This will sound good...



This will sound bad...



And I can hear that with my eyes.

nice the ms-1 is dope its what i started on. but why do you look at the screen? i dont. really what does the screen have to do with anything? i press record on my nano control and play. just like when i make a beat on the 404 haha. the sp is a box that is programmed to do what it does. just like software. i do everything the same as how i learnt. and i learnt how to make music on hardware. i record raw do keys live off my microkorg i sequence my drums and thats usually all i sequence...i record layered onto a tape and dont even look at a screen. anyways this is kinda silly, the whole hardware/software debate is stupid, its the musician not the hardware/software that makes you, so really i dont even know why i care what anyone thinks. just have fun no matter how you do it, i know i do peace all.

That's true, but at the same time the top example still has some headroom left you could fill though, right? As long as music doesn't get cut off, there's a whole lot of room to fill.

I'm still not quite sure how people in a professional mastering suite are able to accomplish this, but I've seen CD Waveforms of music that use just about every bit of space within the margins of distortion and cut offs. Meaning the wave form would pretty much be almost a rectangular block.

virtually every album in the last ten years.

There is no need to use up every bit of headroom available and to limit things to the verge of distortion. Dynamic range and silence are both basic parts of music, even the Ancient Greeks knew this and nowadays we seem to forget it.
And regarding the subject of the post... Well, I mainly use the computer for recording and mixing stuff, but it's true that when it comes to designing sounds my Microkorg and SPs can do nothing against a powerful software synthesizer, no matter how "uncreative" it may be.

threads like these are always kinda funny, but i do think some interesting stuff generally gets hashed out. really in the end it's about the results you get, if you feel you need to use certain software, hardware, analog, digital, whatever to get the sound you are after and you feel it accomplishes that and you click with the interface then that's all that matters.

I used to use software and a limited hardware set-up, but over time I started to get more into improvising/jamming and droning and I wanted the immediacy of hardware and I feel it's payed off, I'm happy with what I have. I'm sure I could get similar results using software and some controllers, but right now that's not where my head is at...

This thread proves that it's all down to personal preference and we choose to approach our own music in differents ways due to musical taste or whatever etc etc.
At the end of the day who gives a fuck how it was made and what equipment was used to make it as long as it sounds fucking mint....the SP555 still rules the roost though.....fuck computers! only kidding

dont limit yourself to one toy combine them all together like voltron.lol i used to be anti computer but if it knocks whos complainin. but i do prefer an sp and mpc over an computer for a live set. who knows tryin different shit keeps makin music fun and u learn new shit in the process. for those that anti computer how u gonna put ur beats online and convert into mp3 files??? with the analog cd recorders.