4 ms·

On a related note, this [1] is by far the best video I've seen on the topic of turning digital signals (like square waves) into analog ones. The bandlimiting an

On a related note, this [1] is by far the best video I've seen on the topic of turning digital signals (like square waves) into analog ones. The bandlimiting and timing section shows what a square wave ends up looking like when it's been converted to an analog signal. [1] https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml It's 24 min long and, imo, does an excellent job at explaining the role of digital sampling frequencies, bit-depth, and the misleading "stairstep" representation of digital waveforms.

louthy 6y ago
That's the video I always share with people spouting the same old clichéd nonsense about how a digital signal can't be as good as an analogue one (and other variant clichés). His presentation style can be a tad annoying, but there's no doubting the utter clarity of his points.
- stagas 6y ago
  A digital signal can't be as "flawed" as an analogue one. The analog synthesizers exploit these flaws to produce richer and more interesting sounds that you just can't get in the digital world as it's too deterministic and the attempts to randomize behavior are too "white-noisy", instead of natural occuring distortions. There's been some advancements using AI, though, to model these flaws organically, which sound promising: https://teddykoker.com/2020/05/deep-learning-for-guitar-effect-emulation/ https://teddykoker.com/2020/05/deep-learning-for-guitar-effe...
  - copperx 6y ago
    You can record an analogue synth digitally without losing its characteristics. It's interesting that you can't recreate the sound exactly by generating it in the digital domain.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      So you can... assuming you can get exactly the right random bias generated given any possible input - and the bias will depend on both the current input and potentially some recent input. This is significantly harder and more expensive than just going and building the analogue box, so nobody does it.
      - joefourier 6y ago
        Nobody does it? There's massive amounts of plugins that aim to do exactly that, along with DSP-based pedals and amps. For analogue synths, the well-designed VSTs are impossible to distinguish from the real thing in an A/B test. E.g. the Repro 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA_B6pP9AA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA_B6pP9AA You're right in the strict sense about analog random bias being hard to reproduce, but those are largely irrelevant when it comes to the important characteristics of the sound. In an A/B test, it is impossible to distinguish a well designed digital audio simulation from a real analog device.
        stagas 6y ago
        Impressive, both the instrument (Repro5) and the video. Can't believe the A/B voting results were as if they were random, everybody got about half right/wrong.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    I do not agree. I find modern digital softsynths just as "rich and interesting" as analog, not to mention 1,000,000 times more convenient to work with. Something like U-He Diva for example can sound as analog as anything analog that I've heard. Then if you get into wavetable or granular, you can get sounds that are impossible to achieve with analog, which are in my opinion very "rich and interesting". I suspect that the people who don't agree may have heard a digital synth many years ago and are unaware that the technology has improved markedly since then, which isn't surprising because there's a lot of money in it. Just my opinion, but modern analog emulation sounds just as good as real analog. Nothing wrong with enjoying the workflow of analog though, although personally I dislike that workflow.
    - louthy 6y ago
      There are plenty of good digital and soft-synths for sure. But the Diva isn't close to a real analogue synth. I have several analogue synths (OB-6, Alpha Juno 2, Juno 106, JX-8P, SH-101, Syncussion SY-1) in my studio (and modular too), and also own the Diva plugin. There really is no comparison. I never use the Diva plugin. If it was as good, I'd use it all the time, because it's much more convenient for recall to have a plugin. Perhaps, for relatively simple sounds, or sounds that have little movement. But, the moment there's any filter movement then it's obvious. The filter really is the key, I think, when a digital synth outs itself. Often there's a 'digital edge' to filters on digital synths that don't come close to the 'smooth destruction' that happens in the analogue realm (really, really hard to describe with words!). But, in A/B tests between digital repros of classic synths and the classic synth, that's nearly always where I can hear the difference. But, it's also a major difference, because often the 'sound' of an analogue synth comes from its filter. If you're looking for that stand out sound for a track, the one everyone goes "I love the track with that noise in", then analogue is where it will come from, the quickest and easiest. This obsession with replicating the analogue sounds in software is really tedious though. I prefer digital synths that do stuff that the analogue synths can't do, like Omnisphere - nothing touches that, and it's a perfect compliment to the real analogue sounds. Let's keep the analogue realm, doing what it does best, and then let's advance the possibilities within the digital realm, looking forward rather than back.
  - louthy 6y ago
    Record the signal, play it back. It's got the same 'flaws', perfectly. Reproduction is what I am referring to, not the _emulation_ of an analogue sound source. The difference between digital and analogue gear is that the imperfections in analogue gear make them interesting. i.e. instabilities in VCOs, the addition of harmonics etc. I am a big, big fan of old analogue gear and so I am definitely in the camp of 'we're not there yet' with the emulation of analogue gear. But, the idea that a digital signal can't replicate it, is nonsense, because obviously an analogue signal can be recorded digitally and perfectly played back. This is often the myth that is propagated, that the 'stair steps' somehow mean a loss of fidelity. Interestingly, and relevant to this discussion, I am yet to find any digital plugin that manages to do saturation properly. Plugins are often, seemingly, just using random number generators, rather than anything more complex (like the AI models you link to); Nothing comes close to my Thermionic Culture Vulture, or any of my other valve based equipment at creating that 'fatness'. I think that the AI approach is interesting, it does make me wonder how far we're willing to go to reproduce this in software, when the real thing is a handful of wires, resistors, capacitors, and transformers. It seems like trying to implement the ARM instruction set in Javascript. How much processing would a simple saturation plugin need? How many could one computer run?

louthy 6y ago

That's the video I always share with people spouting the same old clichéd nonsense about how a digital signal can't be as good as an analogue one (and other variant clichés). His presentation style can be a tad annoying, but there's no doubting the utter clarity of his points.

stagas 6y ago
A digital signal can't be as "flawed" as an analogue one. The analog synthesizers exploit these flaws to produce richer and more interesting sounds that you just can't get in the digital world as it's too deterministic and the attempts to randomize behavior are too "white-noisy", instead of natural occuring distortions. There's been some advancements using AI, though, to model these flaws organically, which sound promising: https://teddykoker.com/2020/05/deep-learning-for-guitar-effect-emulation/ https://teddykoker.com/2020/05/deep-learning-for-guitar-effe...
- copperx 6y ago
  You can record an analogue synth digitally without losing its characteristics. It's interesting that you can't recreate the sound exactly by generating it in the digital domain.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    So you can... assuming you can get exactly the right random bias generated given any possible input - and the bias will depend on both the current input and potentially some recent input. This is significantly harder and more expensive than just going and building the analogue box, so nobody does it.
    - joefourier 6y ago
      Nobody does it? There's massive amounts of plugins that aim to do exactly that, along with DSP-based pedals and amps. For analogue synths, the well-designed VSTs are impossible to distinguish from the real thing in an A/B test. E.g. the Repro 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA_B6pP9AA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA_B6pP9AA You're right in the strict sense about analog random bias being hard to reproduce, but those are largely irrelevant when it comes to the important characteristics of the sound. In an A/B test, it is impossible to distinguish a well designed digital audio simulation from a real analog device.
      - stagas 6y ago
        Impressive, both the instrument (Repro5) and the video. Can't believe the A/B voting results were as if they were random, everybody got about half right/wrong.
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  I do not agree. I find modern digital softsynths just as "rich and interesting" as analog, not to mention 1,000,000 times more convenient to work with. Something like U-He Diva for example can sound as analog as anything analog that I've heard. Then if you get into wavetable or granular, you can get sounds that are impossible to achieve with analog, which are in my opinion very "rich and interesting". I suspect that the people who don't agree may have heard a digital synth many years ago and are unaware that the technology has improved markedly since then, which isn't surprising because there's a lot of money in it. Just my opinion, but modern analog emulation sounds just as good as real analog. Nothing wrong with enjoying the workflow of analog though, although personally I dislike that workflow.
  - louthy 6y ago
    There are plenty of good digital and soft-synths for sure. But the Diva isn't close to a real analogue synth. I have several analogue synths (OB-6, Alpha Juno 2, Juno 106, JX-8P, SH-101, Syncussion SY-1) in my studio (and modular too), and also own the Diva plugin. There really is no comparison. I never use the Diva plugin. If it was as good, I'd use it all the time, because it's much more convenient for recall to have a plugin. Perhaps, for relatively simple sounds, or sounds that have little movement. But, the moment there's any filter movement then it's obvious. The filter really is the key, I think, when a digital synth outs itself. Often there's a 'digital edge' to filters on digital synths that don't come close to the 'smooth destruction' that happens in the analogue realm (really, really hard to describe with words!). But, in A/B tests between digital repros of classic synths and the classic synth, that's nearly always where I can hear the difference. But, it's also a major difference, because often the 'sound' of an analogue synth comes from its filter. If you're looking for that stand out sound for a track, the one everyone goes "I love the track with that noise in", then analogue is where it will come from, the quickest and easiest. This obsession with replicating the analogue sounds in software is really tedious though. I prefer digital synths that do stuff that the analogue synths can't do, like Omnisphere - nothing touches that, and it's a perfect compliment to the real analogue sounds. Let's keep the analogue realm, doing what it does best, and then let's advance the possibilities within the digital realm, looking forward rather than back.
- louthy 6y ago
  Record the signal, play it back. It's got the same 'flaws', perfectly. Reproduction is what I am referring to, not the _emulation_ of an analogue sound source. The difference between digital and analogue gear is that the imperfections in analogue gear make them interesting. i.e. instabilities in VCOs, the addition of harmonics etc. I am a big, big fan of old analogue gear and so I am definitely in the camp of 'we're not there yet' with the emulation of analogue gear. But, the idea that a digital signal can't replicate it, is nonsense, because obviously an analogue signal can be recorded digitally and perfectly played back. This is often the myth that is propagated, that the 'stair steps' somehow mean a loss of fidelity. Interestingly, and relevant to this discussion, I am yet to find any digital plugin that manages to do saturation properly. Plugins are often, seemingly, just using random number generators, rather than anything more complex (like the AI models you link to); Nothing comes close to my Thermionic Culture Vulture, or any of my other valve based equipment at creating that 'fatness'. I think that the AI approach is interesting, it does make me wonder how far we're willing to go to reproduce this in software, when the real thing is a handful of wires, resistors, capacitors, and transformers. It seems like trying to implement the ARM instruction set in Javascript. How much processing would a simple saturation plugin need? How many could one computer run?