Just curious as to why still analog??

[Lotus]

thanks for the replies guys...no surprises in the responses...
dont get me wrong, i DO agree that analog is better sounding than digital at the moment...on the other hand though, i have a huge interest in computing technology and keep myself fairly informed of the latest events/discoveries...one exciting area is Quantum computing which basically uses light beams to transfer data instead of transistors and is therefore capable of making calculations BILLIONS of times faster than present computers...not to mention the whole area of Nanotechnology which will bring astounding changes and discoveries...both of these areas will influence ALL areas of life including of course music production and will make obsolete forever any present day computing problems...and its not too far off either..
I have a couple of observations though....I too like the idea of the "hands on" approach of twisting knobs and dials and buttons as opposed to a keyboard, mouse etc, but WHAT has this got to do with analog or digital?? digital and the means which which we manipulate digital are not the same thing, right now its all based around a PC but that doesnt mean it cannot be used in other ways (which it will be)...Would you turn your nose up at a DIGITAL machine (with all the bells and whistles) which was identical to a tape machine (without the reels of course) even if it was able to reproduce analog sound 100%?..if the answer is yes, then it seems you are more interested in an ideal rather than the process or the end result...If it has the feel of an analog machine and gets the results of an analog machine but worked in digital then the only difference would be in your perception and attitude towards it...
I believe that the real issue here is one which could be applied to ANY era of human development: A lot of people simply dont like things that they didnt grow up with, OLD is good, NEW is bad...you are right when you say analog sounds better than digital, thats ipods suck, that sonic quality has gone downhill, sure, but if you take away the corporate hijacking of the music industry and focus on the progress of computing technology you will see thats the good stuff hasnt even begun yet...you can be sure that when the first electric guitar and amp were invented there were people who said "ITS NOT NATURAL"...take a look around your home and you could apply this to just about anything.....microwave ovens, cookers, tvs, LIGHT BULBS!! THE WHEEL!!..the list would be endless...so any argument that analog is more "REAL" than digital is complete nonsense...
I dont mean to piss anyone off here, its just that i really dont care for the "older is better" attitude....Im sure most of your parents or grandparents would turn their nose up at your "REAL" world as did their parents before them..

 

[cjacek]

Would you turn your nose up at a DIGITAL machine (with all the bells and whistles) which was identical to a tape machine (without the reels of course) even if it was able to reproduce analog sound 100%?..if the answer is yes, then it seems you are more interested in an ideal rather than the process or the end result...If it has the feel of an analog machine and gets the results of an analog machine but worked in digital then the only difference would be in your perception and attitude towards it...

Why would I wanna have that if I have the real thing ?? God, open reel machines have been around for ever and it's a polished technology ... Why in the hell would you wanna emulate the feel and look of an open reel machine (with digital insides) ? Doesn't make any sense! Where are the motors, the moving parts, the tape sliding over the heads, the maintanance issues ... I don't know about you but to me it's not only about the end-product .. It's the fun and satisfaction one has with whatever one is working with .....

I believe that the real issue here is one which could be applied to ANY era of human development: A lot of people simply dont like things that they didnt grow up with, OLD is good, NEW is bad...you are right when you say analog sounds better than digital, thats ipods suck, that sonic quality has gone downhill, sure, but if you take away the corporate hijacking of the music industry and focus on the progress of computing technology you will see thats the good stuff hasnt even begun yet...you can be sure that when the first electric guitar and amp were invented there were people who said "ITS NOT NATURAL"...take a look around your home and you could apply this to just about anything.....microwave ovens, cookers, tvs, LIGHT BULBS!! THE WHEEL!!..the list would be endless...so any argument that analog is more "REAL" than digital is complete nonsense...
I dont mean to piss anyone off here, its just that i really dont care for the "older is better" attitude....Im sure most of your parents or grandparents would turn their nose up at your "REAL" world as did their parents before them..

Not everything "older" is better but when it comes to many pieces of musical gear of yesteryear, the notion that older is better is very true indeed. Btw, I had taken to music quite late, in 1999 and was quite dumb about the whole music/gear scene before that time. I was pretty much exposed to what was considered "mainstream" before that and it meant much in the way of digital. When I got into recording, I only knew that digital was outtthere and that is the defacto way of recording. Didn't even think of tape or analog. I didn't grow up recording or being exposed to analog much at all. I resisted digital after trying out the different offerings and "went analog". I never regretted my decission.

 

[snow lizard]

You're probably referring to one of my earlier posts ..... That was called an A N A L O G Y. Had nothing to do with machines growing on trees! Oki ?

No problem - I get it. I also think there's a basis for the analogy, but I'm also interested in the real reasons why as well, on a technical level.

Not to say that the subjective level can't be vastly entertaining.


sl

 

[Lotus]

Why would I wanna have that if I have the real thing ?? God, open reel machines have been around for ever and it's a polished technology ... Why in the hell would you wanna emulate the feel and look of an open reel machine (with digital insides) ? Doesn't make any sense! Where are the motors, the moving parts, the tape sliding over the heads, the maintanance issues ... I don't know about you but to me it's not only about the end-product .. It's the fun and satisfaction one has with whatever one is working with

It was an example, to prove a point thats all...to bring up the subject of perception..not to be taken literally...what does it matter whats inside it if it had the same FEEL through buttons and knobs and got the same analog results??... you basically proved my point, that you use analog because you have chosen to resist digital at all costs EVEN if there is no obvious difference (in the example)....thats ok..but for me, the sound is really whats important..if you are a sound engineer your clients dont pay you to enjoy yourself, they pay you to make them sound as good as possible, so if this example digital machine produced 100% analog sound at fraction of the cost i would see no reason NOT to use it...

 

[Beck]

I believe that the real issue here is one which could be applied to ANY era of human development: A lot of people simply dont like things that they didnt grow up with, OLD is good, NEW is bad...

I grew up with digital recording. It was the thing everyone thought would save us. True to my nature as a skeptic though I did become suspicious of one article after another in the recording mags starting in the late 80's that were ramming it down our throats with over-the-top endorsements of yet to be tried products.

CD-quality was the buzzword of my generation. A-DAT was supposed to end world poverty and usher in the second coming of Christ. And DAWs... well, don't get me started.

All these years later people are still using the same phraseology, predicting the greatness of a digital technology "just around the corner." …Right.

No, your above premise is not THE real issue. It may be an issue with some, but to say it is the core is a rather simplistic assessment of a very broad and complex matter. Of course, any single explaination doesn't cover it.

All these questions have been answered in this thread, in depth with insight by people who lived through the digital revolution, and ultimately joined the analog uprising.

There is so much information in this thread we should be charging consulting fees. I don't really expect anyone to go back and read it all. However, I have no interest in repeating it all over again either, making this thread twice as large only to have everyone forget what was said all over again.

 

[snow lizard]

Lotus,

Great post - lots of interesting stuff to chew on.


Random thoughts:

I'm not too enlightened by the idea of digital gizmos that get too fancy about doing everything. Mixing with a mouse is a good example - by the time you've pointed, clicked, dropped down, switched frames and opened the parametric EQ or whatever, you might have been finished already on an adequate analog desk. Control surfaces can get closer to providing a more ergonomic feel to the process, but having to take a 6 month course to figure out how to turn the thing on doesn't make much sense either. There's more than aesthetics going on here, but that's a part of it.

This whole issue seems to be exactly like everything else. Back in the old days, we set standards for how to draw blueprints. People did it by hand with a pencil. It took a long time compared to using Autocad, but people knew how to project images properly and knew what datums and tolerances would be required. Even though we can whip up a drawing in a fraction of the time, people don't always care anymore. If a company hires some guy out of school that can't be bothered to learn why, the results will suffer. Autocad is great, but it isn't an engineer. This isn't technology's fault, but not to say that there isn't one. We're facing a decline in skills now that didn't exist 40 years ago and it affects everything, not just audio.

Perhaps old analog audio may have been better a lot of the time, but this is no different than an inefficient fridge from 1964 that outlasts something 5 years old (by 34 years) or a car, power amp, television - anything. As a society, we seem driven to provide ourselves with junk in order to fuel the marketing sectors that will replace it with more junk. The stock market is digital.

The problem (solution?) is when you get engineers that try to make a better A/D converter, or a better storage format, or better arguments for why a vocalist that can sing sounds better than Antares Auto Tune. You can't replace art and skill with technology, even if you can use it as a tool.


sl

 

[Seeker of Rock]

You guys have a lot of technical knowledge that I don't and this has been very educational for someone like me to learn. I will give two points that I can only back up by what I hear, and it could be that my ears are slightly messed up and not hearing things correctly...but they are below:
There is a sound about tape recordings that I like. There may be 10 other and better ways to capture the sounds, but why I buy what I buy is because it is what I hear that I like.
Second, if I recorded to digital, I could not be happy "mixing in the box" I might as well ditch my guitars, amps, stomp boxes and just midi the guitar parts in via modeling and a keyboard midi controller. No thanks. I want EQ on the fly instead of screen hopping, I want real fader action for all channels at once without pushing "shift" or clicking a mouse...Now most of the better setups out there have full external boards, I know. Great, if you have that kind of $$$$$$. But I like to be able to move faders on the fly at mixdown, sometimes, small EQ tweaks or effects adjustments. The knobs are there, I turn or push them, done. No uni-knobs in site, no clicking a mouse three times to be able to adjust one parameter

 

[evm1024]

don't let the bits cause a missed point

I picked 32 bits out of the air based not on a need to digitize at 32 bits but rather on wafer fab realities. There are some economies of scale in using powers of 2 and integer multiples of 8. Thus in the integer world 8, 16, 24, 32 prevail. In memory busses 8,16,32,128 and 256 rule. (more in high ens system) There were 12 bit, 18 bit, 24 bit and 36 bit systems that were designed based on limits of technology and the cost of memory. These systems are all collectors systems now. 24 bit integer DSP systems reflect a cost trade off as well. Moore's law was invoked so given 10 years the cost of a 32 bit floating point dsp device will be in the commodity range. This would place the residuals of time to frequency processing in the near unaudable region. (think digital filtering) Designing a specific device that would be very low volume (for a wafer fab) would make the device expensive. However using an off the shelf 32 bit or even 64 bit DSP chip (or 32 of them for that matter) would be more cost effective.

regards

 

[evm1024]

I vote Lcars for my interface

The touch and feel of analog is very natural to humans. Sitting and moving a mouse to point and click is not so close to our makeup.

If you look at many of the science fiction shows you will see how the authors envision we deal with that. Lcars from Star Trek makes a nice interface and How about the Minority Report for a MMI (ManMachineINterface).

Still it is so much nicer to curl up and read a book. That is a great interface.

Regards

 

[evm1024]

electrons or light, C is the speed limit

A minor point, Electrons travel in wire at the speed of light (through that media) thus the speedup in optical computers is not cause by using light to transfer data and logic. It all travels about 8" per nanosecond.

The real slow down in cmos switching times is caused by the Miller Capacitance of the front end gate inthe fet. In order to switch you muse inject enough electrons to overcome the gates charge. By making the gates smaller (going from 0.5 micron to 0.2 micron gates sighficantly reduces the capacatance thus decreasing the switching time. Because the FEG (front end gate) is smaller is has also to be thinner. This was a problem with 5 V powered CPU because a thinner gate breaks down at a lower voltage. So CPU core voltages were reduced. Lots of power savings there as well.

Optical does not have a capacitance to overcome and thus has lower switching times (higher speed).

regards

 

[snow lizard]

I picked 32 bits out of the air based not on a need to digitize at 32 bits but rather on wafer fab realities. There are some economies of scale in using powers of 2 and integer multiples of 8. Thus in the integer world 8, 16, 24, 32 prevail. In memory busses 8,16,32,128 and 256 rule.

An argument has been made that 88.2k sampling will work better than 96k if your target is a CD, because it will be much easier to downsample to 44.1 (CD) accurately, being a straight multiple of 2. The slightly higher rate will throw far more problems into the conversion, even if the disk space and computing horsepower are almost identical when tracking.

Perhaps if we could have a computer that could give us accurate floating point math at the speed of funk, a great deal of the problems would be easier to overcome. This is why I'll be happy with my Celeron 500 until its last gasp, or when it finally enters the realm of Pong. In the meantime, I'd like to build on my outboard stuff - all the analog things like microphones, preamps, bass traps, etc... that digital will not be able to replicate.


sl

 

[Dr ZEE]

An argument has been made that 88.2k sampling will work better than 96k if your target is a CD, because it will be much easier to downsample ....


sl

Target is a CD? Really?
Are you sure about this? That is at least questionable from both sides. First I'd say - the target is really Podcast/i-Tunes/Musicmatch and such.... So, downsample this, man
I know what you may say in reply :... CD is still THE MEDIA (for the music album release) etc.... But is it really a target from distribution/commercial point of view?
As for today... I really don't know anymore what the target is. So all I can do it to stick to what I know - make it the best in the kitchen, worry about table service later.

Now, you may say.... wait a minute. This is not about the target at all. It's all about having the best master and it has nothing to do with the form of distribution.
Well, that is maybe the case? For some? or for Many? I don't really know any more. It used to be both - make great master - make greate release, make great distribution.
But nowdays, thanks to digital technology, you can't just follow that simple logic..... 'cos to many spits on your way.
BTW, downsampling is very "inspiring" word in the whole picture for a music producer with a passion.... know what I mean? It makes my stomach ill, actually.... ...thanks, but no - thanks.

Well, the reality is the reality - CDs are what we make - mp3s - is what they listen.
The question is - who "they"? Do you care. Well, you should... I guesss, otherwise you live in your own dream-land. Is reality better than your "dreamland"? The answer is - NO, it is not.

Someday.... somewhere..... here we go again,

Also, before you jump on me for bashing digital technology again ..heh heh .... I don't really bash the technology in general. Technology is great. Microwaves are great and are cool and I use microwave allot...dayly!!!!, but when I really feel like good food...Ya'know ... I use open fire outdoors.... and if I feel like really really making good stuff... I actually burn real wood, not propan.
Some things are old and no-good. Some things are just old. Some things are old and that's what makes them good. Some things are just good period. Those things, that are good period are getting old as time goes by, but still are here... 'cos they are good, or even more to say - 'cos thay are perfect New things arrive...and they can't help it, but HAVE to point out the 'oldness' of the older things, which means really nothing, but does only one thing: it reflects the level of immaturity of the new things .

Also (I want to highlight this again here), remember - we are home recordists - which (for the most!) means we do produce our own music ... That is: - we fantasize, we get inspired, we write, we dream, we pick the instrument, we play, we record, we mix, "we put the album into the box". So the actuall process of recording and followup production work is nonseparable part of the whole process. So, you can deny the effectiveness of psychic factor of the gear/tools/instruments/allOthers , you can hide from it, but you can't run... it gets you anyway. If the gear puts you down instead of inspiring the whole process is broken - and you get no result.
So anybody (tech heads) can laugh as much as he/she/they want at me for making no technical sense. I laugh at them... WHY? - cos' they don't know a first thing about music SELF-production. Why would I be so sure about that? - simple: because Guys who knows what it takes to self-write-play-record-release, they see nothing funny about seeing reels growing on the tree, or needing big and ugly tone control KNOB of a specific shape right there OR ELSE!!!! - gotta have it or nothing goes. What SeekerOfRock is saying needs no "technical" explanation or backup for a person who knows music performance/production process by heart). And if a person gets inspired by digital gear, computer software, deep technical knowldge or what have you - that's great - so that's the way this person will be doing his/her best.
So, speaking of real issue here. ..heh heh, I'd say the issue comes out of the form in which the question was posted: "Why Still Analog?"
That still makes the question to become a stement. And there you have it.... fire back.

If you ask me "Why Analog?" - no problem ...we can blah blah .. I can spit out bunch of "why to", what analog does from technical and totally non-technical but "spiritual"/(ispirational if your wish) point. There will be no even mentioning digital technology in the answer.
If you ask me "Why Still Analog?" - then my answer is off topic really.... and the answer is????? heh heh - BECAUSE DIGITAL SUCKS!

get it? lol

(to explain, I say digital sucks, not really to expose my view on comparing analog vs. digital, but rather to retaliate against the statement in the "question".)

-Why do you cook on open fire?
-Because I like good food.

-Why do you still cook on open fire?
-Because microwave food sucks.


/respects

 

[planetorange]

none

Amen to all of that.

 

[Tim Walker]

You guys have a lot of technical knowledge that I don't and this has been very educational for someone like me to learn. I will give two points that I can only back up by what I hear, and it could be that my ears are slightly messed up and not hearing things correctly...but they are below:
There is a sound about tape recordings that I like. There may be 10 other and better ways to capture the sounds, but why I buy what I buy is because it is what I hear that I like.
Second, if I recorded to digital, I could not be happy "mixing in the box" I might as well ditch my guitars, amps, stomp boxes and just midi the guitar parts in via modeling and a keyboard midi controller. No thanks. I want EQ on the fly instead of screen hopping, I want real fader action for all channels at once without pushing "shift" or clicking a mouse...Now most of the better setups out there have full external boards, I know. Great, if you have that kind of $$$$$$. But I like to be able to move faders on the fly at mixdown, sometimes, small EQ tweaks or effects adjustments. The knobs are there, I turn or push them, done. No uni-knobs in site, no clicking a mouse three times to be able to adjust one parameter

I'm a guitar player, and I am totally organic when it somes to getting sounds. I don't understand midi, and don't care to. I crank up my tube amp and go, real drums no triggers and a bass amp. BUT, I totally embrace digital recording, the editing is much quicker, no tape degrading. It's just quicker with a clean sound.

I think changing reels of tape when you want to work on something is so old fashioned, and inefficient.

I also think tracking and mixdown is much quicker using protools than a reel to reel tape machine.


tim

 

[Wesleymino]

I'm a guitar player, and I am totally organic when it somes to getting sounds. I don't understand midi, and don't care to. I crank up my tube amp and go, real drums no triggers and a bass amp. BUT, I totally embrace digital recording, the editing is much quicker, no tape degrading. It's just quicker with a clean sound.

I think changing reels of tape when you want to work on something is so old fashioned, and inefficient.

I also think tracking and mixdown is much quicker using protools than a reel to reel tape machine.

I totally agree with that. I dislike having to baby the tape, and I imagine protools goes a lot quicker. But I still prefer the open reel. I use other digital tools to help deal with those shortcomings. I guess it works the way I'd like, for now.

 

[cjacek]

As an aside: I spent quite a few days listenning to many CD's that I had picked up over the years and noted that my ears simply could not tolerate the metallic and harsh high end sound of the most recent releases. Stuff from the 50's, 60's, 70's and some 80's, no problem, all had wonderful fidelity but never irritated my ears but much of the stuff after that (not all) did. Different mastering techniques, perhaps but I doubt it's the only reason. Analog highs, lows, mids etc .... have an almost "silk" like texture but digital can sound overly bright and harsh, metallic in many cases. I wanted to do this experiment to at least have a better take on the sound issue many are conversing about here.

~Daniel

 

[Seeker of Rock]

I'm a guitar player, and I am totally organic when it somes to getting sounds. I don't understand midi, and don't care to. I crank up my tube amp and go, real drums no triggers and a bass amp. BUT, I totally embrace digital recording, the editing is much quicker, no tape degrading. It's just quicker with a clean sound.

I think changing reels of tape when you want to work on something is so old fashioned, and inefficient.

I also think tracking and mixdown is much quicker using protools than a reel to reel tape machine.


tim

And quicker is better for some people. Again, tape is what I choose, from my own reasons that are my own and I like. I didn't mean to stereotype about the guitar setup, sorry . Personally, I prefer the experience of tape. My good friend uses Pro Tools and that's what he likes....cool, and I'm glad he found his nitch. I'm just voicing what works better for me. I'm sure between you and I, we could find commonalities in our daily routines like do you drink coffee in the morning and if so, do you prefer to have it from a shop or make it yourself; do you drive a car or a truck, and why. I know, not think, it is a matter of choice. I prefer analog. Not having owned a digital system, but working on professional software in my job, I know a lot of things are easier in digital, but you use the kind of tools you use (in whatever you) and in the context that you use them based on what is most comfortable for you. I do the same. Analog taping is what I prefer to do. Nothing against digital, but I like what I like. May change in the future, sure. And I completely agree iwht you that tape is not NEAR as efficient as hard disk/drive recording/editing. But keep in mind efficiency is not what I'm after, and the primary "editing" I do is with knobs, faders, and punch-ins, not cut and paste.
btw, I do use an electronic kit, so you're one up on me there. I prefer acoustic drums, but they don't fit my situation right now so I built the best-sounding analog models I could on my DM Pro. Not ideal for my taste, but I can live with it when my choices are limited.
Glad to see you're an analog tube amp man for your rig, btw

 

[Doc Holiday]

As an aside: I spent quite a few days listenning to many CD's that I had picked up over the years and noted that my ears simply could not tolerate the metallic and harsh high end sound of the most recent releases. Stuff from the 50's, 60's, 70's and some 80's, no problem, all had wonderful fidelity but never irritated my ears but much of the stuff after that (not all) did. Different mastering techniques, perhaps but I doubt it's the only reason. Analog highs, lows, mids etc .... have an almost "silk" like texture but digital can sound overly bright and harsh, metallic in many cases. I wanted to do this experiment to at least have a better take on the sound issue many are conversing about here.

~Daniel

I've noticed this also. The CD's released before their digitally remastered version sounded better. More dynamics, not just one volume level(MAX)throughout the CD. The newer stuff does sound harsher.

 

[Seeker of Rock]

I agree with what you are saying. Ultimately, the song and how it's played are the most important elements in music.

I've recorded in studios on 2" tape, and adats, and to hard disk, they all have their advantages. Our 2" record sounds pretty harsh to the ears, but we didn't know much when we mixed it. Our Adat record sounds much better, but we were more experienced and had a different engineer.

tim

2" functioning properly should sound like butter to your ears. Was it a Behringer Analog Pro 2" machine...
Hmmmm....2" I believe gets you well away from the "prosumer" market in which I reside. Just a hint, but it may not be the proper sound coming from that machine if it sounded harsh. You weren't sending tracks through a cheap board, maxing your i/o levels, or riding your high frequencies were you?

 

[snow lizard]

Target is a CD? Really?
Are you sure about this? That is at least questionable from both sides. First I'd say - the target is really Podcast/i-Tunes/Musicmatch and such.... So, downsample this, man

<snip>


Also, before you jump on me for bashing digital technology again

<snip>

DIGITAL SUCKS!

get it? lol

Sorry if I took too much out of context, but the origional post is there anyway.

Yeah, I actually meant "if your target end user format is some kind of 44.1k, CD compatable wave file, it makes more sense to use a multiple of that rate if you plan to track at a higher sample rate to avoid mathematical complications like truncated bits & such..." Yeah. If that's not your target, no problem. You must do what you feel is right, of course. (At least that's what Obi Wan said to Luke when they were... oh, nevermind.)

As for all the compressed, lossy music formats out there...


SIGH.... Oh well... record on wax cylinder - 4 track cassette tape - wire reel - 2" 15 IPS - "Pro" Tools - it doesn't matter. Again, it seems like "audiophile" in general is overlooked by most consumers these days unfortunately.

You can go "digital bashing" all you like if it pleases you - some of the things people are doing with music these days are horrible, and people should pay attention to that. This is not to say that digital recording is always the culprit.

In turn, I could go "analog bashing" I guess, but I don't feel passionately enough about the arguments to bother. I happen to like "good" analog (not to say that there's anything wrong with high end loss, stretched tape and track bleed from all those classic 8-track cassettes) but I won't dismiss the capabilities of digital for it.

So "why still analog"?

There can be a range of answers for this question on many levels that are all valid. If you like it, that's good.

If there's room for improvement with digital recording (and I'm sure there will be for a very long time) it might add to the discussion for some to have a bit of Where? Why? and How? in there. Not to jump on you or anyone else for their comments, but there seems to be more people adding their thoughts to it - which is good, no?

Analog certainly does have a smooth sound to it, which in part might be due to harmonics being favoured through the analog process, that aren't in digital. Right or wrong, it's a thought, and it comes from years of people making great tube amps for guitars once again after we were told (wrongfully) for a decade that we could get those sounds with electronic simulation gadgetry, perhaps with a tOOb thrown in there as a gimmick. Perhaps one day we will, but I'm not holding my breath. In any case, I don't think digital recording is anywhere near as drastically wrong as digital modeling is at present, but there's still room for improvement, and I'm sure there always will be as long as there are people that care about audio. I'm not prepared to write off everything about it because of one or two "wrong" things like lossy file compression or one-dimensional modeling effects that behave as if they belong in rehab in the mix.

Having said all that, I think I'm done with Fostex products in general, unless I can get my hands on one of those printed ribbon mics.

As with anything, YMMV.


peace,

sl