What's the sound of analog

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Amøbe
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What's the sound of analog

Post by Amøbe »

Okay this might be an extremely stupid question, and I'm pretty sure I've seen it being discussed here before, but when I tried to search for it I ended up with 90 pages of results.... so here goes

I just discovered that Hades had given me feedback on a track, which he said sounded too digital and that some analog-sounds could help it really good.

Now two things:

1) I don't have the money right now to invest in expensive anal gear. (and my limit for expensive is annoyingly low right now)

2) I know that these days it should be possible to recreate most sounds ITB.

So this is a pretty broad question, but what is that particular thing that makes something sound analog?

noise? irregularities? What are we actually talking about when we want shit on our dicks and buttplugs?

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Lost to the Void
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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Lost to the Void »

Well with good technique everyone can be fooled.
In fact there was a shifted article linked on the main forum page where the interviewers thought he did a certain thing with analog and he said he did it in the box.

Often the word "digital" when referring to the qualities of the mix is used when the sounds are thin or lacking in harmonic complexity. It's not necessarily a trait of digital, I've often been wrong with clients about their thing mixes being digital when they have been all gear.

I don't know the tune so I can't comment on your case in particular, but generally it's a case of picking sounds with rich harmonics or thickening them up and maybe adding movement.

Really it starts with the sounds you choose. Don't go the other way though, there is room for brittle digital sounds (think DX7). But you want a good balance in your mix.

Too many thin sounds is a problem (as is too many thick sounds).

There are plenty of vst that sound rich and thick (and also analog) if you want them to.
After that it becomes an issue of processing.
Compression can thicken a sound, saturation can add harmonics, as can console emulation, tape emulation, chorus can also add depth and richness.

Finally how you EQ can also effect the perception. Too much cutting, or too harsh cuts can think out sounds and make them brittle and digital.

Adding movement and non linearity is very much the small increment stuff that adds little touches that help.

People never know what stuff I have done as all gear, ITB or hybrid.

It really is down to your own skill and technique.


Which track is the offending track, link us up....
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Southpaw
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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Southpaw »

I've owned and used a fair bit of both analog and digital synths since I first got interested in music. The 2 are slightly more blurred between the lines than they used to be. For instance, if you ever used a Roland digital synth like a D5, D10, D50 series 'LA' synth, there's an obvious difference to a Roland Juno or a 101. The more modern stuff, software and VA's are capable of bridging that gap and fill the area in between.

I don't think anyone can say that something you made can be too digital or too analog for that matter since these are purely individual sound choices and it could sound exactly as you intended it to sound but there's room for both digital sounds and analog sounds and everything in between. Certain digital sources might not be the best choice for certain sounds though. My early Roland D5 synth was never going to be useful for bass sounds for instance but could do some nice thin string stuff that was easy enough to just drop in a mix.

I don't know what the 'analog' sound is, I don't think there's a clear definition on that even though the phrase gets thrown quite a bit. You can quite easily get yourself a little library of sampled analog waveforms from various synths and use a decent sampler/software sampler with a good filter to create basic analog sounds. A pile of subtractive software synths will do just fine too.

If you're talking about adding noise, dirt, hiss, character etc, that doesn't mean analog or digital in the essence of the source sound itself but more about the recording stages or an aesthetic quality you deliberately add/leave in.

All sounds are fair game if they fit the bill of what you're looking for. I'm quite a fan of the Waldorf stuff at the minute. Blofeld, Largo and Nave as I find I can get basic raw subtractive tones as well as more hybrid sounds. Apart from that, a sampler with a library of analog and digital looped waveforms gives me an open-ended way of layering up stuff too and combining anything I care to chuck in there. Quite into this at the minute.

But personally I think there's too much blurriness between everything now to make any useful distinction esp after processing and stuff.

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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by rktic »

What Steve says.

I think the term analog is widely associated with a natural sounding quality, being pleasant to the ear.

There's a lot of subtle movement, smearing, distortion and noise you get for free when producing with analog equipment. VCOs don't properly reset their waveforms. Analog desks allow subtle clipping before the red LED starts flashing, then there's channel cross-talk, transformers subtly eating harsh transients, gear is adding noise. There is a myriad of things happening all the time and you don't have to think about them.

ITB on the other hand comes with perfectly synced synths and effects that invite users to align everything perfectly on a grid. If you want distortion you've gotta add it yourself. Overdriving a signal introduces digital clipping, you loose information but don't add any harmonic content. It's easy to overload a track with harsh transients due to ignorant dynamics settings.

If you want to sound more natural you need to be aware of these intricacies. It's not about one effect on the master. It's about the sum of parts. Use less beatsynced effects, synths with free-running oscillators and everything Steve mentioned above.

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Amøbe
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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Amøbe »

Okay this is really interesting!

Because I too have a "that's sounding digital" ear - but it's like I can tell when people speak french, but I can't say anymore.

(so the track in question is this - I had kinda moved away from it, but then I saw Hades' feedback and the question about what we mean with analog baffled me)

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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Neal »

Hardware emulation, saturation, tape and tape delay vst's.

Think it's important to remember that if you have good quality hardware but record it through a shit audio interface then it's going to affect the quality and the feel.

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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Lost to the Void »

Ok, I can sort of see where the digital comment is coming from. The top end is quite thin and very clean and bright.
I wouldn`t say "digital" is your issue though, it`s balance. The main synth does sound quite thin when the filter opens up later on, but that is more a product of the how the filter is working, and it could be smoothed out with compression or saturation.
The lows are quite woolly and dense, it`s the contrast that is jarring.
If the top end were rounded out and more "smudged" then the track would sound more consistent.

Or conversely, if the bottom end was super clean, precise, hifi and very "digital" sounding, then the track would also balance out.

So yeah, don`t worry too much about sounding "analog" it`s more an issue of consistency within a track.

You want your dynamics to balance across the track, as well as the tonality and texture, density of sounds, it`s not just EQ that will balance a mix. Think about the size and weight of sounds, when slotting them in to a mix, as well as where their frequency bias is.
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Amøbe
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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Amøbe »

Lost to the Void wrote:Ok, I can sort of see where the digital comment is coming from. The top end is quite thin and very clean and bright.
I wouldn`t say "digital" is your issue though, it`s balance. The main synth does sound quite thin when the filter opens up later on, but that is more a product of the how the filter is working, and it could be smoothed out with compression or saturation.
The lows are quite woolly and dense, it`s the contrast that is jarring.
If the top end were rounded out and more "smudged" then the track would sound more consistent.

Or conversely, if the bottom end was super clean, precise, hifi and very "digital" sounding, then the track would also balance out.

So yeah, don`t worry too much about sounding "analog" it`s more an issue of consistency within a track.

You want your dynamics to balance across the track, as well as the tonality and texture, density of sounds, it`s not just EQ that will balance a mix. Think about the size and weight of sounds, when slotting them in to a mix, as well as where their frequency bias is.
Well that's definitely something I will take into considering from now on! Thanks a lot for the feedback (never really thought about denseness before!)

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Re: What's the sound of analog

Post by Aureliano »

To me analog is all about, as mentioned, the non-linearity of the sound.

I played with Reaktor for a long time before getting my hands on a modular. To my ears, playing a single raw sine wave on a modular sounds electric in a way that I've never heard by its software equivalent. By electric I mean sort of alive; grisly; moving.

That said, after a modular is recorded, processed, etc etc...can you hear the difference in a finished piece? Probably not.


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