analog vs digital

[thebrontosaurus]

i wasnt really sure where to post this but i did it here.

i would like to gain some opposing viewpoints on both analog and digital recording, and analog and digital playback. Which is better for listening and which is more convenient. what has this digital age brought on, and is it ready and capable to replace analog?

any questions you could answer (and im sure you can answer a lot) would be a tremendous help. im writing a paper. ill be glad to cite you as well. leave your name.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Do a search -- this has been covered PLENTY of times already...........

 

[Farview]

I typed Analog vs Digital into the search feature on this site, I got 500 threads. Some of them newer than this one. Happy reading.

 

[Fenderville]

Digital = Cold, Harsh, New, Evil
Analog = Warm, Vintage, Inviting

Just kidding...

 

[thebrontosaurus]

I typed Analog vs Digital into the search feature on this site, I got 500 threads. Some of them newer than this one. Happy reading.

mm i did the same. lots of stuff containing the words howver not as many that will actually help me. lots of weeding to do then i suppose.
heh, sure will be fun

 

[thebrontosaurus]

Do a search -- this has been covered PLENTY of times already...........

thank you, so much
im sure it has, but i dont know where to look,
and the search didnt help me too much.
ill keep sifting through though.

noah

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

Blue Bear isn't being an sarcastic- he's telling you the truth.

This subject has been kicked around since digital hit the market. Its a *really* good question to be asking, but all the answers have already been typed up in spades here and elsewhere.

My own experience with it:

Digital Pros: Cheaper to get quanity (tracks and effects), easy editing, saveable mixs, sounds good.

Digital Cons: Editing is often abused, high quality is very expensive, takes quite a bit of skill to get good sound.

Analog Pros: Seems easier to get good sound, most home 8 and 16 tracks cost less than comparable digital systems, analog effects typically sound better (IMO) than stock and inexpensive digital effects.

Analog Cons: Tape is expensive, machine maintainence is expensive and takes a while to learn, all affordable machines are also old and used, quantity is expensive. Technically noisier than digital (though most listeners don't seem to care.)

take care,
Chris

 

[TuoKaerf]

Digital Pros-Faster editing, more tracks, more affordable, plug-ins (you can use them on as many tracks as your CPU can handle, instead of having to buy 20 LA-2A Compressors).

Cons-A/D conversion, clean (what you put in is what you get, depends your view on this), and the others listed.

I use a mix of the two. Large format analog board (in studio) into Pro Tools. I do almost all of my mixing and automation on the board, and send it out the stereo bus back into Pro Tools.

 

[thebrontosaurus]

thank you chris

 

[thebrontosaurus]

its my understanding that pretty much everyone is using a mix of the two. There arent too many using all digital there are better and cheaper alternatives. i need to research anyways.

thank you justin

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

Well, not too many people are actually using tape- which is what I mean my analog recording most of the time. Not too many people around here actually use tape.

There is analog mixing with a digital recording system and that's pretty common. You get most of the advantages of both. You also get the price of both.

Then there is the fact that all digital systems need an analog front end- preamps and such. There's just no way around that.

Take care,
Chris

 

[thebrontosaurus]

http://www.tiptopsound.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=4

nice article

 

[snow lizard]

Mr. Brontosaurus,

Here's a link to a really old thread on a completely different forum, but there were some very talented recording engineers bickering about this subject at the time. (Most of the same ones still discuss their views on it, which haven't changed much, but they don't hang out there anymore.)

Note that the (digital) hardware they're talking about is largely obsolete today, but many of the same arguments can be made about a lot of the more recent tools.

http://recording.org/ftopict-9686.html

Given that people will always argue adamantly one side or the other, (the linked thread is typical) people frown on it. It's almost a blood sport. I'm inclined to side with the arguments of well experienced engineers such as Mixerman, but I don't have the experience to back it up myself.

There are still people talented enough to get good results with the technology.

You might also try to search for things like "in the box", or "mixing outside the box".

I've also seen a lot of reference to rock drums and bass in particular being able to benefit from a stage of the 2" Ampex/Studer/MCI variety of tracking.

From briefly skimming over the article you posted, much of it is very good. The "connect the dots" digital sampling analogy is arguable. There's a good article in PDF format (many articles, actually) at Dan Lavry's website that explains a lot about sampling theory.

http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pdf

It seems to me that there's an advantage to increasing sample rate to move a bit farther away from the Nyquist limit to avoid smearing at higher frequencies for various reasons, but "more dots is more accurate" seems like a crude and incomplete argument. I'm not sure if you want to get that technical about it.

It'd be nice to see advancements in DSD technology, but at present it can't replace PCM sampling in areas like signal processing.

It also seems to be that CD audio at 16 bit, 44.1 kHz is lacking when compared to DVD Audio and SACD formats, but CDs remain the standard format at present. MP3's and such do nothing to help the issue.

You might also want to search for "loudness war", another important subject that's been beaten into the ground.



Good luck,

sl

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

Keep in mind that much of the criticism leveled at Pro Tools came from the legitimate mix buss dithering bug in the Pro Tools MIX system. The internal path of 48 bits was CHOPPED, not dithered, to 24 bits at the final output stage. It was a hardware bug and the only way to fix it was to create new hardware- the HD system. That's why Digidesign obsoleted the MIX system so quickly.

While I don't have the expertise (or the desire) to say that the new high end digital systems sound "As good as tape!" or anything like that, I do know this issue has been resolved with Pro Tools systems and didn't afflict any of the others.

Keep that in mind when reading older arguments about analog vs. digital.

At the home level this is all pretty academic. I can't afford a 2" 24 track, nor can I afford 2" tape at 30ips. My choices are Pro Tools LE or 1/2" 8 and 16 tracks- all of which I have. The arguments at that level are completely different.

Take care,
Chris

 

[snow lizard]

Chris,

Excellent points. Not to belabour the points you made, here's a more recent thread:

http://marsh.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/8158/

It can be a bit confusing to understand what "MOA" and "Alsihad" are in a MARSH discussion about Digidesign and Pro Tools, but the intuitive reasoning about the arguments against digital should be clear. This is actually more of a "digital vs. digital" thread, but it might help to provide some insight for Thebrontosaurus.

Plus, The MARSH can be an unusual place at times. It's sort of like what would happen here if people talked about recording in The Cave, except most of the members are professionals.

While I agree that there's a differnce between "home" and "pro" recording (I'm in the home camp as well) I still think that there's value to listening to what the experienced people are saying.

I've never used HD, Digi, M-Powered or any other Digidesign products and I'm not really making an argument about a specific product. There's content in these threads about process, regardless of the specific digital format & hardware used. The hard part is sifting through the bashing to find it.

Pro Tools just happens to be the most widely used digital recording platform at the moment. While these threads kind of bash that format, they don't deny that it can be used to make great records. It still has its strengths and weaknesses like anything else, and for a lot of people it can be the right choice.



sl

 

[TuoKaerf]

I use Pro Tools almost everyday. If I had the option (well more like the $$$$) to track to tape, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Track to tape, then dump into Pro Tools for editing.

The only complaint that I have about the "sound" of Pro Tools, is how clean it is. With tape you get track bleeding, which can sound either good or bad. With tape, things seem to gel a bit more. I've only done a few sessions with tape, and doing the tracking to tape then mixing into Pro Tools gave it a much better sound (analog coloring wise).

But for what it can do, Pro Tools (or for that matter any other good DAW, depending your preference) is the shit for me. I'm comfortable with it, and I'm quick with it.

I'm always using an analog element for the during the session. I hate digital boards, I feeul much better on an analog board.

For the most part during tracking I'll patch the return from the mic pre into a piece of tube gear (usually a Summit TLA-100 with no compression, this gives it a bit more depth especially on a D/I bass track) and patch directly from the external gear right into the MTR returns, totally bypassing the console (unless I'm using and SSL, then I'll use the strips for drums).

When I mix, I will usually set all the Pro Tools faders to unity and do all mixing/automation on the board (unless I have VCA faders, then I'll automate in Pro Tools....SSL VCA's=nasty). Send it out the stereo bus back into a stereo track in Pro Tools. Do some mastering, and that's that.

That's how I kind of mix the digital and analog into my workflow.