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

[Richard Wentk]

At 09:20 12/01/2004 +0000, Paul Maddox wrote:
>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..

I think analogue sounds better at being analogue than digital does. ;-)

This month's Future Music has some side-by-side comparisons of original and 
digitally emulated softsynths, and it's obvious that good analogue hardware 
pisses all over the stuff that you have to install.

But all this tells me is that today's crop of digital simulations aren't so 
hot, and that people still haven't really taken the time to work out what 
it is about *good* analogue that makes it sound the way it does.  And good 
digital design (e.g. Virus) already sounds better than bad analogue (insert 
long list of cheap and nasty late-80s cash-in monosynths here.)

Unlike analogue, which is limited to being analogue, digital can do 
anything if you throw enough design time and clock cycles at it. Right now 
we're in an intermediate period where digital is still playing catch up. 
Ten years from now there will be *no* difference.

Meanwhile a freebie like Native Instrument's Metaphysical Function still 
sounds more interesting than many sounds I've heard people get out of a 
modular. The killer difference from the point of view of sound design is 
that when you have (almost) unlimited modules to play with, you can make 
noises that are hugely more interesting and imaginative than all but the 
most oppressively huge wall of analogue knobularity.

Richard