Wednesday 30 March 2011

Reflective chat: Analogue Vs Digital?

This week our chat covered a variety of interesting topics but for this post I will focus on the subject:  Analogue Vs Digital?  The reason why I want to focus on this topic is because I feel that I need to explain my reasons in more detail on why I prefer analogue for the creation of music and digital for the reproduction of music.

Years ago when I first started playing electric guitar my first amp was a transistor amp.  At first this was fine to learn to play on but after a couple of months I hated the sound so much that I just stopped playing.  I had a friend who had a Marshall valve amp and totally loved the sound and knew that I had to have one if I wanted to continue playing.  The only way I can explain this is that the sound of the valve amp seemed to flow, while the transistor amp was so compressed it felt like the sound was trapped in a box in desperate need of escape.  I have since tried digital amps and I find them much the same as the transistor amp only with more effects but still the compressed sound.  On the whole I think most guitarists will agree with me when I say that nothing compares to a valve amp at the moment.  Yet I do have some friends that just don’t seem to be able to hear the difference, and to be honest I feel that they are missing out big time on not being able to hear this. But then I guess if you can’t hear the difference then you’re not missing out perhaps!

My reason while I prefer digital for the reproduction of sounds is because the sound is crystal clear and there’s no hissing with background noise as with vinyl or tapes. The sound can be copied perfectly.  I also don’t buy music on cds anymore either, because digitally downloading music is much more environmentally friendly than buying cds, records or tapes so this all makes perfect sense to me.   For this reason I also prefer to read books, newspapers and comics via computer too :-)

Click here to see Gary Moore playing guitar at a Marshall Amp Demo.

Gary Moore playing Parisienne Walkways live at Montreux in 1999.  RIP Gary.





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