Why analogue and not digital?

[cjacek]

But it could be a bad idea to use 192kHz. Remember the price range. 192kHz could actually sound measurably worse than 96kHz. It would depend on the box itself, but the theory is there.

Are you perhaps referring to the increase in errors when the sampling goes measurably higher, thus affecting the end product, in a negative way? Is this the reason why you say it's a bad idea? [Missed your earlier post, sorry].

If you're going to go with Soundblaster-quality conversion, why bother with the interim tape step? You'd have warm-sounding violin covered with digital ass.

The are a few reasons for the interim tape step, one of them being the ability to have an archived high resolution master, ready for the next advance in consumer audio media. Another one [which is admittedly subjective], is that tape may impart interesting and flattering characteristics to the violin.

-----

 

[Tim Gillett]

Tim, I appreciate you taking the time and I do understand what you're saying and while you did explain, in the context of the above, mine is of a different argument.

I do not believe that digital sampling is directly related to the physical properties of the original sound, as much as that of analog. It can't be because when you 'sample', you effectively throw away information, wherever it is contained. Is this in dispute?

ausrock pointed out earlier that digital "omits" rather than "misses". I'm not sure if it omits or misses but it's one or the other or both. In whichever case, digital is not 'analogous' [pardon the pun] to the original source or waveform. It can't be because 'sampling' effectively makes this impossible.

Natural life, on this earth, processes in analogue, tape machines record and playback analogue. We're creatures, which process in pure analogue and not ones which deal well with A/D D/A conversion. I can hear it and I can feel it. Am I missing something? Science aside, isn't this just common sense?

A question thus begs to be asked: Why do many people accept the sound of digital or is 'accept' not the right term?

-------

Your last question is a very good one, and one I expect might continue for you.

The same for the other question you raised which is why the vast majority of people are happy with CD quality even though the format was introduced in the early 80's, and since then the same people who invented it, Sony /Phillips also developed the SACD, but SACD has had incredibly small market penetration, even tho' I believe it is backwards compatible.
In effect the SACD is competing with its older relative the CD and losing out badly. If newer is said to be always better, the old CD is proof that's not always so. The reason?
I suspect that unless human hearing evolves to a higher standard (and evolves VERY quickly) the CD will continue to be a pretty good playback standard. The actual disc technology may change but 44.1/16 PCM is pretty solid for releasing of music, whatever the carrier.

Daniel I really encourage you to do that little listening test with 44.1, 22 and 11 sample rates. If you dont have the gear, have a friend do it with you. That's the listening part.

To the sampling part, which is more theoretical, see if you can get a friend to set up a CRO (oscilloscope) and a signal generator (all analog gear) and get him to feed in say a 100hz sine wave, but with the CRO timebase set to very fast (equivalent to very fast sampling)
What will you see? Not a sine wave but a straight horizontal line. Why is it straight and unchanging? Because the CRO is sampling it so fast and magnifying one small slice of the wave in time that there is effectively no change in the wave. It looks like nothing is happening.
That is what happens with fast sampling. Sample a 100hz wave at 44.1khz and the vast majority of the 44,100 samples per second look exactly the same. From sample to sample, nothing is changing, or seems not to be. (actually that's not quite true. It is changing but so infinitesimally slightly that we with our ears are unable to detect it) So from a strict scientific measurement point of view, yes, information is being lost, but from a human hearing point of view, we cant detect such tiny changes) Above a certain sample rate, you gain nothing extra.

Our ears are limited in what they can pick out. Perfect accuracy in audio sampling is therefore both unattainable (whether with analog or digital) and gains no advantage in what we as humans can hear.

1.No it's not perfect,
2.that's impossible anyway, and
3.thankfully it doesnt need to be.

We live in a world of limitations, and actually that has some advantages. That's why all sorts of things are possible.

Anyway, must away. Off to a Karaoke night.

Cheers Tim

 

[mshilarious]

Are you perhaps referring to the increase in errors when the sampling goes measurably higher, thus affecting the end product, in a negative way? Is this the reason why you say it's a bad idea? [Missed your earlier post, sorry].

Yes. You can even sometimes see that in specs; dynamic range may decrease as sample rate increases. I believe this is due to a change in how the noise shaping is done with a higher sample rate, but you'd have to check me on that. But since we are always dealing with a single true sample rate (often about 3mHz), of one or a few bits, our accuracy in constructing a data rate at a given bit depth must decrease as that data rate increases.

The are a few reasons for the interim tape step, one of them being the ability to have an archived high resolution master, ready for the next advance in consumer audio media. Another one [which is admittedly subjective], is that tape may impart interesting and flattering characteristics to the violin.

-----

Sure, so long as the budgetary concerns are addressed.

 

[_brian_]

ms hilarious, why can't you state your opinion and let it be? You are fighting against everyone else's comments and not letting anyone else convey what they think or feel about this particular topic. Generally you find that people with a shaky argument will constantly aggressively push their point until they actually start believing that all of their nonsense is water tight and everyone else is wrong because they must have a hidden agenda. I don't understand half of what you've posted and have been working with a daw for most of my recording life, I reciently moved to analogue, I enjoy recording more now for whatever reason - isn't that a good thing? To actually be annoyed at having to eat or sleep because you want to get into the studio and get more ideas down? I've never had that with DAW even when I recieved new digital gadgets I didn't have that kind of motivation to record. I love the sound, I love the interface, I love the simplicity, I love the fact that I hardly watch any meters and don't watch my audio images taking shape on a screen. Perhaps a little romantic, but hey it's what I think. I have no facts or figures to back up my ideas, but don't you not think that it's a little arrogant to dismiss thoughts and ideas for the very reason that they cannot be reduced to a mathematical language that humans can understand and interpret? And also reduce the relevence of those thoughts and ideas of analogue when compared to digital that can be more easily mathematically proved?

That's just what I think, I wont continually bang on about it because I respect that most people on this forum are pretty clued up about things and don't warrant being attacked for what they believe to be true even if it differs from my thoughts.

 

[mshilarious]

ms hilarious, why can't you state your opinion and let it be? You are fighting against everyone else's comments and not letting anyone else convey what they think or feel about this particular topic.

So if someone asks me a direct question, I shouldn't respond to it? Like you just did?

I am not particularly interested in opinions with respect to this thread. I am only interested in objective data. If someone claims digital audio has measurable distortions in the audible spectrum, I am interested in evaluating those claims, and I will evaluate every such claim. Some of them are even true! But those are well understood and I have tried to describe them.

Also, I just counted, on this page there are 25 posts and 5 are mine. But two of those were responding to the same post by Ethan. I should have edited rather than added another post, sorry.

Generally you find that people with a shaky argument will constantly aggressively push their point until they actually start believing that all of their nonsense is water tight and everyone else is wrong because they must have a hidden agenda.

That's a nice fallacy.

I try my best to explain the concepts of digital audio as they are raised. OP brings up the visual appearance of a 10kHz wave, I respond to that explaining that the apparent squarishness of the wave is caused by ultrasonic frequencies that are removed in D/A.

Someone else mentions the existence of quantization distortion on a test signal that is effectively low bitrate; I respond explaining that dither, whether added or simply a function of analog noise, will prevent that QD from ever occurring.

Someone brings up a NASA paper about the measurement of peak modulation, I respond with an experiment that indicates, again, that it is only a visual and not audible phenomenon.

In every case, I take out my converters and DAW and do an actual experiment and post my results to demonstrate what I am saying is true. And my results should be repeatable by anyone else with a DAW and a converter.

What else would you like me to do? I can only explain things as well as I am able. I can't help that these are very technical discussions. But I am not the one raising these supposed issues.

I reciently moved to analogue, I enjoy recording more now for whatever reason - isn't that a good thing?

Sure. Have you not read the nearly 100 times I have posted that I don't mind if people use tape? You can be assured I am sincere.

 

[apl]

I am not particularly interested in opinions with respect to this thread. I am only interested in objective data. If someone claims digital audio has measurable distortions in the audible spectrum, I am interested in evaluating those claims, and I will evaluate every such claim. Some of them are even true! But those are well understood and I have tried to describe them.

What he said.

Thanks for taking the time to do the experiments.

Your handful of posts in here would make a solid basis for a great Tape-Op article.

 

[pianodano]

On and on it goes

Just like every other aspect of digital.

I fondly remember the day my Tascam 8 track recorder, dbx units, m-308 console, necessary cables and a pair of Fostex RM780's studio monitors, a Fostex A2 2 track and couple of effects arrived. It was 1985. I borrowed the money from my bank to pay for it all. Everything was less than $5000.00.

Within 2 days I had it all together and was recording. Yeah man. Making music. There was not much to figure out nor even think about. It just WORKED. Flawlessly. And it continued to work. In 1986 Roland released the MC500 hardware sequencer which I also bought and it worked. Never once crashed. Used it for recording, used it live for many years. That cost around $1700.00 Absolutely all of the above setup worked without issues for 15 years. 20 to 30 hours a week of recording with maybe 30 min per week maintenence. Reel after reel after reel. I still have all of it and can use it still, anytime I please.

Around 2001, a good friend of mine told me I really needed to get with the program and get into digital. Well, even though I had always wanted to move up to a Tascam MS-16, I allowed myself the opportunity to check out the latest offerings from Tascam because at the time, I trusted them to STILL build products that worked and lasted. And I sure as heck didn't trust a PC.

So, I bought a brand new DM24, meterbridge, every expansion card available for the mixer and all the bells and whistles. I also bought 2 DA-78's as a start.

Needless to say, it took some time (as in many months) to figure out all the intricacies of the digital DM24 and those digital DA-78's. Or as one engineer friend said, he was pretty sure they were designed by satan himself. And just about the time the warranty expired, the whole kitten kaboodle stared falling apart. Bad caps, LCD screen failure, powersupply burnout, backup batteries shorting out and the cheapest biggest piece of $%# transport system ever designed in the DA-78's. Basically 2 songs cost $10K to do on that setup. Damn.

So around 2003, my previously mentioned "good" old friend ( who just happens to be a computer guru for a large newspaper) suggested that I really needed to forget all that stuff once and for all and really get into digital. I listened. Damn.

I started out on the at the time, brand new PC that I am typing this on. A AMD which when fully maxed out it could run 6 tracks of Sonar 3 without dropouts. Damn. Must need bigger.

So, I ran down and bought another bigger, better and latest, greatest at the time AMD 64. A dedicated daw, fully maxed out and tweaked for days. And I tried for 29 days to get it to run more than 6 tracks. It couldn't. Damn.

So . . . after countless hours of research, I took the piece of %$%#^ back and bought a P4 3gz. Cakewalk all the while was talking how much better that their new version 4 of Sonar was. Then 5. Then 6. Upgraded each time. Got lotsa tracks running, sometimes, when it wasn't crashing. Dealt with latency, midi jitter, the list is endless. I was able to record a couple of tunes. But I couldn't finish them because Sonar corrupted the files. Damn.

So, me being a boundless optimist, decided I could see some potential there and maybe I just needed to spend more money. A lot of it. Yessiree. Digital it was gonna be. It wasn't going to let it whip me.

I read untold numbers of digital is perfect diatribes such as is being espoused in this thread by software engineers, pluggin developers, mathemeticians, nasa scientists and computer engineers. Damn.

What a waste. I am just a musican/songwriter who happens to have been recording, very productively prior to my leap of faith into digital, since 1980 and I wasn't getting any songs done anymore. Not exactly computer illiterate either since I did work on them while in the Air force in the early 70's.

The end result of my experience with digital:

Still got it all BUT after endless upgrades to keep up with some other upgrade, new versions, driver failures, corrputed files, support phone calls, bugs, more machines to run libraries on and on and on, I'm over digital. Damn. What a bunch of junk. I repeat. What a bunch of junk, hooey and hype. Note: I will be pleased to provide the same inventory/cost list that I provide my accountant. Or you can trust me when I say I spent serious money. Kids are grown and I don't have much to else to worry about. But damn.

By 2006, I had completed a grand total of zero songs on my DAW. It slowly dawned on me that perhaps I had bought into something that was maybe a farce and that maybe, just maybe I was being played for a fool. I also felt like half country was in my pocket, money wise. No matter what went wrong, it was somone else that created the problem with their product and it couldn't be absolutely, positively determined exactly who caused it or even what the problem often was. And regardless of what failed, in the end, I must have been the one that had done somthing wrong by buying the wrong thing to go with some other thing. Damn.

Well, by mid 2006 I started searching for that good ole MS-16 that I mentioned I had originally wanted. Found a good candidate, bought it and rebuilt it for a heck of a lot less than the 13 to 15 grand that it cost new too. And guess what? It works everytime. Without fail. No latency. Sounds great. And whatever goes on tape sounds better coming off. I guarantee it.

So as for the digit heads, you can keep your numbers. As for me, magnetism is everywhere. It's organic. Even keeps the universe glued together and our feet firmly stuck on the earth. God must love it. That's good enough for me.

 

[apl]

So what are you saying? Digital recording is too technically challenging for you?

 

[pianodano]

Nope. I'm saying it costs too much . . . . as in to little return on investment.

 

[poopchute]

pianodad...
Very good post. That really sounds like my own experiences. Just not quite as much money.

 

[Dr ZEE]

I am not particularly interested in opinions with respect to this thread. I am only interested in objective data.

Granting "objective" data the status of "the only thing that matters" with respect to this thread is the action that is based on an opinion.
And, thus, quote above IS the presentation of that opinion.
The author presents his opinion to the thread, with respect to which, he has no interest in any opinions.

/later

 

[mshilarious]

So what are you saying? Digital recording is too technically challenging for you?

It's too challenging for me OK, truth is I have almost no time to record. Oh, I have time to screw around on the boards, that's when kids are up and it's waaaay too noisy to record, or I have to mind them or something. #3 is practicing violin at the moment.

Once they are all in bed, usually I'm too tired. I'm old

There are lots of ways to make digital difficult, and sadly PC is often one of the most difficult. But it's so powerful, therein lies the temptation. All my gear is fairly old stuff now, but it all works and always has. Still, there's stuff like SIABs or the HD24 if you want to avoid PCs, which isn't a horrible idea.

I don't think most people who choose digital do so because of sound, they do it because they want 67 tracks with massive amount of edits, and all with 137 plugs each. Is that a good idea? No, not particularly. But that's not Mr. Nyquist's fault.

apl, you'll have to write the mag article. I don't think I've ever read an audio magazine. When I feel like writing, I just publish it on my website, that's about what it's worth.

 

[apl]

Nope. I'm saying it costs too much . . . . as in to little return on investment.

You're silly. You can make a digital recording using a built in soundcard and freeware and it'll be good enough to impress your friends.

 

[apl]

Granting "objective" data the status of "the only thing that matters" with respect to this thread is the action that is based on an opinion.

Remind to never, ever, rely on you on for any technical advice.

Objective data is truth. Validity of opinion is indeterminate.

 

[apl]

I don't think most people who choose digital do so because of sound, they do it because...

It's cheap and it's easy. If I need thirty takes to get that riff right, I'll use thirty takes then cut and paste. If someone in Spain wants to do a drum track and ez_ wants to cut the bass track in sunny southern California, we can do that. Digital is way flexible in ways that analogue will never be.

Analog is good; digital is good, but for very different reasons.

 

[pianodano]

You're silly. You can make a digital recording using a built in soundcard and freeware and it'll be good enough to impress your friends.

LOL. Right. Are you implying that in your world time is not money? All that time wasted trying to keep a bunch of junk cobbled together and working ? Wow. It is in mine. I don't give a hoot what friends think anyhow. Futhermore, I was trying to be especially gentle and nice in my post above when I did not conclude with: To pull it off on tape . . . you have to be able to play. But in your last post, you had a different way of saying it.

 

[Beck]

I don't think most people who choose digital do so because of sound, they do it because they want 67 tracks with massive amount of edits, and all with 137 plugs each.

I'll go along with that, but the word "choose" might be giving people too much credit. The average Joe using digital today has never made a choice... it's the only thing he knows.

In contrast, analog proponents are more likely to have actually made a choice... they use analog, not because they are stuck in the past, but because their experience with the technologies has allowed them to weigh the pros and cons of each.

At least that's how it is my case and many other analog enthusiasts I know. And I continue to evaluate new advancements in recording technology just as I’ve been doing for almost 30 years. So I continue to have real options and make real choices.

It's a blast... I have a good time.

 

[mshilarious]

It's a blast... I have a good time.

Good post.

In that sense, digital has been a boon to analog too, since it's made all that gear affordable. When I wanted to start out (1990 or so), I couldn't afford anything. Even the really bad 4 tracks, they were pricey for a college student. In 1997 I bought the 424mkII, that was what, $500? I knew one guy with an ADAT, nobody cared too much about digital and analog, but he had 8 tracks. That was over $1K, if memory serves. I don't think I'd pay $10 to pee on an ADAT today

Now I could buy just about anything, although the large-format console is still a bit beyond my reach.

 

[Beck]

I don't think I'd pay $10 to pee on an ADAT today

They'd have to pay me... I won't pee on just anything.

 

[Dr ZEE]

Remind to never, ever, rely on you on for any technical advice.

Confuse to somehow, anyhow, rely on my myself on for any attempt to figure out the meaning or logic behind the above quoted statement.

BTW, I don't offer "technical advice".
So?
-
*********

Objective data is truth.

Incorrect.
Objective data is nothing more than a collection of information or values which by consensus is validated as factual.
Consensus requires an opinion or two, btw
*********

Validity of opinion is indeterminate.

Yes. That is Opinion's destiny.

/later