Why analog rocks: It sounds bad!

regebro

regebro

Insane Genious!
The more I've learned about the differences between analog and digital, the more I have been forced to this conclusion: Analog rocks, because it sounds "bad". ;) Or rather, it sounds *inaccurate*.

When recording to tape, you will typically get a bit of tape compression, becuase you are pushing the tape to not get any noise. And with all narrowband formats you'll get humps and bumps in the lower bass. Your tape machine will not have an exactly flat frequency response, but will have add a gently swaying EQ on everything.

Then you run it through a mixer, that will have it's own little tricks running. It will have an EQ that will force it's particular sound onto everything you run through it (at least unless you bypass the EQ). And EQ's that are deemed "musical" are typically those that have a particular and distinct sound.

SO what's the result of all this? Well, the result is that both the tape machine, and the mixer, no matter WHAT you do, will shape and distort your signal. In effect, everything you have on that tape will be slightly compressed, with the tape nice mellow compressor (tape) and filtered a bit with some nice mellow filters (tape and mixer). The result: Coherence. Everything will sound a bit more "the same" than it did when it came streaming out as electrons from your mic preamp. And of course, your mics and mic preamps will help too (although that is true for digital too).

Digital however, either adds evil distortion, or is crystal clear! Garbage in - Garbage out. If you can't find that right mic/preamp combination to make the guitar sit right in the mix, you will have to use those crystal clear filters to find the problem. Tweak, tweak, tweak, and finally you just slap loads of reverb on the mix to get rid of the problem. :)

That's why it was much simpler to mix my stuff when I used a 4-track casette. I pushed those measly casette tapes as hard as I could, got loads of tape compression, and the el-cheapo Boss mixer I used makes everything sound exactly the same. No swaying levels, no frequencies that stand out and just doesn't fit in the mix. You record, put everything to the right level, and the mix is done, and it sounded great! Now I have an 8-track that is much more accurate, and I sync the synthesizers so they never go to tape at all. It gets harder. :)

Analog is just easier to get to sound right!
 
I don't think analog sounds bad. I think, like you, that is creates a reproduction that is more pleasing to our distorted, not flat, human ears which also have their own eq curve that is far from flat.

Flat sucks.

The only thing I admire about digital recording is the ability to cut and paste, edit in short. I am thankful that I don't track digitally as it would be too tempting to play one riff perfectly and just repeat it, over and over through out a song to create a flawless and fake musical document.

I am glad analog keeps me honest by making it a pain to try and do stuff like that.

Cheers! :)
 
It has no technical substance and I am half kidding, but MAYBE if analog basically requires flat true monitors to mix, then perhaps the crystal clear digital reproduction simply calls for Home Fi monitors to mix with.


:)
 
BillyFurnett said:
It has no technical substance and I am half kidding, but MAYBE if analog basically requires flat true monitors to mix, then perhaps the crystal clear digital reproduction simply calls for Home Fi monitors to mix with.


:)
Click to expand...

Umm, err, no. Not really.

Speaker rules and room acoustics apply to all disciplines of recording.

But, the best advice I can give you is to pick a pair of speakers that sound great with the type of music that you normally record and devote time and effort to figuring out where in the room they sound best and dedicate a house eq to them if necessary to make them sound right with pre-recorded, well known CDs or albums that you are familiar with and similar to the types of music that you will be recording. Doing that, will help to ensure that what you are hearing in the monitors on your own stuff will be of a similar character to store bought stuff.

Cheers! :)
 
A long time ago in a bbs far away, I posted the thought that analog just sounds better to our ears because it is the way we have listened to music on tapes and records for most of our lives.
 
Derek Verner said:
A long time ago in a bbs far away, I posted the thought that analog just sounds better to our ears because it is the way we have listened to music on tapes and records for most of our lives.
Click to expand...
I think you are right to a degree in that everything we are familiar with and comfortable with is from previous experience and sociotal conditioning.

If man-kind could do no better then scratching crude shapes of game on a cave wall and we never progressed beyond that point, cave painting would be "state of the art". In analog sound recording, we were raised on the sound of what that was and grew to hold it as a pinnacle of scientific development until digital came along and challenged the established doctrine.

The only thing that keeps us "cavemen" still comfortable with our science is that digital is not yet a mature technology. They haven't ironed out all the bugs in it and until they do, we can be judgmental and skeptical about digital being the last word in sound recording.

Until digital perfection is achieved, we can still be proud of our love and use of analog gear.

For now, I will breath the smell of 456 and like it.

Cheers!:)
 
Speaking of that old BBS

Here are some thoughts on the Analog Vs. Digital subject, cut, pasted and updated.



Digital sound recording is an immature technology. I won't say inferior, but immature compared to analog tape at this point in time – absolutely. Digital is a one trick pony – zero background noise. People can’t seem to get over it. As for me, once digital technology can reproduce sound as well as it can silence I’ll consider switching.

I remember a conversation I had with a sound engineer friend around 1989 about the state of digital recording technology. It’s funny, the same problems we had with it then are the things that bother us now – inaccurate reproduction of midrange; harsh, thin and icy highs, lack of headroom, a general coldness that’s difficult to quantify, but none the less perceptible. It’s something that transcends S/N, dynamic range, freq response and other specs that were establish in the analog realm.

I even have a pet theory that the sonic nature of digital recording has a lot to do with the rise and popularity of rap/hip-hop, which is all thump. (Content wise, one can trace the foundations of rap to inner-city kids watching Sesame Street in the 70’s and early 80’s, but that’s another story).

Digital reproduces certain bass freqs quite well, but current digital technology will not deliver the sonic clarity that complex, intelligent music requires. In fact it’s very fatiguing to listen to it struggle to reproduce a broader range of the sound freq spectrum. The bass thump has evolved to dominate the mix because I believe it scratches an itch, which is really a subliminal pain that digital causes the human ear. The heavy bass is a compensation that drowns out the digital harshness of the mid and upper freqs, which brings relief.

Rock has also evolved (and in some ways become extinct) because of digital recording. Bass also dominates and modern overdrive/distortion effects give guitar a broader mushy range, rather than having its own voice in the mid range. The wide, warm, full sound that Tom Scholz produced with Boston is now called “thin” by many who have only heard it on CD.

Current Rock production techniques have also evolved symbiotically with digital technology to scratch that “itch” I mentioned above. The simplicity of the arrangements I can only compare to the Ramones' “wall of distorted mush” of the late 70’s, but with a lot whining, despair and hopelessness added for the new generation of crybabies – “Boy that kid sure is a whiner” (Sorry, you won’t get that if you haven’t seen Thumb wars)

I don't believe that analog just “sounds right” because we are used to it and that we just need time to get used to digital. There was no such issue when going from mono to stereo or AM to FM. The conversion of the listener was immediate. So why are so many of us not converting as easily to digital? Quite frankly, analog simply reproduces the full spectrum of natural sound more faithfully.

Changes in technology aren't always good. Sometimes we walk the wrong path for a while before we realize our mistake and turn around. And sometimes we deliberately take a path for its speed and convenience, not the scenery. And sometimes we switch to a new technology before it is ready. That is how I see digital right now. It may eventually be perfected, but will be a different animal than what we have now…. If the general public demands it. The reality is that audiophiles will always be a minority, so don’t hold your breath – buy analog instead, you’ll live longer.

Tim :cool:
 
Of course I was kidding about the speakers, but what I was driving at is our preception of the recorded digital material
and the way we hear it and try to shape it from the begining of laying tracks to mixing down.
Natuarally no one will use home fi speakers in that manner, but studios WILL sometimes have several sets of speakers or guys will simply run out to the car to give a mix a listen.
The preception of it ISN'T alaways true and may vary from person to person, but until digital is perfected there will continue to be plugins and other software that will attempt to alter our preception of the digital signal i.e. trying fool us into thinking we're hear the warmth and basic EQ curve of an analog recording over consumer speakers on an FM radio.
I was half kidding and half wondering if you began a session altering that harsh clarity of digital by using cheap speakers if you might end up with a mix closer to the yummy yummy analog sound.

(I realize that attempting to alter that preception at best only becomes another digital effect or an EQ preset in a drop down menu. Ain't nothing like the real thing baby...At least not yet.)

:)
 
Despite the glories, ultra-flat response & accuracy of digital,...

All I hear, on & on, is about how other devices are used, [preamps, compressors, EQ, PLUGINS], to get that "analog warmth" printed to an otherwise "sterile" digital recording.

It makes me laugh, really.

IMO, Part of what makes analog tape recording so pleasing to the ear, is that it somewhat parallels the normal range and limitations of human hearing. That, and the simple, no-nonsense operational aspect of analog recording, that's complex without being "gadgety", like digital.

As GFM said above, IMO the greatness of digital lies in it's editing. The unwanted result is that often it makes musicians & producers lazy. With cut/copy/paste capability, you may edit together a bunch of half-baked performances into one cohesive track, which no doubt is amazing, but analog tends to keep you honest in your performance and tracking.

There's still "comping" of tracks in the analog world, but it's much less of a convenient crutch or relied upon technique.

Beyond that, I agree with TBeck, and all you other guys' comments.;)
 
It's not just the EQing coloration and the compression.
It's also that digital breaks the sound down into discrete pieces.
A pretty good analogy is a digital photograph and a film (analog) photo. When you put them on the wall....the digital looks ok but when you start using a magnifying glass, you can see the pixels.
It's not as 'continuous' as the film photo. In audio, this causes truncation of small signal sounds, i.e......'cutting off' reverb tails.
This is why digital sounds fine on loud electronic music for example.....but it's deficiencies can be heard much more on delicate acoustic stuff.

There is something to all these arguments and the complete explanation is no doubt a combination of all of them.
 
hell yeah...

i noticed that my photography paralelled my recording a whole lot. i started taking pictures on a "real" (reel) ;) manual camera. i love the way that stuff looks. so smooth and rich. every time i heard someone talk about digital cameras i said "dude, digital sucks! it looks so brittle and jagged! (unless you have a very nice $$$ digital camera) then i realized i liked my music the same way. i think we like it because it puts a subtle mask over the image (or audio in tapes case) and gives it a smoother richer than real life image (or sound). unnatural, but in a softer way. digital is still unnatural ...but in a harsh way.
 
Analog has more distortion....distortion is good. Some people call it "warmth".....warmth is distortion.

Bad is sort of a silly word to describe distortion IMO.

Analog sounds...ahh, ur, sproingey.

Good points about analog mixing though Reg, I think you are on to something there.
 
Photography analogy

With a five megapixel camera the individual pixels become smaller than the grains of silver in a standard photograph. Further, they are all the same size as opposed to varying, like silver grains.

All photographs published in mass form use a screen process that consists of very tiny dots of color -- exactly what a digital photograph is made up of.

The bottom line is that with a high enough sampling rate, digital becomes closer to analog than human beings can detect.

The ability to cut and paste, change colors and, in general, easily edit digital photos is much like the ease with which digital recordings can be edited. For this reason , it will be inevitable that digital will replace analog -- except for a few old diehards like us.
 
Re: Speaking of that old BBS

Beck said:
Digital is a one trick pony – zero background noise.
Click to expand...

And here you are wrong. This is indeed the main thing with early low-budget digital stuff. The thing that impressed me when the CD's came was two, there was no clicks and pops, and there was a "brilliance" to it. That brilliance is what we today call "harshness". :)

But to say that the low noise is the only trick digital has is simply wrong. Have you ever listened to say, Sgt Pepper? That recording is not only fully analog, it's 60's analog, and I dear you to hear any noise on it.

The fact is that high end analog gear has been so noise free the last 40 years that the low noise in digital recording has largely been a non-issue.

The "one trick pony" that digital does is rather a completely different one, and here you are wrong again: Flat frequency response.

When you and your friends think that digital is crappy on midrange, then it's not because it is. It ain't crappy on midrange. It is howvere, excellent on both bass and treble, and that's where analog faulters. And THAT is probably a case of "what you are used too".

Digital has a harshness coming out of the digitalisation. This is obvious if you simple crank down the practical bitdepth to around 8 bits. You get a harsh grittiness (which can be very cool, witness the unique gritty sound of 8-bit synths such as the SIDstation). This however can be overcome with more bits and higher samplingrates. There are now equipment out there doing 32 bits and some 192kHz I think. I challenge you to find any harshness there. :) Although you will still find the midrange lacking. :)

Other examples of the same effects are found in mics and preamps. If you want an exact accurate recording, your best choice is probably some high-end Earthworks mics, and most likely their preamps too. These mics are ridicously flat, and indeed, most reviews I ahve seen of them complain that they are TOO accurate. They are clinical, and have no "soul". They just output exactly how something sounds. And that's not what people want.

And it's also obvious when you compare micpreams on vocals. Most people prefer the sound of the preamps that slope off a bit in the high-end. Obviously, we like voices to be a bit warm, and not krisp and clear.


Digitals "one-track pony" is that is sounds accurate. And that's not something we are particularily interested in. We don't want accuracy. We want it to sound *guuuuuud*.
 
Re: Re: Speaking of that old BBS

regebro said:
When you and your friends think that digital is crappy on midrange, then it's not because it is. It ain't crappy on midrange. It is howvere, excellent on both bass and treble, and that's where analog faulters. And THAT is probably a case of "what you are used too".
Click to expand...
I have to disagree, in my A/B tests the biggest difference I could hear was in the bass. You may think that the digital representation is a more accurate one but I can tell you from experience that I could never get a good rolling bass sound in digital. Even at 24/96 the bass seemed muddy and loose compared to an analog track recorded at the same time. True the digital picture may be more accurate to reproducing the voltage but both low and highs sound better in analog, which tells me tha tanalog is better at reproducing the percieved sound character. The treble is less hyped and crisp sounding in analog while remaining true to the instrument in a real world sounding way. This may be audio conditioning as mentioned earlier but I think it's more than that.

But "one trick pony"? I don't think so...more like an unlimited pony.
 
Re: Re: Re: Speaking of that old BBS

jake-owa said:
I have to disagree, in my A/B tests the biggest difference I could hear was in the bass. You may think that the digital representation is a more accurate one but I can tell you from experience that I could never get a good rolling bass sound in digital.
Click to expand...

Well, you mix good and accurate again, like it's the same thing. My whole point is that it isn't the same thing at all. :)
 
Everyone wants to break this down into one reason why the difference exists and you can't do that.....it's a combination of all the factors everyone has mentioned.
Yes....32bit/192k pretty much wipes out the difference but the CDs we listen to are 16bit/44.1k and that's where the biggest difference lies.

As for the accuracy issue........I can hear when something's accurate or not. I'm a piano tuner by trade. Have been for 27 years. My ears are well-trained. And when I burn things to CD (16bit/44.1k), I often hear a difference. If I hear a difference, then it's not totally accurate. And there are plenty of people with good ears that also hear that difference; it's well documented.
Just like analog.....there are different degrees of performance in different digital recorders.
It's not enough to simply say "Digital vs. Analog." You have to define which digital vs. which analog. A big-money Studer reel-to-reel is going to outperform a cheap 16bit/44.1k digital rig in virtually every way...especially dynamic range.
OTOH, the new 32bit/192k digital stuff is going to be better than virtually any analog rig except for the very, very best ones.

But digital puts multi-tracking into the hands of chumps like us so I'm all for it.
 
But since the final format these days, like it or not, will be CD format, that it rather a moot point. The topic here is digital vs analog RECORDING. :)

It would be interesting to know what equipment you use when you hear the difference between analog an 44/16, the AD/DA and the monitors, that it, that's the interesting part.
 
Well yes......and hopefully my posts should show that I'm aware of that. I'm not really arguing with you.......I'm just saying it's not as cut and dried as most people want to put it.

And burning a CD is digital recording you know. And for the record.......I listen to CDs on the exact same amp/speakers and so on as I do for analog.

I use standalone audio units for all my recording......no 'puters......and you're right. The A/D and D/A are a major part of the issue.......indeed, maybe the whole issue. Different converters do sound different. But they are inevitably part of the digital recording process so I don't feel you can just separate them and say that it's the converters, not the digital recording process because they are part of that process. After all.......one of the bugaboos of analog is tape hiss but you can't seperate the tape hiss issue and then say that without the tape there wouldn't be tape hiss. The tape is an inevitable part of the analog recording process.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Speaking of that old BBS

regebro said:
Well, you mix good and accurate again, like it's the same thing. My whole point is that it isn't the same thing at all. :)
Click to expand...
Not really, in this case good IS accurate. The bass sound in the room is rolling and tight as is the analog recording. The same cannot be said for it's digital counterpart which ws muddy and loose sounding.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top