Vintage Gear or AU / VST ?

Tell me about it. Given my druthers I want to move serious air and try some creative mic placement. I really dig stereo guitar rigs miced in blumlein at a slight distance for example.

Hi for my music i only use native plugins in realtime with a reasonable latency. i doing this by using an old protools hd 10 tdm pci with asio software. the asio software send midi to protools for using protools instrument and the asio software record all protools plugins audio. the asio software compensate the latency of protools hd plugins. i put a video demo of my system here https://www.ayewind.com/use-native-plugin-without-in-realtime-without-latency and an audio demo made with this system https://www.reverbnation.com/weesch/song/33726072-last-days-saints For me i have the better result with mutools and protools hd 10. but you can also use another asio hardware and anothere asio software to control midi and audio of protools hd tdm. thanks for replies best regards weesch

A couple years ago I switched to a couple new motu interfaces that have my roundtrip really low, midi latency is usually negligible when playing a plugin, I cant even feel it. Although my audio roundtrip latency is still noticeable if I plug a guitar or hardware synth in and start piling up plugin processing, close but I can still feel it if I monitor from a daw while playing by hand, but fir just playing midi in the current generation of interfaces are so good that your host is the only bottleneck and not much of one at that.

both, if you really like some piece of gear, you should def get the physical one, but if you are a minimalist (like me lol) its better to have a plugin that does the same.

that being said, I don’t think there’s much maintenance involved with hardware...

Sounds like you're good at selling your gear before it turns 30 years old. One of my primary uses of this site is keeping track of which items in my studio still need repairs, lol.

Computers are really a double edge sword, because while they enable so much in terms of music production, they are also probably the biggest reason why we are not putting out as much as we should be.

Back in the '00s, I would have agreed with this 100%. I remember reading an interview with Mike Paradinas (who now runs the Planet Mu label) and he was lamenting that back when he just made music on an Atari ST running Cubase, a sampler, and a couple of keyboards and rack fx, he could crank out a full song in one day -- but switching over to modern PC and VSTs, his output slowed considerably, as there were so many more things to tweak, consider, and second-guess.

That said, now that we're in a world of producers who have never known life without Live or FL Studio, I think we're at a point now where there are plenty of real-world examples of ppl who crank out music all day long by using a mostly-software/ITB workflow... those folks are typically good at self-limiting what plugins they entertain, and what aspects of production they invest a ton of tweak-time to... they don't need the inherent limitations of hardware to help force them down a path towards completion.

Its rough. Computers have raised the bar for production values. Gone are the days when an indie dance track could be cut with a drum machine and a couple of synths live through a mackie to a dat tape or cassette. Creativity often takes a back seat to leveraging a bewildering array of digital tools said to give you that 'professional sound' to be remotely competitive on streaming platforms in the computer age of music.

But as for computers slowing things down? I dunno. I find I'm just slower now because I'm older. I don't work holidays and only do weekends if I need to, I don't usually work late unless I'm really inspired, I take more breaks because my ears get fatigued faster, I don't skip meals and no longer accept fast food as actual food and I have to deal with way more responsibilities... coupled with how discerning I've gotten about the details (okay, nitpicky and perfectionist) adds up to a slow production timetable.

We're not unproductive, we're middle aged and day jobs have taught us to slow down, do our best work and put our well being first. Even if I'm working on other people's music, if you can give me extra time you get better stuff back.

Its rough. Computers have raised the bar for production values. Gone are the days when an indie dance track could be cut with a drum machine and a couple of synths live through a mackie to a dat tape or cassette.

Excellent point.

That said, we're now in a strange era in which a wonderful track that has been produced to the highest standards is still very likely to be entirely ignored, while a video of a mediocre track playing back through a drum machine and a couple of synths, all fed to a Mackie, is way more likely to crack 1M view on Youtube than a music video for that aforementioned wonderful, fully mixed & mastered track.

That seems like the rule but i suspect its actually the exception. It happens multiple times a day but compared to the sheer amount of music content uploaded to YouTube or Tiktok those successes are a drop in the bucket. I wouldn't think the odds of your well produced track cutting through the noise of spotify are any worse than getting a million youtube views with your live groovebox exploration. I think YouTube really lends itself to low production values. The poor sound quality is a real leveler.

That seems like the rule but i suspect its actually the exception. It happens multiple times a day but compared to the sheer amount of music content uploaded to YouTube or Tiktok those successes are a drop in the bucket. I wouldn't think the odds of your well produced track cutting through the noise of spotify are any worse than getting a million youtube views with your live groovebox exploration. I think YouTube really lends itself to low production values. The poor sound quality is a real leveler.

Good points, Jim. I appreciate your more optimistic take.

Spotify makes decent metrics available, but I haven't taken the time to dive into what, if anything, is available re: comparable Youtube data... so my arguments lack the rigor of empirical evidence.

Also, I'm happy to live in a time when every piece of music gear or music software released finally has a healthy library of user-created demo content to support it. I have nothing but appreciation for people that take the time to make that kind of content... so I'm not trying to throw shade on anyone engaging in that activity.

I don't have metrics either but if you really scroll the results of any music related youtube search you get an idea of just how much music content is on there. For example, sometimes I just put some words together and then type 'song' after them and i'll get a million results from musicians I never would have known existed. It boggles the mind.

Personally I've given up dreaming of producing or mixing 'hits'... these days there's oldschool chart hits, spotify chart hits and viral video tracks and it would be an unlikely stroke of luck for a nobody to find a formula that builds a substantial audience via a single outlet let alone achieve the triple crown without some form of sponsorship. I tend to view my contribution as archival. Maybe some day something I worked on will find an audience and it's up to me to create a good version and make sure it exists in a high resolution format outside of spotify YouTube and other servers against the unlikely day that an audience takes interest in my client.

The old question :/

It depends on your taste and targets, doesn´t it?

I have played around with the endless options of VSTs for much too long, underestimating critical points of view and often thinking that vintage analog equipment was hyped.

Today I better turn the Juno 6 or MKS-80 on, turn some knobs and I´m done. No VST will ever bring you where it sends you. And it doesn´t just sound different, the sounds you can make with it ARE different. The J6 doesn´t just have sweetspots, it IS a sweetspot.

The rest is a matter of the production workflow. A J6 has no automation, not even patch memory. But it sounds like an instrument and you can just record its output.

I have to stop now. My MKS-50 is in delivery and I have to watch the door!^^