Analog vs. Digital Need help....

L

LTG

New member
I'm writing a paper proving that digital audio is better then analog audio. It's a research paper
and I need "professional" opinions and quotes on the matter. If you work in the field or know a
lot about it, please post a quote here and leave your name and where you work. Thanks for the
help.
 
hi LTG....a couple of quotes for your paper....
analog is that long-time lady-friend who is both familiar and reliable, while digital is that young hottey in the dark-sunglasses standing just ahead of you at the qwickie-mart; Ms. Analog always knows her part and willingly bestowes the most beautiful harmonies, while Missy-Digital needs extra attention in order to be made to sing at all....
each of their voices can be made into blissful song with the proper approach and skillfull stroke of the hand...

james toyl, the old naval air-warfare center, indpls in.
 
but seriously....comparing the two is akin to comparing the apples that Thoreau enjoyed from the nearly-wild orchards around Walden Pond to the best hybrids you can "buy" at the grocery store today...todays apples are clearly "better" by various measures, even though Thoreau's apples would taste as sweet.
 
LTG said:
I'm writing a paper proving that digital audio is better then analog audio.
Click to expand...
You can't "prove" that digital is "better" than analog -- they are simply different, apples and oranges.... the premise of your paper therefore, is faulty!

My contact info is at my studio site...

Bruce
 
You could prove it in a lab!

You will need a highly sensitive oscilloscope and a spectrum analyzer, a chart recorder or computerized versions of the above test equipment.

You could then demonstrate that a high dollar digital system, reproduces the original signal (Sine wave, music etc.) most accurately. Analog recording introduces some harmonic distortion and overtones that while pleasing to the human ear, are not present in the original signal.

WHICH IS BEST? If you let your ears decide.... mabye Analog 2" tape saturated with a hot signal from a pre-war ribbon microphone through a vacuum tube preamp. Silky and smooth beautiful tones.... but not accurate, not pure, not sterile.

Of course now there are software simulations of analog artifacts, so a digital recording can sound just like tape! or does it?
At least now we don't have to put up with the hiss and scratches of vinyl records. (We learned to block out that sound in our minds while focusing on the music)

Sincerely;
Dom Franco
INTeL Oregon
 
The whole argument about which is better (sounds better?) is so subjective, that you have an impossible task.

Why not write a paper on Monster Cable versus zip-cord? or "Enhancing CD Performance using a Green Marker"? or better still, how about a thesis on "The Emperor's New Clothes: How Lessons Learned from the Classic Hans Christian Andersen Tale can be applied to Consumer and Audiophile Marketing in the Late 20th and Early 21st Century" - now THERE's a title for you!!!

;>

- Wil
 
As long as you have tube power conditioners you can make digital sound like anolog, Likewise if you have digital power conditioners, you can make analog sound like digital!
 
analogue v's digital

A friend of mine who was studying accounting had to right a recomendation paper to an imaginary new business.....seeing as she was a busy little thing, i offered to do it for her.....i chose to write a paper informing a would be studio owner wether to go analogue or digital...it is of course full of my own bias's but substansiated I think....
ta
Vic
CAF Studios

p.s...i have attached the (short) paper to this reply...
 

Attachments

  • avd.txt
    14.6 KB · Views: 46
still does not rectify theory

Gianthands --- Great paper (two words misspelled) over all it does'nt rectify the fact that digital is better than analogue.
But your research is very indepth, precise and very intuitive, I wish you well on your paper.

Besides, it's the engineer/producer who makes the adjustments to turn out a great sound on any digital/analog studio facility, so in a retraction, I'd say "Is it the human or is the machine" that makes the better of the music.
 
mstudio1224

mstudio1224........just to clear things up.......i, gianthands was not the original poster of this thread, i was uploading my paper to assist his....anyway....i'm glad you liked it.......my main concern is that digital recording is leading to a loss in an understanding of the very fundamental nature of sound......I know a few people, and i would call them geniuses, on their computer, in the electronic medium....but ask them to mic up a drum kit...ask them anything about mic's and they shrug dumbfoundedly, toke on their ciggarette and gulp their beer....they wanna know, but they don't.

the organic expression of music is the most important thing......
everything has it's place...and a combination of both is the ideal

with love
gianthands
 
I feel ya

I understand, I understand exactly were you are coming from.
There will always be the great ones in the analogue domain that understand the scematics of it all, and then there are the computer-tarians whom which worship non-on hand to gear association, though thoroughly carring out there mixes well.

Once again Gianthands, I feel you, Love is Love, Play on, Live Long, and from the heart lies the greatest of songs.
 
Not to rehash an old thread or anything.. :p

...but that article above takes the same approach to the analog vs digital debate that I have seen over and over. One of the main arguments was that analog tape stores a sound wave "in its natural state as a smooth curved sound wave." It goes on to say that digital recording, however, stores the wave in "blocks" and therefore only approximates the natural waveform and you lose some of the "more subtle harmonics and frequencies which give recordings their 'warmth'." The main problem I have with this comparison is that it ignores what is really going on with an analog tape and the striking similarities that really exist between the two media.

With an analog tape, you have a thin layer of metal oxide (on a plastic substrate) that is magnetized by the heads in deck. What most people don't realize, is that this method does NOT have infinite resolution. When these magnetic tapes are manufactured, you coat the plastic with a thin layer of an emulsion which contains small particles of oxide. When you record on the tape, the tape head magnetizes these particles and gives each its own magnetic field with an associated direction and magnitude, much like the "blocks" described above for digital recording. To get good resolution with analog, you use high tape speeds, wider tape and smaller particle sizes for the metal oxide. One of the reasons why tape degrades over time is that all these little particles aren't happy having magnetic fields that oppose their neighbors and would like to go back to having randomly oriented fields. Over time and with the aid of improper storage this will happen and you'll start to lose quality.

So, my point is, that both analog and digital recording approximate the waveform using blocks of information. Analog does so with somewhat randomly sized magnetic particles and digital does so with discrete bits of information (also generally stored in magnetic particles). Until recent history, digital recording was unable to duplicate the resolution of analog recordings with much success because those blocks of information were just not small enough. But now, with AD converters getting better and better and computers becoming more and more powerful, this is no longer much of an issue. It is theoretically possible to make a digital recording with such a high resolution that analog can't compete (ie, you would need particles that are too small, with tape speed and width that are impractical). But you've also got to realize that the human ear has a limit to the amount of detail it can pick up to, so at some point enough is enough.

Now, there are other subtleties associated with analog recording that has yet to be successfully duplicated in the digital medium......yet. These include things like tape saturation, etc. But pretty soon we'll be able to model that if you want, too.....

Ben:p
 
Chevys are better than Fords! Are digital pictures more accurate than conventional film? Where's that guy, Jeeves?
 
Constrained to the adjective, "better" in your premise for this paper, you'd be better off sticking to the age-old conundrum of whether the refrigerator light really goes out when you close the door. Or does your lap exist once you stand up?
 
I stuck the camcorder in our fridge to have an end to this mystery but the door switch emits some kind of high frequency that triggers the cameras stop button!
I don't care.

Stupid light.
 
Gnarly, Gnarled!

Good one!

I recently attempted to post here, saying I agree 100% with Gnarled, and believe it or not, just prior to Gnarled posting, I was thinking of composing a post, almost verbatim to what Gnarled posted.

Unfortunately, I lost that posted reply, to an "Explorer Error". I'm web-disfunctional.

So, not to try to take credit for an awesome post [gnarled], I'll say I agree with you completely, and you virtually took the words right out of my mouth! Good one, Gnarled.:)
 
Digital vs Analog

This is an interesting topic of digital vs analog. It's one that seems to be more emotionally driven, more than anything else. Since I'm in the biz of music production I'll share my area of expertise.

Honestly, there is no better format. Why? Simply put- they both have their deffiencies. One thing needs to be clarified here; there's really no such thing as "digital audio" ... Really! Why? Because if you were to hear an actual digital bit stream, you would not be hearing anthing but "noise" (if indeed you could hear RF). Don't believe it? For an example, just listen to the noise a dial-up modem makes- it's "noise". Nothing intelligable there, right? So therefore, no such thing as digital audio... not for humans anyway. ALL audio (i.e., music, voice, etc) is in fact ANALOG. That's indeed what it is... point blank. Yes, I realize that you probably already know this. But U'd be suprized at the people who don't.

Remember "Digital Ready" speakers and headphones? Hmmm...! Fact is, there is NOTHING digital about 'em! It was (and still is) a sales gimmick. Don't belive it? Then just try put'n a digital bit stream into 'em (be it AC3, Dolby, etc) and see if it'll decode it back to intelligable audio. Won't work! They're NOT digital ready.

Now- for validation sake, yes, you CAN in fact, hear audio SOURCED from a digital medium, such as a CD. Those wonderful little 1's & 0's that are of course matmatical representations of audio, ALL have to eventually go thru a little device we call a "D to A" (aka Digita to Analog) converter. So there ya have it... BACK to ANALOG! That's the way they work... Sorry digital guys, but that's life!

Now I'm not gonna get into quantum phisics, as in, talking about the tape granulation of an analog recorder somehow being like digital bits... Nope! That's just pusing it a bit too far and that therum lacks acuracy.

Ok, now to answer the issue of weather digital is better than analog. all's I can say, the digital mentality is certainly in current fashion and it certainly has big advantages that certainly make audio much more easy to manage, manipulate, edit and store. Yes, it has those wonderful advantages! I work with them all the time... AND analog too. Keep in mind, that I'm not gonna snow you. I'm in the recording/production buisness and we use it all... Really! Yes, even outboard tube equipment... and it sounds really great!

To really sum it all up, just think of the differences of digital and analog, like the difference between standard and automatic transmissions. One is obviously more easier to use, while the other is more labor intesive, but is very reliable efficient when used properly. They both work within their mean and they work well and we STILL use both.

I can honestly tell you, that if I gave you a blind side-by-side listening test of something that was originally produced in the analog and digital domain,
I dare say that you really won't be able to tell the difference. Again, the quality is in the hands of the producer and engineer.

Another point you'll find interesting, is that here in Hollywood (and elsewhere), we are now mastering to "Fat track" analog machines. These are generally half-inch or 1-inch, 2-track analog machines we're mastering to to BEFORE they go to CD. A lot of the top artists are being mastered in this fashion.

And if you talk to (or read about) recording engineers like Bruce Sweden and Al Schmidt (some of the big pros), they'll tell U that they gladly work with both formats... digital and analog... from the Sony and Mitsubishi DASH formats, all the way over to the wonderful analog Studer A827 2-inch
24-track machines.

I will not lie to you tho about analog machines. They are not ruler flat! They don't really have to be tho, as long as they come reasonably close. If you compare certain details, such as flatness across the entire audio spectrum such as THD, phase relationships, freq responces, wow 'n flutter, the digitals usually win. Altho there IS a caveat to these specs; digitals' weak points can be with the A/D and D/A coverters. Inexpensive coverters can lead to aliasing and certain noise and phasing problems. In either the case of analog or digital, good quality components and equipment, usually translate to great quality sound production.

Here's some informative sites about analog and digital:

http://www.focusedaudio.com/articles/artcF-T_9910_AnalogNotDead.html
http://www.sorcerersound.com/studer.htm
http://www.echopark.com/analog.html
http://www.timjordanrentals.com/Ultimate Analog.htm

So whether analog or digital, there's NO free lunch, folks! Hope this sheds a little light on the subject.

Bob

-----

I'm writing a paper proving that digital audio is better then analog audio. It's a research paper and I need "professional" opinions and quotes on the matter. If you work in the field or know a lot about it, please post a quote here and leave your name and where you work. Thanks for the
help.
 
LTG said:
I'm writing a paper proving that digital audio is better then analog audio. It's a research paper
and I need "professional" opinions and quotes on the matter. If you work in the field or know a
lot about it, please post a quote here and leave your name and where you work. Thanks for the
help.
Click to expand...

Good Luck You will never graduate if this is the paper you will write. None of the pros can decide which is better anymore than non-pros. There is no "better" there are omly opinions which are different with every person.


Too bad the CDs they all listen to are done in either or both. I CAN tell you that digital is here to stay and analog will be going away pretty soon. That is just reality and a paper thesis you CAN write. No opinions to be had there. It is fact. (Unless some manufacturers decide to make the analog stuff again, in which case no-one here will be able to afford it and we will be right back in 1978)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top