Are digital synths the new king of the music world now.

[dnlfacundo]

Seems to me thAT they are very affordable and the sound are almost the exact same thing as analog.Yeah I hear alot of people say analog is warm,warm,and phat but in today's music on the radio can people really tell the difference or even care.For instance take open labs miko which is 100% digital yet I see a crap load of producers getting rid of there old hardware just because the digital world has much more too offer than just a good sound.So the main question is will all this analog hype die with this new and much advanced technology of music?

[X-Trade]

I think, certainly in some cases, you can get just as good sounds from a digital synth.

It also depends on the synth. As you will be aware from your other discussion on the need for multiple synths, there are many different kinds with different ways of producing sounds. Some of these are not possible or just clunky and inefficient to do in analog - like sampling, fourier (additive synthesis), FM...

Aside from that, I judge a synth based on how it sounds, and its feature to price ratio. In the latter category, digital synths almost always win. Think about it: I can buy a 24 voice polyphonic, four part multitimbral Radias for £700, or I can buy a brand new Moog Voyager for £1999 which is monophonic, has no mod sequencer, no waveshaping, only does traditional analog type sounds - no digital PM, wavetable, wavesequence etc sounds, no or hardly any built in effects, arpeggiator, or sequencer, etc.

But as I said, I base judgement on a synth on how it sounds and on its features and price, not what its circuits are made of. I find it terribly annoying how some people dismiss anything that has digital circuitry in it. Even if some examples of digital synths sound 'cold' or such, doesn't mean that's a negative thing! It might be just what you need for your band or track or whatever. Equally a really fat analog sound might not suit what you are going to be playing.


But yes, in my opinion, one of the great things I enjoy about modern synths (particularly the Radias, and its siblings the R3 and MKXL), is that vast flexibility to delve deeper into programming, and get a wider range of sounds - sometimes even sounding 'fat' and 'analog' if you like, other times being 'harsh' and 'cold' and 'digital', and going anywhere in between, all with one synth!

[dnlfacundo]

I guess you miss understood me but what what I meant to say was soft syths.

[X-Trade]

To be honest, I can't really use softsynths.

I'm trying to make some kind of interface that makes sense like KORG's combination mode, but for hosting softsynths. The main problem I have is few hosts have a useable arpeggiator. It seems controller manufacturers expect the software to have arps, and the software programmers expect the plugins to have arps. and the plugin developers expect the host software to have arps, etc, etc.... so no arpeggiators for me! :/

Besides that, there are a few plugins I really like - the Analog Legacy Collection, B4 II, and some of the stuff that you can get going in Reason. I don't own any of these at the moment though, I can't justify buying it. For a start, i'd rather have something with actual knobs I can twist that were laid out with that synth engine in mind.

Also, I think a problem for myself and many others is that we can't trust a computer live. If it is in a situation where you really don't want it to crash, it will! Unless you really have a specific music computer with nothing else on it. But that can get just as costly as hardware, and then things want registering or activating online, etc, etc...


The only thing I really use software for is modular synthesis. Reaktor is great, very flexible, and I know that kind of thing is very difficult to implement in hardware.

Personally, I'd rather have a hard disk recorder than a DAW, but the MIDI and audio processing functions and processing power in most DAWs is okay as a compromise. People will always need keys, pads, buttons, knobs, sliders, etc. The best combination comes when these interfaces are designed specifically for the sound engine they are used to control, like on a dedicated hardware synth.

I do think though that computing is the way forward for synthesizers. Things like the OASYS, Neuron, Neko, etc. Considering all digital synthesizers these days are just software running on a chip anyway, its a very logical step and offers a lot more general purpose processing power. But the same goes for mobile phones and everything else.
Eventually we'll have one single tiny chip or board that is a completely programmable computer just as powerful as any of todays, that is a standard platform used in everything from cars to toasters to synthesizers.

[iD4rK]

He did not understand you wrong, you typed it wrong in first place.

I agree on what X-Trade said anyway.

There are differences between Hardware Analog Synth, Hardware Digital Synth, Hardware Digital Virtual Analog Emulation, Soft Digital Synth and Soft Virtual Analog Synth.

Hardware Synth vs Software Synth

1. Hardware = Knobs you can turn, sliders you can move. With both hands, you can switch to varous knobs and sliders "live". You can only move 1 knob or slider with the mouse. Even if you have a midi controller it's a hassle to set every damn button, and one controller is probably not enough for all the soft synth someone has.

2. Hardware is "more" stable than a ex. Windows computer, and its much more safe ex. Or have you seen a virus for the ex. Radias? I don't think so. Imagine on a live concert your computer hangs, that would suck.

3. It looks cool. And I don't know what else at the moment. Oh yeah save up some cash!

But that is already enough reasons.

Greets

[BasariStudios]

To me personally is same as real Sex and Phone Sex...you figure out
the difference...Phone Sex being the SoftSynths...