[Ardour-Users] analog summing

[Brent Busby]

Gordonjcp <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> writes:

> You're not seriously telling me you can hear any sort of difference
> between all the near-identical ripoffs of terrible 1970s VCOs that
> people are currently punting as "boutique synth modules", are you?
>
> I've never really understood the obsession with analogue synths.
> They're so lifeless and static-sounding, and they never stay in tune.
> There's a reason why people stopped making them, you can do better
> digitally and it'll actually work the same way when you come back to it
> tomorrow instead of wandering off into some weird alternate tuning
> because it's half a degree warmer in the studio.

It sounds like you have strong feelings about this I'm not going to be
able to dissuade.  Actually, most of the recent attempts at analog don't
sound like 1970s/80s VCO's and VCF's to me, and also, I don't think
those originals were terrible as you've said.  They were prone to some
very unpredictable behavior, and they needed a lot of tuning and
maintenance, but electronic keyboardists seem to be the only musicians
who feel entitled to not have to do those things.  Guitarists and
drummers have been dealing with tuning issues, pickup idiosyncrasies,
the fickle reactions of wood to climate, etc. for ages, and I've never
heard them say it made their instruments terrible or demand that they
deserve ones that are always in tune and perfectly reliable.  So
keyboardists may have finally realized that tuning and stability issues
are something they have to live with like everyone else, and you can't
just make your instrument a computer and escape it all.  Oh well.

I don't quite understand what you mean though by saying analog synths
are lifeless and static sounding, but they also never stay in tune.
Actually it's the fact that they are so unstable that, to me, is why
they're not lifeless and static sounding.

Anyway, if you're fed up with analog, I can sympathize with that too.  I
was playing music in the late 80's when everyone felt that way.  We all
went for digital workstation keyboards like the Yamaha SY99 because a
keyboard that needed zero warmup with zero tuning error and 100%
reproducibility for any sound it could make was just too much to resist.

-- 
- Brent Busby	+ ===============================================
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