silikon wrote:Honestly, there should be little reason for concern whether it's an emulation or analogue.
When it all comes down to it, you're making music. If you're that caught up in how the music is generated, I'd say you're likely concerned with the wrong things. It's a shame that people can't get past some supposed inferiority of a digital machine; I often struggle to see how being an analogue purist would enhance ones output. That whole argument is a complete non sequitur in my opinion.
I say instead we see what fleshes out with this new offering and judge it on reasonable metrics like "does it produce interesting sounds?" and "is the interface such that it inspires?", versus "aw, it's digital, therefore it must be shite".
I'm certainly no Roland cheerleader, but I personally prefer to audition a machine first hand irregardless of underlying architecture and judge based on metrics that actually relate to producing music.
I agree with your points and I think that if you took a total newbie who has never had first hand experience with a real 303 that person may as we'll go on to make music with without worrying.
But if you take someone who has used a real 303 for years, it being analog is critically important to deliver the goods.
VA has a not so good reputation, and they are using it here on a historically analog device!
Things like latency, aliasing issues are going to be a problem unless they really managed to get this right, they are saying this is an authentic recreation, things like that liquid filter sweep response have to be spot on. We shall see.
This is likely to be a success with a new generation.