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Digital vs Analogue

#21
What your friends fail to tell you is that most individual pedals you buy for Delay, reverb, even chorus, will be digital and not analogue. Unless you specifically invest in analogue versions of course, but they're less common.

As everyone is saying if you like the sound of your unit, use it. Don't fall into the trap of snobbery about the way the sound is created. The same people will tell you a tube amp is inherently better - not true - or that you must use a type of string for particular genres, or even (as happened to me recently) that the brand of cable you use is "wrong".

Just do what makes you and your ears happy.
 
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#22
funkymonk13 said:
I think it has more to do with the specific stomp box and whether or not you like the sound.

How can you even tell what's digital and what's analogue? A lot of single effect pedals are digital too, no?
Click to expand...

On your first point, yes, if you like it for whatever reason that's reason enough.
On your second point, with the quality of recent stuff, often the only way to know is by how long the battery lasts or how got your psu gets...
 
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#23
Negative1 said:
... Most musicians that I know tell me to get rid of this and buy each pedal separately because the digital sounds like plastic. However to my ears it does not sound like that at all...
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You've answered your own question, very well. That should be the yardstick for you from now on, and ever. Never bend over and obey what other thinks. You get your gear for you, and it's your money. If some of the punters and snobs will pay all of your gear, then so be it, but I have yet to see that happen... ;)
 
#24
Gizmot said:
Digital circuits have improved and their latency time has gone down, but those cannot ever be zero.
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Hence, they works better with time dependent things, like delays, reverbs, choruses, because there's delay/latency inherent anyway in the effect from the start on. It all comes after and makes modifications/modulations to the resultant tone/note.
 
#25
the important thing to know is that both analog pedals and digital pedals can come is as equally different qualities. Now let's do a comparison.

Have you ever heard any BEHRINGER reverb pedal? Digital of course. Costs like... 40 dollars.
And then compare it to STRYMON or EVENTIDE reverb pedals? Still as much "Digital" as the Behringer. Costs like... 500-600 us dollars.

Now those doesn't have an analog counterpart. Other than analog spring reverbs. Now let's go talk about analog dist pedals then.

Have you ever heard a BEHRINGER UD300 Ultra Distortion pedal? As analog as it comes. Comes at 29 dollars.
And then compare it to an ANALOGMAN King Of Tone pedal? Just as analog as they come. Clocking in at 250-300 dollars. Or a Klon original Centaur?
And then... even more then...
compare it to STRYMON Riverside, or Sunset Dual Overdrive? As DIGITAL as they come! Clocks in at around 250-300 dollars too.

I have yet to meet or hear anyone claiming the Behringer analog sounds better just because it's analog. So remember, there are both crap sounding things in both the digital world just as well as in the analog world. If we should talk about "plastic". Although price isn't the yardstick alone, I choose to select the most extreme ends of the pricing of both digital/analog separate pedals.
 
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#26
mpdd said:
i actually picked up an early 90s ibanez ddl digital delay this afternoon and i was shocked at how awesome it sounded when used with an aerodyne pj strung with flats, incredible slap back and it doesn't have a too dark or degraded sound at all
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Some of those 90s digital delays are very good. I have a couple DOD DFX9s and I've always really liked that delay. It just sounds great. Very easy to dial in too.
 
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#30
To actually contribute:

When a pedal takes your original sound (forget the effect sound, just talking about your raw clean bass signal here), and converts it to a digital signal, some form of loss is introduced. It then has to convert that signal back to an analog signal so other gear recognizes it, and again more loss is introduced. The amount of loss is defined by the speed that the digital Convertor works.

Ever heard a bit crusher? It works on this basis - you turn down the sample rate and the signal gets changed into something different from your oriinal sound. They also have other parameters that can influence change to your sound, bit rate being another important digital spec here.

Back to the digital vs analog thing. In a multi effect, the original signal is sometimes converted to digital to save on cost - even the bypassed signal. When you use the bypassed signal you can hear a difference between what went in and what comes out in cases where care has not been applied to ensure there is minimal loss. That's usually part of what you pay for in a digital pedal - either an untouched bypass signal or a very low loss analog to digital to analog conversion.

In my experience I do prefer to avoid this type of signal change as it does miss some important frequency information that can be used musically. Running one multi effect with poor ADA conversion into an amp won't be so bad, but running it into an analog fuzz pedal will be meh. Not bad, just not great. But again that is subjective and may be perfect for your goal.

That said, it doesn't mean that it's a negative thing for everyone, and if you are gettin out what you like then perfect! Make music with it and love doing it.
 
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#31
Not necessarily a deciding factor in the analog/digital debate, but digital pedals tend to use more current and therefore require a dedicated power supply or wall wart, whereas the current draw on some analog pedals are so small, they can be battery powered. Just some more food for thought.
 
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#32
TheLowDown33 said:
Not necessarily a deciding factor in the analog/digital debate, but digital pedals tend to use more current and therefore require a dedicated power supply or wall wart, whereas the current draw on some analog pedals are so small, they can be battery powered. Just some more food for thought.
Click to expand...

Just to carry on this thought, analogue stuff will often degrade gracefully when underpowered whereas digital stuff, more often than not, just turns bad or takes itself out of the equation by powering down - YMMV as to which is worse...
 
#33
gregmon79 said:
I have a DD3 on my board. Wonderful, simple, delay. I love how you can oscillate with the turn of a knob.
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I almost spent more for a DD7 to use an expression pedal to control those noises, but I too am happy with DD3.

Alien8 said:
What even is ANALOGUE?

How do you say that?

Is it the same as ANALOG?
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It is the same word, and is pronounced the same, it is simply the way it is spelled in the land of proper English.
 
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#34
TheLowDown33 said:
Not necessarily a deciding factor in the analog/digital debate, but digital pedals tend to use more current and therefore require a dedicated power supply or wall wart, whereas the current draw on some analog pedals are so small, they can be battery powered. Just some more food for thought.
Click to expand...
Additionally I have had trouble with a digital chorus (130mA) not playing well on a daisy chain even though the total load for all pedals was less than 200mA on a 500mA adapter.

Every time I'd have to power the pedal, switch the effect on, unplug and replug the power cable to the pedal then it worked all night.
 
#36
AshInAmsterdam said:
I almost spent more for a DD7 to use an expression pedal to control those noises, but I too am happy with DD3.


It is the same word, and is pronounced the same, it is simply the way it is spelled in the land of proper English.
Click to expand...

Oh man I hadnt realized that the DD7 had an exp out.....shuuuu.....I may need to rethink my DD3. I bought it in a pinch because my DOD DFX9 went out on me and I needed a delay that could oscillate with the turn of the delay knob. The DD3 was able to and it was at my local GC at the time. So I've ran with it since. But knowing that I can hook an exp up the 7 and control that oscillation, well, I may need to revisit the 7....
 
#37
gregmon79 said:
Oh man I hadnt realized that the DD7 had an exp out.....shuuuu.....I may need to rethink my DD3. I bought it in a pinch because my DOD DFX9 went out on me and I needed a delay that could oscillate with the turn of the delay knob. The DD3 was able to and it was at my local GC at the time. So I've ran with it since. But knowing that I can hook an exp up the 7 and control that oscillation, well, I may need to revisit the 7....
Click to expand...
Yeah. Even tap tempo with an external switch is useful - as are the several extra modes and longer delay times. Now you made me want one.
 
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