I know… haven’t we been there before? Yes we have, multiple times. But there’s still some things which might be worth saying about it, especially since many of the myths of both analogue and digital audio are still widely circulating and because the discussion often conflates a lot of distinct topics.
I recently bumped into this video here through a discussion on lines, :
The video in turn, references this short paper by Mark Barton (who is the guest in the video): Why Modern Digital Synthesis Is More Analog Than Analog – by Mark Barton. It’s just a 5 min read, so give it a go. Also, if you’re wondering who Mark Barton is, the paragraph at the end might give you some answers.
Now, Barton makes a good point in the paper and a few, let’s say “confused” ones in the video.
But before I get into the latter: the good point.
Let me expand on it and try to explain it my way: if we consider the travel sound makes from its source state (sound waves in the air, let’s call it wave A) through recording, storage, reproduction, back into the air (wave B), and we take the word “analogue” as a descriptor of how analogous – i.e. similar or comparable – the two waves are. Then yes, modern day digital (at higher resolutions), is likely more analogue, in the sense that it does a better job at recreating wave B in a faithful way, i.e. making sure it’s as analogous as possible to wave A.
It should be noted that this is mostly theoretical, since, as Mark points out:
We are still at the mercy of digital-to-analog converters, amplifiers and speakers to deliver the results to us.
So at the end of the day, in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, it probably doesn’t matter if your gear is analog or digital. Or at least, it’s much more complicated than that.
This said, I think digital is still digital and analogue is still analogue. It’s two different technologies, each coming with their own set of characteristics, issues and benefits, and I don’t think we can reduce everything to just the signal-to-noise ratio.
The other point that becomes quite apparent from the video – and this is the “confused” point I was mentioning above – is the conflation of digital / analogue sound generation / reproduction and the interfaces that enable you to interact with those.
In the video Mark Barton mostly talks about virtual vs. hardware, about computers vs. standalone instruments, i.e. he talks about the interface and the kind of devices that he uses to create and process sound. To me this is a very distinct topic from the digital vs. analogue discussion, except for the fact that yes, computers are digital devices and can only be digital. The host of the video, Anthony Marinelli makes a few good points on this aspect.
This takes me to my final consideration: my feeling is that we should talk more about user interfaces, about how we play the instruments, what kind of sonic aesthetics they allow, facilitate or impose on us, how they inspire us or not, what kind of relationship we form with them, etc. and we should talk less about the underlying technical aspects, because at the end of the day, those are perhaps not as relevant for the act of musical creation and performance anyway.
A note on the cover image: this was originally created by me for the Modular Spaces article series, but it felt like a very good fit for this post, so I decided to re-use it.