Analog Tape specs
- Thread starter bozmillar
- Start date
jjones1700
Learning, always learning
Oh sure, leave to the gear slut to give the down and dirty answers......
A Reel Person
It's Too Funky in Here!!!
A Reel Person
It's Too Funky in Here!!!
evm1024
New member
Here we go again.....
With all due respect.....
Specs? You want specs? How narrow of a view point. WE cannot measure the differences that make digital and analog sound different in its fullest. Heck, we don't even know what to measure. It's called psycoacoustics and I left my design manual for human audio perception at work.
Sure sure sure we can measure the typical THD, IM, S/N etc but these are gross measurements that are averages of a very complex and not well understood interaction.
If we could define and measure what was going on we would have plug-ins that really did sound like tape. But, we don't do we.
It seams to me that if you want to learn the differences you should drop the restrictions on what you want to hear and spend some time trying to understand what they mean. It comes across to me as an attitude problem. But then again that is just my impression and not the fact.
Here is a question for you - What is the reason for understanding the what makes tape sound like tape?
Regards, Ethan
With all due respect.....
Specs? You want specs? How narrow of a view point. WE cannot measure the differences that make digital and analog sound different in its fullest. Heck, we don't even know what to measure. It's called psycoacoustics and I left my design manual for human audio perception at work.
Sure sure sure we can measure the typical THD, IM, S/N etc but these are gross measurements that are averages of a very complex and not well understood interaction.
If we could define and measure what was going on we would have plug-ins that really did sound like tape. But, we don't do we.
It seams to me that if you want to learn the differences you should drop the restrictions on what you want to hear and spend some time trying to understand what they mean. It comes across to me as an attitude problem. But then again that is just my impression and not the fact.
Here is a question for you - What is the reason for understanding the what makes tape sound like tape?
Regards, Ethan
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
Hear, Hear Ethan.
The OP poster wants, what amounts to nothing more than paper specs, which do absolutely nothing to differentiate the real world sonic differences between analogue and digital. There is not a clear measurement or mathematical explanation which shows why analogue sounds the way it does. For digital it does but not for analogue.
Here we go again, indeed...
---
The OP poster wants, what amounts to nothing more than paper specs, which do absolutely nothing to differentiate the real world sonic differences between analogue and digital. There is not a clear measurement or mathematical explanation which shows why analogue sounds the way it does. For digital it does but not for analogue.
Here we go again, indeed...
---
famous beagle
Well-known member
It's not only one reason, as I've said. It's about half sound and half the process of working with tape.
I guess I don't understand why you don't think the continuous vs. non-continuous contributes much?
When digital came out, obviously it was much inferior to the digital of today. But back then, everyone hopped on board right away because it sounded so different. It sounded so clear and clean. The hiss was gone! But many people came back to analog in part or in full (Peter Gabriel comes to mind) because they realized that, even though it sounded clearer, it was missing something else that is there with analog.
Maybe this was just sampling vs. continuous. Maybe it's the lack of tape saturation/compression. Maybe it's purely in our head. I don't know.
Here's the thing, in general, I prefer the sound of albums that were made in the time period between the mid-to-late 60s through to about the early 80s. I'm just talking about the sound---not necessarily the music.
When I find a recent album nowadays that I do like the sound of, more often than not, it turns out that they prefer to record on analog. Wilco comes to mind, as does Kelley Stoltz (he actually uses a Tascam 388!) and many others.
Now, I'm sure there may be many metal bands that record to analog, but I generally cannot stand that music. I have no idea if Tool records on analog or digital, but their music sounds cold and soulless to me. If I had to guess, I would say they record digitally, but I'm sure if they recorded with analog, it wouldn't make much difference to me; I probably still wouldn't like it.
I guess what I'm saying with all this rambling is that there are way too many factors that go along with why we like analog or digital. Specs are only a tiny bit of the picture.
And I know it may seem as though you're asking a simple question, but I think it's a loaded question.
ethyrvalve
Norman Nanoweber
You're begging the question. That statement seems to make the rather lofty assumption that not only does modern science have the ear-brain combo completely figured out, but sound reproduction is a simple enough concept that we can judge 'good sound' by the set of easily measured specs that come with most audio equipment.
My m-audio delta 44 sound card is definitely more linear than my Otari MX5050 BII 2 track when it comes to signal-to-noise ratio and frequency response curves. But if I A/B'd the two to anyone and they preferred the m-audio...i'd personally think they were a tin-eared philistine (or worse).
just sayin'..
bozmillar
New member
Looks like people are getting defensive. Please don't talk about digital audio. That's not what I'm asking about, and it's something that you obviously know nothing about, cjacek, based on your continous/non-continuous statement.
I know there are some smart people out there, and some have posted here. Please if you don't have anything useful to say, don't post. Specs can go far beyond SNR and frequency response. thanks Reel Person for putting those specs up there so that I can at least have an idea of those specs. I know that's not the whole picture, and I never said that it was.
However, continuing my first question. Magnetic tape is not magic. There's nothing magic about it. If you believe that, then I have no use talking to you. Magnetic tape does something to the signal, apparently something more than just frequency response and SNR. Does anybody know what this is?
I know there are some smart people out there, and some have posted here. Please if you don't have anything useful to say, don't post. Specs can go far beyond SNR and frequency response. thanks Reel Person for putting those specs up there so that I can at least have an idea of those specs. I know that's not the whole picture, and I never said that it was.
However, continuing my first question. Magnetic tape is not magic. There's nothing magic about it. If you believe that, then I have no use talking to you. Magnetic tape does something to the signal, apparently something more than just frequency response and SNR. Does anybody know what this is?
johnbilben
New member
I think that tape has feelings. and digital doesn't
I also think that nobody in this peaceful analog only forum likes you bozmillar.
I also think that nobody in this peaceful analog only forum likes you bozmillar.
evm1024
New member
Those specs that were listed are widely available on the net. You could look them up. cjacek does know something about digital as do most here. I don't think that you need to be insulting anyone.
If you do not know the difference between a continuous and non-continuous function then I think you should read up on things a little before you offer an assumption of knowledge.
As far as useful goes, what use is your question to the analog only community? Are you planning on joining this community or are you just driving through?
I do hope that you will take the time to answer my question from a post or 2 back as well as this one.
Regards, Ethan
Me too. Men and machines, we're a natural match. Some guys love cars, I'm into tape machines.
Have you ever noticed, browsing these forums, that the analog only section is so much more supporting and polite than the other sections? I think it's because we really love this stuff, and sharing experiences and information with others is never a hassle, there is no elitism.
Anyways, I don't think any technical specification is going to lead you to the reasons why human beings prefer the sound of magnetic tape to digital audio. The answer lies in the theory and mechanics behind the two mediums.
Nature is never finite. It doesn't matter how strong a microscope you use, you will never find the tiniest particle such that nothing smaller than it can exist. You cannot define a specific point in time to perfect accuracy, because there will always be a smaller measurement. In this case, humans are naturally accustomed to natural sensations. After all, we are products of nature. Magnetic tape recordings, like nature, are infinite in the sense that you cannot define a resolution. The sound is naturally continuous. Digital audio is extremely well developed and does a great job of reproducing sound, but it can never be truly natural sound. This, in my completely non-expert opinion, is why we prefer the sound of analog tape and vinyl records.
leddy
Well-known member
For one, it adds harmonic distortion, and it does so in a non-linear way. The harder you hit the tape, the more you get. I've run tests where I play a 1kHz tone into my 1/4" 2-track at different levels, record it into my PC then look at the results on a frequency analyzer. It can get pretty extreme at higher levels.
So you are adding content that is not there originally. There's also an element of "compression" with tape, which I'm not sure I understand well enough to explain, but suffice it to say it is also very non-linear. So far, no one seems to have duplcated either effect with a plug in, at least in a way that makes tape guys go digital.
I've always contended that digital does not take anything away from the signal or damage it, it just fails to add something that tape does.
leddy
Well-known member
I just had thought -
As tape begins to saturate, it begins limiting the signal (at different frequencies - again, non-linear). Right?
Assuming I explained that correctly, then consider that when the tape saturates it also adds harmonic distortion that falls on the more pleasing side (at least until it gets too saturated).
In effect, where compression is applied, it is fattened up in a harmonically pleasing way - offsetting the usual displeasure we might sense when hearing compression (or worse in digital distortion or clipping).
I may or may not have explained this well - I'm open to having my arse handed to me if I'm wrong.
As tape begins to saturate, it begins limiting the signal (at different frequencies - again, non-linear). Right?
Assuming I explained that correctly, then consider that when the tape saturates it also adds harmonic distortion that falls on the more pleasing side (at least until it gets too saturated).
In effect, where compression is applied, it is fattened up in a harmonically pleasing way - offsetting the usual displeasure we might sense when hearing compression (or worse in digital distortion or clipping).
I may or may not have explained this well - I'm open to having my arse handed to me if I'm wrong.
bozmillar
New member
This is off topic from what I wanted this thread to be, but I will answer your questions.
Digital audio is very much continuous. It is represented as a series of values at a high sample rate. This we all know. If we left them as a series of delta functions, then indeed we would have what you call, rightly so, a non continuous signal. This signal contains the original audio, plus all sorts of garbage outside the intended frequency band. This junk is not harmonically related and sounds bad. To get rid of it, we pass it through an anti-aliasing filter on the DAC output, which is just a low pass filter. This is where upsampling comes into play, because we can digitally filter out some of that junk to give the analog filter an easier time. It then passes through an analog filter LPF, hopefully cutting out all the out of band garbage and passing through the exact same signal that was recorded. This is the same continuous signal that was played into the ADC.
If more details are needed, I can give them. I'm not trying to prove that digital is perfect, but that the continuous/natural argument is not true.
I'm sorry. My comment on cjacek was a bit out of line. I have seen other comments he has made on other threads about digital vs analog that were 100% ridiculous, and I got the impression that he doesn't understand digital audio.
My question is not to prove anything to the analog community. I am trying to get a clear understanding for myself of what the benefits of analog are, and why they are. Like I said before, if you really want to use something to its potential, you should know how it works so that you know the strengths and weaknesses of what you are using.
Again, specs go beyond SNR and frequency response. I never said that digital sounds better than analog. This argument was brought up by people who took defense to a simple question (not with a simple answer).
And actually, we can measure quite well these differences. The audio band is extremely low fidelity compared to other signals that we have to deal with.
Just because we can measure it doesn't mean that it's easy to recreate.
If I want to learn the differences, I'm not going to throw my hands up and say "hey, works for me!" I'm going to try to figure out why tape sounds the way it does. That is all. I'm not asking why tape sounds better or worse, but why it sounds the way it does.
bozmillar
New member
I just had thought -
As tape begins to saturate, it begins limiting the signal (at different frequencies - again, non-linear). Right?
Assuming I explained that correctly, then consider that when the tape saturates it also adds harmonic distortion that falls on the more pleasing side (at least until it gets too saturated).
In effect, where compression is applied, it is fattened up in a harmonically pleasing way - offsetting the usual displeasure we might sense when hearing compression (or worse in digital distortion or clipping).
I may or may not have explained this well - I'm open to having my arse handed to me if I'm wrong.
Leddy. Thank you for posting useful information. I am under the impression that tape saturation and compression is not just a simple non linear input/output ratio, but different for different frequencies and levels, like you said. this might be what makes it hard to recreate digitally. But then again, I'm just guessing.
bozmillar
New member
Ok, reading through this thread from the beginning, I noticed where it went wrong. I tried not start any arguments, but it looked like I couldn't help myself. I'm pretty convinced that I'm not going to get any more information than I have, so I guess this thread has served it's purpose.
Thanks to the following people who left useful information for me:
jpmorris
famous beagle
jjones1700
A Reel Person
leddy
Thanks to the following people who left useful information for me:
jpmorris
famous beagle
jjones1700
A Reel Person
leddy
evm1024
New member
Sadly you assume
Sadly you assume that digital is a faithful representation of the original source to an accuracy greater than human perception. You assume that the colorations of digital are not significant. You assume that the colorations of analog recording are what makes it sound different than a digital recording.
Significant information in the audio stream is lost in digital conversion. This is mostly high frequency spatial information. This information is primarily comb filtering of reflections from the room. It tells us where we are in the room.
Lets talk sample rate for a second. In the modeling that we do we like to have a sample rate 10 times higher than what we are digitizing. This is a rule of thumb to be sure that the digital conversion artifacts do not interact with what we are looking at. I know of no digital recording system that samples at 440 kHz.
Of course you will say over kill but then again I am a research systems engineer and I like my data to be accurate.
Oh but I forgot that we were not going to talk about digital.... Let me change my tempo and go off at in a new tangent.
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So you want to know what makes tape work. What makes is sound the way it does. The way you went about it is somewhat stupid. Notice that I did not call you stupid. I just think that the way you are going about gathering information is stupid.
From my view what you have done is gone over to your local martial arts dojo and told the master that what you want to learn and how you want him to teach it. You told him that he need not talk to you about the "zen" of the way or for the way for that mater. Just the facts.
Now if you were to actually do this you might find yourself on the street. And if you were to find a master who would teach you I think that we would find that you had become proficient but not inspired.
I would hope that you really think about this. Why would you tell the master how to teach? Why would you limit your learning?
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Actually, the more I think about it the more I think that I have no time for you. Your efforts are not of an interest to me. I would suggest to others that we are wasting our time in this thread and suggest that we just move on.
Sadly you assume that digital is a faithful representation of the original source to an accuracy greater than human perception. You assume that the colorations of digital are not significant. You assume that the colorations of analog recording are what makes it sound different than a digital recording.
Significant information in the audio stream is lost in digital conversion. This is mostly high frequency spatial information. This information is primarily comb filtering of reflections from the room. It tells us where we are in the room.
Lets talk sample rate for a second. In the modeling that we do we like to have a sample rate 10 times higher than what we are digitizing. This is a rule of thumb to be sure that the digital conversion artifacts do not interact with what we are looking at. I know of no digital recording system that samples at 440 kHz.
Of course you will say over kill but then again I am a research systems engineer and I like my data to be accurate.
Oh but I forgot that we were not going to talk about digital.... Let me change my tempo and go off at in a new tangent.
-------------------
So you want to know what makes tape work. What makes is sound the way it does. The way you went about it is somewhat stupid. Notice that I did not call you stupid. I just think that the way you are going about gathering information is stupid.
From my view what you have done is gone over to your local martial arts dojo and told the master that what you want to learn and how you want him to teach it. You told him that he need not talk to you about the "zen" of the way or for the way for that mater. Just the facts.
Now if you were to actually do this you might find yourself on the street. And if you were to find a master who would teach you I think that we would find that you had become proficient but not inspired.
I would hope that you really think about this. Why would you tell the master how to teach? Why would you limit your learning?
----------
Actually, the more I think about it the more I think that I have no time for you. Your efforts are not of an interest to me. I would suggest to others that we are wasting our time in this thread and suggest that we just move on.
B
Beck
Guest
Not at all. Preoccupation with specs is an early phase people go through in sound engineering/recording. I started that phase when I was 17 and grew out of it before I was 20. There is comfort in thinking that one can quantify everything about sound, but in fact one cannot. Standard specifications as listed in the back of a manual are the tip of the iceberg -- a skeletal representation of the body that is really there. So there are things that the industry can't measure and things they just don't measure or disclose. This is more so in digital than analog, so I found it odd that in your first post you stated the following:
The average musician/recordist knows very little about what goes on between A/D-D/A, as most manufacturers simply don't provide this information. For the most part the industry is still using the old standard analog measurements to represent parameters on a digital spec sheet. S/N, Dynamic range, frequency response, THD and such were all estblished when analog was all we had and every analog spec sheet lists them.
Your statement that you've never seen a spec written for analog tape only tells us you aren't familiar with the analog world, which is ok.
Whether looking at digital or analog one cannot predict the character of sound by looking at specs. This is easily demonstrated by noting the many devices that have the exact same specs on paper, but sound totally different, and certain devices with inferior specs on paper are often preferred over devices with seemingly "better" specs.
Now as in the past we still must give something a listen before we go with it. And terms like warm, harsh, fat, edgy, tubby, middy, shrill, tinny, narrow, flat, fuzzy, tight, brittle, sterile, etc, mean more to experienced engineers/producers than do specs like 20 Hz - 20 kHz or 24/96.
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A Reel Person
It's Too Funky in Here!!!
Sorry!
I think I can "hear" (predetermine) in a general way what various specs sound like. Sure I can! Say, if I were to mentally "audition" (think of) one particular sound bite, I feel I could very well "hear" (surmize it's sound in my head) that sound recorded on a Portastudio format, Low or High Speed, 4 or 8 track cassette, 1/4" 4- or 8-track, 1/2" 8 track, 7.5 ips, 15 ips and so on. I know what 92db dynamic range vs. 102db dynamic range would sound like, relatively speaking, in my head. 40Hz-16kHz vs 30Hz-22KHz, in a ballpark way I know how that would sound,... or would "frame" the sound. You put a 1/2 inch reel on an Otari or Tascam, and I can surmize the fidelity of that recording in my head. I can "hear" (in my imagination or surmize) the different sounds of 456 vs. 499 vs. 406 on similar program material,... from the specs!
Maybe I've been around that long that I know or have soaked it in thru experience, or maybe I am just that good, or maybe it's my acute hearing and finely tuned perception,... or maybe I'm just full of shit! (but I know what "specs" sound like when I read them!)
Not only that, but my recordings invariably have flaws, nonetheless I feel I get the most consistenly even and high fidelity out of my gear despite the format,... across the board.
... and I can "hear" specs!
... and I'm full of shit!
... and I'm not kidding!
No, specs don't tell the whole story. Leddy's explanation was pretty lucid in layman's terms. EVM & Becks commentary are pretty biting. There's psychoacoustics, and take for granted no two people hear in exactly the same way, then build from there.
... where's my spec sheet!
I think I can "hear" (predetermine) in a general way what various specs sound like. Sure I can! Say, if I were to mentally "audition" (think of) one particular sound bite, I feel I could very well "hear" (surmize it's sound in my head) that sound recorded on a Portastudio format, Low or High Speed, 4 or 8 track cassette, 1/4" 4- or 8-track, 1/2" 8 track, 7.5 ips, 15 ips and so on. I know what 92db dynamic range vs. 102db dynamic range would sound like, relatively speaking, in my head. 40Hz-16kHz vs 30Hz-22KHz, in a ballpark way I know how that would sound,... or would "frame" the sound. You put a 1/2 inch reel on an Otari or Tascam, and I can surmize the fidelity of that recording in my head. I can "hear" (in my imagination or surmize) the different sounds of 456 vs. 499 vs. 406 on similar program material,... from the specs!
Maybe I've been around that long that I know or have soaked it in thru experience, or maybe I am just that good, or maybe it's my acute hearing and finely tuned perception,... or maybe I'm just full of shit! (but I know what "specs" sound like when I read them!)
Not only that, but my recordings invariably have flaws, nonetheless I feel I get the most consistenly even and high fidelity out of my gear despite the format,... across the board.
... and I can "hear" specs!
... and I'm full of shit!
... and I'm not kidding!
No, specs don't tell the whole story. Leddy's explanation was pretty lucid in layman's terms. EVM & Becks commentary are pretty biting. There's psychoacoustics, and take for granted no two people hear in exactly the same way, then build from there.
... where's my spec sheet!