Analogue to Digital

smellyfuzz

smellyfuzz

New member
When I first came to this web-site 3 years ago, I had join with quite a few misconceptions.

Since I'm quick to judge and short tempered and my writing skills suck, I lost time and
opportunities for learning the art of recording.

Lucky for me, many members here like Blue Bear Sound, do not hold a grudge and over looked my early comments and spared time to teach me a thing or two.

Well I'm considering going digital.

That's right, a PC based Daw.

Right now I use a Hybrid, which is great but synchronizing is not perfect or I just haven't figured it out yet.

I still prefer tape but 8 tracks just is not enough to play with.

I could buy a 16 Track, which I'm still considering but the cost of repairs and maintenance on old stuff is big bucks.

There is something else that I have been considering though, I have heard that some recording studios first record on Analogue then to Digital.

I think I know why this is done but, I'm 100% sure.

Any info on this procedure would be helpful.

Thanks

All comments welcome

Sean
 
If you want to keep a analog style of working then you might want to get a 24track HDR to hook up to a mixer. The Alesis HD24 is pretty good deal.

To record analog first you just track to tape then dump it to a digital system. You either need to be able to sync the analog machine so you can dub the tracks over in multiple passes or have enough digital I/O to do it all in one pass.
 
smellyfuzz said:
There is something else that I have been considering though, I have heard that some recording studios first record on Analogue then to Digital.
Click to expand...

Some people indeed do record the first phase of a song to analogue, convert it to digital, and then add the rest.
I used to do that often as well, tracking drums and bass to tape and then importing it to a DAW.

However............ I can safely say that its becoming a thing of the past, as digital technology has moved ahead (especially the high-end stuff). Things have changed and we're now seeing a scenario where more-and-more high end studios are tracking through their analogue consoles, with the benefits of their pre-amps and processing power, and then track to DAW, like Pro Tools, giving them the benefit of virtually unlimited tracks as well as editing capabilities. Thereafter they will go through another conversion to do the final mixdown (or just the summing), through the console, thereby avoiding the summing problems associated with a DAW (to explain this briefly - DAW's attempt to bring a mix down to 2 channels through the use of one chip for summing, which is an inadequate solution which leads to a "the more channels the worse the summing" situation).

Personally, I'm no fan of the above either, as there are extra A/D and D/A conversions involved. Having been fortunate enough to work with just about every system, I have been able to compare and evaluate results of all different methods.
My conclusion is that the best results can now be achieved entirely in the digital domain. Saying that, there are multiple lousy sounding digital systems available, but if you look at a base system of Pro Tools HD or Nuendo, you'll be on the right path.
 
That's a question difficult to answer. Its easy to say "buy the best converters", but that's not realistic.

I think you ought to decide on what platform you are going to go for first, as that will form the base for your future system.
After you make that decission, it will narrow down the choice of suiteable (and cost-effective) hardware solutions.

If you would like any help with that, fine, but then we'd need to know a budget as well as your existing gear, to see how that can be integrated into a new system.
 
Radar 24 system. sounds as close to analog as digital will get.

atleast thats what all the rave is talking about.
 
toadies said:
Radar 24 system. sounds as close to analog as digital will get.

atleast thats what all the rave is talking about.
Click to expand...

Radar is ok - but restricted in the number of channels available.
As far as "as close to analogue as digital will get"........ naaaaah
Its good, but there is plenty better.
 
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