a digital & analog question NOT VS. DEBATE!!!

S

Schmoe

New member
I know with digital you don't ever want to go over 0 dB. If your talking +3 or +6, you are right, clip city. However, when you were recording on the analog at that level, your actually adding a little bit of distortion because the signal is so hot. It also depends on the media you are using on the analog recorder also. I would suggest laying the drums at -3 to 0 dB like you said, then add some effects to them like distortion, delays and /or attack and see if you can't get close to what you are wanting.
 
ok, with analog i like to record toms, kick, snare, and electric guitar in the red, way in the red, so when the drums are hit the meter stays in the red for a given amount of time, not peaking. this gives me a vey fat sound i believe. With digital, obviously this would cause major clipping, so i am asking how do you deal with this? will the drums sound the same if you let them peak less the 0db and above -3db as that is the optimum region for digital recording or am I wrong? im just curious. im guessing sonusman you might have a response somewhere in here. =) thanks.
 
In analog you are just saturating the tape, which produces distortion, and creates some compression. Actually, distortion acts like compression too.

In digital this is possible, but not as easily. You have to play with some tube gear, and get it set just so to emulate the experience.

There are some tricks I am working on that may offer a fully analog sound to digital. But I am not offering up untill I have it down. Just gonna have to wait.... :)

I will tell you this though, use 24 bit converters!!! 16 bit just does not cut it at all for getting things loud. Even when a 24 bit file has been dithered down to 16 it is much louder, with far more depth and accuracy then the best sounding 16 bit file. This became very appearent to me when I got my new soundcard and started mixing to my hard drive. My mixes are louder, more detailed, and have a more "translucent" sound to them.

The highest sampling rates right up until mastering is very important too. Letting software sample down for you is best in my opinion, but even a device that does it on the fly will do. Especially in the tracking phase, a higher sampling rates captures more of the sound like analog does. The higher the better for sure. It is not going to matter as much when you master because all music kind of get's sucked down to the crappy sounding 16 bit 44.1KHz sampling rate anyway, so getting everything right at 24/48, or 24/96 is where you will really hear a difference.

Go check out my re-mix of RE's song Parallel. Done through the sound card. Also, he tracked on a ADAT XT which sports 18 bit converters, even though it only save 16 bit data to the tape. But the extra headroom on the converters really give a nicer sound than a 16 bit converter will.

Oh yeah, about drums, let them damn mic pre's sing!!! Run em' hot and you won't regret the sound. As hot as possible until you actually hear distortion, then back off just a bit. With a tube mic pre, you will definately have a very in your face sound. Works okay with guitars too....

Ed
 
are you at all familiar with http://www.hdcd.com at all? i own a couple cds that were taken from their analog reel to reel to cd master encoded using hdcd and they do sound different. they boast that their chip/computer will encode 20 or 24 bits into the 16bits on a cd. and that it will sound better then regualr cds, which from my experinnce they do. also it says that you can get players that have decoders on them that make the actual 20 or 24 bit sounds come out. hmmm? im curious
 
kristian:

It's a dither hdcd is a dither algorithm... One of the popular and most used; right along the side woth Sony Bit Map and Apogee UV22.

Which sounds the best? Hell if I know! I like them all and would be satisfied with any of the three. I don't really care which of those is used for my stuff. All top pro sh*t.

ALL:
What's funny is that I've heard some things multitracked on ADAT-XTs (recorded when they first came out) where I've said "If I could get that kind of quality out of ADAT-XTs, I'd be completely satisfied". Had I not known, I'd think they were multitracked on analog and would have never bought my ADAT-XT; thinking I could never get that sound because it's analog.

And maybe the converters they used on those recordings were state of the art then, but probably nearly our standards now days; who knows?

Mainly, I think it's about doing things in the analog (microphone selection, nice "analog" sounding pres and compressors; when wanted) and acoustic (microphone placement, instruments, rooms, etc.) world before hiting digital is the best approach for digital; really for nice sound period ("analog" sounding pres and comps as important for analog than for digital).

The converter's quality are probably next. Then the A/D bit resolution. And lastly, the "on tape" bit-resolution.

All this is just my opinion; right now. Will probably change over-time; or what kind of mood I'm in, etc. Anotherwords, I change my mind the more I think about it, the more I learn, the more I experience, and the more I hear of others experiences (verbal and reproduction).
 
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