synthesizers that don't stay in tune and don't have patch memories.

All right, so that's sorted. Discussion over.

Come on guys, we can do another 30 pages!


DISCLAIMER: The above statement does not in any way reflect the author's own opinions, it is only meant to inflame the debate further and therefore result in more thread pages. Frankly, the author does not care about the equipment other people use for their music—as long as they use vintage hardware analog synthesizers that don't stay in tune and don't have patch memories.

[eduardo_b]

Good music just distracts from the sound, that's not what a sound demo is about.

This seems so self-serving I'm wondering if you actually read it before posting. Whatever your goals, I would avoid attempting to earn a living in marketing.

30 pages, wow!

The thread title alone is so misleading it doesn't make any sense to discuss this anymore, IMO.

What's the biggest difference between today's productions and older ones is the lack of synchronicity between musicians. There is too many "one man show" these days, and for me, this is THE biggest audible difference both in feel and in sound.

That mid range harshness is a total non sense. Ever heard some 60s hit productions in your loud speakers ?

There's a lot to be said for working together as opposed to doing it alone. I read an interview with an audio engineer who has worked with many very well known bands and artists over many decades, and he noted that so much comes out of collaborative team efforts that doesn't happen when one is doing it all alone. Which is why debating analogue vs digital is really non-productive. Creativity emerges from the person, not the tools.

[tranel]

Creativity emerges from the person, not the tools.

Hear hear! Edoardo-san, a voice of reason. The above quote should be a mantra for all KVR members.

[Blackbelt Jones]

Good music just distracts from the sound, that's not what a sound demo is about. Also, I keep the good stuff for releases.

Oh yeah, obviously the world is on fire with all your releases. Your site doesn't even link to them. Probably to shield us mere mortals from the glorious genius that is you. 'sanks!

[HanafiH]

Analog or digital?

On a seperate note: I'm in marketing and an overweening vanity, total ignorance of the subject and a natural flair for bullshit are pretty much ideal qualifications.

[living sounds]

I knew that phrase would be taken out of context.

[ew]

I knew that phrase would be taken out of context.

What's been taken out of context? Explain please...

ew

[pdxindy]

Creativity emerges from the person, not the tools.

Hear hear! Edoardo-san, a voice of reason.

Reason? That is digital software and clearly inferior

[rob_lee]

This whole thread is bollocks

[yellowfever]

This whole thread is bollocks

[UltraJv]

can you say "derail"?

[HanafiH]

I knew that phrase would be taken out of context.

Oh it's far too late be sorry. You said 'marketing' and that's all the excuse I need to write tons of bollocks. I like hardware bollocks, full on analog, and the no bollocks like marketing bollocks.

Marketing is a supremely vague term that covers a whole bunch of different specialisations. There's marketing proper, which is the identification of nascent product niches and the exploitation thereof. In the sense of an activity that creates more sales in an existing niche, a fundamental idea in marketing is the identification of marginal loyalty. Take hardware analog synths: you either love them, hate them or don't give much of a hoot either way. The natural constituency for marketing analogs is the people who don't give a hoot. If you love analogs you've already bought too many and are probably broke, if you hate them no amount of persuasion will change your mind. It's the people in the middle, who might buy hard but then again might buy soft, the marginal market, who you really need to market to.

Now all synth vendors would rather sell hardware. Not only is your IP totally protected against warez activity, you have a marginal lock-in against other vendors. That's why Yamaha keeps some of its tech totally out of the soft domains, such as the multi-operator FM/FS tech and the patented Sondius physical modelling algorithms. If you want that stuff, you have to buy hard. Secondly the greater inherent profitability of hardware allows the vendor to lavish big dollars on intangibles, such as the design of the core presets and the wavetables. Very few soft vendors can afford to bring the kind of talent on board that Korg and Yamaha can, and it's the very same sound designers who mostly run the few software companies that can.

Next, most musicians are, well, technically challenged when it comes to all the ditzy techno blarg you have to go through with soft. It can be a real nightmare dealing with all the loony toon issues there are in building up a DAW from scratch. And in fact the people who most support the software model actually make this problem about twenty thousand times worse than it needs to be by being such religious fundamentalists. The old Apple Mac was nearly run into bankruptcy by the Macatollahs driving the newbies out with their sheer foaming-at-the-mouth hysterics.

If you already know absolutely everything, soft is an irresistible and compelling solution to musical production that is much cheaper and yet so very good you can argue endlessly about which is better. Most musicians just want music, not an argument, and there's a very nice man down the Yamaha dealership will sell you what you want. You plug it in. It works! No psychos or nerdodrama involved. You gotta say yes.

Next, soft has a wet hole. It's the human user interface that lets the hard boys back into the game, with controllers of all kinds. The Korg Kaoss thingie was a work of marketing genius. The inverse side of this is why Yamaha bought Steinborg. Who cares about DAW sales FFS, it's the packaging with the synth that counts. Yamaha had this great twenty-year plan to take the world over with mLan and a distributed control system based on small computers. The soft market buggered all that (snigger snigger).

Finally there's the Aston Martin factor. If you're a zillionaire are you going to drive Skoda? I mean really? Next to a period DB6 at the golf club? Tackeee.

So the question is, where is the money going to come from? There's four fundamental market segments: unsigned musicians, signed and struggling, signed and successful and stars. Well, stars, woof woof, lots of cash but there's not very many of them, and software vendors usually grovel very nicely with freebies and infinite support whenever a real star hoves into view. Signed and successful, well a good market but hard to market into, whatever these musos did that got them successful, they're going to carry on doing it. Signed and struggling: this is the natural market. Not only do they have a strong motivation to go for the less expensive options, their management will usually keep them honest and paying the license fees. The big black hole is unsigned musos: there's gazillions of these but they're not monetizing the music they make. They pay for their gear with a day job.

The old CM magazine is the best example of failing to monetize unsigned musicians. The essential premise of CM was 'you too can be a star if you only you have…' That market has gone. It's gone partly because the world is awash with unmonetizable free music. In my genre alone, ambient, there is more soundscape already out there than any person could listen to in a lifetime. By the time you've read this sentence there'll be another gigabyte and a half already. It's also gone partly because software vendors didn't adequately distinguish between people using soft production for fun and people using it seriously. Kids who download somebody else's DAW and dick around for a few weeks before moving on to BioShock aren't a market. Arseholes running under-the-arches studios are. But the mass market has really gone mostly because the MAGIX Corporation owns it lock, stock and compressor.

There's a web site that claims to use search engine results to prove that Cubase is more popular than Sonar. One of the tools we use in marketing to actually asses Internet mindshare is www.alexa.com (free and no sign up). Alexa aggregates data from ISPs to determine the actual volume of web traffic that (almost) every web site in the world is actually generating. I haven't looked lately but the MAGIX Music Maker web is The Monster, it has a bigger global mindshare than Yamaha. It's usually around 8,500 in the global web ranking. Next biggest is Native Instruments. Yes, that's right, the mindshare for a synth vendor outranks all the famous DAWS at around 17,000. Cakewalk comes in around 30,000 and Steinberg at around 40,000. Half of Cakewalk's traffic comes from the USA, one fifth of Steinberg's does. Steinberg gets a quarter of all its traffic from Germany. Samplitude makes it in at around 2 million.

What does this prove? Selling cheap, cheerful and easy to use music software at mallware prices makes more money than the whole of the 'professional' software market. That's why MAGIX did an IPO in a global recession. Music software as a form of computer game needs to be priced and promoted accordingly. Look at that guitar solo crap on the Wii.

Next, way to go NI! What are they doing so right? Well firstly, they've thrown the legacy fest out of the window. NI's products are products in their own right, have reputations in their own right and feck other people's fame. Secondly, they've covered all the bases in all the genres with professional quality offerings that leverage marginally across an optional hardware Kore. Thirdly, they use cheap copy protection. Note that I said cheap, not weak. The dongle is a painful base unit cost that NI don't have. They've not gotten all anal compulsive about locking out the McJob earning scuzballs, they just make sure the monetized musos pay their rightful share. They've occupied the signed and struggling niche all the way up to the real stars. They are no Aston Martin, but they sure are a BMW. And you know you've made it when you get to show off your first bought-as-new Beamer, right?

Samplitude at 2 million? It's (together with Sequoia) a pro product sold at pro prices into a very selective and well-identified niche. This is the rocket science DAW that gets sliced and diced into Music Maker. It's the bull to all those cash cows. Who needs to market?

Fanatics of full frontal software should be wary of what they wish for. There are only two, repeat two methods to expand the VST market. The first is to sell the product for peanuts, and cheaper than everybody else's peanuts, forget about copy protection using a product (preferably the same product) that has a mass market price and a pro price - in other words: Reaper. Blow as a big and cheap a hole as you can in the biggest market. The other method? Monetize musicians and their music. If you want more cash in the customer's kitty you have to induce more cash into the music market that's tied to your product. Otherwise: it's every brand for itself in a gradually contracting horizontal middle market already filled with aggressive personal hygene challenged competitors.