Comment by anigbrowl
5 days ago
Almost all electronic music is synced to a sequencer and so obviously is going to have a very steady tempo.
Haha if only
Well the tempo is steady by human standards, but latency and jitter on timing signals are recurring issues in electronic music. Some devices put out very steady timing but don't like being slaved to another device, bugs can creep in at loop points or pattern switching (even on Roland's latest flagship drum machine, which costs most of $3000), things can get messy if there is too much note/controller data and so on.
Yeah, it's a really bold claim by someone who obviously never had to sync midi gear, which can become a nightmare depending on the gear. The problem is so difficult that we have specialized expensive sync gear that try to tackle it.
You mean a protocol designed for 9600 baud has issues with saturation?
The protocol has its limits (heavy polyphony + midi CCs over 16 channels on a serial protocol at 9600 baud is "fun") but some hardware make it way worse than it should be.
Usually top electronic studios use external clock sync device which prevents that kind of issues, I’m sure that Daft Punk uses it too
Probably not on this album.
More than likely they did, sync boxes have been around for a long time, they're not that expensive (would have been in the hundreds of dollars or euro at the time), and Daft Punk could surely have bought or borrowed one if they wanted. I was just having a chuckle at the blog author's idealism about how well sync works in the real world. If they were using MIDI, the standard allows for a 1% timing variance at the hardware level (not 1% of 1 beat, 1% of the tempo). I would guess Daft Punk were more likely using old 'classic' synths with control voltage, which is often a bit more reliable.
Why not? It’s a common equipment and it’s not count as "digital device forbidden in analog studio" as you connect synth directly to it, just to make sure that your front waves are in sync
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