I was recently reading a book called The Art and Science of Analog Design, and I discovered some passages that claim analog circuit production and growth and application is growing at a slower rate than digital, and it leaves me questioning why we still use analog vs digital.
For DIYers and stomp boxes, of course there's a lot of analog parts and designs flying around, but is there a function for analog in today's high tech world? What's the cost or trade off for analog vs digital circuits in applications from stuff like medical to science? How come we don't convert wholly to digital? Apart from the appreciation for analog forms of information from CRT to film grain and music, isn't digital simply better in most cases where the brain's preferences don't matter?
I reckon it's what you're used to.
People are used to hearing their cymbals swirling in compressed audio - thus iturds has an enormous market - personally i'd rather a few crackles and a little 'surface noise'. I can stand a couple of percent of 2nd harmonic distortion!
People are now used to seeing what were perfectly graduated colour tones from black to 100% appear as a set of 8 bands of colour, so jpeg/DVD/Bluray/cable/HDTV are now completely acceptable (give me film grain any day).
The multieffect pedal or amp that gives every beginner a fantastic (but totally identical) sound sell in thousands... bust out the dsPIC and fine tune your germanium transistor algorithms! ;)
david
Well said, David!
BTW - as long as there is still a demand for analog stuff, as well as the electronic stuff WE use (TO-92 transistors, opamps etc), they will continue to make them, just like vacuum tubes.
> isn't digital simply better
No.
Analog is generally cheaper, because each device covers a full dynamic range. Digital uses similar devices, overdriven to 0 or 1, and must use many more devices to have any dynamic range.
However devices have become obscenely cheap. A million for a buck? (In a micro-computer such as a PIC.)
And at some level of complexity you can do things that would hard or improbable in analog. You can re-touch facial wrinkles with a pencil on the film negative, but in digital you can run an algorithm which seeks specific shapes in a digital image and modifies them. A user-set 100dB/Oct audio high-pass is a royal pain in analog, fairly trivial on a Pentium or better.
> How come we don't convert wholly to digital?
It's an analog world and there will always be analog around the edges. Microphones (though mike capsules now emit digi-streams). Loudspeakers are quite hard to do digital, so we use analog speakers driven by an analog voltage (but now generated by "digital" amplifiers {which are often analog in time rather than voltage}).
Otherwise digital will take over all jobs. The classic very-analog problem of radio reception is already nearly full digital. All that regenerative and superhetrodyne stuff is gone: the antenna can feed a ADC nearly directly, and then software picks-out the specific signal and demodulates it.
McDonald's has a ridiculously high calorie-to-cost ratio, not to mention it's far more convenient. In the future, won't everyone eat only food from McDonald's?
Fundamentally, the rendering of some audio transformation by digital means requires that one be able to describe that transformation in terms of an algorithm. If you can't describe the change, you can't produce or reproduce it.
To my mind, this is why digital FX have always done a top-notch job when it comes to things that are easy to translate into algorithms (take the sampled input, wait XXmsec, and then output it, in the order they samples came in), and why some sounds came later (e.g., digital phase shifters and flangers), while others (distortion of many kinds) still seem to await perfecting. The challenge has laid partly in the limits of the technology itself (i.e., speed), but mostly in our ability to describe what we like to hear in mathematical/computational terms.
Certainly, where digital excels is in packing ever-increasing numbers of feature-sets in a small space for a low price. As Paul accurately notes, a lot of what digital-FX can do can also be done in analog form...but it would require a lot more parts, space, and cost, and likely be temperamental or twitchy.
I would be remiss if I did not also note that digital does a better job at keeping proprietary things proprietary. Many of us here can readily reverse-engineer an analog circuit, but faced with a PIC or ATMEL, and a couple of VLSI logic chips, on a multi-layered board, would simply not even know where to begin, let alone complete the task.
I suspect we will still continue to use a number of analog devices for a number of years to come; partly out of mojo and nostalgia, but probably because there is a certain degree of indeterminacy we like about how they behave in semi-predictable ways. Wecertainly want effects that do most of what we want, but we also crave at least a teeny bit of surprise and pushback from the effect, and analog will do that, where digital not so much.
Quote from: Thecomedian on September 27, 2014, 05:13:37 AM
... in most cases where the brain's preferences don't matter?
What cases are there where the brain's preferences don't matter?
QuoteThe challenge has laid partly in the limits of the technology itself (i.e., speed), but mostly in our ability to describe what we like to hear in mathematical/computational terms.
That is an extremely insightfull truth imho, and though we CAN digitally manipulate any number of things via lines of code; knowing how to say it to a computer or even fully understand the full scope of what needs to happen to which and when is not always simple or obvious in terms of lines of code. 'there is many a slip, twixt the cup and the lip!'
With respect to musical effects reproduction I don't think analog will ever disappear. I think Ham radio operators are a good example of long-standing analog enthusiasts. They have a place for DSP equipment, but when it comes to simple circuitry that any amateur can troubleshoot with nothing more than fundamental knowledge of electronics, then simple non-optimal analog circuits show an advantage.
Even if in the future the algorithms used to produce analog sounds are perfected, then there will still always be analog enthusiasts -- even if for no other reason than historical nostalgia.
Take for example the small historical organizations who experiment with black gunpowder cannons. Modern technology provides cannons that outperform the old blackpower cannons in every practical aspect of war, but an artist seeks to make something that is not a better cannon, but something that is an improved blackpowder cannon; even if the best blackpowder cannon falls short (literally) of something designed using modern technology.
Another example would be the art of fencing -- what kind of idiot would intentionally select sabres for his soldiers to face a regiment of gunmen safely concealed in foxholes at 50 yards? However, many people devote their lives to mastering the skill of sword fighting. This is not to save their life in the off-chance they face an adversary armed with only a sword, but because there is artistic expression in sparring with a brother in the same art.
That is to say, we may develop digital signal processing to the point of eliminating analog design as a practical signal processing medium, but we won't eliminate artists who love analog design simply because it is beautiful.
Artistic expression aside, there remain some practical aspects of analog design that cannot entirely disappear. These relate to the analog aspects of supporting a practical digital circuit: Power supplies, PCB layout, transmission line termination and D/A,A/D interfaces. Little of this represents audio-frequency analog signal processing.
It will be interesting to see what happens to TO-92 packages and through-hole 1/4W resistors as time moves forward. Maybe this falls into the same vein as artistic expression, although I'm a big fan of SMT even for analog prototype building...but that's another topic altogether.
http://shadowmusic.bdme.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=11466
This is an interesting discussion, with a video of an ex Shadow's band playing recently - may be relevant here.
What about SPICE? Analogue components each digitally modeled and then the whole virtual circuits affect on a signal is rendered. There is no need to work out a specific DSP algorithm.
From the publicity for Rolands Aria series (dance music tools based on original Roland analogue drum machines & synths), analogue circuit modelling in real time would appear to be the way they did most of it.
Now, if you could buy an enclosure containing the DSP and analogue I/O needed for an effects pedal, have software that renders a schematic into SPICE objects and download to the DSP, would that kill off the traditional build?
Quote from: anotherjim on September 28, 2014, 07:39:49 AM
What about SPICE? Analogue components each digitally modeled and then the whole virtual circuits affect on a signal is rendered. There is no need to work out a specific DSP algorithm.
From the publicity for Rolands Aria series (dance music tools based on original Roland analogue drum machines & synths), analogue circuit modelling in real time would appear to be the way they did most of it.
Now, if you could buy an enclosure containing the DSP and analogue I/O needed for an effects pedal, have software that renders a schematic into SPICE objects and download to the DSP, would that kill off the traditional build?
Not in my house!!
Quotebut mostly in our ability to describe what we like to hear in mathematical/computational terms.
QuoteFundamentally, the rendering of some audio transformation by digital means requires that one be able to describe that transformation in terms of an algorithm. If you can't describe the change, you can't produce or reproduce it.
True but that description is often the same math we'd have used in describing the analog circuit not how we think it sounds. Recreate the conditions in digital based on the math that describes the physics, hope it sounds like it's analog counterpart without using more CPU cycles (or memory) than real time can handle. When jumping into electronics and building pedals after a couple decades being fully immersed in digital and programming etc. I learned one very valuable lesson....
There is no copy/paste or undo/redo in analog! A copy/paste operation may be hours of "making another one". Mistakes are often a good bit of manual labor where in digital it's a simple matter of CTRL+Z. I was much more freewheeling in digital because reversing mistakes was usually very easy; I also learned more quickly because the mistakes didn't hurt so much however what I learn may not last as long since it didn't hurt so much. I'd give anything to see red squiggles when I place the wrong-valued component on a bread board or perf board instead of a hour or two of analog debugging although spice type simulators try to bridge this gap some.
There is no such thing as truly digital circuits, only analog circuits that have been tortured into behaving like digital circuits.
One thing that has not been mentioned yet - anything with digital signals or clocks above 9 KHz requires FCC certification whereas straight analog circuitry does not. You can sell an analog effect without governmental interference. Not so with digital.
Anything digital requires an ADC input and DAC output before anything else gets done. A distortion could be done by mapping a PROM so the input is the address and the output is the remapped value. So you have three digital components operated by a CPU to perform the function of a two-transistor fuzz. If you are paying the price for mojo transistors, you might actually exceed the price of a digital unit, but mojo is more hype than reality.
Digital effects require at least 16 bits but for certain purposes and more than that may be needed for effects where the granularity of the digitization is important. Where this happens, you may need to go with external RAM and ROM. Cases like this occur where you subtract a signal value from another and the value of the remainder is important. Then it can become a case like low light levels in digital television where the image looks like a contour map whereas an analog signal would not have that problem.
Quote from: amptramp on September 28, 2014, 10:27:57 AM
One thing that has not been mentioned yet - anything with digital signals or clocks above 9 KHz requires FCC certification whereas straight analog circuitry does not.
This is a good point. Be careful though, analog effects are not 100% off the hook. If it conducts out on the cables anything 150 KHz and higher, you risk getting into trouble with the FCC (for example, PWM variable resistors).
Probably most musical effects are relatively safe because they have a low probability of creating enough of an interference with some important RF telecom signal to trigger a complaint to the FCC. There may be many illegal analog FX out there that only appear to be legal because nobody has ever complained about it causing interference.
On a deeply technical note, it is common to think that the world is fundamentally analog. That's not strictly true.
The underlying lesson of quantum physics is that the universe is fundamentally divided into a few basic units, and we think it is analog (i.e. fundamentally smoothly varying, not stepped) because there are so many "bits"; we cannot sense the tiny steps. On a very personal level, *WE* are digital. Nerves are digital. They either fire or not. We think the world is analog because there are so very many nerve cells that they present themselves the illusion that all is smoothly varying.
I'm sure this seems like pure sophistry, but it gets up close and personal in electronics at low currents. At low currents, the graininess of charge being quantized into electron-sized lumps does show up as noise. The old-time illustration of this is in low-current vacuum tube gain stages, where the individual electrons slamming into the plate can be heard as "shot noise" when there are few enough of them per unit time to be significant to the current flow. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise)
Back at the OP's original question:
We use almost entirely analog stuff in effects primarily as a legacy of the origin of effects and the fact that analog is so very cheap to get started with.
The legacy effect is easy enough to understand - practically every man jack effect builder started off wanting to copy some older effect they thought sounded magic in some way, and that's almost certain to have been analog. Other wise the planet would not have been scoured for two decades now for leftover germanium transistors.
The "analog is cheap" is more subtle. Analog parts are cheap today, although the economy of millions of transistors per currency unit is catching up quickly. Analog is cheap in the fundamental sense of "low barrier to entry". You can have a working effect with one transistor and a few other parts. The "hump" to get over is small enough that a raw beginner can get started easily without understanding much about electronics at all. Advancement to more complex analog effects is simple and rapid. On top of that, many effects are based on the side effects of some analog circuit's imperfections. That is the sina qua non of some effects - as witness the scouring of the planet for germanium devices again. It's all about the side effects.
While there is some hope that digital stuff is getting more comprehensible, digital signal processing is still a very abstract field. Even using a chip with pre-canned digital effects requires spoon-feeding the chip a lot of very specialized currents and voltages on a plethora of pins. So there is a much bigger skills "hump" to get over to get a working circuit, and an even bigger mental hump of understanding to get over.
The digital stuff keeps getting better in the sense of more reflective of the many-bits smoothness illusion by being both more bits and faster changes in bits, as well as being dramatically cheaper per bit. Digital is doing this by pushing the boundaries of the mechanics to process a bit down into the range where each digital transistor is running into quantum-mechanical limits. Right now, for instance, the issues in making digital circuits involve limitations in the "graininess" of charge and quantum effects. Transistor features are so small that leakage by quantum mechanical tunneling is rising as a limitation on how you could even theoretically make transistors smaller.
But of course, digital doesn't have to get to infinite resolutions to seem analog - it only has to get to resolutions finer than the sensible "steps" our nervous systems can distinguish. That was the idea behind 16 bit encoding for CDs. It's arguable that even if 16 bits isn't good enough, that something fairly close - 24bit? 32 bit? - will be. It doesn't have to be infinitely many bits to be as "analog" as humans can tell. This is in fact the idea behind Apple's "retina" displays, the notion that the density of pixels is at or above the density of rods and cones in the human eye for comparable picture areas.
Why do we use analog? It's cheap, easy, and ... vintage!
Will digital displace analog? Yes, some day. There are more things you can do.
Will all analog disappear? No. There are some jobs so simple that there is no need to go digital. But analog may be very different from what we think of today, as the analog devices that exist may be quite different, and eventually, the old stocks of no-longer-manufactured analog widgets decline. Someday, the last "vintage" germanium devices (for example) will be ferreted out or cannibalized from older junked parts, and no one will make new ones, except perhaps in their 3d electron-force assembler that puts atoms where they're supposed to be one at a time.
When that day comes, the discussions will be on what algorithm to use to make the side effects in the newly-assembled germanium devices be like the last real, old vintage one in the museums.
If one reads the journals and newspapers of the time, people were awestruck by Thomas Edison's wax cylinder recordings that one could make for a handsome fee at county fairs. You'd see descriptions that remarked how the recordings were
indistinguishable from "the real thing" (sort of the historical precursor to "Is it live or is it Maxell? What do you think, Ella?").
Of course, to hear such technology
now, we would think that there was, in fact, a world of difference in the realism of how the human voice actually sounds, and what could be reproduced by using mechanical means to scratch into hard wax.
Over time, I imagine, someone would have said "Yeah, it's pretty good, but there is just something a little....
different about it. Can't quite put my finger on it, though.". Others would have said "Yeah, I know what you mean", and together they would have tried very hard to describe, in more specifiable terms,what was "different". Once they could describe in detail what was different, they would set about figuring out how to reduce that difference as much as they could, with the technology of the time.
And it would keep them happy...for a while...until someone else said "Yeah, it's pretty good, but there is just something a little....
different about it. Can't quite put my finger on it, though.". And they would go through the same cycle, yet again, using the technology of that era.
Little tiny steps that brought us from wax recordings to the present day state of high-fidelity, in all its 120db S/N, 24-bit, 96khz, flat from here to infinity, .0001% distortion, glory. Each of those steps relied on engineers responding to what people were now (finally) able to notice, that was...
different. They were probably unable to notice it earlier, likely because they were knocked out by what had seemed like tremendous advances at the time; same way people who had simply never realized that voice could be recorded were stupified by the manner in which wax cylinders were able to reproduce "exactly" all the nuances of sound and voice.
ALL quantification, prediction, and control begins with the human capacity to notice and describe.
Analog means battery voltage is gradually decreasing over time.
Digital means battery is full one moment later empty. :icon_eek:
Digital sucks current.
electrip
Ok :icon_rolleyes: Quantum Physics and Stompboxes? Hmmmm? Gettin a little deep up in here lately!
First is banana jacks and now digital vs. analog, entangled with Quantum Physics?
I say all bets are off when we start teleporting............................................................. :icon_eek:
Scientists Announce Successful Teleportation
http://www.gizmag.com/light-into-matter-quantum-teleportation/33906/
Ok, so they have a ways to go before we can enjoy a "lunch break quicky" if ya know what I mean... :icon_wink: So far they have only been able to make it work with Apple and Cherry Jolly Ranchers for a distance of 15 miles.. I have to admit, this is a bit disappointing cause I like Grape damn-it! :icon_twisted:
Imagine what this would do for the "fast food" industry alone!!
Papa Johns Portal Pan Pizza - Delivered Piping Hot to your Fat Face in 30 Seconds or less or it's FREE!!
You may ask yourself, what does this have to do with building your own stompboxes.... Well, nothing of course... Just keepin it real!
stompboxes aside...how many here prefer the sound of vinyl lps over cd's & mp3's? warmth immediately comes to mind especially when played on a quality turntable + a vintage tube stereo system. personally, I don't have a problem with an occasional record scratch. digital fxs can sound kind of 'fake' in small venues...in a large arena, few listeners can differentiate.
Quote from: StephenGiles on September 28, 2014, 02:10:30 AM
http://shadowmusic.bdme.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=11466
This is an interesting discussion, with a video of an ex Shadow's band playing recently - may be relevant here.
Nice link there Stephen - on a side note to this the on The Shadowmania gig in the link one of my pedals was included on the pedalboard which is a digital based pedal :)
I don't see analogue electronics fading away in my lifetime, interfacing between humans and electronics will generally need some sort of analogue interaction.
For the most part nearly the entire music industry has gone completely digital, pretty damn sure.. As for guitar, bass, drums etc it's still in transition but as soon as the next couple generations of players are born (literally) there will continue to be a place for "analog" effects, amps, rigs... The musicians of tomorrow are not here today to weigh in on this but I would be willing to bet a Maestro Echoplex (if I owned one) that they will be using nearly all digital. Oh sure, there will still be analog stuff floating around for decades to come and a small market for it but, the vast majority will not be using it for recording, live or whatever. You may like the "good old imperfections" of non-digital but the your children and your children's children may not share your nostalgic memories of the "good old days" when a "real musician" had to lug around a van full of equipment. When I say generations keep in mind that I am saying when these kids get old enough to post a video on youtube or whatever will be the "next thing" in the near future.. Also, keep in mind that I am not young either but I have already seen enough evidence to support my theory. I have 4 kids ranging from 7 to 22 years of age and I can see "the writing on the tablet" so to speak. It's not even a question "if" digital will ever be able to sound as good as analog anymore because we have already arrived! It has already surpassed analog in so many ways if not every way and beyond but, there is still a generation or two that are still not convinced and holding on tightly. As time rolls along and digital becomes easier and easier to utilize and becomes the primary spoken language I believe you will see analog put to bed where music is concerned. You don't have to look too far into the future to see that it's already beginning to happen, just listen to some popular music and it should be very evident! I love imperfections and mistakes but there is no room for that anymore and if there is for some reason a need for imperfection then digital can imitate it.
I have to say that there are some really really good alternatives right now and if I were a kid again, earning a very low income, starting to play and possibly playing live it would be a "No Brainer" for so many reasons! It's all relatively new compared to tube amps and fx pedals but technology grows in quantum leaps...
Prime example:And by the way, I have played this and it sounds and feels unbelievable!!! I will buy it eventually.
Positive Grid JamUp Pro XT with the custom amps, BIAS Guitar Amp Designer and Modeler and BT-2 & BT-4 Bluetooth MIDI controller
http://www.positivegrid.com/
And if you think there is a lack of support from the community then you're just not as "up to date" as you think you are!
http://www.positivegrid.com/artists
Other prime examples would be AXE-FX, Kemper and others are following suit and there will be cheaper and more powerful alternatives, soon.
The Pro's
1. Sounds as good if not better than the real thing.
2. Cost is almost nothing compared to the alternatives. I can have "ALL OF THEM" for the price of a tube screamer.
3. Size is almost nothing compared to the alternatives. I can put it all on my phone or even an ipod or whatever..
4. I can get it now, RIGHT NOW and be playing it RIGHT NOW without leaving my home! A big deal in the world of instant gratification!
The Con's?
?..... crickets....?
1. DIY isn't quite as fun. I don't want to solder together a smd dsp chip, and ONLY that, and then spend time coding (or, more likely, uploading a more competent person's code.)
2. If you're going to that, you might as well just buy DSPFX2781, or whatever the cool kids of 2040 are using.
In response to the OP....
Quite simply, analog is still preferred because Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, SRV, Jimmy Hendrix, etc. didn't use Digital. They used analog. And people want to "sound" like them so they get what they had available to them at the time.
I really dont see it being anything more than that! Its really the same reason why people HAVE TO have a Les Paul Traditional or an American Strat or their Fuzz pedal HAS TO have germ transistors in it. Because that was the way it was and what was used by their guitar gods. ;)
Purely a daydream:
What about a mixed-signal chip that has, say some onboard opamps, transistors, resistors, caps, diodes, etc. and multiplex switching controlled with the onboard micro controller .... You could program analog circuits and change them on the fly.
Quote from: Philippe on September 28, 2014, 03:20:18 PM
warmth
I've been hearing this word in relation to music/equipment for 25 years now and I still don't know what it actually means. But given the amount of sludge metal I listen to, it's probably not relevant. :icon_twisted:
I suppose that guitarists around the world will be dumping their outdated analog tube amps in 3...2...1 ;)
(And I'll be there to snatch up one of those surplus '59 Bassman heads that nobody wants any more for a song! ;D)
All I can say is thank Clapton for the TI "sample program" !!!
Some analog equipment is just so goddam GORGEOUS.
Not a guitar, but a 1905 electric keyboard designed by Helmholz. Pre-sale estiimate $20,000-30,000:
(https://images2.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2014-08/22/9040086-1-1.jpg&width=640&height=480&halign=l0&valign=t0&autosizefit=1)
Excellent thread content !
The predicted tapering of analog circuit use was noticed, especially after digital learned to introduce itself really well.
Quote from: alanp on September 28, 2014, 08:50:52 PM
DIY isn't quite as fun. I don't want to solder together a smd dsp chip, and ONLY that, and then spend time coding (or, more likely, uploading a more competent person's code.)
Thought I'd chime in on this particular issue. I personally enjoy designing circuits in CAD, simulating and building them just as much as programming, woodworking, machining and so on. Everyone has their preference, and that's precisely the point: some people
will prefer coding over soldering, so the argument can be made either way.
It's been pointed out that analog electronics (or specifically effects building) are cheaper to get into, but I don't think that's the case (any longer). Sure, the basic components are pennies, but soldering irons, DMMs, pots and knobs, enclosures etc. are not. On the other hand, one can make a VST effect with free tools, on a computer they already own, in a language they probably already know. Hardware (standalone) DSP works much along the same lines, with all the demo boards and development tools, but is subject to the same costs for enclosures and auxiliary hardware.
The learning curve is different for people who see effect DIY as a hobby (perhaps complementary to their guitar playing), an alternative source of income or a gateway to the mainstream industry. Having previous experience in related fields is of course also a factor.
But the original question was about technology as a whole, not only our quirky DIY niche.
I can see the analog circuits role becoming a strictly academic, historical field of study done with computer simulations and processors, becoming what is left over from the golden age of analog.
To study a subject such as 'analog' or 'sound wave behavior', a learning program would be loaded into a multi media station by a student.
The question is really entertaining me by testing my ability to envision the odds of various combinations of future scenarios.
Will digital continue to increase the financial pressure squeezing analog parts into SMD, reducing the availability of 'big old' parts for casual use/experimenting ?
Will all circuit design become 'formal' as in strictly the desired curriculum required for industrious production of CAD / SMD entries only ?
What potentials will stepper motors reveal in their bid to replace coil driver transducer motors ?
Will analog devices be relegated to tackling brute tasks like being part of the power supply or amplifier ?
Coincidentally, I'm doing a paper on this sort of thing for one of my classes ;D
One of the most interesting ideas I have found is the post-digital movement, and how it is slowly seeping into mainstream culture.
Not all of it is relevant, but it's still an interesting read - http://www.aprja.net/?p=1318 (http://www.aprja.net/?p=1318)
Another interesting read, explains how analog is used to achieve Haptic Feedback, and how digital makes it more difficult to achieve the same effect - http://www.aprja.net/?p=1003 (http://www.aprja.net/?p=1003)
I really think analog will always live on in audio, at least. As mentioned above, Vinyl is a perfect example: It might go in and out of style, but nothing can really replace it. There's something to be said for the non-linear behaviour of many analog devices, especially discreet ones. I dunno. Kinda talking out of my ass here, but it's kind of like the idea of post-digital. I don't see any reason for the two not to coexist - eg. Digital LFO with an analog signal path - but it really comes down to cost vs quality and ease of use I think. People seem have some weird draw to analog tech, at least in audio, but audio is a small niche in the already niche topic of electronics.
Oh, and while we're on the topic of warmth, here's another interesting article lol - http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb10/articles/analoguewarmth.htm (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb10/articles/analoguewarmth.htm)
Quote from: J0K3RX on September 28, 2014, 08:14:24 PM
I have to say that there are some really really good alternatives right now and if I were a kid again, earning a very low income, starting to play and possibly playing live it would be a "No Brainer" for so many reasons! It's all relatively new compared to tube amps and fx pedals but technology grows in quantum leaps...
I'm kind of in that boat right now, and I have to say that it honestly doesn't entice me - or anyone I know - as much as you'd expect. My generation is as much shallow as it is impatient and "cutting edge," and everyone in my local "scene" (if you'd really wanna call it that) wants t00bz as much for looks as they want it for T0Nz.
Quote from: clipman3 on October 01, 2014, 12:22:43 AM
the post-digital movement
Postmodern hipsters don't have a say in the evolution of technology, sorry. Leave it to the rich, healthy and educated to bitch about how distraught they are with contemporary conveniences.
QuoteVinyl is a perfect example: It might go in and out of style, but nothing can really replace it.
How do you mean "replace it"? It's already been replaced by tape, which in turn was replaced by the CD and so on. Or are you referring to a modern tech that behaves precisely like vinyl, including all its shortcomings and particularities when it comes to sound reproduction? Well we already have things like these (http://youtu.be/tEYIiUUvq38), but this particular issue is not exactly a mainstream priority.
QuotePeople seem have some weird draw to analog tech
Nostalgia and technophobia are fairly well understood.
Quote from: clipman3 on October 01, 2014, 12:22:43 AM
There's something to be said for the non-linear behaviour of many analog devices...
I think that's probably the single greatest reason why analog(ue) will hang along for a while yet in guitar/music circles.
That and the fact that we will probably use analog (power) amps for quite some time, so the signal at either end of the signal chain will need some analog circuitry.
Quote from: FiveseveN on October 01, 2014, 05:53:40 AM
QuoteVinyl is a perfect example: It might go in and out of style, but nothing can really replace it.
How do you mean "replace it"? It's already been replaced by tape, which in turn was replaced by the CD and so on. Or are you referring to a modern tech that behaves precisely like vinyl, including all its shortcomings and particularities when it comes to sound reproduction? Well we already have things like these (http://youtu.be/tEYIiUUvq38), but this particular issue is not exactly a mainstream priority.
yes, but that digital snap crackle and pop has none of the warmth and enjoyment of the real mechanically generated and analoguely amplified real thing... :icon_twisted:
Mainstream? Current music genres, combined with nightclub sound systems or auto subwoofers show that modern music listeners have no ****ing idea. We come up with all of this hifi gear designed with to be good for a THD of 0.001% and most users listen to it well into clipping... give me a williamson amp designed around EL34s any day - at least I will enjoy the warm woody/dusty smell (which is what I loved the most about my Laney Klipp!).
david
Quote from: tubegeek on September 29, 2014, 03:39:29 PM
Some analog equipment is just so goddam GORGEOUS.
Not a guitar, but a 1905 electric keyboard designed by Helmholz. Pre-sale estiimate $20,000-30,000:
(https://images2.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2014-08/22/9040086-1-1.jpg&width=640&height=480&halign=l0&valign=t0&autosizefit=1)
Maybe. But who wants to use it?
(http://blog.simplelivingmadison.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/wringer_washing_machine.jpg)
Quote from: Philippe on September 28, 2014, 03:20:18 PM
stompboxes aside...how many here prefer the sound of vinyl lps over cd's & mp3's? warmth immediately comes to mind especially when played on a quality turntable + a vintage tube stereo system. personally, I don't have a problem with an occasional record scratch. digital fxs can sound kind of 'fake' in small venues...in a large arena, few listeners can differentiate.
Different. Not necessarily better.
There's room for both in my world.
In the early 80's, one of the major voices in audio at the time, either Julian Hirsch or Len Feldman, had a piece in either Audio or Stereo Review, discussing the emerging kerfuffle about digital recordings (and keep in mind this was digital recording on vinyl) and their "harshness".
What the writer noted was that audio engineering techniques had evolved in anticipation of the weaknesses and quirks of traditional analog recording. In particular, mics, EQ-ing, and mic-placement methods were deliberately used to help tracks/instruments "cut through" when all was collapsed onto 2" tape, running at 15 IPS, with all of tape's inherent dynamic headroom limitations, saturation, etc. When those limitations were removed (or drastically reduced), he noted, the engineering techniques overcompensated, and the result WAS harsh, brittle, or whatever other adjective you want to use. However, he noted, eventually recording engineers would learn to adapt their methods to the new technology so as to yield a more pleasing recorded sound that took advantage of what digital recording afforded. So, basically, if you use the wrong screwdriver for a new type of screw, you risk stripping the head. And once you use the right screwdriver/method, everything proceeds swimmingly.
We've seen lengthy debates about digital vs analog delay, and people go on ad nauseum about the "warmth" of analog. But, much like recording, the "warmth" we associated with analog was really a result of what was needed to cope with the flaws and weaknesses of bucket-brigade technology. As it turned out, rolling off all that top end did a pretty good job of mimicking how echoes get shaped in the real world. BUT THAT WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL PURPOSE. So when digital delays became feasible, and manufacturers realized they didn't have to cope with the same headroom and noise-control limits, a lot of that filtering was simply eliminated. And musicians found digital delays too harsh and brittle in many applications. It wasn't the mode of technology, but rather the failure to recognize how much the most pleasing aural result was due to things we had traditionally done to address THAT particular technology. Once the gaps/differences were recognized (and described, so they could be turned into algorithms), the differences in pleasingness of the end-result pretty much vanished.
Part of the problem is most people don't really understand the recording process or the technology involved with it. So they take one sliver in a big pie and latch on to it: "oh, it's analog", "oh, it's digital", "it's germanium", "it's silicon", "it's solid state", "it's tube", and suddenly, in their minds that one little piece among a vast number of pieces accounts for the whole reason they either like or hate a particular sound. While a lot of pedal and amp circuits are fairly primitive, there are still a lot of "moving parts" involved in what affects the final sound you hear. And the recording/mixing/mastering process is much *much* more complex than that.
So you mix this with a little good old-fashioned sentimentality and nostalgia, shake, stir, and myopia results. Pretty soon there are all kinds of "internet truisms" flying around that people believe without questioning. Usually, what is really going is much more complex.
Neil Young once said "Sound is like water. Analog is a warm bucketful slowly poured over your head and digital is the same water, same bucket only this time it's ice cubes dumped quickly. I know which is more pleasing to me."
I tend to agree.
go to this site and you will see why analog will never die
http://lpcoverlover.com/ (http://lpcoverlover.com/)
remember "for every ounce of progress there is a pound of nostalgia"
I love my records!
Quote from: DougH on October 02, 2014, 08:00:09 AM
Part of the problem is most people don't really understand the recording process or the technology involved with it. So they take one sliver in a big pie and latch on to it: "oh, it's analog", "oh, it's digital", "it's germanium", "it's silicon", "it's solid state", "it's tube", and suddenly, in their minds that one little piece among a vast number of pieces accounts for the whole reason they either like or hate a particular sound. While a lot of pedal and amp circuits are fairly primitive, there are still a lot of "moving parts" involved in what affects the final sound you hear. And the recording/mixing/mastering process is much *much* more complex than that.
So you mix this with a little good old-fashioned sentimentality and nostalgia, shake, stir, and myopia results. Pretty soon there are all kinds of "internet truisms" flying around that people believe without questioning. Usually, what is really going is much more complex.
You broach on something we tend to overlook: the fact that digital audio technology has emerged within the same time period/era that internet memes have as well. There was nowhere near the current level of rumour, innuendo, and misinformation 30 and 40 years ago, when all you had available were the monthly magazines, the quarterly or bi-monthly journals, and the annual conferences. What we "know" (or at least believe we know) about both analog and digital audio technology at this point in time is constructed by this new milieu, inseparable from it, and filtered by those electronic means we use to gather information.
When I was in a band in the 70's, I had heard from some players that Fender Bassman's were actually really good guitar amps. There was no information available to either indicate why or to identify which particular models were desirable (and why they were). Pics of tweeds, blonde piggybacks, blackface and silverface were largely unavailable, unless you knew someone who collected catalogs or had operated a service bench for a couple decades. So, I borrowed a silverface head from a guy for a gig, and ran it through a 15" Radio Shack speaker I had bought and put in a homebrew cab. It sounded
decent, but nothing to change my world-view, and I put the info out of my mind for another 15-18 years.
Contrast that scenario with what the present-day musician is able to find out, and the multitude of opinions they will run into about it. I might point out that all many of us had access to at that time, for information about gear, was
Guitar Player, Downbeat, the Jack Darr book, and the
very occasional article in Popular Electronics.
Quote from: Mark Hammer on October 02, 2014, 09:50:49 AM
Quote from: DougH on October 02, 2014, 08:00:09 AM
Part of the problem is most people don't really understand the recording process or the technology involved with it. So they take one sliver in a big pie and latch on to it: "oh, it's analog", "oh, it's digital", "it's germanium", "it's silicon", "it's solid state", "it's tube", and suddenly, in their minds that one little piece among a vast number of pieces accounts for the whole reason they either like or hate a particular sound. While a lot of pedal and amp circuits are fairly primitive, there are still a lot of "moving parts" involved in what affects the final sound you hear. And the recording/mixing/mastering process is much *much* more complex than that.
So you mix this with a little good old-fashioned sentimentality and nostalgia, shake, stir, and myopia results. Pretty soon there are all kinds of "internet truisms" flying around that people believe without questioning. Usually, what is really going is much more complex.
You broach on something we tend to overlook: the fact that digital audio technology has emerged within the same time period/era that internet memes have as well. There was nowhere near the current level of rumour, innuendo, and misinformation 30 and 40 years ago, when all you had available were the monthly magazines, the quarterly or bi-monthly journals, and the annual conferences. What we "know" (or at least believe we know) about both analog and digital audio technology at this point in time is constructed by this new milieu, inseparable from it, and filtered by those electronic means we use to gather information.
When I was in a band in the 70's, I had heard from some players that Fender Bassman's were actually really good guitar amps. There was no information available to either indicate why or to identify which particular models were desirable (and why they were). Pics of tweeds, blonde piggybacks, blackface and silverface were largely unavailable, unless you knew someone who collected catalogs or had operated a service bench for a couple decades. So, I borrowed a silverface head from a guy for a gig, and ran it through a 15" Radio Shack speaker I had bought and put in a homebrew cab. It sounded decent, but nothing to change my world-view, and I put the info out of my mind for another 15-18 years.
Contrast that scenario with what the present-day musician is able to find out, and the multitude of opinions they will run into about it. I might point out that all many of us had access to at that time, for information about gear, was Guitar Player, Downbeat, the Jack Darr book, and the very occasional article in Popular Electronics.
That's a good point- the speed and efficiency of (mis)information these days. And as R.G. has mentioned before- "The internet is wide but not very deep." So although ideas spread very quickly and are easy to locate, they are usually not very well thought-out IME.
Even when they ARE well thought out, the number of stages of potential transformation between the original source, and when it reaches any given web-user, allow considerable opportunity for misconstruing the information.
Moreover, the net affords considerable opportunity for false-consensus effects ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect ), supported by "likes" and chatroom/forum responses from a couple people. So there is greater risk of people being convinced of the truth of what they think they know...like how elastic bands on Fuzz Faces improve the sound.
Quote from: Mark Hammer on October 02, 2014, 12:57:48 PM
Even when they ARE well thought out, the number of stages of potential transformation between the original source, and when it reaches any given web-user, allow considerable opportunity for misconstruing the information.
Moreover, the net affords considerable opportunity for false-consensus effects ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect ), supported by "likes" and chatroom/forum responses from a couple people. So there is greater risk of people being convinced of the truth of what they think they know...like how elastic bands on Fuzz Faces improve the sound.
True and it still comes down (IMHO) to "smart guy gets the rewards" at the end of the day. In other words the right person knows how to dig all the value out of a sea of information where 80% of the information is misinformation. I think that has always been the case even when information was less available and before the internet.
Thusly, he who has the skill/intelligence/diligence/demeanor whathaveyou to separate the wheat from the chaff is going to get way more value from that information regardless of how much there is or the quality of it. Everyone else is simply going to repeat what they see and hear because they don't want to think for themselves and those have always existed. On the internet it just gets infinitely multiplied. However, for reasons stated above, I'm happy to wade through that info because 30 years ago, I'd go to the library and hope to find a book that might be close to what I wanted to learn and so on.
Quote from: FiveseveN on October 01, 2014, 05:53:40 AMPostmodern hipsters don't have a say in the evolution of technology, sorry. Leave it to the rich, healthy and educated to bitch about how distraught they are with contemporary conveniences.
I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the rich, healthy, and educated do actually pretty much control most aspects of the world.
I also don't think you're getting my point.
Post-digital isn't a "hipster" thing. It's a large part of society. Look at the recent backlash on iCloud. It's a reality of modern society.
And if you want proof, look at the plethora of post-digital advertising. Everything is "vintage" in our "modern" society. Clothes, music, hell even websites (http://revelationconcept.com/) are feeling the effects. Oh, and how many of your friends use Instagram?
QuoteHow do you mean "replace it"? It's already been replaced by tape, which in turn was replaced by the CD and so on. Or are you referring to a modern tech that behaves precisely like vinyl, including all its shortcomings and particularities when it comes to sound reproduction? Well we already have things like these (http://youtu.be/tEYIiUUvq38), but this particular issue is not exactly a mainstream priority.
Again, missing the point.
Technological advances =/= mass appeal. You can look at any digital reproduction of an analog delay for proof. And then look at the fact that BBD delays are still both in production and being developed. And allow me to reiterate the importance of
Non linear technology in this.
Some people just enjoy whatever feeling analog tech brings them. In vinyl, Haptic Feedback plays a big role.
In the end, it is a matter of opinion. Some enjoy modern hifi, some enjoy the nostalgic tendencies of yesteryear. I enjoy both (I don't have a single "analog" pedal), but the purpose of my post wasn't to argue that one was better than the other, it was to explore ideas as to why many people enjoy analog tech.