theglyph wrote:Real instruments can be sampled at high enough rates that the digitized signals graph would approach a continuous form.
theglyph wrote:I often think about Arturia's Moog emulations and wonder if I Judge the Real Minis to sound better simply because I can't accept that a CD/DVD can generate sounds as well as real analog circuits no matter how close they get to the real thing.
I think these are helpful observations - and inter-related ones. If transitions are smooth enough, and at a high enough rate, the senses relay information smoothly and not in the form of separate elements. That's true of sound, and also of vision. We see a film (movie) as a continuous flow of movement and not as a series of stills, and in fact all our vision of the world edits out the blindspot the human eye has and presents a smooth transition that moves around the disjuncture that happens where the optic nerve obscures what we see.
A lot of the attitudes people have in analogue versus digital debates seem to come from prior expectations. I do have to say I've heard some bad digital stuff, including both synthesised digital stuff and bad digital recordings. But from developing experience I've concluded that those problems aren't due to the digital medium as such.
When recording I use both digital and analogue recorders, depending on the kinds of sounds I'm working with. I've found the digital recorder doesn't record some sounds as well as analogue - and the main problems have been with a keyboard using sampled piano sounds, and some kinds of sound from the Roland V Synth. It seems to handle the Voyager or the MS20 fine.
Wendy Carlos did some blind A/B tests and concluded that people who said they preferred analogue recording either couldn't detect a difference or preferred digital when their preconceptiosn didn't get in the way.
As far as synths are concerned, I have the Roland D50 card installed in my V-synth, and I initially found the D50 very characterless. Later digital synths have a richness and colour to the sound that the D50 lacks (both the D50 card and actual D50s on records), which suggests the remedy is advancing digital technology and not an inherent problem with digital as such.
Also, I made a sudden breakthrough with programming the D50 by using the partial tuning to create orchestral textures, which convinced me against all my expectations that the D50 has something valuable to offer. As always, it's a matter of horses for courses. A certain synth might do a lot of things badly, but do one or two things supremely well. And that applies whether it's an analogue or a digital synth.
Regarding softsynths, I recorded a demo mostly using Arturia softsynths for someone who doesn't like digital recordings (and therefore may be expected not to like digital sound or anything computer processed). They were very surprised when I happened to mention how much part the computer played in recording that demo.
I have analogue-style lead sounds from the Arturia 2600V that sound richer and creamier than the Voyager in some applications. And I use the Voyager layered with Arturia sounds a lot of the time, and the two blend together beautifully. Similarly, I've recently been using EMS Rehberg's soft Synthi AKS and sampling sounds from it into the V-synth, and the results can sound like full-on analogue sonic attack.
I think many people haven't caught up with softsynths yet. They try to play them on computers that aren't powerful enough, and with low-end soundcards, and they think the problem is with the software. It's rather like playing a Voyager through a really small radio speaker and thinking it can't hold its own against a MiniMoog played through a Marshall. The technology for softsynths is advanced enough if you know what you're doing and you get the right system, but the point hasn't been proved by enough people yet, and there's still a lot of prejudice to conquer.
In short, my conclusion is that with the right technology being used well, and without the baggage of preconceptions and prejudices that gets in the way of direct perceiving, both digital and analogue have their values. Neither is inherently better, there are large areas between the two where it's pretty much irrelevant which is which, and neither is more `real' than the other. In some ways I'm surprised by that. I've certainly not been free of preconceptions myself, especially in the area of digital recording. It's nice to be proved wrong sometimes, especially when that opens up massive new areas for making music.
