Analog to Digital conversion... What is Best?

Astralography

New member
I recorded a live concert of a group on my 16 track Tascam Reel to Reel, mixed it down into an absolutely amazingly full beautiful sounding master on my half track Tascam 1/4 machine. The band came by and listened to the recording as was blown away. They all wanted a CD of it.

I ran it direct from the reel into a Firepod then through a firewire cable into my Mac computer using Cubase at 24 bit. No eq, no compression. I had to lower the input sound level on the computer so it would not distort. It transferred fine. When I played it back it lost 10 DB. If I jacked it up 10 DB in Cubase, it completely distorted. If I just raised the volume, on my board the bass was mostly gone. The digital version sounds like garbage compared to the analog master.

Now if I started adding low end eq, I could get the bass back, but I would then start to lose other things like some of the keyboard clarity. It becomes the cat and mouse game. I feel like I need to add compression, then expand the file in gain.. do some eq stuff etc. All this processing to try and get it to sound like it was before I transferred it.

Can I say I hate digital recording?

I'm pretty shocked at how poorly digital music transfers from the analog world.

Are there any tricks or shortcuts on getting things to sound good when transferring?
Anyone else have similar frustrations?
 
Hi,
You absolutely shouldn't be able to tell the difference between listening to your 1/4 machine and listening to a digital record made from that same machine.

Is there any chance you ran the 1/4" into inputs 1+2 on the firepod? Those are instrument/mic inputs so your line level outs would be going into instrument level inputs. I guess that could cause the problems you're describing.

If not, I'm not really sure what's gone wrong, but you definitely shouldn't need to be using eqs to fix anything.

I had to lower the input sound level on the computer so it would not distort.
What do you mean exactly? Input levels should be controlled on the front of the interface.
Any adjustments in the computer would be after conversion...just like turning the speaker level up or down.

It transferred fine. When I played it back it lost 10 DB.
With reference to what? The levels you see in your DAW whilst recording shouldn't change upon playback.
If they do there's something dodgy going on.
 
...You absolutely shouldn't be able to tell the difference between listening to your 1/4 machine and listening to a digital record made from that same machine.
Subscribing to see were this leads. Pretty much the gist of it. Something is out-o whack.
 
Not that it should make any difference but there was no point in recording the audio at 24bits if the target word length is going to be 16 bit CD.

Re levels, I don't think Cubase gives you a decent, dB calibrated input meter? The meters in Audacity are fair to middling (I use either Samplitude or Adobe Audition and their meters are brilliant!) since this is a tape source you can determine the peak level and adjust accordingly. I am sure better men than I here will have an opinion where to hit just under 0dBFS!

I have copied well over a hundred hours of vinyl to computer then CD, essentially the same process, and the results are fine.

Dave.
 
I ran it direct from the reel into a Firepod then through a firewire cable into my Mac computer using Cubase at 24 bit.

Can I say I hate digital recording?

I'm pretty shocked at how poorly digital music transfers from the analog world.

Are there any tricks or shortcuts on getting things to sound good when transferring?
Anyone else have similar frustrations?

Mmmmmmm....I pretty much work like that all the time. I track to tape and dump to DAW.
Sounds perfectly fine, and everything that I had on tape transfers to the computer 1:1....without any frustrations.


Your doing something wrong....your gain staging may be wrong...your level matching may be wrong...or the card may be having issues.....???

Also...once you have the audio in the computer....just raise the level of the audio in the computer.
 
Somewhere the gain staging got messed up. All of the gain staging needs to be done at the interface. You should not have to touch anything in cubase. If you have test tones at 0VU, you should set the interface so they read around -15dbfs or so in cubase. If you have the le version of cubase, it might not have a scale on the input meter. If that's the case, aim for about half way up the meter with the test tones.

Once you have the interface calibrated, you shouldn't have to do anything else but hit record.

If you are using line inputs on the interface that have no gain control, make sure they are set to the same line level as the tape deck. Running +4 line level into -10 inputs will give you about 11db too much level. Running -10 line level into inputs expecting a +4 signal will be 11db quiet.
 
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