Love Dubstep But The Sound Quality Is Just Awful.

[HKD126]

Really. Nothing does it for me like some extremely grimey dubstep, but just listening to most of it makes me want to rip my ears off. Everyone's sounds are just so horribly digital and flat sounding. Then we have people using the worst quality samples ever. Seriously people. It is getting ridiculous. No this isn't a matter of the loudness wars or anything of the such. Its just a matter of people not investing in their music! I mean jesus. Every guitarist I know that is extremely talented and is doing something with their music has multiple quality intruments, a nice amp or two, and nice effects. Same thing with the drummers. One or multiple nice kits with quality cymbals and what not. You don't see bands playing gigs with a squier guitar and a first act drum set, so why the hell aren't dubstep producers investing in a least one freakin synth? I just find this absolutely astonishing. I mean if you are passionate with what you do then why not be passionate about how it sounds!? I can understand just getting into production and yeah you may want to learn reason at first to learn about signal flow and synthesis but there comes a point where you want to get serious and actually start caring about the quality. Its just sickening how often I'm seeing discussions about people wanting certain sounds and the best answers say you need to do this in reason or this in massive or albino. Its so sad how I don't see one topic about someone talking about any hardware or anything cool like a moog, a virus, (and I know its way out of reach for most people but a serge, buchla or some sort of modular synth), an actual drum machine or anything! Its so sickening! I don't know about most people but I find it wayyyyyyy easier to get the sounds I'm looking for or just to construct anything I want with hardware. I mean jesus. Just pick up a machinedrum and tell me your beat making skills don't improve ten fold. There is no real point of this other than to stir up some discussion. I know things won't change and will mainly just get worse, but hey. I'd really just love to hear opinions on the matter.

[Pedro Sánchez]

[paravrais]

Stand back people there's an elitist fanboy in the building..

[mojomusic]

chill man, it's all good

[Pedro Sánchez]

Machinedrum £700plus
Moog £700plus
Bellend throwing a fit in his first troll post Worthless

[EBR]

This forum is also for venting and complaining. No big deal.

Sometimes the sound quality does suck.

[HKD126]

Who's throwing a fit? Its simply an idea I was hoping fellow producers would care to discuss.

[stompzi]

Nothing does it for me like a good rant, but reading paragraphs that are far too big makes me want to rip my eyes out.

[JemGrover]

My guitar came from a fucking skip! ...and a number of people have been impressed with the tone on a number of recordings. I almost feel bad telling them it's origin...

Not everyone can afford hardware, y'know.

[deadly_habit]

lurk more
having thousands of dollars of analog gear ain't worth shit if you don't know how to use it
go dump that money on it if you think a moog is going to get you instantly signed or self produce quality tunes
alternatively i can make digital sound analog and warm using free plugins rather easily since i know the hardware equivalents and techniques
and there are loads of posts on what you talk about, you're just new
tl;dr
lurk more use the search

[HKD126]

Never said any of that. I believe I did say its cool to use reason and things like that to learn about signal flow and synthesis in the beginning but then maybe investing in some gear once you have things figured out and really start to care about the quality of the sounds. I never said buying analog gear will instantly get you signed or will produce quality tunes. They do sound better and just the interface and functionality of some gear makes things much easier to achieve or help take your skills to another level.

[AllNightDayDream]

Really. Nothing does it for me like some extremely grimey dubstep, but just listening to most of it makes me want to rip my ears off. Everyone's sounds are just so horribly digital and flat sounding. Then we have people using the worst quality samples ever. Seriously people. It is getting ridiculous. No this isn't a matter of the loudness wars or anything of the such. Its just a matter of people not investing in their music! I mean jesus. Every guitarist I know that is extremely talented and is doing something with their music has multiple quality intruments, a nice amp or two, and nice effects. Same thing with the drummers. One or multiple nice kits with quality cymbals and what not. You don't see bands playing gigs with a squier guitar and a first act drum set, so why the hell aren't dubstep producers investing in a least one freakin synth? I just find this absolutely astonishing. I mean if you are passionate with what you do then why not be passionate about how it sounds!? I can understand just getting into production and yeah you may want to learn reason at first to learn about signal flow and synthesis but there comes a point where you want to get serious and actually start caring about the quality. Its just sickening how often I'm seeing discussions about people wanting certain sounds and the best answers say you need to do this in reason or this in massive or albino. Its so sad how I don't see one topic about someone talking about any hardware or anything cool like a moog, a virus, (and I know its way out of reach for most people but a serge, buchla or some sort of modular synth), an actual drum machine or anything! Its so sickening! I don't know about most people but I find it wayyyyyyy easier to get the sounds I'm looking for or just to construct anything I want with hardware. I mean jesus. Just pick up a machinedrum and tell me your beat making skills don't improve ten fold. There is no real point of this other than to stir up some discussion. I know things won't change and will mainly just get worse, but hey. I'd really just love to hear opinions on the matter.

Welcome to the 21st century, where you don't need $1500+ to make great music.

[deadly_habit]

you implied it
lets hear your holy grail of good production value or reference material if you don't mind
and people's workflow varies person to person so while interface may be a valid argument sounding better is subjective most of the time especially when talking digital synths/gears or analog modeled
when working outside of the box with hardware you're introducing a whole slew of new variables that can affect sound quality, cabling, dc offset, ground loops, cheap ad/da converters, latency of your interface vs midi, signal flow routing
so what are these poorly sounding tunes you're referring to, and i hope to god for your sake of the argument their vinyl or mastered digital files and not youtube rips

hell take a gander at the production bible and the moneyshot threads if you think people round here don't care about the quality of their tunes, if anything i'd say this board holds itself to a higher standard than a lot of the stuff that gets passed off as releases now a days

[mojomusic]

humans make music, not computers

[hurlingdervish]

I kind of understand where hes coming from, even if he is wrong about generalizing all the producers. Everything is demanded instantaneously now, whereas when you work with your hands on objects in front of you the self-learning and discovery process is more natural and obvious. Even if you worked with an mpc or something of the sort, the mindset does carry over and typically improve peoples ability to craft songs imo. But at the end of the day it comes down to your abilty to focus on it as a craft or hobby. People who amass lots of racks and gear tend to learn how to focus and appreciate the process greatly, but that by no means stops someone working on a purely digital platform from taking the same time and effort.

[deadly_habit]

I kind of understand where hes coming from, even if he is wrong about generalizing all the producers. Everything is demanded instantaneously now, whereas when you work with your hands on objects in front of you the self-learning and discovery process is more natural and obvious. Even if you worked with an mpc or something of the sort, the mindset does carry over and typically improve peoples ability to craft songs imo. But at the end of the day it comes down to your abilty to focus on it as a craft or hobby. People who amass lots of racks and gear tend to learn how to focus and appreciate the process greatly, but that by no means stops someone working on a purely digital platform from taking the same time and effort.

[sephek]

Really. Nothing does it for me like some extremely grimey dubstep

Thats the reason why then. I'm sure the producers who create the "extremely grimey dubstep" that you love use basic software and generic plugins to create loads of midrange wobble. Compare that to the production of someone like Mala or Loefah and it's gonna be on point, get me ?

[paravrais]

I wouldn't have a problem with this threads main topic if it wern't for the fact that it's no longer true. A decade ago yes. Hell maybe even as near as half a decade ago! But these days you can get much better and more varied results using software than hardware. Unless your trying to make something with an oldschool feel to it I don't see the point in buying synths (other than that they are awesome to play with, I mean from a practical *need* basis)

Your very out of touch with the scene OP, all of the best and clearest production/soundscaping I have ever heard has been done digitally.

I'm always up for a talk about the joys of hardware etc etc but when someone says that your not putting your all into your music by not spending tons of cash on irrelevant hardware. Well thats just rubbish XD

Have you just been listening to oooold style rusko, skream etc ?? Cos all those old tunes sound real rough and underproduced but I love 'em for it. Makes them all the better IMO. If your looking for well produced dubstep make sure your listening to recent stuff. There's a lot of people showing some mad skills on the production front at the moment. Too many to list really.

[AllNightDayDream]

The thing about technology is that it's never standing still. Maybe one day all of our DAWs and engineering knowledge will become obsolete because a chip in our brain can transmit any sound we imagine. Who knows how people are going to be playing music in 2020, or even 2120?

Synthesizers are out, I believe turntables have their days numbered, but controllers are INNIT to winnit.

[hurlingdervish]

, I mean from a practical *need* basis

Some people will never be able to meet their ideal production quality by computer alone. Not without making some serious compromises. The reason being is that designing, writing, editing, and mixing happening in the same place on the same computer screen can burn them out from the song and the process of song building for the day. For those people working on a tune without a computer, on any one or all of the songs phases, can help maintain overall interest in getting their production quality up to par.

A good example is some hip hop producers. The reason some of them can work as long as they do on a beat to get it up to par is for the fact that they are "hanging out" with the mpc/sampler. Its in the same room with them, and they know it by muscle memory. Ive heard people who only go to a computer for a mixdown say that "Working on a computer takes me out of the room, I am no longer in the studio, I am in the program."
Now lets race some light-bikes