Analogue sounds warmer

[tw1nstates]

Really,

does it?

These days?

This whole thing of warmth gets me.

Yeah I buy all this ridiculously expensive gear cos its warmer.

I use whatever and if it's not warm enough i roll off some treble. If i want a bit more fatness guess what - i use distortion, sparingly or not.

Roberts comments a while back got me thinking about all of this and i reckon it's 95% subjective bias.

if you have got UAD and a few other wicked plugs such as wavearts / decapitator, amp sims plus others that i forget now cos i am not in front of my machine then you want shooting if you think a new piece of gear is gonna make you sound that mich better.

I am so sick of reading interviews with electronic musicians where they are banging on about their analogue gear being 'so' important to their sound.

It seems to be a daily thing now. . .

I reckon analogue is the new digital! In a few years time a lot of people are going to say, meh, why did i waste so much money for not a lot of difference. . .

[SubFunk]

^^^ our days, i agree with you... the times of huge differences are certainly over...

the one thing that remains with analog, though it is more forgiving, if you do not know what you are doing... it is a bit of a contradiction, digital is so much easier to get your hands on these days (affordability for a lot of people) but it is also way easier to make bad sounding tracks, orientating on numbers, graphs, presets... and so on...

and well, there is obviously a 'different' level of beauty (talking analog distortion) which is very different to digital ugly distortion.

all that said, i still agree with you, especially seeing how people listen to music our days, on plastic PC speakers, in cars (just awful boom boxes) and on cheap in ears with iPods... or on crappy banging club sound systems... so no one really cares anyhow.

but that crap talk, especially from electronic musicians bores me.

a grand piano mice'd properly and recorded purely analog still remains a beauty, though...
and still can't be really replaced by a sample, or the like.

[re.mark]

How do you make a cold sounding track with only Analog equipment? Thats what I want to know...

[SimonPHC]

that's easy, it's even got its own genre name: Cold Wave

[3phase]

Really,

does it?

These days?

This whole thing of warmth gets me.

Yeah I buy all this ridiculously expensive gear cos its warmer.

I use whatever and if it's not warm enough i roll off some treble. If i want a bit more fatness guess what - i use distortion, sparingly or not.

Roberts comments a while back got me thinking about all of this and i reckon it's 95% subjective bias.

if you have got UAD and a few other wicked plugs such as wavearts / decapitator, amp sims plus others that i forget now cos i am not in front of my machine then you want shooting if you think a new piece of gear is gonna make you sound that mich better.

I am so sick of reading interviews with electronic musicians where they are banging on about their analogue gear being 'so' important to their sound.

It seems to be a daily thing now. . .

I reckon analogue is the new digital! In a few years time a lot of people are going to say, meh, why did i waste so much money for not a lot of difference. . .

Thats the backlash of the digital propaganda over the last decade.. And that the good sounding stuff is known buy now and many people rebuild good sounding units..

it was pretty much impossible to get neve 1080 pres in the past.. now evrybody with money can have as much of them as they want..

a few years ago i build patchpannels and wiring for a demostudio of an international instrument manufactor.. they had all the gear there just for the sake that famous pro musicans can see and test it there.. the full chandler range.. all neve clones in reasonable amounts..32 channel appogee system with chandler analog summing...

oh my god.. this little demo studio is producing a huge sound.. a really huge sound..
A decend pre and a decedn compressor for each bloody channel..analog summing... you dont need to know much about soundengineering anymore. set the levels ..done

of cause thats doing with analog how people work with plugs..

ANd it really sounds better.. you especially realize that with acoustic drumsets.. they really start living ..you only can top that by cutting them to tape instead into a daw..but the mojo of highend pres and comps is actually doing the job allready pretty good..


Face it .digital is the poormans choice,.. in the real music studio world they still preffer theese hoorid expensiv analog highend stuff.. who dont like a console monster has a rack with analog pres filters and comps .for the analog mojo...highend A/D´s

And from that poimt the do the production in the Digital domain with some beefing in the summing..

Thats the modern Producer studio in the music production world..combining the strenght of digital DAW with analog sound..
ANd all of this is still pretty portable in relation to a half ton weighting analog console..

beside.. a console that matches this quality would cost you a 100K... this is the reason they can ask so high prices for theese analog processors.. have 20 of them 2k each..you still go rather cheap...

[drako]

Depends what you love more, i have UAD's and i have a analoge console, i like the console's sound, it's preamps it's eq the total stage of the channel, way over any UAD or whatever plugin... In fact i think it's not even comparable.
Same goes for source material, like the use of analog synths.
Plugins have many more possibilities, but the sound of a good analog can't be beaten compared to a algorithm synth.

I love plugins, but one prob i have with it, is every production being released, has the same digital sauce over it. All sound a little the same to me.

[tw1nstates]

Depends what you love more, i have UAD's and i have a analoge console, i like the console's sound, it's preamps it's eq the total stage of the channel, way over any UAD or whatever plugin... In fact i think it's not even comparable.
Same goes for source material, like the use of analog synths.
Plugins have many more possibilities, but the sound of a good analog can't be beaten compared to a algorithm synth.

I love plugins, but one prob i have with it, is every production being released, has the same digital sauce over it. All sound a little the same to me.

Right,

this is exactlty what I don't get.

how ca you tell? Most of the time we dont know what people have recorded with.

I recognise that high end stuff is going ot be better. that's why it's so expensive in part.

but, i wonder really how much of a difference there is.

From what i remember reading on a few places on the intarwebs it seemed pretty difficult to tell the difference between the UAD Manley and the real thing. IIRC Gearslutz had a blind test and no one really could say that much either way. That's on isolated tracks - so , in amix, who knows.

But, a good channel in, yes of course that's important.

But all this stuff about warmth and smear and all this other crap that people spout (no offence drako - not talking about you now).

And then i see them in their untreated rooms!

Donno, it's the emperors new clothes i reckon - i have been guilty of gear lust as much as the next person but i am now getting to a point where i realise that more gear isn't the best place to focus.

Actualyl really listening would be a good start.

Don't listen to other elctronic musicians as most of them don't really know their eggs and there is a certain factor of my music is better than the rest cos I have x y and z in the studio- Fact is it still doesn't sound that much better or different.
Warmth, roll a little off the top, learn to mix!

I take the point about analogue being slightly more forgiving though. . .

[3phase]

Computers with digital techniques are perfectly capable of producing the same kind of sounds. Its not the computers or the digital synths which aren't capable; its the people operating them IMO.

you cant make a filet from meat loaf anymore

its actually a pitty that many clubs use digital controllers for the pa in otherwise 100% analog setups..

i think especially on very loud volumes you get the digital sound.. in the highs..they are hard. they byte in the ear even in good allignend systems.. and over hours and houts this gets harder...

I once read a very interesting article that claimed that this is a psychoacoustic fx ..one actuall not all human beeings are sensible too.. its because auf mirror frequencys on the samplerate that trigger an alarm condition in the brain.. like a mosquito flying around your head... And this causes stress wich is interpretated by the brain as a hard sound..

An intersting theorie because it actually explains the contradiction between the word of science against the perception of many people.. it even allows to explain why some pros get it while others dont hear a difference..

I dont know if that is realy the case... but its a much better theorie than the one.. you are haluzinating because what cant be cant be...


And regarding analog.. put a neve 1080 pre and a behringer cheapo desk on a freq response test..

the behringer will have the flatter freq response..as long its not amplifying... i dont have to go to detail that the sound and capability to amplify signals are an absolutly no match.. the behringer is just crap against that.

Analog is not per se better than digital.. just high end analog is per se better.. it really is.. and even when the simulations are getting better each day.. there are still miles in between .. especially mic pres cant really be emulated... an allready fucked mic signal dont gets with digital magic any better than that..

[3phase]

I take the point about analogue being slightly more forgiving though. . .

slightly more forgiving? you have a much denser grasp on the sound.. .. to achive what a analog 24 ffilter does you need a digital 30 to 48 db one...

thats actually a pretty strange phenomen.. ok..the analog filters are not ideal..the actually get steeper as more you are away from he breakpoint.. thats part of the analog modeling of modern digital filters.. they emulate the better sounding bahaviour of analog filters..

That actually says that analog filters indeed do sound better?

why that? its pretty easy.. we humans are natural beeings..so things that behave natural are pleasing us..the feel wright..its realy rather psychoacoustic fx.. but in the end of the day music is a psychoacoustic fx...

however..maybe that conection to nature is changing.. newest test show that young people start to prefer mp3 sound over analog smoothness.. from the earliest days digitally connected ti the world via digital sound and tft screens might alter the brain ...

and than there will be really the day nobody likes analog anymore.. the listening preferences have changed than..

And ear cancer is on the rise

[3phase]

Analog is not per se better than digital.. just high end analog is per se better.. it really is..

"High end analogue" compared to what exactly?

Although I disagree that it will always be better you do bring up an interesting point with regards to loud volumes and the sharpness of the sound itself. That is one of the aspects which I label as "knowing how to operate your gear". Its a perfectly reasonable issue IMO, but it doesn't have to be this way.

On an openair party with over 120 phon at the speakers.. it is pretty unavoidable that the levels are high..

so artefacts that are usually so low that you cant hear them are actually as loud than as somebody talking to you..

and than they are not anymore beyond the border of perception.. they might be masked by the loud signals..but your brain gets them never the less.. actualy you really hear them than.. theese ice cold hard kling.. than a guy comes that plays vinyl..gone...

these digital artefacts sum up.. i have installed digital studios in the past with ssl axiom network and solid jitter free housclock..all cables the same lenght. THX certificated monitoring system...

I ve to admit that this highend digital where everything is propper once in the digital domain sound indeed pretty smooth.. not hard or harsh.. but thats not the reality for the majority of digital productions or laptop djíng..

And.. we did a little comercial there and i teached one guy a bit how to handle the studio.. we had to eq a badly recorded speaker.. i used to axiom channels in parallel.. and even when the eq sounded ok.. i did´nt get the bloody voice right..

at one point i had enough. did an analog patch to a good ol 31 band klark eq.. moved some faders.. ..lets say 15 seconds..

sound perfect...

Some of theese analog tools just work.. a simulation probaly would have done the job aswell.. but there was none at the time. 1999 or so..

[filterstein]

That comparison between tubes and transistors is an interesting one.
When transistor based studio equipment came out the guys who were used to tubes treated those things in the same way they were used to. And that sounded bad, so they sticked to tubes until there was no alternative. Meanwhile some people found out that you could get a decent sound, but you'd have to approach it different.
Analog vs digital is a bit of the same.
Very good analog equipment has a quality that it imparts on the audio and which seems to make it 'better'.
Most analog does not however.
Digital adds very little, so you have to work harder.
And it's still in it's infancy.
But about the warmth, i still have'nt found a plugin that sounds as warm and living as a good analog polysynth like an obx ALL the time.
Yet it's getting better just, compare the first steinberg prophet vsti to a new plugin such as the polykb and you really notice a difference.
But the fact is that in the days of the obx only a handfull had the money to buy those,
yet we heard all those records with them and expect our daw to sound as good.
Though i do use plugins, i think they all smell like DAC to me.

[leedsquietman]

Everything goes in cycles.

In 1989, nobody wanted analogue ANYTHING. It was all Akai S1000s and PCM/Wavetable synths like the Korg M1 and Roland D50 and Kurzweil.

I bought a used, fully functional minimoog for 80 quid in a pawnbrokers in 1990, and they had an Oscar for sale at 30 quid that had been in the store for over 2 years, even at that low a price. I ended up selling that minimoog for 800 quid before I emigrated to Canada (and it was only in average condition and had never been serviced in the 10 years I owned it).

Nowadays there are stacks of cheap DX7s and Korg M1s on ebay, while everyone is fawning over vintage analogue gear again. A bashed up Jupiter 8 sold for $6500 on ebay a short while ago, crazy money for an instrument well short of mint condition.

Back in the day when I worked in a big music store, (circa 1991) I remember one guy being so desperate to get a Roland R8 Human Rhythm Composer, together with an ethnic percussion card, that he exchanged a Roland Jupiter 6, TR808 and paid 100 pounds cash to get it. Nowadays people would think that INSANE, but back in the day, the R8 was the most realistic drum machine around, the first to have the 'human groove' element and almost everyone thought 808s were pants that belonged to 1980.

[Tone Deft]

Everything goes in cycles.

and isn't this the most cliche beat to death worthless topic on the DAW forums?

'bout time it came around again, I guess.

anything new?

[leedsquietman]

Absolutely. Analog 'warmth' is the new black ... well actually, has been for a few years now. This craze started in the early 90s when analogue gear was in the bargain bucket, allowing people to be able to afford it while a Yamaha SY77/99 and Kurzweil K2000 were way out of most people's price range, but were the instruments studios were buying and everyone else lusted over.

Who wants to buy an additive synth or an early PCM wavetable synth these days ?? Even though they pushed music technology ahead and created more realistic interpretations of instruments not recreatable (or closely recreatable) in analogue.


You want to have diverse music, diversify your equipment and technology. Throw is some FM and digital PCM synths in with your analogs and have the best of all worlds. Use some REAL instruments too if you can. Mix it up, or you will forever sound like Laurent Garnier or The Orb circa 1994.

[filterstein]

Yes wish i had had those 80 quid in those days..
But i did buy an new synton syrinx when i was about 23, which had been in this shop since i was 16.
Sold it for 4 times as much, which was nothing compared to my 303 which made nearly 14 times it's original price. In retrospect i should have waited a little longer
Never regretted selling those.
Now i'm buying that cheap digital stuff.