| dongle wrote on Sun, 11 September 2005 11:16 |
Hey Bob, you seem adamant that it will happen, do you think it will be for the better or worse. In what direction is audio heading.
giddyup  
|
What direction is audio heading? Up and down...
Seriously, I thought that my description of an exponential curve implied that any given analog processor will not disappear until there is something better or equal.
Let's look at a musical instrument analogy:
In my opinion, the original, "true" Fender Rhodes has given way to some excellent simulations that most people agree is a substitute for the real thing. But the real acoustic piano so far has not been replaced by any satisfactory simulation or even sample-based version.
It's that last 1% that we have to worry about at the end of the exponential curve. Like the thread where Steve Albini successfully argued, I think, that there is still no real substitute for analog tape. With devices like the Cranesong we can get some of the effects of analog tape but not the visceral "balls" and "impact" I think. But it is up to, maybe, 95%. A lot of people have been at my place, where the monitoring is not a slouch, and said, upon hearing the Cranesong, "yes, there's the sound of analog tape".
So, when you ask, "will it get better or worse"? I think it could get some points worse as we discover that through tiny erosions in our standards of acceptability, we begin to accept something that is 99% of the real thing. This has already happened to a log of what used to be acoustically-based music. Listen to the distorted collection of sampled drums and synths that passes for "R&B" these days. And the entire advertising field is all synths now except for the vocals. When I came into audio, there were 10 to 20 big, active studios in New York City recording string and horn ensembles for radio commercials. Our world is changing, and not for the better from the point of view of music artistry.
The same sort of thing could (and already has) happen to the audio industry. But looking at the bright side, the purity of tone that I perceive in the 64 bit digital mixer and plugins for the Metric Halo Mobile I/O running at 96 kHz points out that there are many bright things in store for all-digital processing. I like the sound of really-high-quality digital mixing, for many genres of music and recording, so that is an advance, in purity of tone.
But when we are looking for certain types of distortion and grit and balls and punch, that's where the plugins currently fail, or just provide "simulations of the real thing".
Instead of worrying about whether analog processors will be replaced, I think we should just set our sights on keeping improving digital processing and seeing where and in what applications it can replace some of our old analog techniques. And then when someone starts calling a new plugin an adequate replacement for such and such analog process, the keen-eared and experienced engineer/producers that we have left have to call an alarm and tell all of us why such-and-such is a pale representation of the way we used to do it.
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Topic: When will digital completely take over audio processing (Read 17897 times)