PTravel
Senior Senior Member
What do you mean defensive? Who's defensive? I'm not defensive. You're defensive!
Just kidding.
Regarding the technical issue, I learned about the dangers of rounding errors when I worked in aerospace in one of my other lifetimes. There we called them "tolerances" and getting them wrong was the difference between a rocket that flew and one that exploded. My introduction to audio recording was in the 80s and was strictly analog-based. I had (still have) a Fostex A8LR 1/4" 8-track and a Tascam MT-208 8 channel mixer. Then, my concern was mostly S/N ratio, which was a product of the "noisy-ness" of the mixer, the coercivity of the tape, the amount of magnetism of the tape heads and, of course, the narrowness of the tape tracks. I started doing digital video and learned about chroma sampling and the difference between a 4-4-4 space and a 4-2-2 one. In the digital video world, sample rate and bit depth effect, rather dramatically, video noise and digital artifacts. When I got into digital audio, I simply assumed that the same rationale applied and for the same reasons. Maybe it doesn't. I'm not an engineer and I'm certainly not a pro. However, as I said, it works for me. I have no issues to address in my recording. Though I'm sure my recordings could be improved, for me they're good enough. In fact, my biggest audio issues (aside from justifying my pricey toys to my wife) are Adobe's decision to move away from software ownership and figuring out Sibelius enough so that I can move away from Finale and use Sibelius' ReWire capability to record Sibelius scores in Sonar.
As for HR, I really like this site, which is why I've been hanging out here. I've learned a lot and, with the exception of a now-barred poster who wanted to teach the world how to do "industry recording" with $150 worth of hardware and pirated software, I like the people here -- they're smart, creative, knowledgeable and have a good sense of humor (and I like reading the News section, too). With that said, I have noticed a certain amount of "genre blindness" here -- there is an assumption that "music" means, "that which bands play in clubs and can be distributed on CDs or iTunes." Though a bias in favor of popular music is understandable, there are other genres that people write and record, and other reasons besides performing musician aspirations for writing and recording it. Here, I'll prove it:
Okay, everyone who writes and records classical music, raise your hands.
See, not only did no one raise their hand, but a bunch of people just groaned and left the room. I don't write classical, either, but I do compose, arrange and record music that is intended to be performed by "traditional" symphonic ensembles. Of course, that has nothing to do with bit depth or sample rate, but it is certainly relevant in a thread that, for example, asks, "What track do you record first?" I found it interesting how many people thought the drum track should be recorded first as that assumes that every recorded piece has a drum track.
Maybe the site needs an, "I'm not defensive" emoticon?
