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Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

Pretty crazy when I think about how much money we spent as musicians buying hardware just to make music and now how everything from synths to guitars, and most modern music is made 100 percent on laptops with software and samples now. Pawn shops are literally full of crusty old gear that won't likely be sold to anyone butt museum curators and nostalgic producers with money to burn.

There will of course be people who will say that analog sounds better, but nothing beats being able to save the position of every knob and not have to worry about your kids coming in the studio and messing up your perfect tuning by playing around. The main gripe I have is that the software is still priced too high, but thank goodness we're not wiring and tuning hardware moogs any more... Most producers that know the real pains of getting the perfect tone back then (prior to making each recording) will agree.

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> The main gripe I have is that the software is still priced too high

Many plugins are crazy expensive, but you don't have to buy them to make music. Vital (synth) is free, VCV (virtual modular) is free, Cardinal (VCV as VST) is free. Reaper (DAW) is $60 (one time payment) and comes with every mixing plugin you'll ever need, plus an immense library of other free ones, plus the ability to code your own.

I'm slowly recovering from GAS [0] myself; in many cases, having fewer plugins helps music making and does not hinder it, because it's better to know some tools inside and out than know many superficially, and it's also better to spend less time choosing a tool and more time using it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_addiction#Gear_Acquis....)

Ardour (DAW) is both gratis and libre (though supported ready-to-run builds cost at least US$1). Other gratis and libre DAWs include QTractor and LMMS and likely soon ZRythm.

Bespoke, an innovative, idiosyncractic modular music making environment, is also gratis and libre.

The LV2 plugin API has on the order of a thousand gratis and libre plugins that do almost anything you can imagine, and a bunch of stuff you probably cannot, and there are also many VST and AU plugins that are gratis (but frequently not libre).

> and likely soon ZRythm

For now it seems the gratis version of ZRythm has "Save/load disabled" (!) and doesn't even include access to the PDF manual (!?); do you have information about their plans in the near future?

(That said, the paid versions of ZRythm are really inexpensive.)

Hi I'm the Zrythm author. No plans to change the current price model because it's reasonable (based on user feedback) and seems to be working. Haven't seen any good arguments against the current model other than people wanting everything to be gratis, but I'm all ears if you have recommendations

As someone that went the other way (100% software to mostly analogue modular) I’d have to disagree. Part of the pleasure of using analogue hardware synths is that you’re forced to treat them like a musical instrument, rather than like you’re coding the music. You record yourself performing and the musical part of your brain responds, leading to more interesting (IMO) results. It’s an intuitive rather than an intellectual process.

I get it, I'm mainly talking about how the historical/economic divide has changed for new musicians... Now a kid can save up and buy a used laptop for $400 and make music with bootleg software, whereas back in the 80s and 90s music could only really be produced and released by sponsored and wealthy artists that had funding to buy gear and studio time. Many don't have even the space to set up a proper analogue rig, for a signed/funded artist space and gear are usually not a problem.

Now the biggest problem musicians have to battle with is just getting around algorithms in order to be seen and heard. :P

True, though the cost of hardware isn't really that much, especially if you're ok with buying Behringer. A lot of the costs of studio setups used to be expensive mixers/reel to reel tape machines and that is certainly better done in the laptop nowadays.

> As someone that went the other way (100% software to mostly analogue modular)

Software modular -> hardware modular or Non-modular software to modular hardware?

I did everything on the software side including extensive use of Max and Reaktor.

While you’re probably right about studio production, I think we’re in a freshly rising wave of new folk sounds and outsider composition.

Those pawn shop guitars are still finding their way to local stages and TikTok videos, and that moog you got sick of tuning and patching to reproduce a sound just got used for some analog nerd’s new daily ambient track on Soundcloud.

Making music is too exciting for instruments to collect dust. The retirement of a lot of these instruments from studio production may even be somewhat responsible for the rise of all these new folk sounds.

I think you underestimate the inspiration you get from touching a physical instrument and turning knobs with direct effects. It's the same with GUI design in music software, really. How you make the music affects the music itself a lot. I don't think we'll see instruments and gear disappear.

I love both worlds though.

In my opinion it's not so much the case of analog sounding better, it's about the difference in tangibility when I use analog gear and the focus on sound rather than the music theory.

When writing using software I spend far more time thinking about the music theory. This usually leads to pretty sterile sounding (but musically good) pieces.

When I write using analog I focus more on the sounds and how they work together, spending hours tweaking knobs and faders. There are far more "happy little accidents" when doing this, most of which I couldn't imagine doing with software since they are not planned. I write much more interesting music using analog.

It's similar to playing a real guitar versus a software guitar synth, there are weird little quirks and surprises when playing a guitar that can't be emulated with software.

That's where recording samples of analogue gear comes into play...

You can play an organic riff, or even an entire part and then integrate it with fully digital work in most modern DAWs, and then all the effects and settings can be saved, this allows a much more consistent and clean sound.

In the digital world there are tools to completely remove artifacts like humming, clicks and pops, even undesired notes... Stuff I dreamed about years ago being able to do is now possible.

I think it's hard now to not be able to say digital is better overall. Even if you record full analogue, the process of music reaching people you don't know usually relies on some form of digital encoding or conversion to reach the public's ears, unless they spend a lot on vinyl and high end tube amp sound systems (or vintage ones).

It sounds like you're just talking about the difference between knobs vs mouse clicks ;)

Yes, and it's a massive difference. Using analog you can quickly manipulate all the knobs and sliders in front of you, often simultaneously. Using a mouse is always going to be less easy

That’s part of it, though it can also be about having something that’s fixed rather than infinitely configureable and the mental muscle memory that results.

You’re right, the pawn shops are filled with old gear that was very pricey - but it’s not the moogs or even the dx7s, instruments that were fun to play in 1992 or 1982 are fun to play in 2022 - it’s the tools from the early digital era that are junk now. ADATs, and firewire audio interfaces, mixers, zip drives, etc.

All things that were killed by software updates or ports being left off new hardware, or changes in techniques.

When you use physical gear you can _perform_ more as a musician and less as a composer/producer. Yes you can do an amazing ableton/bitwig based live set, especially if you have a midi controller or two, but the fewer training wheels you give yourself and the more you rely on in-the-moment generation of sounds, the closer you can get to the magic of a live performance.

Just because it's analog doesn't preclude presets. Analog generally refers to the signal path, not the control path.

The Analog advantage (on tone at least) is most obvious in high frequency sounds and audio rate modulation. This is due to DSP sample rates / aliasing / nyquist limitations. The main disadvantage is cost as many things components have to be physically duplicated rather than just copied in software.

"but nothing beats being able to save the position of every knob and not have to worry about your kids coming in the studio and messing up your perfect tuning by playing around."

That's where im at now. Love playing around, but how to save the state of anything _before_ i start messing ie at the beginning of a tune?

All i can think of is diving back into sysex and doing dumps, but i only can see the optikns on my hardware items.

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