analog vs digital

S

shorty_himself

New member
I guess its one of the hardest questions and i know that there is no wrong or right answer, but I want to discuss it anyways.

I did a few projects in the past. Recording a band (Rock / Punk), mixing the songs and also mastering. So kind of demo-production.
During mixdown I always said to my self: "man I want some more analog compressors or EQs here and there".
I´m a student and so i don´t have the money to buy one unit after another just because I wanted them. So I´m using Plugins that model analog gear (Waves, Softube, Slate Digital..)

And that leads me to my question: is analog gear worth it, or should i just go on with Plugins.
Its clear that a real LA-2A would beat an digital emulation in every time (looking on sound performance) but you can use an analog unit only on one track, and a plug on as many tracks your system can handle.
But how bout "cheaper" gear. I´ve used an ART PRO VLAII long time on my drum bus till I got me a copy of Slate Digitals VBC and since then i never touched my ART.
Though that fact I´m still dreaming to build me a System500 Rack with Lindell Audio and JoeMeek units. But.. a few hundred bucks for an Interface that has multiple Line I/Os (like the TC Electronic Konnekt48 or the RME Fireface800) + the units + cables.. just for the possibility to tweak real knobs (which is a biiiiiiig pro auf the analog world to me!!)

What do you think? Is really worth it? Is ("cheap") analog gear capable to produce results that are as good as if you would use Plugins that are based on gear that cost 2000+ a single unit?? Would you spend money just for the pleasure to be able to touch your gear?

I´m really curious about your opinions!
 
I would guess no. Cheap gear is just that, cheap, noisy etc. Good plugins like UAD are being used in pro set-ups all day long.

Its a good question though, but unless you've got the extra room and money, I'd be building a DAW. I do have analogue preamps to run my mics, but that's it. I'm sure there are other instances where analogue is useful but it hasn't fit into my budget.(yet)
 
Seems to me, in the chain, once it is digital, you loose most of the advantages of analog. So the source origination processing would have analog advantages or stay of digital as long as possible. It seems once you are in the digital world, most of the advantages of analog are lost with 1's and 0's.
 
Cheap is cheap, barry. Cheap analog hardware isn't good just because it's analog. It's still cheap junk. Good plug-ins > cheap/mediocre analog gear.
 
shorty_himself said:
Would you spend money just for the pleasure to be able to touch your gear?
Click to expand...

I have lots of analog hardware....but not just so I can touch it. :D

So when you say "man I want some more analog compressors or EQs here and there"...are you saying that becuase you HAVE used decent analog comps and EQ and you can hear the sublte differences and they are important to you....
....or are you just saying that becuase you THINK using some analog gear will bring magic to your mixes?


Like others have said....cheap is cheap....and having knobs to turn will not make you or the gear "pro".
 
The best bang for your buck would be to spend your money on getting a good front end, (great mics and great preamps), and use plugins for the processing.

I've used both hardware and software 1176's and la2a's, there is a difference, but they both do the same job and accomplish the same thing. For that matter, I can usually tell the difference between two hardware 1176's or la2a's. Hardware can be inconsistent...
 
shorty_himself said:
Its clear that a real LA-2A would beat an digital emulation in every time
Click to expand...

Why do you believe that? You'd have to compare them side by side with nothing else different to know. I've been around since classic gear was current. I've used all the classic gear from vintage compressors to tube U-47s and everything in between. IMO the worship of vintage gear is not deserved. Much of it is noisy and adds more distortion than I like. Not to mention the prices charged today. A lot of fantastic sounding music has been produced using only DAW software and plug-ins. I promise you that the lack of a "real LA-2A" is never the reason someone's mixes don't sound excellent or fully professional.

--Ethan
 
Surely the entire point is to record audio that has the best audio quality based on what your ears hear? What do we actually hear? We can hear the sound source, we can hear distortion, we can hear noise and we can judge overall quality. We can like 'good' distortion, and we can detest 'bad' distortion. We can all hear a different range of frequencies, and as people get older, they lose their top end - yet older people still produce excellent recordings.

So I personally don't care if a recording is digital or analogue if it sounds good. If I can't hear it, it doesn't matter to me. I'm also pretty convinced that as soon as you start using plug-ins, for every gain, there's a corresponding loss somewhere else. I do quite a bit of piano recording - quite nice ones, but just recently I've been recording one artiste and using a new software sampled piano - and I like it better than the real one. When you listen absolutely critically, the real piano sounds very good, but the tiny issues with the room annoy me. The sampled piano has pedal noise, and allows half pedalling - it's very nice - and the room it was recorded in is better than mine!
 
I use analog gear because I like to actually touch the gear, faders, knobs, switches, and not a mouse and looking at a screen, just the way I work. Nowadays I record to the digital world and do all my editing in digital, I just track and mix in analog.

Does an analog sound better? Some of it does some of it doesn't.

Alan.
 
Quite few of us really get to try out the differences, once you do you might not like the answer :D
 
I've got a somewhat newly acquired perspective on this. Allow me to share.

First thing. Yes, cheap kit is cheap kit and will not sound like expensive UAD plugins. That's been said and I think it's a pretty safe bet.

I started out working on a lot of high end analogue gear 15 years ago but I didn't really have the experience yet to know what I was getting into. Thus, that experience in the context of "knowing what is better" is a bit far gone at this point because I had no point of reference. So I went on to become a 21st Century Digital Boy and worked almost entirely ITB for my whole career. I had a couple of outboard compressors (Focusrite Platinum series) but for the most part processed ITB. I produced quite a number of records in this era and they're fine, IMO. As it's been said, the gear did not make the recording but rather the performances.

However, recently I moved into a new studio with a TAC Matchless that has 32 channels on mixdown along with my TL Audio C1 compressor and a UA LA-610. Granted, we don't have a prodigious amount of outboard but just playing around with these units inserted into the console I found a new respect for outboard that I had kind of replaced with the "it can be done ITB" attitude. Conclusions?

It's a different experience when you're turning knobs and listening as opposed to clicking around on a screen. Yeah, I know it's been said. But there's definitely some sort of psychosomatic thing going that alters your perception and, IMO, heightens it. The psychosomatic responses of clicking a mouse are totally different to twiddling a knob until it sounds right. It is a way sharper and more perceptive experience and I found it much easier to get the sounds that I was after. I will be doing that more often!

Cheers :)
 
The most divisive topic since 45 caliber pistols vs 9mm pistols, or Harley vs Honda. The recording community is very divided on this topic, so you will get many opinions and many good arguments on both sides, but you will mostly get uninformed bad argumentation, so be prepared to be even more confused on the other side of this thread than you were before starting it.

As for me there are many good reasons for using dedicated outboard analog devices and tape, but without getting into that for the moment, the most important thing to understand is that low cost does not necessarily mean poor quality.

The most successful home recordists are those that have enough background with high dollar professional equipment in commercial studios to have a reference to purchase good semi-professional equipment for their own personal use. You set standards during that experience and are then able to shop intelligently and achieve fully professional results with what you acquire. That's what I did... that was my background. You ignore the marketing hype and peer pressure, and use your own judgment.

My opinion about the rise of digital and the demise of music is well known on this forum, so there will be no surprises. My observation has been and continues to be that all I had to do for my recordings to sound relatively better than the new and lower standard was absolutely nothing. That is, I kept using analog during the early days of the digital revolution and still to the present time. I stayed the same as the collective music recording standards declined. It had the same effect as if I had upgraded my studio to the best available without considering cost.

And as for plugins in general that are pitched to replace a given piece of classic hardware, this is the biggest scam to ever hit the recording industry. Someone should go to jail. There are many good digital tools, but there are some things digital simply cannot do and for those things you are better served by hardware.... and that hardware does not have to cost you your first born.

Analog was a happy accident that made a lot of music palatable that was not as palatable live, so the argument isn't chiefly about "accuracy" here. It is about musicality and human perceptions of auditory pleasure. I don't believe we would have had the music phenomenon of the 50's, 60's, 70's had we invented digital sampling as a recording method first.

And by the way, Harley wins, if only because of this performance by Brigitte Bardot.

 
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I'm fine with 9mm, but I insist on Harley-Davidson. That said, that particular era of HD (when they were owned and managed by AMF) needed Bardot... The modern ones still ooze personality - but the personality doesn't look like the motor's fluids.

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Geez, I need new pics of the bike too...
 
Massive Master said:
I'm fine with 9mm, but I insist on Harley-Davidson. That said, that particular era of HD (when they were owned and managed by AMF) needed Bardot... The modern ones still ooze personality - but the personality doesn't look like the motor's fluids.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm ok with 9mm as well. Then we get into the fast and light round compared to the slower heavy round debates. I'm more for the fast light so I use basically the same 115 gr +P 9mm round in my Smith and Wesson as the Illinois State Police use, but mine are made by Corbon. I have two new never opened boxes of original Winchester Black Talons from the 90's as well that go for the heavy penetration viewpoint. If anyone wants them I'll sell them. Shoot me a PM (no pun). They're not cheap but I would sell them for a lot less than the going rate. But in case I'm violating any forum rules by offering ammunition on this forum... then never mind. LOL :p
 
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