Analog vs Digital

B=Anal

A-Digi

A has a faster attack. They both have weird hum and noise in the background from your mixer. I'm not familiar with what the square on a nord looks like, I am assuming it is just basic unless it is modelled in a weird way. They are very similar in harmonic content. I would guess A just for fun. Ill take a closer look.

EDIT: yep its definately A. You can tell by the almost rampish quality of the wave. Although I have seen digital synths try to replicate this. A is a little more muffled than B when I test it on decent system. I would assume nord has decent D/A convertors.

Hmmmmm..... now Im confused. The waves don't look very clean. They have jumps as if you let the other one bleed in.....

Ok, well, I was hoping Analogue Wings would get into this but I see he wouldn't take the bait.

I choose the square wave, btw, because an imperfect anlog oscillator, in my thinking, should have had a slight curve to its square. This would produce even harmonics, whereas a perfectly digital square should ONLY produce odd harmonics. In fact, this may even be the case, as when I tried comparing sawtooth, the difference was so minute I didn't even bother posting it because *I* couldn't tell sitting next to them.

For round 1:

A was the Dotcom

B was the Nord

thanks for playing everyone. I think I will have to wait for the filter to do the next comparison, which I plan on making much harder (several melodic runs of both, with various hand-rolled Nord filters that Ive designed to sound more analog).

Also, I was not tying to imply one wa better than the other, I own pieces of digital gear because I greatly appreciate it. I was hoping to show the almost imperceptable differences between the two, in the hopes that people who limit themselves to an analogue only line of thinking would perhaps expand their horizons. Maybe next time, when you hear what can be done with custom digital filters!

EDIT: There was definately no bleeding between the two. The jumps are probably because Im running a cheapass Behringer Eurorack 1202. It certainly accounts for the background hum (that along with the fact that my aprtments grounded outlets are not actually grounded!).

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Ok, well, I was hoping Analogue Wings would get into this but I see he wouldn't take the bait.

Because of my name? I'm named after my record label, which is named after an album by the band DEAN, which is named after their analogue guitar pedals.

  analogue wings said:

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Ok, well, I was hoping Analogue Wings would get into this but I see he wouldn't take the bait.

 

Because of my name? I'm named after my record label, which is named after an album by the band DEAN, which is named after their analogue guitar pedals.

More because of you unabashed analogue snobbery, Mr Super Quartet/Matrix-1000! ;)

  ten fingers ten toes said:

I choose the square wave, btw, because an imperfect anlog oscillator, in my thinking, should have had a slight curve to its square. This would produce even harmonics, whereas a perfectly digital square should ONLY produce odd harmonics.

But isn't the Nord emulating/modelling an analogue? Therefore its square will imitate the imperfections of an analogue square, right?

Next time, use a DX7

  ten fingers ten toes said:

  analogue wings said:

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Ok, well, I was hoping Analogue Wings would get into this but I see he wouldn't take the bait.

 

Because of my name? I'm named after my record label, which is named after an album by the band DEAN, which is named after their analogue guitar pedals.

 

More because of you unabashed analogue snobbery, Mr Super Quartet/Matrix-1000! ;)

Oh, you mean my "pro gear" as Beak calls it? Nothing in my rack cost more than a third the price of a MicroKORG.

And I think modulars are a bit anal btw. Actually, I think CV/gate is a bit anal, tbh.

It probably does, I don't have an oscilloscope to check. Still, you can (barely) hear the smoothe edge in A that is the even harmonics comming on. At least I think thats what it is, its awfully close!

Can you beleive the Dotcom tracked that well without even calibrating?

I find modulars to be compeltely NON anal. Once you know what the pieces of a synth are, its actually like the simplest way to do things, just point the cables where you want the sound to go :)

  ten fingers ten toes said:

It probably does, I don't have an oscilloscope to check. Still, you have (barely) hear the smoothe edge in A that is the even harmonics comming on. At least I think thats what it is, its awfully close!

 

Can you beleive the Dotcom tracked that well without even calibrating?

Let's do this again when you have TWO vcos

The nord oscs and the Dotcom oscs were actually very similar in shape. Theres a funny curve in the front of the Dotcom's wave file that made me think it was an analog voltage jump rather than a perfect digital jump. It also was a little more inconsistant in the wave shape (much more curvy in parts). I also compared the square wave in surge(really weird and curvy looking..... hmmmm) and in xhip (much straighter). I'm still trying to figure out what the strange notches in the corners of the square were on both of your examples were. But i dont have any experience with this type of thing.

  analogue wings said:

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Can you beleive the Dotcom tracked that well without even calibrating?

Let's do this again when you have TWO vcos

Well, it tracked an octave just as well as a DCO! Right out of the box!

Honestly I was going to guess A for analog and B for digital.

A clearly sounds better to me. B has less overtones and dimension.

  Bubba69 said:

The nord oscs and the Dotcom oscs were actually very similar in shape. Theres a funny curve in the front of the Dotcom's wave file that made me think it was an analog voltage jump rather than a perfect digital jump. It also was a little more inconsistant in the wave shape (much more curvy in parts). I also compared the square wave in surge(really weird and curvy looking..... hmmmm) and in xhip (much straighter). I'm still trying to figure out what the strange notches in the corners of the square were on both of your examples were. But i dont have any experience with this type of thing.

It almost seems that the notches could be from some sort of VERY short delay that is introduced and mixed back in in the signal chain at a low volume. At least I think that would account for it. I may try to recreate it in a modular environment.

Ok how about this one. Analog or digital source?

I dunno I've never had any analog equipment

But the first one sounds duller then the second one

  tv_party said:

Ok how about this one. Analog or digital source?

Analog, but pretty stable sounding.

  ten fingers ten toes said:

analog vs digital

O NOE U DI'INT!!!~

  Dr. Elemeno von Hat X: PhD said:

  ten fingers ten toes said:

analog vs digital

 

O NOE U DI'INT!!!~

TTT MUTHAFUCKA