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Digital vs Analogue

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...


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.

Both these things in mind, I still tend to prefer digital delays and modulation (except phase), and currently have a digital dirt on my board. Go figure.
 
Proper English; You mean like England?

I have never seen a peddle being called analogue. In most of the marketing hype about pedals the term is analog, but the Context is digital.

Invalid Link Removed

"
5. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”


And my personal favorite:

"18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the “World Series” for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable and forgiven"
 
Invalid Link Removed

"
5. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”


And my personal favorite:

"18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the “World Series” for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable and forgiven"

That is NOT John Cleese. See Snopes:

John Cleese's Letter to the USA
 
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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. It's a lot of money for me to boy the pedals separately and wanted to ask you what is your opinion on this,...

If you adopt someone else's opinion because they seem more knowledgeable or more professional than you, what are you gonna do when you meet another guy who seems even more knowledgeable who disagrees and thinks you had it right the first time?

No matter what you choose there's gonna be someone stand up and tell you that you are doing it all wrong. Just smile and tell them "I know."

Trust in your own senses and do what works for you.
 
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If you adopt someone else's opinion because they seem more knowledgeable or more professional than you, what are you gonna do when you meet another guy who seems even more knowledgeable who disagrees and thinks you had it right the first time?

No matter what you choose there's gonna be someone stand up and tell you that you are doing it all wrong. Just smile and tell them "I know."

Trust in your own senses and do what works for you.

There are occasions too numerous to count and so inevitably to be repeated for which this ^^^ should be made a sticky!
 
Hello everyone, I'm making this thread since I have a question. I have the Digitech BP355 bass multi-effects pedal for 4 years now, I don't use it much in my music, I mostly use some delays, a chorus, a vibrato, the envelope filter and the reverb but not all together, just giving a taste to my sound like salt and pepper. 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. It's a lot of money for me to boy the pedals separately and wanted to ask you what is your opinion on this, the digital vs analogue thing. Should I buy the pedals separately despite the fact that I use like only 6-7 effects from this multi-effects pedal? Thank you.

My lunch hour is just about up an I don't have time to read a 44 responses, but in case on one (45 now, one more just chimed in...) mentioned this; your tone is your tone. If you like it, it works for your band mates, and audience, then done. Who cares how you get there. There is a stigma about using digital pedals over analog, but people can pick on just about anything if you let 'em. That being said, you can use a blender pedal like this one:
mosquite blender - Google Search
It will let you put your digital pedal in a loop, which will allow some portion (you decide) of your unaffected bass tone back into the mix. I have a Zoom pedal and use a little blender pedal this way. The principle is the same. I like it because I am a little sensitive to the "plastic" sound of digital pedals. Putting a little original tone back in is a good thing. Makes the tone a little more foundational and solid. I especially like what blending does to compression and octave pedals.

Hope this was worth reading...
 
If you adopt someone else's opinion because they seem more knowledgeable or more professional than you, what are you gonna do when you meet another guy who seems even more knowledgeable who disagrees and thinks you had it right the first time?

No matter what you choose there's gonna be someone stand up and tell you that you are doing it all wrong. Just smile and tell them "I know."

Trust in your own senses and do what works for you.

This.
And I'm a guy who loves analog dirt for my bass. But.......I also enjoy using things like Steven Slate drums, reamping to use Guitar Rig's speaker cabs on my DI tracks, playing guitar strictly through Guitar Rig, and using VST compression in the mix as well...not to mention vst reverbs/delay/eq/bitcrushers/weird effects/mastering(those are all digital as well)
 
If I am not mistaken, the old MXR chorus and flanger back in the '80s used analog delay lines. I also built a reverb back then with one of those delay lines.

The clocks for the delay lines used logic circuitry, but the audio path was analog. They tended to have a limited frequency response and were pretty noisy.

-
 
Most people would say (and have said) that digital reverb and delay pedals have been very broadly respected and adopted.

I happen to remember a blind test of modulation pedals on this forum where a digital pedal was more liked than all the vintage and boutique pedals. Shocking for many.

On the digital dirt front I can report that our first generation was a sales disaster. So was gen two and gen three. Gen 4 (Bass OFD) was our first hit. Our gen 5, Aftershock, is a huge success, and used by many picky players on this forum

My point in all of this, and given my clear bias I tried to focus on facts rather than subjective stuff, is that digital has become a very viable option for all effects. This suggests that one should enjoy the journey of exploration without the fear that digital (or analog) is categorically better or worse. More choices is good!
 
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Usually I recommend people start with a cheap digital multi effect to see if they like effects and specifically which effects they like. Once they have figured this out, then I recommend upgrading to better versions than what are in the cheap digital multi-effect.

Analog v digital isn't as important as cheap vs decent. Somethings like delays and modulation can sound pretty good in some of the cheap digital multis but a dedicated unit will still blow them away.
 
Most people would say (and have said) that digital reverb and delay pedals have been very broadly respected and adopted.

I happen to remember a blind test of modulation pedals on this forum where a digital pedal was more liked than all the vintage and boutique pedals. Shocking for many.

On the digital dirt front I can report that our first generation was a sales disaster. So was gen two and gen three. Gen 4 (Bass OFD) was our first hit. Our gen 5, Aftershock, is a huge success, and used by many picky players on this forum

My point in all of this, and given my clear bias I tried to focus on facts rather than subjective stuff, is that digital has become a very viable option for all effects. This suggests that one should enjoy the journey of exploration without the fear that digital (or analog) is categorically better or worse. More choices is good!

I remember when Radiohead got tired of repairing their Roland RE-201 unit on the road and started taking the Boss RE-20 in lieu of it. I really miss that pedal.
 
Just to here to point out that all of you who've listed reverb along with chorus, flange, delay or whatever else are being terribly misleading, there's plenty of common examples of both analog and digital delay, chorus, and flange pedals but I think I've only heard of one or two actually analog reverb pedals.

Spaceman? I think spaceman makes one, it's probably three thousand dollars and made out of the same springs in Neil Armstrongs jump seat.

The tech 21 RVB is the closest common thing to analog reverb (and an amazing underrated pedal, imo) but the reverb sound itself is still a digital circuit, while the mix, feedback, tone, mod, and boost are all analog.
 
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Ok just cause I can't resist, @Negative1 i think if you're only using one sound at a time then there's less reason to go analog.

The reasons I have analog pedals (and think the audience can tell the difference) is when you combine different sounds. Like @Alien8 said, loss is an inherent part of all audio conversion.

If you're just converting a clean bass signal, it might not matter that much; clean bass doesn't have a great deal of harmonic content, and a good chunk of what there is comes from the amp anyways. But if you're using pedals in combo, it can get more dicey

Running fuzz into anything is what makes this especially obvious for me. Like, try running a fuzz pedal into a digital delay and then an analog one and it's pretty obvious to me (at least with my rig), that one of them is mixing a delayed sound with my dry signal and one of them is changing the whole signal into something it was not before, something far less lively.

Filters are the other one that this becomes real obvious for, to me, but in modulation sounds I've also found quite noticeable difference in combos.

But if all you want is single sounds, stick with your multi effect!

Do what makes you happy
 
Thing is though, you're comparing a reasonably high end analogue pedal with quite a high end digital pedal.

They should be relatively similar sound-wise, though function-wise they will differ.

It's not the same as comparing an affordable multi-fx unit to that of a single pedal (such as either of the above).

Even the so called "analogue" pedals (i.e. the "bucket brigade") use an integrated circuit chip, not an actual circuit made up of individual electronic components. [/rant] ;) :D
 

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