Analog vs Digital

[IamBurnout]

Analog pedals rule.

 

That said, they can't touch the versatility of my digital rack gear.

[hugbot]

 

Well, that was 10 years ago at most. I'm talking generations. What do you think the timeline of guitar music is gonna look like?

 

 

Its gonna be shaped by social {censored} that is impossible to predict, rather than simply by a changing of tastes.

[six acre lake]

 

yeah it will not be around forever, the sun will die at some point. are you saying guitar music will be here as long as humans are here? I just dont think it will be, 500 years from now is a pretty short amount of time, I doubt rock will be valid then

 

 

Kinda how the blues is not valid now?

[Sad Darwin]

 

Opinions? Experiences? GOGOGOGOOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO Personally I think digital can do a lot but analog gear has all these "buzzwords" which hold some truth. People bitch about digital being sterile but most of the time the thing that really makes analog gear is noise. Not just like {censored}tons of hum and hiss but little bits that add something to the sound even if that means a lack of clarity.

 

 

Analog vs Digital what?

 

Synths? Delay pedals? Recordings? VHS? Women? If it's the latter, I'm starting to prefer digital.....

[d4rk0]

Pffft... It's like Arthur and Lancelot... my DMMwTT would get Guinevere everytime

 

in all seriousnez, I have never played a DMMTT so I can't comment. I've been waiting for one to pop up on ebay or teh gear page. if I find one for the right price, I'll give it a try.

[Hiwatt Bob]

Anal vs. Digits

[d4rk0]

 

Anal vs. Digits

 

 

and so it has come to this...

[Sad Darwin]

I know making an "Analog + Digital" thread isn't quite as fun, but it is, in fact, REALITY.

 

Sorry everyone, you're probably all wrong. TLDR'd

[AimmarCair]

I know making an "Analog + Digital" thread isn't quite as fun, but it is, in fact, REALITY . Sorry everyone, you're probably all wrong. TLDR'd

 

That's not what this thread is about at all.

 

I'm sorry that you don't understand

[sommy]

I hate the analog v digital debate because it's gotten to the point where they've essentially just become analogues for "good" and "bad." I often hear people complain that pedals with no digital components (in particular, the DS-1) sound "too digital," illustrating a fundamental lack of understanding of what digital aliasing actually sounds like.

[9520575]

 

Kinda how the blues is not valid now?

 

we're still close to the "birth" of the blues. the blues are still valid. Will it be in 500 years? we're less then two hundred years from the death of Beethoven, yet you can still go see his pieces performed on the instruments used in his time. Will 2 minute blues/rock song have the same longevity?

[melx]

 

we're still close to the "birth" of the blues. the blues are still valid. Will it be in 500 years? we're less then two hundred years from the death of Beethoven, yet you can still go see his pieces performed on the instruments used in his time. Will 2 minute blues/rock song have the same longevity?

 

 

I think so.... sure we'll look at it in a slightly different way but the way music effects people at a fundamental level won't change.

[AimmarCair]

 

I hate the analog v digital debate because it's gotten to the point where they've essentially just become analogues for "good" and "bad." I often hear people complain that pedals with no digital components (in particular, the DS-1) sound "too digital," illustrating a fundamental lack of understanding of what digital aliasing actually sounds like.

 

 

I don't have that problem at all.

 

Wasn't a problem in the thread.

 

Occasionally you find the odd misguided person but it's easy to steer them back on the right path.

[9520575]

 

I think so.... sure we'll look at it in a slightly different way but the way music effects people at a fundamental level won't change.

 

 

true music effecting our brain is pretty much an indelible attribute of humans. I guess I view pop/blues/rock as a type of folk music. Like drinking songs from the 1600s, which we do still sing from time to time, I suppose. I guess the United States National Anthem is an example of a "folk-ish" tune still sung. Although, the lyrics have changed.

[lefort_1]

I would also like to point out that our ears are actually more digital than analogue.

 

hm....my understanding was that the Organ of Corti could be considered somewhat 'digital', but all the rest of the ear (from the tympanic membrane up to the entry into the cochlea) was decidedly and unwaiveringly analog in nature. And the only 'digital' concept of the organ of Corti is the pitch-discrimination of the individual stereocillia (a bit like 20,000 single-pitch sensors) and some of the nerve impulse encoding.

 

And the vast majority of the cellular physics which allows the Organ of Corti to function is, again, analog:

 

Viscous coupling After the discovery of outer hair cell electromotility, it was generally recognized that the sharp tuning of the basilar membrane at low sound pressure levels could be explained assuming that cell motors provide an active force term, counteracting the internal viscous losses (undamping). However, there remained the problem of the transducer current shunting by the capacitance of the outer hair cell membrane, causing a roll off of the motile responses at frequencies above about 1 kHz. A way out of this problem was proposed in Nobili and Mammano (1996), assuming a weak resonance of the tectorial membrane motion relative to the reticular lamina and viscoelastic coupling of the outer hair cells to the basilar membrane mediated by their supporting Deiters' cells. The second resonance properties of the tectorial membrane were assessed by Gummer et al. (1996) and the viscoelastic coupling provided by the Dieters' cells was evidenced by experiments performed by Lagostena and Mammano (1999, see animation below). When the organ of Corti is subjected simultaneously to the sound evoked oscillation of the basilar membrane and the cell motor feedback, the two types of distortions illustrated above combine so that the basilar membrane portions which are respectively external and internal to the outer hair cell region oscillate with opposite phases. This effect was observed by Russell and Nilsen (1997).

 

[spoonie g]

That's what I was going to say.

[eti]

Dude, you should really put a NFSW spoiler tag on that animation.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I nearly always approach this question from a recording engineering POV, as opposed to a guitar pedal POV.

 

I grew up in the analog era. We used analog multitrack tape decks, listened to vinyl records and analog cassettes and FM stereo back when radio mattered. I know the era, and the gear well - and it sucked.

 

It's not that I can't recognize and appreciate the positive attributes of analog - as Craig Anderton says, it's a processor that we humans happen to like the sound of - but the engineer in me had lots of laments regarding analog; some of which were eventually solved with technology, and some of which weren't.

 

For example, noise. Noise is cumulative - it adds up. More channels = more noise. Tape hiss was / could be a real issue, and early noise reduction caused as many problems as it solved. However, by the time Dolby SR and the hot output tapes (3M 996 / Ampex 499) came along, things were different. Noise became a non-issue. But you still had other issues that remained. For example, your top end on your recording changes as you work on the project. It's maddening. You track with it sounding one way, and as the oxide sheds and the tape makes multiple passes over the heads, you loose some of the top. So you deliberately track with more brightness than you need, so you can try to compensate. The amount you will need to compensate by is, at best, a W.A.G.

 

The bottom is never quite "true" either due to a phenomena called a head bump. You get a boost in the lows. This is nearly as frustrating as dealing with the loss of high frequencies over time, but since it can be checked immediately, at least you can compensate right away.

 

Analog also suffers from other fun things like dropouts, wow and flutter and distortion... and really, that noise, that distortion is part of the fun of analog. It's imperfections are part of the appeal from a sonic standpoint. It's not pure. It processes and changes the sound in ways that is appealing to our ears.

 

Obviously digital has considerable advantages in terms of duplication, accuracy, replication and editing. You don't even want to try a window splice on a 2" analog tape - trust me. Digital allows us a level of control that we have not had before. However, much of early digital - sucked. Early converters were pretty bad. Newer stuff is worlds better. Processing power has increased exponentially too, so the realism of things like reverb algorithms have also improved considerably. But it's just like analog - you can design a brilliant analog machine, or a piece of junk. There are good sounding converters and processors, and not so good ones. I'd much rather have a good digital device than a bad analog one.

 

The vast majority of my work these days is with digital, but I see the usefulness in both analog and digital. To me, it doesn't have to be an either / or proposition. YMMV

[Cirrus]

 

hm....my understanding was that the Organ of Corti could be considered somewhat 'digital', but all the rest of the ear (from the tympanic membrane up to the entry into the cochlea) was decidedly and unwaiveringly analog in nature. And the only 'digital' concept of the organ of Corti is the pitch-discrimination of the individual stereocillia (a bit like 20,000 single-pitch sensors) and some of the nerve impulse encoding.

 

 

Yeah, that's what I was talking about.

[percyexpat]

Digital processing still can't do distortion worth a damn but it's great for everything else. By the way, a laptop with a good audio interface and some nice plugins is the best multieffects processor ever bar none (and twice on Sundays).

[AimmarCair]