Just curious as to why still analog??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tim Walker
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Over 100 years and counting

Over one hundred years of research and development on making analog pleasing to the ear totally trumps digital just getting started in "warming up" the sound. Entire industry is now rebirthing tape manufacture because someone screwed up and started messing with what we hear to sell a microchip.

Harvey does say that we should all just start getting used to it because it's a digital world now, and he is right. But until digital is all grown up, my tape machines will always have a home in my studio. What am I talking about? I'll never sell. Analog just sounds great.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
Most hobbyists/home-recordists are using low-grade digital that sounds just awful - THAT'S where the complaints come from, not because of any inherent analog superiority..........

Low-grade analog sounds just as crappy as low-grade digital, IMO....

Mr. Bear, with all due respect, this is NOT the place to make any sense. I have said this 100 times here and they seem to have the same answer. There are certain ones here that have serious reading comprehension problems. This comes from retardation sometimes. Please be kind to the handicapped

OK?
 
evm1024 said:
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

Now HERE is a totally valid argument. I agree 100%. I cannot mix a song using anything other than my big analog console. I tried and get way too distracted using software mixing programs. I need to record and mix like I am using an old fashion tape machine because I grew up doing it and I am way too used to it. I certainly don't diss the new kids who can do it and are used to it at all. MOre power to them. It is not for me though.
 
Dr ZEE said:
hey! hey! hey!

to all of you, Behringer bashers out there.
Now, you really hurting my feelings.
You guys, constantly bash Behringer due to your lack of knowledge and misunderstanding.
I am a proud owner of Behringer MX-8000 console. Yes, it is the fact, that using MX-8000 is like being a Captain of the Ship with 100s holes, perpetually drunk crew and full of rats. But with knowledge, experience, creative mind, strong command and dedication you can deal with it and You can make it across Atlantic.

Learn the basics, work hard, never give up ... and stop that baseless bashing of great product and its brand name.!!!!
**********
:D :p :D

**********
p.s. - Speaking of rats. As the whole 'ship of musical production' is sinking in the peacful nightmare of data-compressed mp3-audio files distribution ... - The Dirty RATs would be the only hope.
But, It looks like we've took care of rats for good before ringing The Departure Bell. So ???? .... as night falls, we are going down and don't even know it. Sweet dreams ;).

Behringer console EQ and pre-amps sound cold and harsh to my ears. Totally useless. I like real analog consoles that sound warm and lush.
 
Beck said:
Are you kidding? That's the first thing I ever saw when I first tuned in to this bbs and others before it - a deafening roar of cries for help from digital users. "It sounds bad" "Vocals sound thin" "How do I warm my tracks up?" The vast majority of users don't choose digital. They haven't made a choice because they didn't have one.

The 20 users, as you say, on this forum are but a small sampling of a global subculture of analog users. This is not occurring in a vacuum. It certainly is not confined to homerecording.com. Whether members of this particular forum would or wouldn't buy a 2" Studer is irrelevant, because the debate didn't start here and it doesn't end here. We all know that virtually all of the top studios in the world do have 2" Studers. However, I don't need a Studer for my purposes. Few home studios or project studios do.

The laugh is that the answer to many a newbie problem is right under their noses in the Analog section, which they will never see because it's tucked away in "Archives and Other." In this case, as it is in much of life, the road less traveled is the choice of the astute. The discriminating are never the masses. The masses fly like a flock of birds or school of fish - one brain among them.

Daniel is right-on with his analogy. I was there when the recording periodicals began pushing digital. Hoodwinked is the word. There was no more substance to those early digital testimonials as there is to Don Lapre and his "Greatest F**king Vitamin in the World." :D

Read Blue Bear's post carefully. Are you gonna tell me that a 4-track portastudio sounds as good as a 2" MCI or Studer?

You just don't get the point and you never will.
 
Beck said:
".....If you want to learn something read over the contributions to the thread..."

Please do. As far as I can see, you and a few others just twist words around and present useless quotes. I can quote sources that say analog is a dinasoar and should be extinct. What does that prove?

It proves that exactly 1 person said that.

If you want to really get into it, seemingly you do, I got you one up is analog snobbery and I think that any analog machine that is NOT a 2" pro machine is a toy and was designed and marketed towards pseudo-engineers. I happen to have a real analog 2" MCI JH24-24 that I record on all the time. There are so many gold and platinum records done on this machine the list would make you dizzy. Do I "put down" digital? Hell no. I use and have used most of the top end stuff and I can ASSURE you that they sound every bit as good as my 2". and THAT is the end of conversation on my part. Unless you have USED any of the top end digital AND analog machines, I suggest you calm down on the bashing because you are TOTALLY uninformed and only armed with second-hand information.
 
evm1024 said:
Taking a quote from a peer review paper...

"The number of bits in a DAC is a poor method of determining its performance and accuracy. A better measure of performance is the accuracy of the actual bits themselves. Under ideal circumstances, a 16-bit converter would exactly convert all 16-bits of the sample data word in a linear fashion. However, this is seldom possible. In practice a 16-bit DAC is less than sufficient for accurate conversion.

The error in a 16-bit (or any multi-bit) converter relies on the accuracy of the most significant bit (MSB) of the data word. Inaccuracy in this bit can result in an error of half the signal's amplitude--a significant error by any measure. This in mind, manufacturers reasoned that converters with high bit rates could overcome this shortcoming along with others through sheer numbers. In addition to ensuring the accuracy of the MSB by having more than 16-bits, they can also improve quantization performance by adding 2x-16 more quantization levels than a 16-bit converter. Now, any nonlinearity in the conversion process would be a far smaller fraction of the overall signal and the more quantization levels result in a greater S/E ratio by virtue of Eq. 1. The extra bits used by these converters may be either thrown away, be left unused, or be put to other intelligent uses that will be discussed later. Unfortunately, it is a misconception that the use of an 18- or 20-bit DAC gives true 18 or 20-bit audio performance.

Despite the fantastic performance benefits of these nth generation multi-bit converters, they are still plagued by many errors. Linearity was already mentioned, but they are also plagued by gain error, slew-rate distortion, and zero-crossing distortion. All of these error and distortion types introduce severe harmonic distortion and group delay; thereby perturbing signal stability, imaging, and staging. "

Accuracy can be judged by metrics or by subjective evaluation. When we say that accuracy is a measure of some parameters (mathmatical accuracy) we must admit that both digital and analog are accurate. When we speak in the more subjective sonic accuracy we see that analog has its "color" which is the deviation in accuracy as does digital.

The point is there for the astute.

Regards

This is a nice written report stating some technical opinions. However, although I am an electrical engineer by trade, I don't really care about the science of anything when I record. I love the sound of my digital recorder and record. But, if you want to rely on *written* evidence why digital is so bad and analog so good, the FACT is that on paper, analog specs suck. Digital specs rule. These are FACTS that I can show you right now.

So, there are other factors to sound than just plain technical facts, right?
 
acorec said:
Behringer console EQ and pre-amps sound cold and harsh to my ears.
Do you mean you have one? Which one? There are two to chose from. I though you only work with High-End real PRO products. So how do you know? Or do you sell Behringer products? Or do you just love from time to time to kill a few hours a week to swing over some local music store to check some hommy-guys' gear... just for laugh of it?


acorec said:
I like real analog consoles that sound warm and lush.
Me too. So?

Also if you miss the whole Socratic irony of my post, then you are the one who should NOT be talking about 'retardation' around this board. ;)

arhhhhhhh

/be well
 
Acorec,

Are you basing your comparisons between 2" and digital on your D2424?

I've been using a D160 for a few years without any complaints about the quality..........I mean, no-one has yet told me things sounded shyte because of the 16 bit recorder :). That said, when I added a 16 trk 1" to our setup, we did immediately notice a difference in the sound..........not necessarily "better", just pleasantly different.

:cool:
 
ausrock said:
Acorec,

Are you basing your comparisons between 2" and digital on your D2424?

I've been using a D160 for a few years without any complaints about the quality..........I mean, no-one has yet told me things sounded shyte because of the 16 bit recorder :). That said, when I added a 16 trk 1" to our setup, we did immediately notice a difference in the sound..........not necessarily "better", just pleasantly different.

:cool:


Yes. I run my D2424 at 24/48 and it sounds extremely close to the MCI 2". The choice of pre-amps, mics and mic placing are different if I want the sound to be "grainy" like tape. I find with digital that the choice of compressors also adds some coloration like tape saturation. The use of an opto-compressor "slows down" the envelope of the waveforms. VCA compressors are just too fast and tend to add some distortion to the edges of the waveforms. A/D converters don't handle switching distortion in the same way that tape does. Tape saturates and eliminates the peaks where A/D convs tend to clip (if pushed too hard this distortion sends it over the edge). The expensive VCA compressors minimize this distortion pretty well.

People find tape to be pleasant sounding. I agree. But, the main problem with digital is that it adds almost no "pleasant" coloring to the signal and pretty much records what is put in. Now, what most people don't get is that the source that is recorded sounds different than what goes to tape. The tape adds a "grainy" less defined sound to sources that are more soothing to the ear.Try really listenening sometime to a source and think long and hard if what you really hear is going to tape or is the tape changing the source. Engineers have said many times that what goes to tape sounds better than what the source sounds like. They seem surprised. I am not.
 
Dr ZEE said:
Do you mean you have one? Which one? There are two to chose from. I though you only work with High-End real PRO products. So how do you know? Or do you sell Behringer products? Or do you just love from time to time to kill a few hours a week to swing over some local music store to check some hommy-guys' gear... just for laugh of it?



Me too. So?

Also if you miss the whole Socratic irony of my post, then you are the one who should NOT be talking about 'retardation' around this board. ;)

arhhhhhhh

/be well

I had an MX8000 for 6 years. It basically was a reliable board with good routing options, but the sound was pretty harsh and the EQ does very close to nothing but add distortion. Did I call you retarded?
 
acorec said:
This is a nice written report stating some technical opinions. However, although I am an electrical engineer by trade, I don't really care about the science of anything when I record. I love the sound of my digital recorder and record. But, if you want to rely on *written* evidence why digital is so bad and analog so good, the FACT is that on paper, analog specs suck. Digital specs rule. These are FACTS that I can show you right now.

So, there are other factors to sound than just plain technical facts, right?

We are in complete agreement that sound is an interpetered experience and that the listening is the measure of "goodness".

As an Electrical engineer I am sure that you will agree that Ohm's law is true, that nyquist it true without (undue) questions. In general these "laws" are not opinion. Moving more to the soft side. I think that you will agree that thin film resistors generate less noise than composition resistors and further to the soft side that polystyrene capacitors "sound" better than ceramic disc caps.

The paper quotes does not say that analog tape sounds good or that digital audio sucks. It only addresses some of the factors that form limits to the accuracy of digital audio. It says many things including that an 80 pS jitter in the sample clock is audable. The list goes on but no one needs read this as a defect but rather as the conditions of real world of engineering.

An opinion expressed by some of the pro-digital in this thread is that digital is absolutly accurate and that we (the analog taped deck lovers) cannot handle the audio reality of digital. This paper refutes that assertion.

So digital has color. You like the color or your system. I would not say that you are wrong.

And yet some people hear the color of digital and do not like it.

Regards
 
evm1024 said:
"....So digital has color. You like the color or your system. I would not say that you are wrong.

And yet some people hear the color of digital and do not like it..."

Regards

Slight correction:

"....So digital has color. You like the color or your system. I would not say that you are wrong.

And yet some people hear the color of some systems and do not like it..."


This makes more sense and is probably what you mean. If it is, I agree.
 
acorec said:
Slight correction:

"....So digital has color. You like the color or your system. I would not say that you are wrong.

And yet some people hear the color of some systems and do not like it..."


This makes more sense and is probably what you mean. If it is, I agree.

LOL, No need to defend digital :D

Yes, let's do change it to as you wrote:

And yet some people hear the color of some systems and do not like it..."


So Why still analog? Because some people like the color of analog systems! And some people dislike the color of digital systems.

So why still digital? Because some people like the color of digital systems! And some people dislike the color of analog systems.

Regards
 
acorec said:
Please do. As far as I can see, you and a few others just twist words around and present useless quotes. I can quote sources that say analog is a dinasoar and should be extinct. What does that prove?

It proves that exactly 1 person said that.

If you want to really get into it, seemingly you do, I got you one up is analog snobbery and I think that any analog machine that is NOT a 2" pro machine is a toy and was designed and marketed towards pseudo-engineers. I happen to have a real analog 2" MCI JH24-24 that I record on all the time. There are so many gold and platinum records done on this machine the list would make you dizzy. Do I "put down" digital? Hell no. I use and have used most of the top end stuff and I can ASSURE you that they sound every bit as good as my 2". and THAT is the end of conversation on my part. Unless you have USED any of the top end digital AND analog machines, I suggest you calm down on the bashing because you are TOTALLY uninformed and only armed with second-hand information.

I admit I have an unfair advantage – I remember everyone’s position and I don’t get one member confused with another. This thread isn’t confusing to me.

Twisted words? Useless quotes? Those words seem twisted to you because they make you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about. If the question is who uses analog and what do some of the greatest in the industry have to say, then those quotes are golden nuggets. When you say, “analog is gone” or “only the 20 members of this forum” think this or that I list a few of the top studios in the world that are using analog (tip of the iceberg by the way). Your answer is “Well, they don’t do razor editing.” :confused:

Again, you make wild assertions concerning the professional recording industry that are so off base they must be answered. Me simply stating my opinion that you are mistaken won't suffice. I give the members here verifiable data for further investigation.

My contributions are usually answers to specific questions or challenging a notion that is inaccurate.

One more thing about quotes. I see people here copying and pasting words from magazines and websites that I’m familiar with as though they are their own words. I quote and give credit to an author when I use their words. I quote people when I think they’ve already said it better than I could reword it.

acorec, it is you who do the twisting in reaction to reasoned argument. It is all you can do if you will never acknowledge you’ve learned something new.

You get the award for the least accurate picture of the recording industry of anyone I know in the analog forum. That includes your 90’s perception of analog in the industry and your proletarian idea of narrower track formats.
 
Beck said:
I admit I have an unfair advantage – I remember everyone’s position and I don’t get one member confused with another. This thread isn’t confusing to me.

Twisted words? Useless quotes? Those words seem twisted to you because they make you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about. If the question is who uses analog and what do some of the greatest in the industry have to say, then those quotes are golden nuggets. When you say, “analog is gone” or “only the 20 members of this forum” think this or that I list a few of the top studios in the world that are using analog (tip of the iceberg by the way). Your answer is “Well, they don’t do razor editing.” :confused:

Again, you make wild assertions concerning the professional recording industry that are so off base they must be answered. Me simply stating my opinion that you are mistaken won't suffice. I give the members here verifiable data for further investigation.

My contributions are usually answers to specific questions or challenging a notion that is inaccurate.

One more thing about quotes. I see people here copying and pasting words from magazines and websites that I’m familiar with as though they are their own words. I quote and give credit to an author when I use their words. I quote people when I think they’ve already said it better than I could reword it.

acorec, it is you who do the twisting in reaction to reasoned argument. It is all you can do if you will never acknowledge you’ve learned something new.

You get the award for the least accurate picture of the recording industry of anyone I know in the analog forum. That includes your 90’s perception of analog in

Well, if you know what I do and who I work and hang out with, you would certainly change your mind on how accurate my assessment is of the current recording methodology. I don't know where you work in pro studios, but it is obviously different from the current New York/Boston environment.
 
acorec said:
Well, if you know what I do and who I work and hang out with, you would certainly change your mind on how accurate my assessment is of the current recording methodology. I don't know where you work in pro studios, but it is obviously different from the current New York/Boston environment.

A sound argument is not based on what you do or who you know, unless the question is "What do you do and who do you know?" In fact your words could be used in an argument giving evidence that what you say you do and who you say you know is not true, or at the very least that you don't know what they know despite the fact that you hang out with them (whoever they are, real or imagined).

I’m more interested in the knowledge or lack there of that a person demonstrates of the subject at hand.
 
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acorec said:
Read Blue Bear's post carefully. Are you gonna tell me that a 4-track portastudio sounds as good as a 2" MCI or Studer?

You just don't get the point and you never will.

You have no point. That is unless dodging and innuendo constitute an argument.

You're just trolling now or you have poor comprehension and retention of what you read.

Putting words in people's mouths is one of the lowest tricks ever devised. It is just barely above a practice in the cave where a person’s quote is actually altered in the reply.

It happens too often to think it's not intentional on your part.

I've learned not to believe what acorec says someone has said. I go to the original quote to see what the person actually said.

If you can’t present an argument that will stand up to what someone has actually stated, you make up an easier argument to contest and then claim that is their argument. Well, you can’t lose that way, can you? But people here can't be patronized as easily as you assume.
 
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acorec said:
Are you gonna tell me that a 4-track portastudio sounds as good as a 2" MCI or Studer?

When did Tim (Beck) say this ? See, statements or even assumptions like this, based really on nothing, discredit a member (Beck) who is one of the most coherent here.

You just don't get the point and you never will.

I think we have a case of looking at the same thing and seeing two different things. It is obvious that yourself and even regebro have your own "schema" or mental structure that represents an aspect of the world not everyone here shares. Doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong tho. However, you both come off as thinking you know more than anyone here. Your superiority complex is so evident it hurts. This is not meant as an insult just an observation. I think it is you who doesn't get the point and never will ..

~Daniel
 
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