How different synths sit in the mix

[Octagonist]

@Schnork

whereas a 909 or 808 has a pretty narrow range, but the kit itself is very nicely balanced making it much easier to have it sit well in a mix

I reckon the individual outs help quite a bit.

[HoldMyBeer]

They sit like a good boy.

[PlateOfShrimp]

Definitely depends on the context. Just looking at filters as an example, there could be differences in brightness with slope, differences in frequency content when turning up the resonance, and differences in how much you can overdrive the filter. Now imagine you have a filter with a lot of control over these aspects. Does that flexibility make it easier to fit in the mix? Oftentimes, yes. Other times you just need something simplistic and predictable to quickly achieve something that sits.

[jeffroman]

The main way analog is easier to mix is by often having characterful and exciting sounds that dominate useful portions of the spectrum while digital often has a lot of garbage in other areas of spectrum that you don’t notice on its own but that makes mixing harder. You don’t have to shape “good sounds” as much necessarily because letting them be in your face and cool sounding just works. So I find that analog stuff often has far less detailed eq applied while digital stuff needs a little more surgery.

[shinobi]

I usually find easier the other way (maybe except access virus)

[jeffroman]

I think it depends a lot on what you’re after. Mixing a lot of “strong” sources is hard, but mixing one or two strong sounding analog things in with some more polite sounds can make it easy to let the lead and bass analogs (for instance) shine without producing them much. To me it’s really easy to mix synths if they have a sound that only needs to be band-limited and really hard to mix them if they have a sound that needs to have lots of little notches applied to avoid overly clashing with other sounds and I find the latter to be more common in digital sources but I also prefer to use analog stuff as a very up-front sound that is intrinsically allowed to dominate the mix anyway. With digital stuff I am often less happy with the raw sound and so I spend more time dressing up that track in mixing (usually trying to get some of the highs rolled off without losing presence, something analogs just do better since VCO’s tend to have more natural sounding band-limiting in the circuit vs. a DAC).

[aMunchkinElfGraduate]

@jeffroman

The main way analog is easier to mix is by often having characterful and exciting sounds that dominate useful portions of the spectrum while digital often has a lot of garbage in other areas of spectrum that you don’t notice on its own but that makes mixing harder

@shinobi

I usually find easier the other way

I am interested in this topic, because I’ve convinced myself, without any scientific foundation, that FM synthesis is the right choice for the music I create.

All my tracks are intended to be played along to by students. One of my musical goals is for the accompaniment to be clear but not overpowering to the soloist or the group. My assumption about FM is that more-well-defined (narrow) resonance peaks are more readily available, compared to other forms of synthesis.

I have produced these accompaniments almost exclusively on the Digitone. The small number of tracks I’ve made with other gear have have struck my ear as lower quality, with more general “noise” interfering with the purity of the tones and the clarity of the accompaniment being “washed out” by the students playing along.

I should probably start using an oscilloscope. I am pretty bad at figuring where the frequency distribution of sounds in my mixes lies, and I frequently redo projects when I discover, while trying the tracks out on students, that the mix is lopsided.

[jeffroman]

@jeffroman

I also prefer to use analog stuff as a very up-front sound that is intrinsically allowed to dominate the mix anyway

@aMunchkinElfGraduate that is the relevant aspect of what I said. Analog doesn’t guarantee great sound and it might need to be band-limited to avoid the extras in the lows and highs that aren’t necessary for its timbre to be properly represented in the stereo mix but if you have a really lovely timbre that can be allowed to bloom all over a mix I see nothing wrong with letting it do so…but you shouldn’t expect to be able to easily mix a whole lot of sounds like this without lots of sculpting and moving things around in the stereo staging. That’s one of the reasons people will often only have one or two really memorable sounding analog synths and then fill out everything else with digital stuff or samples that can slot in nicely under those more dominant voices.

Mixing 8 tracks of character analogs would definitely be hard but I think having one or two tracks of that give you something to work around that you can think “OK I need these to sound like they do and I can fine tune the other sounds to work around them.” By committing to them as the primary sounds that need to be respected it makes it easier to know what to cut/boost on the other sounds IMO.