| Create Digital Noise Forum Index » General / Chat » the strengths and unique qualities of digital sound |
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| Rinko |
 Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:20 am |
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Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 13
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anyone got any info on what they are???
i have looked at the basic differences between analogue and digital sound but i would like to try and maximise the potential of my digital equipment i.e. use it to create things that can only be created digitally.
i can't find any articles on what digital's unique strengths are though.
i guess a lot of dsp stuff can't be done any other way - fft, chebyshev, morphing samples (like in soundhack) but apart from that i wasn't sure what avenues digital sound creation opened up.
any help much appreciated!!! |
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| segwist |
| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 11:44 pm |
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Joined: 19 Apr 2006
Posts: 120
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| Tricky topic, and one open to endless opinion stacked precariously high atop some under-whelmingly simple science. Sounds more like a question someone doing as university assignment would ask, rather then someone "maximising" their "digital" sound. Not sure if that really makes sense to me so would like to hear more about your intentions and influences in that regards. |
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| Rinko |
| Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 2:37 pm |
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Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 13
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what i'd like to do is to know and be able to understand what unique sounds can be created by purely digital means.
so rather than just using digital music technology as a cheap/convenient way of trying to replicate analogue sounds (which seems like what a lot of plugins and programs are meant to do e.g. emulations of classic analogue synths etc as well as a lot of hardware e.g. nord leads are tagged as virtual analogue) i wanted to make unique and fundamentally different sounds if possible.
did you mean musical influences?
well i can think of examples of autechre, gescom, team doyobi, ryoji ikeda and taylor dupree's work where it seems to me that the sound they have got could only have been made digitally- not with analogue gear.
i like allsorts though and am not an analogue hater by any means - i'd love a fender rhodes an 808 etc but the sounds are familiar. it seems to me that if you want fat analogue sounds then you are best off using fat analogue kit (contentious?) but i'd like to take it to the next level and create something new and unfamiliar.
analogue gear for analogue sounds and digital gear for digital sounds? (not to go too O/T - i know its a well worn path) |
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| shamann |
| Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:34 pm |
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Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 45
Location: Toronto
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In the case of your examples, a lot of what they do shows the benefits of digital systems, not just sounds, in that their music often reflects a method of sequencing sounds in a way that's near-impossible without computers. Or they exploit specific flaws in digital sound (i.e. the whole glitch aesthetic).
In terms of digital-specific sound, a couple things come to mind:
- digital silence - with silent parts in analog systems, there is always some sound that remains, with digital silence, the only sound is in fact the sound of the analog systems that surround it. The absence of even low level noise can be put to striking use in music.
- dynamic depth - as result of the control you have over dynamics, and the reduction of the noise floor, digital sound can both be a lot louder and a lot quieter than sound captured with analog systems. 24-bit audio is deep enough to capture dynamics down to the molecular level, so you have a lot of room to work with. Think of the Onkyo movement or the Kim Cascone/lowercase/microsound style, all those barely heard sounds benefit a great degree from digital audio. You might try rooting around the microsound site for some stuff written about it, although you might only find write-ups in praise of utilizing the flaws/artefacts of digital sounds.
- clarity of reproduction - using high quality samples is different than using snippets of tape or old samplers, particularly because the digital reproductions sound the same as the source. That cuts both ways of course, since folk often like the change in sound inherent to certain processes, like tape and old samplers, but faithful reproduction is still a unique quality.
- visual systems - this goes back to what I said about the qualities of working with digital systems, but being able to edit visual representations of audio changes the way in which we work with audio, and any benefits gained in the process are thanks to digital technology.
Really, if you go through a list of qualities of analog systems for audio, the inverse would hold true for the qualities of digital audio. If coloured sound is unique to tape, then colourless sound is unique to digital audio. Even something as simple as cost benefits of digital systems changes audio. For example, it'd be cost and space prohibitive to use a hundred different analog reverb effects on a single song, but you can do exactly that quite easily with a digital system. |
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| Rinko |
| Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:10 am |
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Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 13
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cool!
cheers for taking the time to reply - some interesting thoughts there!
never considered silence in that context.
i'll take a peep at microsound and i think i'm gonna look into data bending too... |
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| adambomb |
| Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 12:28 am |
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
Posts: 70
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| How true about the silence. I never considered that as a benefit, either. Expect it to enter my music in the future. |
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