7 ms·

>I think you are ignoring the fact that for some people, the manipulation of the analog media is part of the joy. No, I'm not ignoring that aspect and I unders

by jasode 10y ago

>I think you are ignoring the fact that for some people, the manipulation of the analog media is part of the joy. No, I'm not ignoring that aspect and I understand that physical touch of media can add enjoyment for some people. What I disagree with is the constant biased narrative from writers that emphasizes analog media's attributes. That perspective presents a one-sided view favoring analog such as: 1) physical media you can touch is better than digital bits you can't touch 2) ownership is better than subscription (Spotify streaming) 3) listening in 20-minute side of 1 album is better than instantly jumping around a large music library ... ergo, analog is overall better than digital consumption. (As I stated before, I disagree as a person who straddles both the vinyl and digital eras. I've had extensive experience with both formats and the digital experience is better in my case. Many people besides me have come to this same conclusion.) Yes, holding in your hand a vinyl album's cover art and reading its lyrics can add joy to music but there's also the opposite view that seems uncool to write about: there's also joy in not handling physical media. It's this second perspective I'm emphasizing and it doesn't take away from anyone who prefers their vinyl records.

anigbrowl 10y ago
You're overlooking the fact that we've already been here before and experienced the rush to digital as a world of perfect reproducibility and consistency without all the inconveniences of analog. Digital is better if your priority is the things that are more easy with digital. If you ask me to mix your movie soundtrack, I'll head straight for the digital desk hooked up to the Pro Tools rig and it's be plugins for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you invite me to jam for musical pleasure, I'll switch on the 303 that I have wired into a shitty desk that I bought because it sounds so shitty and I enjoy the way it crunches a hot signal. Multitracking, refining, polishing, can be enjoyable and deliver a sense of accomplishment when you deliver the end product, but it's work. The music I make and listen to for pleasure is typically done with cheaper, crappier gear, pushed beyond its design parameters, and recorded in one pass. I suppose you could cal it a techno-punk aesthetic; when you have sequencers and editing tools at your fingertips, the personal aspects are best expressed (for me) through performance rather than through perfection.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  not sure these things are excluding each other.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Of course not, but for years there's been a 'digital can do anything analog can do so why even use analog' from the digital side of music engineering. To which I answer, because I don't want to have perfect consistency and predictability in every context. There are contexts in which I want imprecision, nonlinearity, and surprise so that I can select rather than design. I'm not sure how to articulate this, but it's a general problem in our technology culture. To me this is not that different from not wanting to write code all the time. You know what I hate about writing code? When I'm working with unfamiliar languages/frameworks/libraries I don't know what all the available options are, whereas when I'm working with more visual tools I can see all the options even if I don't understand what they do, and I can select and experiment and, well, play with the options until I find something useful or interesting. I can't play when I'm writing code because my experiments are just liable to result in syntax errors or suchlike. Writing code appeals to people who like learning a bunch of things first and then recombining them. I find this kind of learning slow and tedious and I keep wonder why I'm doing all this syntax bullshit instead of letting the computer handle it for me so I can focus on my domain-specific ideas. Likewise when I talk with DSP programmers about how I like the unpredictability and nonlinearities of analog signals, they say things like 'I could add a random noise generator to the oscillator algorithm' or so (I'm simplifying, but that's a design reality on many electronic musical instruments). This is often a self-defeatinmg strategy, at least in the short term - witness Roland corporation bending over backwards to do The! Most! Accurate! Component! simulation! Ever! in a recent line of digital devices featuring 'analog circuit behavior'. Meanwhile their smaller rival Korg has completely crushed them in the very important entry and mid-level market segments by simply producing what the market wanted - a wide variety of cheap analog gear, mixing both classic and new designs, and labeling the boards and publishing the schematics so people can mod them if they're handy with a soldering iron.
criddell 10y ago
> What I disagree with is the constant biased narrative from writers that emphasizes analog media's attributes. Do you want writers to start every sentence with "in my opinion" or "I think" or "it's my belief that"? From the context you can usually figure when a writer is expressing an opinion vs stating an objective fact.

by jasode 10y ago

anigbrowl 10y ago

You're overlooking the fact that we've already been here before and experienced the rush to digital as a world of perfect reproducibility and consistency without all the inconveniences of analog. Digital is better if your priority is the things that are more easy with digital. If you ask me to mix your movie soundtrack, I'll head straight for the digital desk hooked up to the Pro Tools rig and it's be plugins for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you invite me to jam for musical pleasure, I'll switch on the 303 that I have wired into a shitty desk that I bought because it sounds so shitty and I enjoy the way it crunches a hot signal. Multitracking, refining, polishing, can be enjoyable and deliver a sense of accomplishment when you deliver the end product, but it's work. The music I make and listen to for pleasure is typically done with cheaper, crappier gear, pushed beyond its design parameters, and recorded in one pass. I suppose you could cal it a techno-punk aesthetic; when you have sequencers and editing tools at your fingertips, the personal aspects are best expressed (for me) through performance rather than through perfection.

ThomPete 10y ago
not sure these things are excluding each other.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Of course not, but for years there's been a 'digital can do anything analog can do so why even use analog' from the digital side of music engineering. To which I answer, because I don't want to have perfect consistency and predictability in every context. There are contexts in which I want imprecision, nonlinearity, and surprise so that I can select rather than design. I'm not sure how to articulate this, but it's a general problem in our technology culture. To me this is not that different from not wanting to write code all the time. You know what I hate about writing code? When I'm working with unfamiliar languages/frameworks/libraries I don't know what all the available options are, whereas when I'm working with more visual tools I can see all the options even if I don't understand what they do, and I can select and experiment and, well, play with the options until I find something useful or interesting. I can't play when I'm writing code because my experiments are just liable to result in syntax errors or suchlike. Writing code appeals to people who like learning a bunch of things first and then recombining them. I find this kind of learning slow and tedious and I keep wonder why I'm doing all this syntax bullshit instead of letting the computer handle it for me so I can focus on my domain-specific ideas. Likewise when I talk with DSP programmers about how I like the unpredictability and nonlinearities of analog signals, they say things like 'I could add a random noise generator to the oscillator algorithm' or so (I'm simplifying, but that's a design reality on many electronic musical instruments). This is often a self-defeatinmg strategy, at least in the short term - witness Roland corporation bending over backwards to do The! Most! Accurate! Component! simulation! Ever! in a recent line of digital devices featuring 'analog circuit behavior'. Meanwhile their smaller rival Korg has completely crushed them in the very important entry and mid-level market segments by simply producing what the market wanted - a wide variety of cheap analog gear, mixing both classic and new designs, and labeling the boards and publishing the schematics so people can mod them if they're handy with a soldering iron.

criddell 10y ago

> What I disagree with is the constant biased narrative from writers that emphasizes analog media's attributes. Do you want writers to start every sentence with "in my opinion" or "I think" or "it's my belief that"? From the context you can usually figure when a writer is expressing an opinion vs stating an objective fact.