Primarily, large consoles are still around for one reason:
Professional analog still sounds better than anything digital. End of story.
Analog is a quite mature technology. The concepts are well known, well understood, and there are still a whole lot of highly experienced designers around who know how to manipulate an analog signal.
Professional analog still sounds better.
Digital is a technology which is still in its infancy (well, maybe it's adolescence). The designers have no where near the experience, expertise, or skill. The technology is not even close to being as good as analog, yet. It may get there (in fact, it almost certainly will), but it hasn't yet. Additionally, many of the most experienced and skill engineers in the world don't have the time or the inclination to deal with the VERY steep learning curve of the digital world.
Why would you use something which is not nearly as good and you don't know how to use when you are already an expert at another, better method.
Professional analog still sounds better.
And even those who preach the Digital God STILL don't say, "I use Pro Tools (or whatever) because it sounds better." They say, "I use it because it sounds fine, and is far more cost effective."
And they are right. Digital sounds fine, and the start up costs, not to mention the session costs, are FAR lower than an analog studio. I mean, you can get a hard drive which is big enough for an entire album for the same cost as a single real of 2" tape, which only holds at most two or three songs (if you only have one take of each song, and you run at 15 ips, which has a lower S/N ratio, though a lot of engineers prefer the bass at 15 ips).
But professional analog still sounds better.
And as Mister M. Zerrman says, frequently, on his Zen forum, "Digital summing just sounds wrong."
Most people don't have mixxie's ears (I know I don't), and would never hear what he is talking about. I know that I have heard it in non-blind tests, and not just that I believe I could hear, but that I could easily hear. But I still seriously doubt I could tell the difference in a blind test. But some one like Mixerman can. His ears are better than mine, and the fact of the matter is, he gets paid for his ears, not his ability to program a computer.
And as far as HE is concerned, analog still sounds better, and he gets paid for his opinions on this subject.
And I can easily tell you why I much prefer a console to a control surface:
- I have yet to find a piece of software or a control surface which sounds as good as an analog console.
- I have yet to find a piece of software or a control surface which had as intuitive and flexible of a routing scheme as a large format console (mostly I am talking SSL here, as my experience with Neve's or anything like that is a bit limited).
- Control surfaces, and particularly software without a control surface, take a lot longer for me to mix on, as it takes a lot more time and thought processes to find the controls I need than on a console. The ergonomics of a real console can't be beat, as far as I am concerned. If I am on an SSL, and I need a compressor, I turn it on and start turning knobs. If I want the same thing in Cubase or Pro Tools, I first have to open up a plug-in, put it into the signal chain, turn it on, assign the controls to the control surface, and THEN I can start turning knobs. It takes me a lot longer in a software program. I want a dedicated knob for every single function, for every single channel, and the fact is that there is not a control surface out there yet which has it.
- Analog consoles still sound better.
- High end analog has a better signal to noise ratio than most digital.
- With an analog console, I don't have to go through a DAC and back through another ADC just to use an outboard processor. If I want to use a GML 8200 (which I frequently do, when it is available), all I have to do is plug in a couple of cords to a patch bay. In a software program, I have to assign the insert to an output, assign that output to a DAC, and THEN patch, and then assign the inserts return to an input, and assign the input to an ADC.
- Analog still sounds better
But really, for the time being, analog still sounds better, and if you are familiar with a large format console, is WAY faster to use.
And professional analog still sounds better. That trumps all the rest.
P.S. I am talking about PROFESIONAL analog here. If you have never heard 2" 16 track, or 2" 24 at 30 IPS, you have never really heard what analog sounds like. The great thing about professional analog is NOT the distortion, but the complete lack of high end harmonic distortion that digital just hasn't come close to yet.
P.P.S. By the way, the biggest problems with digital, that I hear, are nothing to do with the math or the actual digital domain. It is to do with the process of turning an analog signal into a digital, or a digital signal into an analog. The things you have to do to go between the two formats involve some really abusive analog filters which you would NEVER use if you didn't need to get into the digital domain. In general, the more complex a piece of electronics, the more damaging they are to the signal. The anti-aliasing filter alone pretty much can not, by its very nature, avoid causing all kinds of phase incoherencies in those very delicate high end frequencies, causing all kinds of distortion and comb filtering. I mean, for a 48k sample rate, you need to completely eliminate everything above 24k, and you can’t touch anything below 20k. Now, if we assume that a 60 dB cut is sufficient, then that is a low-pass filter of -300 dB per octave. Ouch. That is a phase nightmare if ever there was one.
That high frequency distortion is what makes people think of digital as being "harsh". And then on the DAC side, you have to filter out the carrier frequency, which, while not as bad as the anti-aliasing filter, is still, what, about a -60 dB per octave filter. Think about what happens to a signal when you filter it by -24 dB per octave, and then ask yourself, how can the ADC and DAC NOT cause sonic degradation.
Woops, getting a little windy here.
Now I am going to be a bit of an asshole.
Just because you know how to use what ever DAW you use, please don't assume you understand how the world of professional audio works, OK?
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi