I remember a long while back now when CDs first came out that many argued that something was lost in the process, some living quality that seemed to removed from the sound. Now, many years later, you can find plug ins for digital workstations which vinylize recordings. In the end, I always believed, and I still do, that this was a fallacious arguement except perhaps the most trained of ears that in the end, I doubt are really listening to the music as much as trying to hear suble differences in the sound.
Considering the kind of low tech car radios that people listened to so much music on in the past, iand loved it, t seems silly to argue about minute differences in sound.
That brings me to the basis of this post, analogue and digital synthesis. Here I would like to argue the other side. After getting my Voyager the other day, I started to tweak things and began to experience with my ears and perception, a whole new universe of sounds. Now I had some experience with this before with Moogerfoogers which is really what ultimately lead me to the Voyager.
I am trained in mathematics and part of me still can turn a cold analytic, antisceptic, scientific stare of the world and break it up into parts and see how they fit together. Sometimes, that can serve me well even in music. But another part of me is equally strong, the artist who percieves in another way, a more intuitive way and its this artist that hears something very different in a Voyager, something I like very much or I would not have invested so much money in it.
When we talk about converting analogue to digital we are talking about only two (or however many for surround) signals being broken into parts and reconstituted. Does it work. Yes, I think it works very well. It’s why I like my M3 with all its sampled sounds. It sounds great.
But here is the problem with analogue synthesis. We are not talking about duplicating a sound (as in the case of CDs). We are talking about sound that is being shaped by electronics. Now these electronic circuits don’t play by digital rules. they are not broken up into parts and they respond s quickly the electrons that give them life. They also interact as in the case of modulation and its for this reason that even the most carefully refined of virtual models fails, in my mind, rather badly. In short, this is why I have a Voyager and this is what I hear when I listen to my Voyager, something that is lacking in digital. Not better, no worse, just different.
I have some old classical music CD’s that were recorded ADD. You know what they sound like? MIDI files. I have Switched on Bach on vinyl, as well as a whole bunch of other music, from Jefferson Airplane to Led Zeppelin and everything in between. And yes, all my records are alphabetized. They do not sound like MIDI files at all. So, if you want a good comparison, try it out for yourself. A record will pick up the ambient qualities of the studio, the precision of the microphones, the hum of the amps, as well as the slightest background noise which you might only hear on an expensive turntable run through an expensive amp. Even tuning issues can be heard. So, yes. An LP beats a CD hands down for quality. 
