@Iacchus 350736 wrote:

interestingly roland themselves have failed to clone the 303.. they rebuilt the circuits in models such as the MC-303 and MC-909 but the sound was too pure and clean. Design flaws in the original gave it that dirty scratchy sound that nobody has ever quite hit on again.

i thought the mc303 was sampled?

@Iacchus 350737 wrote:

alas I want to use snide versions of a whole host of software and plugins.. ive had to kiss goodbye to some of my favourites like Intakt, quantum leap RA, getablitch, and many more since being lumped with vista. I’d be tempted to try windows 7 and see if they all start magically working again before I fork out on the mac.

still want logic and metasyth tho 😛

i do believe windows 7 somehow emulates the xp kernel or something, so windows 7 will run an xp program as xp would, whereas vista makes a dog of it and runs it like an inside out microwave

@Iacchus 350741 wrote:

how do you know everything? *squints at you suspiciously*

you seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of most subjects discussed on this forum 😉

i concur. :laugh_at:

@General Lighting 350742 wrote:

I don’t know everything but I started getting interested in technology when my age was in single figures, grew up in the days when analogue audio kit was still common and worked in the TV/brodcast industry in the late 90s during the analogue/digital crossover 😉

in the 1980s there was a time when if you wanted some gadgets you had to build them…

I wholeheartedly agree with those who still prefer analogue kit (for both recording and creating music) but sadly the recording/delivery methods of today put in so much compression any subtle differences are lost..

raaa, i like to touch buttons rather than click

I could if I wanted find loads of endless arguments and tech papers (in various languages) over analogue vs digital for a lot of creative applications, but ultimately the best test equipment for AV applications is ears and eyes and I know as do many people from their mid 20s upwards there is a definite difference in quality between analogue and digital originated content.

I tried to find a circuit diagram of an original 303 but Roland’s lawyers seem very quick to make people take them down. There was also a change from analogue circuitry to DSP for the filters which would also have subtly changed the characteristics of how everything worked. Although a lot of 1980s equipment had chips in it many of these were custom built analogue IC’s, made by the Japanese and the internal transistors based around the 2S series. In some cases the priority was miniaturisation over audio quality, even today better amps are made with discrete components.

Iacchus also mentions other attempts to clone the sound, and you can still buy discrete components today so presumably others as well as Roland have had a go and not managed it…

Ironically random noise in older semiconductors was viewed as a great nuisance during the analogue days, particularly as if it got into a feedback loop it could lead to oscillation at frequencies above audio and eventually thermal runaway (where the circuit overheats and destroys itself). Today its only used for generating encryption keys for computers.

My former employers unfortunately skimped on some of their components for an analogue audio board and we used to get loads of the bloody things sent back for repair due to thermal runaway this seems to be a British syndrome, it was even why years ago the telly announcer warned you to switch off the set after closedown, as some British TV’s left plugged in without a transmitter signal would actually catch on fire!