Hardware vs Software

[Viceroy]

I've read that pretty soon producers won't be using hard equipment and instead mostly use software. Actually Tiesto said that you can do tons of stuff on software, so pretty soon hardwear will not be used.
What do you think?

[Spherix]

hmm what to say =) It's good for some ppl cause hardware equipment take huge space but I don't think that hardware equipment will be toally dissed...

[Ami]

i'll add to this somehow even though, i havent made any music, or even really attempted to do, guess ive still trying to get my headdown just trying to experince, learn and get my feet on the ground trance music wise, heehee

i remeber back when i first came on here, and tried to hang arround getting tips and when i first joined the irc channel, all was well, i was learning, never really gave much thought about how it was produced, until i was in an irc chat session with Slide, one half of Cass and Slide! and one of the questions by someone to Pete was

"what do you think of VA these days?" and the answer from pete was
"not bad although the techno purists prefer pure analogue rather than VA"

or summat along those lines pretty much, im amazed i can rememeber that line out of a whole bunch of questions this time last year!

anyways it got me thinking, what the hell was they on about, VA, to my mind only meant Various Artists, and in this case it did not make any sense, so i went and asked a few people, who immediatly thought i was insane asking what VA meant, heh,

so i went to the king of all search engines, google typed in VA, got nowhere, hmm, add analogue, still pretty much zip, add purists and the essential word Trance, whee, i got a hit to a synthsizer, Nord Lead, did a quick run through, read all about Virtual Analogue, which is using Digital Signal Processors to simulate an Analogue signal, and how Clavia pretty much invented VA and its legendary Nord Lead

In addition they have a product Nord Modular, a lil box of electronic goodies that you have hooked up to your pc, that you can run with a program on your pc, and modify and create wavforms, effects and various other signal and sound properties, upload to the box and then let the hardware do its work, and you can go on forever pretty much tweaking and playing arround

then i find other VA synthesizers, jp8000/8080, Nord Lead 2 & 3, the Virus B or C or whatever , usually these are found in pretty much every trance artists synthsizer's diet, then while i had google open quickly checked out similar concepts for other hardware, and i came across a soundcard that has dsp chips creamware that also works in principle, and a few others, all working with software.

if theres one thing i learned then is that even with the advent of software pretty much its more evident that both will be used in conjuction with each other, tradionally its been the case that hardware = blazing fast, but specialized at a particular set of tasks, where as software its been more flexibilty but the cost of generalisation is often the sacrifice of ultimate speed, so you cant exactly pick one and have the best of both worlds,

besides you really think all them artists and producers would be satisfied with a laptop and whole bunch of software, rather than have an impressive set of hardware, nothing like showing your freinds your rows and rows of hardware goodness

oh dont forget the obligatory multi thousand pound ProTools set up! heehee,

seriously after all they are human, and they have deserved to get rewarded for all there hard work, and its nice to see the artist putting some of the money back into new and better equipment so that they can learn and better themselves, so that the next time arround we get an even better experince through their music!

[trancenrg69]

For a producer starting out, software is probably a better idea because it's much cheaper. Synths like the access virus c can empty your bank account very quickly. As for production value, software synths can produce hardware type sounds with a bit of work. Some tweaking and added effects can generate incredible results. Hardware synths require less work to get those killer sounds. You can produce pro quality music with software, but alot depends on the sound card you have, your mixing skills, and the effect plugins you.

[Dj Traxxlover]

as a trance producer myself i think hardware's still perferred by most people

hardware makes killer sounds while with software its ok but still too "preset"

with Fruity, Reason and Cubase you can make a standard or high quality trance (i can make a ok track within 2 hrs) maybe dats y more n more people use them coz they r free n easy to use

but to me they r good for patterning sequences and adding sound effects
a real dj should have hardware as well...think about if u get famous 1 day with a software made song how u gonna perforamce live? obviously u cant sit on a pc n move around the mouse infront of audience..

i'm saving money now n getting more hardware

[Viceroy]

One thing for handware- it looks more impressive to show off!
If you say "Here's my studio" and point to a computer, people aren't as impressed...