Analog for the sake of analog.. (?)

[skjaldborg]

in terms of the analog vs. digital sonic debate. To me it's like large format to 35mm photography and later the switch to digital images. The quality of early 35mm was no where near as good as large format (and physically never could be) but some photographers actually used the graineyness to create a look or style. Over time the quality improved until there was very little difference - we went through the same thing with digital images. I read an interview with David Bailey in which he said that magazines had rejected some of his early digital files (not good enough resolution for their printing) but were quite happy to accept a printout of the same file he had done on his own inkjet!

I don't see digital effects as a substitute to analog - more a continuation and allowing more sonic ideas. Whether you like the sounds or not is a different question and is subjective. There are plenty of digital techniques that simply cannot be done in analog

[jonasx26]

Well, that escalated quickly.. Wow. So many notification e-mails 

The reason I brought this up is that I've been somewhat unmotivated and undetermined about career choice and whether to continue studying formal electrical engineering.
That's why I tried to downplay the whole "which sounds better?" -debate, which for me is another (already done to death?  ) issue. Not the angle I was going for.

After some years of visiting the forum, I've really come to respect you guys. Lots of interesting discussion and wisdom around here, not directly related to pedal building.
So I posed the question here, hoping for some sort of feedback/guidance/motivation/alternate perspective/whatever from you guys.

I sure didn't expect this kind of response. No one around me "IRL" understands what the frick I'm talking about. So this really means a lot to me.

[R.G.]

I think it comes down to whether you want a promising career or an artistic one.

Seriously, unless you get into one of the few subspecialties of EE that are heavily analog based - RF and logic circuit design at the device level come to mind - you're going to have to deal with the digital monster, and learn to love programming, at least enough to be comfortable with it and put in your time for the paycheck.

This is an issue I faced for a long time. I held on to analog design jobs for far too long for the benefit of my earnings career. If you're seriously NOT interested in programming and digital machinations, think long and hard about the very small market for analog-specialized EEs. You're at the right place to be making this choice and I applaud your thinking. I think I was close to right - earn a living/career or be an artist. Those are quite different choices for most of us. It took me a lot of years to get back to my first love.

[MoltenVoltage]

it seems obvious to me that digital control over analog circuits gives the best of both worlds.

it's true there are things that can't be done with analog, like a clean delay.

but digital is NOT just about sample rate and resolution.  digital effects are limited by what's between the ears of the programmer.

and by the programmers's ears.

with all due respect to rg and the others, the future is in combining the best elements of both technologies.

digital photography is a perfect example.  think of analog effects not as the film, but the LENS!

[jonasx26]

I think it comes down to whether you want a promising career or an artistic one.

It sure does seem that way. Not an entirely trivial dilemma. Employment; Legal. Enjoyable. Great pay. .. Just pick two.
There aren't a whole lot of semiconductor manufacturers around here in Sweden. And writing software DOES "seem like a waste of human life somehow"    So that kind of narrows it down I guess.

One thing I would like to see and have a go at is more hybrid stuff (digital controlling an analog signal path etc).

Putting aside the analogue vs. digital sonic debate, I think digital will always beat analogue for 'controlling' (routing & switching)...

digitally controlled analog , this exites me .

it seems obvious to me that digital control over analog circuits gives the best of both worlds.

In regard to designing stompboxes, I agree with you guys.
Digital control is far superior. And even if/when digital resolution approaches ∞ orders of magnitude higher than what our hearing can discern, there is something 'romantic' about a fully analog signal path   

But I dislike development boards for some reason. Kinda seems like electronics for amateurs since all the work has already been done for you, and you're back to writing PC software, but on a small PCB instead. I'm probably beng very irrational about that though...

My thoughts EXACTLY I'll have to work around my irrational/compulsive thinking when I finally start exploring digital control. Some day.

[EATyourGuitar]

it seems obvious to me that digital control over analog circuits gives the best of both worlds.

this is the perfect answer. DSP is only needed for harmonizers, delay, reverb. anything that needs a frequency counter or data storage. DSP is also great for tap tempo LFO but thats also an example of digital controlling analog since a guitar player has no use for an LFO directly. the LFO is a control voltage. you could avoid the obvious stepping of the 8bit DAC with an analog LFO but then you loose the power of computer controlled tap tempo and all it's handy dandy time divisions. use the right tool for the job.

[greaser_au]

But I dislike development boards for some reason. Kinda seems like electronics for amateurs since all the work has already been done for you, and you're back to writing PC software, but on a small PCB instead. I'm probably beng very irrational about that though...

My thoughts EXACTLY

This is what I don't like about things like the arduino and the raspberry pi. One gets one of these things, and then proceeds to program it in some abstracted high-level language which pretty much negates it's entire value - like riding a 10-speed racing bike in first gear all the time (yes I know... I'm told that all those extra cpu cycles are for running compiled C or BASIC or interpret java!!!).   It's great that it provides an easy path into computing, but I do think it's Lego vs Meccano - at some point one needs to progress to the molten solder and direct bit-wrangling stage!

#1 son is doing a software engineering degree, and one of the tasks was to program a TI-430 launchpad board to read it's local temperature and the state of the button... in C.  All good, but did they then proceed to the nuts and bolts basics of it's assembly language to compare the performace differences?   Unfortunately no!  .

I worked in amusements quite a long time ago. To make my life easier I designed & built a coin rejector programmer using an 8031 and a 2x16 line hitachi-style LCD with a 4-button control interface, All done in about 3 weekends (plus about 12 large pots of coffee)- it  ran to nearly 4k of assembled machine code (mostly tables and display control strings) - and 99.99% of the time it was idling.

I was a even a bit uncomfortable with the PIC family - a quite limited instruction set and small amounts of onboard flash program memory:  I get it now: simple & fast.

I purchased an 89c51 and a PIC16 with my last tayda order. Time to initiate junior into the mysteries of assembly language... 

david

[alparent]

This is what I don't like about things like the arduino and the raspberry pi. One gets one of these things, and then proceeds to program it in some abstracted high-level language which pretty much negates it's entire value - like riding a 10-speed racing bike in first gear all the time (yes I know... I'm told that all those extra cpu cycles are for running compiled C or BASIC or interpret java!!!).   It's great that it provides an easy path into computing, but I do think it's Lego vs Meccano - at some point one needs to progress to the molten solder and direct bit-wrangling stage!

I love my Arduino. It lets me do what I want EASELY!. Don't have time and don't want to learn lower level programming. Arduino made microcontrollers available to every day Joe's and took my switching to a new level. Not all kids have Meccano....but there are Lego's in every house in the world! And what's wrong with a single speed bike? All I want to do is go out and play!

I'm a big fan of analog signal with digital switching and Arduino allowed me to take part in that instead of just reading about it.

I'm getting all that you are saying and it make perfect sense (for someone that wants to go all in!) I'm just saying that sometimes.....Girls (guy in my case) just wana have fun!

P.S. Now we can all add "HYBRID" to our Boutique/Mojo list of words.

[samhay]

Jonas - I think RG nailed it. Assuming you are not long out of high school, then you probably have 40+ years of working life ahead of you. If you look at what has happend to hardware since the early 1970s and extrapolate through now into the mid 2050s, it is pretty hard to see how you will be anything other than an analogue artist by then. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, I personally would not restrict myself to this.
I guess you might need to 'stop worrying and learn to love the programming'. One way to do this is to find a programming project that you are actually interested in - and the DIY community could certainly do with a few more people that can make those nifty DSP chips that we all love to plug and play with.

[alparent]

Yes! Maybe you could come up with a kind of DSP a la Arduino. Now that's a project!

[jonasx26]

#1 son is doing a software engineering degree, and one of the tasks was to program a TI-430 launchpad board to read it's local temperature and the state of the button... in C.  All good, but did they then proceed to the nuts and bolts basics of it's assembly language to compare the performace differences?   Unfortunately no!  .

The very first thing we did in computer science was to learn assembly and low-level stuff. We spent a lot of time doing it as well, and it was quite fascinating.
But later on we were being told kind of implicitly that "none of that stuff matters nowadays, don't worry about it" .. So I totally get what you're saying.
Maybe assembly programming is headed towards becoming just a form of art as well? 

Jonas - I think RG nailed it.

He sure did. I had never thought of it that way. Well I had, but not 'in those terms'.

Assuming you are not long out of high school, then you probably have 40+ years of working life ahead of you. If you look at what has happend to hardware since the early 1970s and extrapolate through now into the mid 2050s, it is pretty hard to see how you will be anything other than an analogue artist by then. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, I personally would not restrict myself to this.
I guess you might need to 'stop worrying and learn to love the programming'.

Actually, I recently turned 27, which makes me ~5 years older than most college students, that are straight out of what is equivalent to American high school.
So yeah, I've got something like 35+ years until early retirement..

All things considered, I DO like being able to pay for food, rent and other things of minor importance.. You're absolutely right, if I am to continue pursue a career in EE, I'd better just learn to love programming.

[amptramp]

I ended up specializing in analog but I put in a fair amount of time on something that is disappearing even faster: random logic.  This is designs using gate-level electronics such as the TTL and CMOS families and all their variants and successors.  In many places now, people just throw in a processor because they are cheap to install and you can do the hardware design without having to think about functionality - if your CPU has enough digital ports and A/D and D/A, you can leave thinking about programming the functionality until later.  If you want to change the functionality, you can alter the code without changing the circuit.  If you run out of code space, you can get a processor with more.

Here is the problem: you can program in some functionality, but it is more difficult to read code than schematics.  It is also more difficult to determine what happens in unusual or undefined circumstances.  For example, if you design logic to allow you to change digital pots and you hit the up and down buttons simultaneously, what happens?  In random logic, it is readily apparent.  In a CPU, only the programmer knows and anything more complicated than a simple program like that becomes extremely obscure.  I have done programming before.  I have checked other people's work in programming before.  I really did not like either job that much, so I don't design anything for my own use that needs programming.  The commercial world is different.  It expects programming.  If you want to be employed in this business, learn programming.  Analog niches exist in power supplies and electrical power distribution, so if you are really against programming, you are not out of luck, but given a preference, someone with digital logic and programming capability may have an advantage even in these areas.

[Jdansti]

I was an old fart in college too, so don't be discouraged. I putzed around for years taking courses that were fun, such as music, physics, chemistry, environmental science, electronics, science fiction literature, automobile mechanics, body building (a lot of good that did!!!) until I settled on a major and got my degree. (Fortunately I had a good job and could afford to putz ).

You might want to consider specializing in process control. Manufacturers have loads of analog sensing devices that are controlled and/or communicate with PLCs (programmable logic controllers).  For example, an ultrasonic liquid level meter mounted in the roof of tank might send out an analog 4-20mA signal which is proportional to the fluid level in the tank. The analog signal is read by a PCL module which in turn converts it into a meaningful number (e.g., 65% full), and then sends the calculated value digitally to a PC computer where it is displayed on a graphic of the tank for the operator to see.

This is just one example.  The PLC programming code is not complicated. The challenge is programming a system that has the necessary logic and interlocks to shut down a process in an orderly fashion when a sensor reports an out of spec value. Also as Amptramp mentioned, you have to try to conceive of every possible situation where someone or something might interact with the system in a way that was not intended (sensor failure, stuck valves, operator error, etc.).

Just a suggestion of a possible career where there might be some demand for talented EE's where you live.