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Has anyone considered that maybe everyone is obsessed with analogue because it's the benchmark? Analogue is how a basic subtractive synth should sound, with no aliasing, no digital artifacts etc. Digital attempts to emulate analogue, which lacks aliasing or any of those other features. That's why everyone's obsessed, not because analogue automatically sounds great, but just because its the standard to which digital is compared.
If you have an mp3, you judge it based on whether it reproduces the original sound well, an analogue sound. If you have a digital synth then similarly, you judge it against how well it reproduces the smoothness and warmth of an analogue machine. To me its just the obvious way to make judgements about the quality of a synth. Of course, it gets a bit amusing when noobs who have never heard an analogue synth start making claims like "ZOMG, NexUS SOunDS So ANALOgueS DuDE!!!?!?!!111??". Basically, it just seems to me like it makes sense for an emulation to be judged against the original. And to me, most digital subtractive synths are emulations.
In my opinion, digital already succeeds a lot of the time, which is why the whole "sounds analogue" thing is now a bit passe. Most people don't even take a product seriously if it says it "sounds analogue" because its just assumed that modern plugins should lack aliasing etc. so it goes without saying hopefully.
Modern VAs are at least 85% of the way there in most cases, you might prefer the analogue workflow, but the sound is almost the same these days, and everyone knows it. But analogue will always be mentioned just because its the benchmark to which digital synths will have to look up to.
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New Mix: March 2010 Promo
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