The advantages of recording analog

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Beck said:
What are analog people?

People who care about the quality of music recording realize what great impact music has on society... and for selfish reasons we don't want the music scene dominated by the crap there is today.

In fact digital is much worse today than it was even ten years ago. The state of the art is less demanding... people expect less and they get exactly that. The debates about digital vs analog are over long time ago.... the "analog people" like me predicted the demise of the recording industry, which we are experiencing today. Digital won, but music and music lovers lost!

That being said, at least three things about this thread are wrong: 1) The original graphic from the OP, 2) The video by Monty Montgomery, which is so rife with error no one should take it seriously. The video especially is the worst sort that feeds the misinformation highway. 3) that anyone replied to the baiting from a new 1-post member... but now here it is... brought to life and we have to deal with it.
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Case in point....this whiny get-off-my-lawn nonsense......and I rest my case.
 
They both work. That is: they both record sound and play it back.

The primary difference is in work flow, e.g. what tools are available and how you go about using them.

To the extent "digital" has killed anything as a business matter, it is digital distribution by way of easily duplicated computer files and online communication. That (a) has nothing whatsoever to do with how the music is recorded and mastered, (b) isn't entirely inherent in "digitalness"* and (c) was going to happen no matter what anyone in the amateur or professional music creation/recording/distribution field wanted to do about it.
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* Though, yeah, it is connected: the ready and perfect reproducibility of digital recordings is a necessary precondition to the current state of affairs. But: (i) in the rather long period from CDs to MP3s music was digital and nothing like what's happened recently was going on (sort of the opposite, actually), and (ii) even if no record company or music-maker anywhere ever released anything except on vinyl or analog tape, people with computers would make digital copies.
 
RAMI said:
I think I've told you before that I respect almost everything I read from you .
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That's funny. It's amazing how different perceptions are. That was the first post I've ever read from him, and it was a steaming pile of crap. :laughings:
 
Greg_L said:
That's funny. It's amazing how different perceptions are. That was the first post I've ever read from him, and it was a steaming pile of crap. :laughings:
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I really want to hear his science on the Monty video, too. :(

That video seems pretty solid to me. It may have had a point of view, but it certainly wasn't biased.
 
Greg_L said:
That's funny. It's amazing how different perceptions are. That was the first post I've ever read from him, and it was a steaming pile of crap. :laughings:
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I can understand that. Your first impression of him obviously isn't good.

The Beck knows his stuff. Doesn't mean you have to like him or agree with him. :cool:
 
Hey Alfredo,

Anything I said wasn't directed at you. I just saw things starting to warm up, as they do so many times on these forums. I've thought about what I posted plenty of times but just never took the time to actually post. It just happened to be on a thread you started. I could have just as easily said the same thing on another site a week ago, and a week before that and...........

Anyway, things are getting heated again. Gonna go hang out in my studio. I'll check back in a few days and see which recording medium won.
 
Sadly have to give up my trusty Teac X7-R.
Anyone know what it is worth and who would use it.
Also comes with a box of tapes.
Len.
 
An easy test .....

Record a violin C8 'Jeté' at +1dB both on analog (15 ips and 30 ips) and digital ( 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz and 192 kHz) recorder ......

Then playback and be amazed .....
 
Foamfoot said:
Everytime I come across one of these digital vs analog things, it always perplexes me how one side wants the other to concede to their way of thinking. Who cares, really. If you like recording digitally, if it works for you, do it. If you like working with analog stuff, do it.
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Exactly this. If you prefer analogue, great, if you prefer digital, equally great.

The one problem with this thread though is that the original post presents completely carked up waveform images to justify what's "wrong" with digital. The graphics are meaningless and wrong...but if left unchallenged will join the wide body of "proofs" both sides are guilty of to try and justify what, in reality, is just a matter of taste.

Edited to add that I'm another one who wants beck to justify his statement about that video being full of errors. It's spot on accurate as far as I can see.

I have no problem with people preferring one system or another--but I have major problems when pseudo science is used to try and prove one is better. Note that the video never says digital is better than analogue. It just says that digital works...which is does.
 
I would like to hear some discussion on that video myself. I dont know enough to say whats right or wrong, but I dont come up with the same answers when figuring the relative bit depth of analog. I may be messing up my math, so who knows. But stated in the video was that a professional reel to reel using noise reduction has equivalent bit depth of 13. Published numbers for such a rig using Dolby SR give a dynamic range of approximately 110dB. My math keeps coming up with equivalent bit depth of being around 18.
 
yanhend said:
An easy test .....

Record a violin C8 'Jeté' at +1dB both on analog (15 ips and 30 ips) and digital ( 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz and 192 kHz) recorder ......

Then playback and be amazed .....
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"+1dB" relative to what...?
"15 ips and 30 ips" on what kind of tape/deck/size format?

Also....since most people here probably don't play violin or have the opportunity to record it (so it's not an "easy test" for most folks)....why don't you just tell us what amazed you and why? :)
 
And 192 kHz won't sound better than 44.1. I already know that and am not going to do it.
 
CrowsofFritz said:
And 192 kHz won't sound better than 44.1. I already know that and am not going to do it.
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I would not go that far. I think resolution needs to be standardized higher than 44.1, but 96k is overkill, let alone 192k. I think it was a Lavry white paper that siad it should probably be around 60khz to get any artifacts out of the audible range. Based on my listening tests I agree with that.
 
CrowsofFritz said:
And 192 kHz won't sound better than 44.1. I already know that and am not going to do it.
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I am straight digital, but I will be honest, I would like to do analog if nothing more than for the experience. I am sure there are really cool and great things one can and does with analog. But, in my limited budge and all the other stuff I am learning, it just seems like it is a high learning/cost curve. I also think (just sayin' my opinion here), the analog guys know more about recording than than many of us digital guys. I mean how hard is it to get a computer, interface and a DAW and boom, you're in.

I'm not kissing any a$$ here, but I still think there is some cool stuff the analog world is doing. I would further add, if it is not to tape or straight to a record (I think they use to record on wax?), it ain't analog. So portable recording machines don't count unless they are direct tape. Once it hits some kind of hard drive, you are no longer analog dude, just a technophobe.

Anyway, I like to read the posts and see what you guys are up to as I probably (hey, you never know) won't get to experience that world and like to know what is going on.

Better? I don't think I would have the patience, but I am sure you can get better quality as there are less conversations (you still convert signals and back again). But in a world of MP3s and IPods, I don't see that translation making that much of a difference in the general world.

I really like these discussion though :eatpopcorn:
 
leddy said:
I would not go that far. I think resolution needs to be standardized higher than 44.1, but 96k is overkill, let alone 192k. I think it was a Lavry white paper that siad it should probably be around 60khz to get any artifacts out of the audible range. Based on my listening tests I agree with that.
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Well, I don't know too much about the math, but according to the Nyquist Shannon sampling theorem, once you have sampled about the Nyquist rate (that is, twice the amount of the highest frequency being recorded), further increases don't matter.

Two links:

An Introduction to Sampling Theory

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2012/11/14/44-1-vs-96-any-audible-difference/
 
CrowsofFritz said:
Well, I don't know too much about the math, but according to the Nyquist Shannon sampling theorem, once you have sampled about the Nyquist rate (that is, twice the amount of the highest frequency being recorded), further increases don't matter.
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True, but you need a brick-wall low pass filter at the maximum frequency you want to record, in order to avoid "aliasing." Such a filter necessarily has some effect (aka "artifacts") below its cut-off frequency. I think the 60k number quoted would pretty clearly get all of that well out of audible range. Then again, some modest artifacts in the top half-octave that some people can hear doesn't exactly seem like a major issue to me. They're almost certainly more minor than the modest infidelities of tape decks.
 
Alfredo_S said:
High guys,
I felt I should share this phenomenon with you analog lovers out there.
To find out why digital recordings sound so harsh (to me), and tape doesn't, I did a simple test.

The pictures show a 5 khz pure sine recorded digital @ 44.1, 96k and 192k.

Need I say more :eek:

The deviations from a "perfect" sine wave represent frequencies above the sampling frequency. They are inaudible (though if you tried the experiment at a 10k sample rate, they would be audible.) If you had used a 48 kHz tone and sampled at multiples of 48kHz, the distortions would be more symmetrical.
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