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

[Scott Gravenhorst]

"TIm Daugard" <daugard at sprintmail.com> wrote:
>> >I am not going to debate weither analog or digital is THE best.  they have
>> >different strengths and weaknesses and often it also boils down to the
>> >engineering details of either world, many times it is even "best current
>> >practice" which doesn't really is the best, just the "current practice" and
>> >nothing else.
>>
>> agreed, but a lot of people seem stuck on 'analogue is best and everything
>> else is just rubbish'
>
>
>Analog is much easier to DIY. Digital takes far more work and a wider range of
>knowledge to get anything out. Analog is also generally easier to reverse
>engineer to understand "how did they do that?"
>
>I'm not saying one is better than the other just one is easier than the other. I
>speak from some experience having built a computer using an 1802 processor, TTL
>chips and SRAM for digital. My 80+ analog modules were far easier to build.
>
>Tim Daugard

I concur, add to what Tim said the movement toward surface mount parts making the
task of building something yourself more difficult.

I have several digital sound modules and synths.  They do things my analog stuff
just won't do - and vice versa.  I need both, but analog is just easier to build.
 I don't have a lot of money.  I can't afford to go to a PCB mfr to pump out 8
voice cards plus a motherboard.  And stripboarding a large digital project is
impractical, usually impossible.  I learned most of my electronics working for
Digital Equipment Corp.  Doing analog has never been anything easy for me, and
Thank God for this list, for without you amazingly smart and generous people, I'd
never have been able to do the projects that I now make music with.  Hence I get
very excited when I come up with something to contribute, regardless of how
un-advanced it may be to many of the list members.

I have tried to incorporate digital methods in my designs, the simplest being
things like a suboctave generator, to my PLL frequency multiplier.  Initially, I
thought that the square wave output would be un-useful, I was wrong.  Digital is
good, analog is good, but analog is easier to build.

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-- Scott Gravenhorst | LegoManiac / Lego Trains / RIS 1.5
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