This is interesting. I like this guy and follow him. He's a grammy winning producer/mixer
Hardware from 30 years ago vrs modern plugins
Back when digital first came out it had serious flaws. Kinda like when wireless mics first came out. Just subpar performance.
They way I understand first digital was the sign wave was kinda choppy and the algorithm to simulate to smooth out out were not correct. Signal distortion effect seemed just nasty.
Being an old skewl monitor guy I didn’t and still don’t like using digital consoles.
1) paging through menus forced me to take my eyes off the artist, If the made a signal they needed something it got missed. Now if you’re doing a tour and have rehearsal time to get it nailed then cool, stick in s thumb dive and go. But for one-offs you just don’t have the time.
2) earlier digital consoles had been crashing mid show. Doesn’t matter why it went down you got blamed.
Like everything pluggins got better, but the onboard stuff was still questionable.
Bit rate was as lower. Bit rate on digital was like the size of a pencil, analog as large as a water main.
I remember first deveral yrs if digi was the mist common saying “almost as good as analog”
As a mostly monitor engineer I rarely toyed with FX. I won’t use reverb in monitors unless they demand it. They sing to the reverb and not pushing like they should, and feedback issues. You’ll be more in depth with it than me. When I was with Bolton I was system operator, not mixing. I just help FOH guy get settle into the system and dial it in for him and hand it over.
That’s where I picked up their bag of tricks.
Everything has gotten much better. Like EAW true line array soeajers can be steer by phasing i stead of pointing in that direction.
All that said, ya plugins are much better now.
Some artist still use full analog systems. Last time with Keith Urban he was full analog, didn’t even use IEMs. For monitors was 2 Midas Heritage 3000 for monitors. Stevie Nicks FOH was analog Yamaha.
The reason analog is warmer us because of …wait for it… signal noise. When digital cleaned that but it sounded sterile, the warmth was gone.
Us analog console guys are always at war with digital vs analog, it never ends, but digital is way better than in the past.
I guess it was more of a question of comparison, which you covered and I assumed.
If ya want kind of a chuckle, google Jason Aldean FOH. Should come up with an outdoor event where he runs through plugins he uses, all over 200 of them. He’s kinda nuts. He way over processes signal. There’s really no dynamics left. Everything is manufactured. Smart guy, I just don’t agree with over processing live.
ANYWAY, congrats on your step forward.
