Why do people still buy analog equipment when they can just compress everything and do it on a laptop?

Why do people still buy analog equipment when they can just compress everything and do it on a laptop?

Serious non-meme replies btw

>shit looks cool
>they got the money

Honestly the quality and "warmth" debate is moot at this point, you can fake all of that pretty well with digital. It's only really warranted when you want really nasty crunchy production. But as far as why people still buy analog it mostly comes down to ignorance because they heard it's better, or some abstract philosophical reasons like it's the realm of physical electrons actually vibrating in voltage vs a computer performing calculations

>fun and hands-on to work with, one knob per function
>restrictive workflow, know and perfect your tools instead of getting confused by unlimited choices
>abuse/out of spec behavior of analog equipment can produce weird, uncontrollable, random results which can be desirable, hard to emulate and might inspire
but yeah, that's pretty much all I can think of

muh wavelengths

Because laptops will never look as cool

oh yeah, forgot the 'clients want to see it' aspect, which might be the most important
the best example is the typical major studio SSL/Neve/api analog desk that hasn't been turned on in months and is mostly used as a $150k mouse and keyboard stand

People really underestimate how important this is and how much it drives the market for high end studio equipment

Why is 99% of all digital equipment emulations of analog equipment, if digital is so much better?

>Serious non-meme replies to my meme post pls
Kill yourself

totally, if you're a legit mastering studio you HAVE to have a weiss eq and so on
this is important

I buy it to manipulate it in different ways than I'd be able to do on a digital instrument. I do my mixing/mastering using computers and mixers, but I have releases on tape with download included.

I'm fairly old here, so there was a time in my life where I was still recording on cassettes and making collages with them.

That's why you get a 300,000 dollar ProTools control surface, so the client can actually see the faders do the wave.

>typical major studio SSL/Neve/api analog desk
Have you ever recorded through a Neve?

serious emulations are the absolute minority, but audio engineering always was a huge sucker for skeuomorphic design

can do that on any major analog console just fine

yes, including the atrocious 88D. neve has to be my least favorite manufacturer

>just compress everything
t. ear-let with shitty audio gear

Not all of it has been emulated, or will be emulated. It has different workflow. It can be fun. Sometimes it's cheap. None of it is necessary, however.

never heard software do good audio rate modulation

...whether or not you actually use it

what is an audio rate?

>neve has to be my least favorite manufacturer
Why?

>but audio engineering always was a huge sucker for skeuomorphic design
and it's fucking awful

>let's make the tiniest possible channel modules packed with ALL the shit like prerouted buffered tapping for every possible tieline and a bazillion busses whether you have them on your console frame or not, a million fucking discrete parts that create heat and that can fail per channel board
>it gets so hot the surface is too hot to touch and your air condition can't do shit in the summer, have fun tracking in underwear
>random stuff starts failing after a handful of years because the shit is just retarded hot 24/7, can't turn off in between session days because it takes half a day to get to operating temps and voltages again and some shit might not even turn on again
and I'm not even talking about the pants-on-head retarded automation and recall computers here
later neve (pretty much everything remotely affordable) is just the absolute worst, the absolute technicians nightmare

hey pal im the one asking the questions here

Is there any daw with no knobs? At least sliders are somewhat logical to operate with a mouse

I think studio one is one of the best looking and working 'flat design' daws out there, but that pretty much only applies to the daw itself, most of their bundled plugins aren't even half as sleek and thought out

skeuomorphic means that it emulates the physical look of a piece of gear, not just that it has knobs or whatever

it's a really dumb idea from a design standpoint, it's ugly and less usable than a more abstract design; it's only done to impress stupid people who equate hardware with good

You're right, but that gets more into whether you're using gear for transparency or for an obviously intentional sound. I'm all for that

Honestly, for me, using a multi-track recorder is just more fun. I don't really believe in it sounding warmer or better because a somewhat talented producer could make it sound just as good and probably better with a laptop. I'm just a simple person who likes to use knobs and sliders.

If something is too complex for you, perhaps you picked the wrong line of work?

>Why do people still fuck women when they can just jack off to porn on a laptop?
>Serious non-meme replies btw

Your virgin walk must be hilarious, OP.

It's like vinyl. Subjective reasons.

OP has never adjusted a knob in his life

Sex appeal

As someone who uses analog equipment almost exclusively I say these are enough reasons. Also I still use DAWs for composition and tons of digital stuff, but I always gravitate back to the analog stuff. Expressiveness?

>"anonymous liked this comment"

Personally I like the feeling of hardware equipment, it’s fun to physically turn knobs and see a meter move, it makes you feel like you’re really doing something rather than making calculated mix moves on software compressors and things itb. Not being able to see the spectrogram on the eqs and stuff kind of forces you to use your ears and mix with what you feel, not what you see.

With tape machines and cassette decks and stuff, I don’t know about it sounding “warm” or whatever, I personally can’t tell a difference. Other than that, I just love using them because I like physical media, and there’s something romantic about watching a reel spin while you’re recording that gives you a nice feeling while you’re recording.

That being said, I can’t fucking afford any of it.

>That being said, I can’t fucking afford any of it.

That feel

Audio rate modulation is modulation (like an lfo) that goes faster than around 20 times per second, creating its own oscillation at a frequency that's within the human hearing range.

Like if you put a slow-ish lfo on the pitch of your synth you get a siren sound, but if you make the lfo faster than 20 cycles per second, you start to get weird sounds like with an FM synth because, to say it in a simple way, you're mixing the frequency of the original pitch with the frequency with the fast lfo (that's now basically like an oscillator).

What he mean is that analog can do this very well, but digital struggles to create a proper emulation of this effect because it has to do math tricks to achieve it instead of using actual moving electrons.

the pitch stability of analog oscillators is not well suited for complex fm tasks, apples and oranges

Can you please elaborate?

I use real channel strips, pres, and compressors on the front end of my interface because it takes stress off the CPU and and leaves RAM free to use other shit within the DAW.

It's a different effect. When you program complex digital FM like on a DX7 the sidebands have to be exactly where you want them, and for the the oscillators have to be phase locked. When you program analog exponential or linear FM it's a totally different timbre, you're not trying to make electric piano or string sounds or whatever

>Honestly, for me, using a multi-track recorder is just more fun.
In my experience it's actually far more tedious and unpleasant.

>math tricks
uhh, yeah maybe you should learn a little more

it's continuous time vs. discrete time

Yeah, try to explain it less simplistically to someone who doesn't even know what audio rate means.

I was actually talking about how they use phase modulation to achieve fm, but yeah, I'm obviously oversimplifying since he seemed to be new at this stuff.

i think the best thing about analogue synths really is how farty they are

it's still audio rate modulation though, as is ring modulation and other things that can be done in software with no problem

it's mainly things like filter FM and feedback loops that are difficult to emulate accurately