[sdiy] Taking a Step towards - - --((FUTURE-PREDICTIONS))-- - -

[Paul Maddox]

Antti,

> Because despite 20 years of effort, analog still simply sounds better.

in *YOUR* opinion...
Show me a resampling or wavetable engine done with analogue electronics, oh
sorry, you can't do it..

> If you could combine the warmth & liveliness of analogue with the
> diversity of digital, That would be good.

I've never understood this warmth thing.
ok, its do with oscillator drift some people say.. so why then do people
spend hours and hours trying to make a perfectly stable oscillator?
Some say its to do with the filters, but every analogue synth in the
70's/80's had different, and yet they all had this 'warmth'?

I'm not going down this road, but lets just say its subjective..

> Chameleon would be interesting if it was 5-10 times more powerful.
> Currently it doesn't have enough cpu power to do new things and one must
> resort to rehashing things which have already been done on the PC.

Huh?
Hold on a moment, you said "analog still simply sounds better"
now your saying the chameleon isnt powerful enough to do new things, and yet
analogue synthesis is still same as it was 35 years ago (VCO->VCF->VCA)...
so, I can say the same thing "analogue synthesis would be interesting if was
more powerfull, if had the power to do new things"
Anyone seen any analogue samplers?
I'm working on a VOSIM system, lets see you do that with a Prophet5.

> That I agree with. Another reason is that you don't need to make the same
> kinds of compromises as you would in analogue domain that often result in
> a charasteristic sound.

agreed, but manufacturers are realising that things need to 'imperfect' take
the virus with its 'saturation parameter'.

> A synth I'd like to try (if I had time & money to build it) is a vector
> synth that had high freq analog oscillators clocking digital wavetable
> oscillators.

Hold on, thats not analogue, surely it won't have warmth?

> This way you'd get the timbral capacity of digital wavetable
> stuff (PPG Wave style) and the analog warmth of 70's synths.

But analogue isnt powerfull enough to do it...
You simply can't get a VCO with a constant enough amplitude to drive an ADC
over the whole 10 octave range.
You can't get a VCO to run fast enough (say 128 times for PPG resoloution)
over the full 10 octave range.

So perhaps when analogue electronics has advanced enough to do what I need,
I'll rethink me stance.

My point is, its a very VERY subjective area.. there is NO "this is better
than this", because as with everything there is only shades of grey, no
black or white.

Paul (playing devils advocate)