Analog VS. Digital

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Tunes68

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I've been recording with digital equipment for about 7 years or so and I am very pleased with the results. I have however heard that there are a lot of people who claim that the old analog style of recording has the best quality sound or "warmth" that digital recording cannot achieve. To my ears, my digital recordings sound fantastic, but I do realize that a lot of people prefer the way the old analog recordings sounded, to the point where they will not buy anything digital such as a guitar player friend of mine who's wanting to buy an effects pedal for his electric guitar, and only buys analog devices.
I've talked to another friend of mine who says after he makes a digital recording, he downloads it onto his computer and then "tweaks" the finished recording to make it sound more like an analog recording.
Is there really that much difference between digital and analog recordings, and which do you prefer?

Tunes68.
 
The difference is pretty dramatic... And although I suppose I "prefer" the sound of analog, I "accept" digital as the standard. Especially now that decent tape is getting to be impossible to find. Analog is very forgiving - Digital has harsh rules. If you break those rules, you get a harsh sound.

The thing I won't change my mind on anytime soon is an analog path... I just like tubes & stuff instead of digits in many cases (especially in the mastering stage).
 
I actually like the sound of digital clipping.

It's awesome.
 
Ah, yes... the old analog vs. digital argument.

I've done both, and I can't honestly say that one is better than the other. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Both do the same thing: record music.

I like both...
 
When it comes to recording format, I LOVE analog, but only high end analog. Neither I nor my clients have the money to be working in the analog domain. There is a world of difference between a Studer A824 with 2" tape at 30 ips and a Tascam running 1" at 15ips. The Studer makes life unbelievably easy. The Tascam makes life all but impossible. So for the budgets I tend to work these days, I like digital. The cost for entry is much lower.

Dynamics are best when done analog, and I much prefer the sound of a good analog EQ, but again I can rarely afford good analog EQ (compression is less of a problem, thanks FMR Audio!), so if I have a choice between a Mackie EQ and a digital EQ, it is digital all the way. In fact, the only thing I really like digital for is editing, and if I had my way, I would never have to edit a damn thing (wishful thinking, I know).

For me, though, the real trick is to avoid going between the two domains. It is the converters which really kill digital sound, and kill it dead. The analog components involved in ADC and DAC are evil, pure and simple. This is one of the reasons I am (unlike many) MUCH prefer to get my sound as close to the final mix as possible on the way to the multi-track. This means I compress, EQ, Gate, and other wise molest my sounds as much as I can (or at least, as much as I need to) on the way to the multi-track. I don't believe in "fixing it in the mix". Get it right the first time, and then you can move on to better things.

Of course, I have done enough of this shit that I have a pretty decent idea of where I am going, which helps a lot.

In the end, I see the "Digital vs. Analog" debate as a budget debate. Can you afford to make the record you want to make in an analog studio with a $100,000+ console, a $20,000+ multi-track, tape costs of about $5 - $20 a minute, and a one day lockout of $3000? Yes? Cool, I'm there, and my day rate is exactly the same as it would be for a digital studio. On the other hand, I bet we can make a record which is imperceptibly different for most of the world in a digital environment for about 1/10th of the cost. Believe me, if I ever win the lotto, I will be putting together the greatest analog studio the world has ever seen (well, maybe not, but it would be in the same category). Until then, fuck it. Go digital. The guy with the ears behind the console makes a bigger difference than the way you store the data.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light said:
In the end, I see the "Digital vs. Analog" debate is really a budget debate.
Click to expand...

That's the way it's going. Digital recording has flooded the market, and making it so easy for the home recorder to get decent, on par recordings.


Light said:
The guy with the ears behind the console makes a bigger difference than the way you store the data.
Click to expand...

No truer words were ever spoken...
 
I don't think that subject line could be any more conducive to sparking an unending debate.

Light, I know of a place you can track in an all analog domain with world-class equipment for no more than $1300 a day plus tape costs. I should probably talk about that place less than I do though, lest I become known as a fanboi. To temper that, I also know of a place where you can record on a world class console (Sly Stone's Flickenger) and an MCI 24 track for $350/day plus tape costs.

I know neither of those hold a candle to someone with a Pro Tools rig charging $100 a day or so to take it all the way through from tracking to mastering, but like a lot of folks say, you get what you pay for (most of the time...the lucky get much more than they paid for, and the unfortunate get much less).

Edit: I misread your post -my apologies.
 
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Not analog VS digital....


Analog AND digital....

come on guys, how many times do I have to say it? :D



Fun fact: the last company which manufactured tape for analog tape machies closed thier doors a little more than a month ago.

If you ask me, thats more scary than fun.
 
come on guys, how many times do I have to say it?

Probably you're not done yet.

I see all the great old analog studios are closing their doors, one by one...Bill Putnam's Chicago studio is now a clothing store, Cello in LA looks to becoming a parking lot, Electric Lady Land is doomed (or so I hear). And least Quantergy seem to arisen from the dead.

So even high-end analog MEDIA will soon be gone. That doesn't mean you can't use an analog signal path.
 
lpdeluxe said:
Probably you're not done yet.

I see all the great old analog studios are closing their doors, one by one...Bill Putnam's Chicago studio is now a clothing store, Cello in LA looks to becoming a parking lot, Electric Lady Land is doomed (or so I hear). And least Quantergy seem to arisen from the dead.

So even high-end analog MEDIA will soon be gone. That doesn't mean you can't use an analog signal path.
Click to expand...


true, but that's not what is responsible for the sound analog gives you. It's the storage of audio media on analog tape that gives you that sound only found on analog tape.

on a waveform, analog will naturally round off your waves, giving you warm sound.
 
LRosario said:
Not analog VS digital....


Analog AND digital....

come on guys, how many times do I have to say it? :D



Fun fact: the last company which manufactured tape for analog tape machies closed thier doors a little more than a month ago.

If you ask me, thats more scary than fun.
Click to expand...

I can only second this whole damn post
 
I agree too...Analog AND Digital (and I love the Apple logo too LRosario)

My dream would be to...track in high-end analog, mix in digital, master to analog.


But on my budget, it's gotta be all digital.
 
One thing to consider is that analog recording is FUN.

I have an 8 track reel to reel and it sounds good (warm blah blah blah), you can overload it w/o too much trouble... but its fun to watch it spin, thread the tape, clean it and demagnitize it and get up close and personal with it. That is something that digital equiptment lacks- you cant SEE it working, you cant fix it yourself... the equiptment itself has less personality.

thats why I like analog at least. but as far as sound goes, if you know what your doing, you can make either one sound good.
 
Oh I see. So digital is not superior in sound as analog is, it's just cheaper, right? Boy, I guess I've really missed the boat here. The one and only time I ever used analog tape is around 11 years ago when I purchased my first Fostex four track recorder, which used regular cassette tape. I had that for about four years until I bought my first digital recorder which was a Yamaha MD8. I know you can't really compare a digital recorder with a cheap four track that only used cassette tapes, but the way you guys talk, those high end reel to reels must've been fantastic. I don't know because I never had the opportunity to own one. What I use now is a Fostex VF160, which has about the same quality as my Yamaha but has 8 more tracks.
Maybe analog tape does sound better than digital, but I think digital is more convenient to use. It's so much easier to hit a button to instantly get to a certain location on your recording whereas with tape you have to waste time rewinding and fast forwarding. Besides, as Milkfaj said, if you know what you're doing, you can make either sound good.

Tunes68.
 
Aside from tracking then transfering to digital, I really don't think that Analog will work for todays style of music. Old recordings were about performance and captured the way that the band actually sounds. Today, everbody tweaks the crud out of every mix in ways that would be impossible using analog tape. When they used to record the goal was to make every track sound exactly like our ears hear the sound in the room that it is being recorded. Most of the music today is very artifical and synthetic in tone and atmoshpere. I just don't think people would be happy with the results from analog even if it does sound better.
 
I was just wondering, if analog tape recording is so good, why are all these analog studios closing their doors? I mean, if the aim of the musician is to utilize the best sound possible for his or her recordings, then analog studios shouldn't be going out of business, right? Is there some other underlying reason? Cost perhaps? Why does all the old analog recording gear cost double, triple or even quadruple the cost of it's digital counterparts? Is it because they've achieved the status of valuable antiques? I would think that digital recording equipment would cost more since it has more to do with computer technology, but what do I know. You guys are probably right, it is more cost effective to use digital than analog. And since more and more of the old analog equipment is fading away and making room for digital, we'll all have to learn to live with our digital recording gear.

Tunes68.
 
Digital audio is all about editing.

And so is commercial music. It's a pretty natural fit.

For the amount of bread it takes to walk into a big-boy studio, a lot of bands can outright buy the digital technology and then rent a producer and engineer and all the high-end gear you can stuff into some cool old house. Counting Crows has made a couple records this way, and so have others.

A lot of these studios in their heydays were doing other stuff too besides signed recording acts. A lot of that business has gone away. Now it's some guy in a spare room in his house tinkering around with this shit endlessly.

I never was a customer at any recording facility, so nobody lost my business. If tape was the only thing going, I'd have gone that way. But like was said above, to get analog tape performance that begins to approach digital in terms of dynamic range, THD, etc, you're gonna be spending big bucks on 2" and all the fixin's and spend countless hours maintaining it.
 
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Tunes68 said:
Oh I see. So digital is not superior in sound as analog is, it's just cheaper, right? Boy, I guess I've really missed the boat here. The one and only time I ever used analog tape is around 11 years ago when I purchased my first Fostex four track recorder, which used regular cassette tape. I had that for about four years until I bought my first digital recorder which was a Yamaha MD8.
Click to expand...


Well, you can hardly compare a Fostex four track recording to (I am guessing) 1/8 inch cassette tape at 7 1/2 ips (inches per second) and a Studer 24 track recording to 2" at 30 ips. I mean, you are comparing 15/64 of an inch square per second to 2 1/2 of an inch square per second. Analog sound quality is all about how much oxide you have recording it, and the more oxides you have, the better the sound quality. And of course, the more square inches of tape, the more oxides. No one who is knowledgeable will ever claim cheep analog tape recording to be worth bothering. Professional analog, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
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