[sdiy] vco's

[Seb Francis]

Graham Atkins wrote:
> Seb,
>
> On 8 Apr 2009, at 00:18, Seb Francis wrote:
>
>> In short, if I want a basic analog sound then I might still use real 
>> analog gear, but for more complex, interesting sounds I'm reaching 
>> for the software more and more.  And I know this is the same 
>> throughout many dance music studios - and is it causing a drop in 
>> quality?  I don't think so: in dance music there is higher production 
>> quality and more amazing sounds around now than ever before.
>
> YES and most of the punters are happy to listen to it in MP3 form 
> rather than CD !, sorry I don't agree.
>

Well, there's various preferences over distribution medium.  A lot of 
dance music DJs will still prefer to buy vinyl over CD.  Personally I've 
sold my entire vinyl collect on ebay, encoding what I wanted to keep to 
320kbit/s mp3.  And all new music that I buy is in this format.  I 
regularly play out alongside vinyl DJs, sometimes on very high-spec 
sound systems.  If anything, the stuff playing off the laptop comes out 
sounding better and cleaner than the vinyl (sometimes I have to turn the 
treble down a touch if the sound system has been set up with vinyl in mind).

Sure, one can hear the subtle difference between 320kbit/s mp3 and CD on 
a good quality monitoring system, and there's also a subtle difference 
between 16bit WAV and 24bit WAV, and with higher sampling frequencies.  
But actually if you just sit down (or dance around) and listen to the 
music, rather than concentrating on analysis of A/B differences, does it 
really make a difference to how you hear the music?

I regularly use analog synths in my music and they have their strengths, 
but if I was being a purist and limiting myself to just these then my 
sonic palette would be much more limited.  Now that would make a very 
noticeable difference to how the music sounds.

Anyway, that's probably enough rant - I almost feel like I should be 
posting on AH ;)
.... although in my defence I am a keen builder of my own synthesisers 
and effects, both analog and digital.

I guess in a nutshell what I'm saying is that one can get too caught up 
in analog evangelism and perhaps miss some of the amazing new things 
that software brings ...

Seb