why would "real analog" synth's be better than digital ones?

[d-kay]

yep, why?. Isn't it just a "bad" habit? People used to the faults of the analog amplifiers?, like people who miss the vinyl-records http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif. I'm throwing rocks in a greenhouse here, but wouldn't just a prime DA-converter be just as good as buying the analogue kit?. I mean it's all sine/rectangle/triangle-waves, no mystery there...

 

(this comes from a guy with little experience of "real analog" synths)

[joegerardi]

d-kay:

Neither is really better, it's just that for fat, thick, lush analog sounds, digital can't quite cut it. Even the Virtual Analogs don't have the imprecision, drift necessary to get that true analog feel.

 

However, for crystalline sonic clarity, for exact replication of a sound, for sample playback, nothing beats digital. For example: there's no way an analog synth could sounld like a piano as well as a digital synth could.

 

Neither's better, just different. It's when one tried to mimic the other that the comparisons occur.

 

This message has been edited by joegerardi on 04-19-2001 at 11:00 AM

[Guest]

For 15 years ago I told myself to remember why I switch from analog synths, 'cos you usually starts to only remember the good things after a while.

 

1. You got polyphonic digitals for the same price of monophonic analog.

2. No midi.

3. You had to tune them before every gig. (sometimes during)

4. the weight.

5. Only sine, square, sawtooth.

 

Remember that this was 15 years ago.

 

There has been some synths that took the good part with analog and incorporated it in the digitals. Like JD800 full of knobs.

I personally don't think that VA is much thinner than an analog and the analog will never replace digital, it's just a complement.

 

 

 

 

------------------

--Smedis,--

[d-kay]

But what IS this so-called "phatness"?. Someone should have closely exmanined the signal out of a "real analog" synth and compared it to a "clean" signal out of a digital one. Through Fourier transform .. or Wavelet-transform...

[coyote]

It ain't about signal analysis, it's about entirely subjective things like 'sound' and 'feel'. As the very happy owner of a JP-8000, I can say that it sounds great (and often awesome) yet I 'hear' a diff between it and the Minimoog. Whether that diff is better or worse is dependent on the patch... but then on those few occasions where I've been able to play a Minimoog, my excitement about playing "the real thing" seems to find its way into my playing. Same w/ the tonewheel organ clones - the new Korg has come quite close to the Hammond/Leslie sound (& feels pretty good), but that "certain something" still is lacking next to my A100.

 

 

Originally posted by d-kay:

But what IS this so-called "phatness"?. Someone should have closely exmanined the signal out of a "real analog" synth and compared it to a "clean" signal out of a digital one. Through Fourier transform .. or Wavelet-transform...

[joegerardi]

d-kay:

I would tend to think that "fatness" (I will NOT use that other, childish spelling. No reflection on you, more on society today that has to come up with gimmicky spellings of ordinary words.) as dynamic range. Digital tends to fall apart around 16kHz, which is ok because that's about the limit of our hearing anyway. Analog, however, will go much higher than that, and also lower than digital's floor. Hence, the dynamic range is much better, and I believe that there is a perceived feel of those sounds out of our aural range. I remember reading an article on Emo's Monster Moog. Will Alexander, his tech, said the the beast will go from DC all the way to 100kHz, and that's why it has the sound it has.

[dansouth]

I have a lot of nice digital synths from Roland, Korg, and Kurzweil. Some of them are fitted with expansion cards that contain samples of vintage synths. I have a JP-8000 and JP-8080. I've got a lot of nice "soft synths" based on analog systems.

 

I also have a 1982-vintage Prophet 600, the first MIDI product ever manufactured. It plays six notes at a time. It's not multitimbral. Horrible MIDI delays. Practical only for playing by hand, and unfortunately I'm not a skilled keyboard player. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/frown.gif

 

BUT...the sound of the 600 will BLOW AWAY anything else in my arsenal for sheer in-your-face presence and power. The difference is not subtle, it's staggering. It's like standing Arnold Schwarzenager next to Brad Pitt. Brad's a nice looking, versatile actor, but for sheer brawn, he's a daffodil compared to Arnie.

 

I don't know why the analog machine sounds so much more powerful. I'd guess it's an example of the limits of sampling technology. Maybe it's because the oscillators are producing the sound in real time. They may generate subtle changes in the overtone series that you can't replicate by looping a single cycle of a waveform. I don't understand it, but I've come to accept the inevitable. Analog ROCKS, and an immitation is useful, but inferior.

 

This message has been edited by dansouth@yahoo.com on 04-23-2001 at 01:22 PM

[d-kay]

Hmm, producting the sound?, It sounds horrible when you put a non-linearity before the amplifier. That would create sin(x)*cos(x) and in that way product the sound (or did I missunderstand what you meant by "producting"?).