Analog Vs Digital - A Good Read

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Guess who's using analog? None other than Steely Dan -- a group well known for their use of digital recording for decades now.

Actually an intelligent use of the two formats for their respective advantages, but the positive comments on analog from these digital heads is pretty enlightening.

Here's an excerpt:

"When we got to the studio," Scheiner remembers, "I said to them 'Look, this is not for your record, let's do it on analogue. Let me give you a taste of that again.' They said, 'fine', not expecting much. But when they heard the first playback, they went wild. They had completely forgotten how good analogue sounded. The whole Joni Mitchell track was recorded and mixed [though it was never released], and they were so impressed by the sound. It did sound amazing. When they realised that it was great to work with live playing and analogue again they decided to record the whole of Everything Must Go this way."

Enjoy

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug...=yes&session=956ee14527b11b1c6c389cf650818f2c

:cool:
 
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The Dan has been a favorite of mine since the '60s, when I was a young pup. I have 'em all, even the stuff from the 90s.

It's not that I'm kicking digital, but analogue has a much better sound. When you are able to A/B analogue and digital, which we could do in this case, there's simply no comparison. The top end is so sweet and beautiful. I've never heard anyone say about digital, even at 24-bit/96kHz or 192kHz: 'Isn't the top end as sweet and beautiful as you've ever heard?' You don't because digital just doesn't sound that way."
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Genius.
 
Yep. Made a believer out of me. But they still did their overdubs in digital? Because they didn't want to deal with the tape shreading? This is not obsessive analog fan behavior.

Now if they did the whole the in analog, including the mastering, and only made vinyl records and cassette tapes, that would be so cool.
 
Ya I thought that tape shreading comment was a little bizarre as well.
 
The Dan/analog discussion happened at other forums at least three or four months ago.

They recorded in Sear Sound, a studio with 2" 16 track machines.
If you step through the front door, you're back in the seventies.

You guys should read Walter Sear's writings on his website, now that is an interesting guy.

There's this story about the Dan, they used some 300 reels of 2" tape, because they only wanna use fresh tape, don't know whether this is true or not.

Here's the link to Walter's: http://members.aol.com/searsound/articles2.html
 
Han said:

If you step through the front door, you're back in the seventies.
http://members.aol.com/searsound/articles2.html
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Hey... thats what my friends say about stepping through my front door. :D

Yeah, and I noticed the story in SOS was from August 03. But you see... Sear Sound, well that's way over there in New York and news takes a while to get here to us folks in Illinois. They put it on a floppy, and then ship it to Chicago by wagon train.

Sometimes they go a little out of the way down through Kentucky to avoid the outlaws and highwaymen in Ohio. But if the Cherokee are on the warpath near the Cumberland (as they often are) they're screwed anyway. It can take 2 or 3 months just to get to Chicago. From Chicago the floppy disk goes south by Pony Express to a server in Kankakee. It's not as easy as it sounds.
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Very interesting article.So do CD's make your fillings fall out?I wouldn't doubt it(if you're over 40-50 years old anyway).
 
Stevebol said:
Very interesting article.So do CD's make your fillings fall out?I wouldn't doubt it(if you're over 40-50 years old anyway).
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Don't know, but it made my teeth hurt when I was only 19.

:cool:
 
SACD

Wat are you trying to say han ?
That DSOTM on SACD sucks? :confused: , after all SACD is a multichannel CD. Right ?

Remco

ps: DSOTM is een geweldige 'plaat'
 
NO! DSOTM is a great work of art. I was trying to say that the CD format sucks, compared to SACD.

The difference between the CD and the SACD version of DSOTM is sensational!

Wel effe wat anders heh?:D
 
Analog, hell ya. I have my studio rigged up so I can track both digitally and analog simultaneously. About %85 of the time the clients pick the analog tracks. I mix down to 1/2", DAT and masterlink simultaneously. Yes my converters are kick ass. About 85% of the time the clients pick the analog mix. However they and I do prefer the digital ones sometimes. I then charge them a rental fee for the tape if they prefer the analog mix or they can purchase the tape and keep the tracks/mixes. A lot of youngsters balk at tape costs so go digital without hearing a beautiful analog machine.
 
Han said:
The Dan/analog discussion happened at other forums at least three or four months ago.

They recorded in Sear Sound, a studio with 2" 16 track machines.
If you step through the front door, you're back in the seventies.

You guys should read Walter Sear's writings on his website, now that is an interesting guy.

There's this story about the Dan, they used some 300 reels of 2" tape, because they only wanna use fresh tape, don't know whether this is true or not.

Here's the link to Walter's: http://members.aol.com/searsound/articles2.html
Click to expand...

Oh man! Thanks for the GREAT link! I'm just reading part 1 and the following struck my attention: "As the new equipment got cheaper, lighter and easier to operate, the general quality of the recorded sound deteriorated." That SOOOO true! I've been continually saying to people how you can tell junk by way of its weight. One guy the other day asked why I was so obsessed with the weight of a recorder .. I told him that what something weighs is a pretty accurate measure of its quality, not always but most of the time ... Anyway, back to the article .....

Daniel
 
Another favorite from that article: "THEN CAME DIGITAL. A whole new world of audio fraud was launched ..."

My thoughts exactly and am so glad it's written about now ...
 
LOL!! That's so bloody true: "Now that we were told another big lie, 'digital is perfection', a whole new industry sprang up. How to fix digital. Bits, algorithms, psychoacoustics, dither, a whole new industry was born. The studio owners had to, at first, buy digital recorders. Then they had to buy all kinds of outboard gear to try to correct some of the problems with digital."
 
hehe .... :D : "The sound was still quite unmusical. We were putting a Band Aid on a leper."
 
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