THERE IS a BIG Difference.
I love analog and I would like to mix & track with it if I could.
But for the moment I'm with Digital recording.

And there is HUGE difference. Sorry to say that .... use you hear.
And it's true that Sound Forge sound very different (don't know if I will say "warmer") .... less deep bass, more punch, sound smoother on bass.

Because every Digital Soft & Compagny use different algorythm.
Of cource there is some parallel but please listen before you talk.
Don't let this tread become a new debat about DIGITAL vs ANALOG. Everything as been said ...

My 2cents. Bye.

Dunno, most peeps here refer to Logic, Cubase, Sonar, etc. as sequencers. It would seem that although you can use them to trigger midi info and arrange midi you can also record a bar of drums with a mic then loop it...which is a bit like sequencing something...you're putting bits together into a "sequence".

Also, it would be strange to call it a "digital audio recording application" when referring only to recording analog and a "sequencer" when referring to editing midi events while simultaneously referring to the exact same program.

I move we combine the two...whether triggering midi or changing analogue to digital then arranging it should both be referred to as sequencing.

perhaps you just change "sequencers" to "sequencers/multitrackers"

pyxis360 wrote:Also, it would be strange to call it a "digital audio recording application" when referring only to recording analog and a "sequencer" when referring to editing midi events while simultaneously referring to the exact same program.

I mostly hear them referred to (and refer to them myself) as Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), some of which offer sequencing features (Logic, Live, PT) and some of which do not (oooold versions of PT, old versions of Live, dunno about Logic). Think of it like your word processor: it offers a spelling checking function, but you don't refer to the word processing program solely as a spelling checker. (Though you may say, "I put that through the spelling checker" when referring to the function.)

As TMH said, the sequencer functions alone have no sound at all. What may or may not affect the sound is the DAW's mixing stage, possibly depending on the algorithm(s) used, possibly bit depth. But I think your hardware is going to have a bigger effect. Now testing different software packages with the same hardware chain would be interesting.

It seems the definition of sequencers (even if incorrect) has expanded to incorporate "multi-tracking" already. As everyone knows Cubase, Logic, etc. does both.

Maurice wrote:

pyxis360 wrote: Now testing different software packages with the same hardware chain would be interesting.

Very interesting!

I use Adobe Audition for digital audio recording. I don't think it does any sequencing, that I've noticed. The last version of SoundForge I used was 4.5, which didn't have any sequencing capabilities that I was aware of.

Then there's Cakewalk, which I was trying out during that same era, years ago (version 8, maybe?) which was great as a sequencer and sucked ass for digital multitracking.

Here's an example of what "sequencer" used to mean and should still mean.

You got this box that maybe is a computer program or maybe is a box or whatever, and you hook it up to your keyboard/synth dealey. The program/box has some stuff you programmed into it, and it uses the keyboard or drum module or whatever to produce some sounds... but you have the outputs of those boxes all routed through a mixer into your 2" machine, and you record Synth A on track 1, Synth B on track 2, Drum Box 1 on track 3, etc etc.

Does that mean that your 2" machine is now a sequencer?

No, it does not.

The box that is running your loops and controlling your other boxes or synths is a sequencer. The 2" machine is not.

If you taped a sequencer box on top of your 2" machine, that still doesn't make your 2" machine a sequencer.

Recording an acoustic guitar and a vocal track into your computer is probably gonna happen via a digital audio recording suite of some sort. Whether or not that digital recording software has any sequencing capabilities has nothing to do with anything if you're looking to record an acoustic guitar and human voice.

If you're looking to loop them, and fuck with them, rather than record them (i.e. you are "sampling" them) then you'll need to use a sequencer.

If that sequencer and the program you used to track the samples you're sequencing are in the same box, or software suite, that's great for you.

You should maybe just be a little more clear about things.

That being said, an *actual sequencer* has no "sound", unless maybe it has problems with lagging or keeping sync'd.

Going back to the old synth days, a sequencer was indeed a box that put out a sequence of different control voltage values. You could adjust the values, the number of steps in the sequence, and the rate that the box ran through that sequence. You could then use that voltage to adjust pitch, envelope, filter cutoff points, whatever. This had nothing to do with audio, or with recording, until you applied the sequencer's output to something that took a CV input, and recorded it.

scott wrote:If you're looking to loop them, and fuck with them, rather than record them (i.e. you are "sampling" them) then you'll need to use a sequencer.

Actually, you don't even need to use a sequencer for that--you could use a looping delay, or looping functions in the recording part of the DAW. Ableton Live is very good at this, and could be used for such live looping and the arrangement of such loops even before it gained a MIDI sequencer in version 4.0. You're right, Scott, that you can use the sequencer for that, but you don't have to. If you are using a sequencer, usually you'll grab your sample first in the recording part of the DAW, apply it to some kind of sampling instrument, and then use the sequencer to play pitch-adjusted samples of t duration on the sampling instrument.

All I meant by mixing architecture was the way in which the mixer is programmed to route audio, and any bottle necks it places upon the audio within. Some mixers operate at 24 bit therefore any increases in audio wordlength such as change of gain or panning or effects can often mean loss in wordlength during summing. Most mixers now don't apply any kind of bottle neck, ProTools 5 series mixer, I believe, would reduce audio word length to 20bit if a panner was used as there was no headroom within the mixer.

I think we all need to remember than digital mixing is not the altering of current, but the rewriting of data, a piece of data referring to a sound has to be rewritten by the computer to include information about the volume and such that you are altering with the mixer. Of course the way in which different programs do this MUST vary because of their design, some will offer more effective and less intrusive ways of doing this, some won't be as good and will add some artifacts or distortion to the sound. This is inevitable.
I don't however see this would lead anyone to say that one sounds WARMER than another, I believe warmer is a wordy way of describing something you can only just notice but not accurately describe. People often also mention things like "Digital Hash" or "Hazing" which also are not something I'd ever say I've heard but I understand the elements within audio which could be described as this, and I have heard them.

I don't think that if you are operating in a, "record something and play it back through a discreet output to an analogue desk and mix it", manner that this sort of thing would come into play as much. But then like someone else said I'm sure the hardware you're using would make way more difference, down to the cabling and insulation within your signal paths. I also think the hardware you use to record in the first place makes a far more noticable and interesting difference to the sound of your records.

I think with ALL software be it a recording package (sequencer, DAW whatever you know what we're talking about), or a plug in, or a mixer, there must be some differences in the programming, but I can't think there are as many as some people make out. For instance.
A compressor turns stuff down automatically I can't think there are too many ways in which you can tell a computer to do this?
Can you program and app to record audio in a more pure manner, or in a way that affects the sound, or in every circumstance does it just take the numbers from the outputs of the ADC and write them direct to disk?

I don't think any of us can guess the answer to these questions, and I don't think I'd like to be the one sharing opinions on whether apps do sound different because there could come a day when all the software manufacturers turn round laughing saying they're all the same from the ground up anyways!

Not directly related, more like a cousin of the original question, but... hey, you guys did mention 'mix-architecture'!

There's a really, really interesting thread on the merits of in-the-box vs. out of-the-box summing (ie. keeping it in the computer vs. doing your summing on an 'actual' desk) over at the Digital Performer discussion pages at unicornation.com
Some good discussion and some interesting points raised.

Requires (free) registration, unfortunately.

Thread is here: http://www.unicornation.com/phpBB2/view ... sc&start=0