Why analogue and not digital?

  • Thread starter Thread starter cjacek
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i think smile should have been finished & released earlier (even if mr wilson went completely nuts), brian wilson said he didn't think people would have been ready or able to digest it and understand it fully back then. but now it has been finished it's all together less impressive as an album. Mabye it's legend had overtaken it? Anyway would have loved to have seen the live show must have been amazing!! Love the album but, cant see past pet sounds, mabye i delve too deep into the melancoly stuff too often?
 
Fabulous!

14 pages of this thread before the term "Luddite" was trotted out! That must be a record!

Hey, this has gotten quite boring, though some brilliant points have been made here and there.

What about revisiting the old argument that there's really no "true" analog sound except 2" tape! That's a good one!:eek:;) Where's Blu-Ballz when you need him?:eek::eek:;)
 
As another nonsequiter, I recall,...

Jeff Lynne released his 3 disc ELO retrospective once he found Pro Tools to "perfect" his true musical vision of these songs thru elaborate editing.

Gosh, I'm sold!:eek:;)
 

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"Consider yourself fortunate that whatever reunions you attend will not be punctuated by A-Ha, and I mean that sincerely!

I understand your point and I agree, but it's just the acceleration of a trend that started long before digital recording came into vogue. The PSW thread I linked blamed the multitrack; it's not an inherently evil technology but in that sense it was the beginning of the end. Sure, there was lots of bubblegum crap pop music in the early 1960s, but it was bubblegum crap done in a live take. And these days I listen to disco and thing, hey actual musicians performed that, and the singing is naturally in tune! But in the day, it was the root of all evil. People burned vinyl, yes, precious vinyl, in anger!

Others have blamed synthesizers, but the early Moog stuff (Walter/Wendy, etc.) was good; it didn't start sucking bad until about ten years after that. And I think at that point it didn't matter if it was an analog or digital synth, the usage of both was pretty bad for a number of years there.

The main difference I see in digital vs. analog so far as quality of talent is that if Milli Vanilli came along these days, they'd be singing on the CD, (no) thanks to Autotune. So with that in mind, I agree 100%.

But what has gutted the industry is digital distribution, not production. Given that mp3s suck bad, people still want them, and there is nothing to do about it, even for the most confirmed Luddite. And I think we all need a bit of Ned Ludd in our lives."

I just think that people embrace a new technology too readily with oustretched arms. I think a more sensable approach would be to really ask, is this going to add or subtract in the long run then make a decision. It's impossible to understand fully what a technology is going to do once released, but considering who releases it may lay down an important clue!! It just seems people want success no matter what, they have no interest in bettering themselves. If they can sound amazing singing along with autotune on full burn, then they'll bung it on. It probably would never occur to them that the benefits incurred from practicing until they could hit every note perfectly without such tools are far greater.
 
_brian_ said:
And hey pianodano, well smart ass i was talking about getting people into the studio to learn.
:D
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Either you're really dumb as hell or you don't have enough brains to know when someone just agreed with you. Bug out
 
What about revisiting the old argument that there's really no "true" analog sound except 2" tape! That's a good one! Where's Blu-Ballz when you need him?
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I'm sorry I missed that :D I think I need to go looking for "meat" though, and I mean that in a sincere way. Anybody who thinks I am massively biased may be in for a surprise . . . as soon as I repair my Porta!


_brian_ said:
i think smile should have been finished & released earlier (even if mr wilson went completely nuts), brian wilson said he didn't think people would have been ready or able to digest it and understand it fully back then. but now it has been finished it's all together less impressive as an album. Mabye it's legend had overtaken it? Anyway would have loved to have seen the live show must have been amazing!! Love the album but, cant see past pet sounds, mabye i delve too deep into the melancoly stuff too often?
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Well, hmmm. Here's the problem. I can understand the love for Pet Sounds. Most of the original Smile made it out in one form or another, but some is inferior material ("Heroes and Villains"; the Surf's Up release of, well, "Surf's Up") or not finished ("Cool Water" on Sunflower, although "Cool Water" is a cool track in its own right). And a lot of the transitions are new. Plus, Wilson couldn't have restored Tony Asher's lyrics to "Good Vibrations" while still recording with Mike Love. There are production touches which wouldn't have been "allowed" in the '60s, as strange as that sounds; the extended fade on "Good Vibrations" is a good example.

But then, the new CD only has one Wilson on it . . . it's not a perfect world.

The concert was unreal. I saw it two weeks after the CD release, but I hadn't bought the CD yet, so much of it was totally new to me. Wow.

As for production, Mark Linett posts on GS, he seems to use whatever he wants cost-wise, and certainly he's quite experienced with tape as he remastered the back catalog, so who am I to tell him what to use?

Another link to a Linett interview:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_producerengineer_mark_linett/

“But when 8-track and then 16- and 24-track came along, people realized, ‘Hey, we can isolate and replace.’ Then people went in booths, the studio got dead, the headphones came out, the playing changed. Up to that point, even rock records were largely captured performances with overdubs, perhaps, but it was still about musicians playing in the studio and getting a sound and a vibe. The studios got deader because you didn't want that ‘good’ bleed anymore. Then, of course, people made different kinds of records. They're valid, good records, but it's a different aesthetic, in a way. There were some great records made in those kinds of rooms. But the music changed to fit the technology. Now, more recently, I think the pendulum has swung back the other way.”
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I agree except for the pendulum; it's swinging back on certain types of releases. Most people still want the 100 track, 1,000 plug mix hooked straight up to their veins . . .
 
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cjacek said:
Chris, your turn to start another 'momentous', in this case, 3000th thread!:eek::D;)

----
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ROFLMAO...................well there's a challenge :eek:. I don't know that I could "top" this current thread. I'll think about while I continue getting pissed off with working on the wife's Suzuki Vitara (what I think you guys call a GeoTracker).......getting to the front crank seal is a friggin' nightmare, after this I'm actually looking forward to opening up my ATR-60 again, I think it's actually easier to deal with :D

Chris :cool:
 
wado1942 said:
No, not all sounds are a sum of sine waves. Have you tried creating a square wave or even a triangle wave using sine waves? You can create a similar sound using sine waves but the outcome is not the same. It's just another outdated scientific theory that needs to be updated along with many others including tacheons and hydogen economy.
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I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
 
wado1942 said:
But I must state that no recording format is perfect. Analogue is not perfect and no matter how much digitalphiles whine about Nyquist or dither, digital isn't perfect either. I prefer analogue, I think it sounds better as do almost everybody who hears it.
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I agree.

w said:
I'm just so sick of people making false claims that digital is perfect. It's not and never will be just like analogue is not and never will be. Anybody who makes such claims is an idiot, I don't care where they went to school.
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I agree.
 
And these were recorded for the most part in one take, both the guitarist and vocalist in the same room at the same time. I wanted to capture the playing in the living room vibe. I could have done this on four track R2R if I had one!
 
Hmmmm. Memo's to self. Open new box of tape and smell. Look through box of HD's in the trash and find HD with corrupted file and remember feeling in stomach. Patch in 42b Check mail for new capacitors for fried motherboard. Feel faders on 3700. Re install XP etc. Repatch on analog patchbay. List TM-1000 on ebay. Dig out stored Reels of really fun session from 5 years ago and synch up MSR's. Re-install Soundforge. Patch analog processors. Re install EVERYTHING. oops....outdated. Buy bigger HD. Listen to mono 40's recording of Ravens. Listen to World Cafe. Listen to 50's "All around the world"...Listen to World Cafe.....wonder what happened. Roll eyes. Go back to shop and finsish superchunk covers....wonder what the hell I'm doing. Turn on cassette and listen to 40's boggie woggie while finishing woodcraft boxes. Smile. Read this thread. Smile
fitZ:)
 
apl said:
OK, here's the square wave as a sum of a sine wave and its odd integer harmonics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave
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Incorrect.
This is NOT the square wave as a sum of a sine wave. Nor is it a description of one.
This is a link to the webpage where one can find an idea about how one can start describing a square wave as a sum of a sine waves and keep doing it through the end of days if he/she chooses to keep on doing so.
One with a little brain may start doing so and then stop sometime before the end of days and say to him/herself: "No way. It can't be done. Forget about it, I have better things to do, spending the rest of my days."
One with a bit more brains can take amoment, think a bit about it and say to him/herself: "Hey, this is a cool idea. Nice thinking, mr. mathematician, but since it can't be done, I would not waste my time trying, and I have better things to do."

Apl, have it ever occur to you that to describe simething it takes two: starting your description and finishing it? :)
Seriously, man, I respect your devotion to "math and physics" and all that, but you gotta try to stretch a bit wider than that, that is if you really care about "the truth".
Here's an exercise for you. (It's a fun one.!)
Describe an endless road journey from here to the end of the road.
You can start right now, because sooner - better :D
In order to make it a bit more fun, you can do it while listening to the music analog or digital or better yet something like a digital version of analog one :p, here's a nice tune for the event with appropriate title (and you can watch something cool as well ;) ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OU7Hka_--U
 
math is math

apl said:
OK, here's the square wave as a sum of a sine wave and its odd integer harmonics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave
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I'm sorry, That is a clipped sine wave that approximates a square wave. I notice that it does not have zero rise time and that it has ringing at the clipping points.

If you are going to use an infinite series of sine waves to prove your point, I am going to use a zero rise time to prove mine.

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for those of you who think I am being harsh with APL I ask you (and APL who's cave postings and politics I generally agree with) to reconsider.

This difference in view is the core of the analog vs digital debate in a nutshell.

On one side we have those who say that by taking enough samples of the sound we can recreate it. And or the other are those who say that sound is a continuious process and that sampling loses some of the nuances.

Both sides have their strong points. Digital recording is very good at this point in time. And yet we still have a population of listeners that choose analog over digital.

Some of us must live in the Matrix and cannot tell the difference between a mathematical expression that describes an object and the object its self.
 
Math

Quote:
Originally Posted by wado1942 View Post
No, not all sounds are a sum of sine waves. Have you tried creating a square wave or even a triangle wave using sine waves? You can create a similar sound using sine waves but the outcome is not the same. It's just another outdated scientific theory that needs to be updated along with many others including tacheons and hydogen economy.

QUOTE=apl;2932351]I'm sorry, but you're wrong.[/QUOTE]

He is not wrong....

Again fourier theorized that for any given (repeating without change non discontinious) waveform we could describe it with a possibly infinite series of sine waves. He did not say that that original waveform is that sum.

Let's take the case of a 4' Diapason who's waveform looks like a sine wave fed through a leaky half wave diode. An FFT shows that it is the sum of an infinite sum of fundemential and odd harmonics.

OK for sake of argument I'll grant you an infinite series of harmonics.

But and this is the big but, that only describes one cycle of the pipe. It does not describe the "sound" (and remember that waldo said sounds) of that diapason. When that pipe speaks it may start with some air-sounds then there may be (in a diapason) a little chiff and then the pipe may speak at the fundemental. Every little change in preassure in the wind chest will change the harmonic content, ditto as other pipes speak, the temp of the air will change the shape of the pipe and thus again the sound of the pipe will change.

Now you may say that these are trivial details that are not important but then again you may know the differences between an electronic organ and a pipe organ. (or if you have any experience with pipe organs between an electro-pnumatic and tracker action organ)

What can you do APL? Perhaps you could admit that the theoritical expression that attempts to describe a real-worls sound it not the sound - it is only an approximation.

Regards
 
mshilarious said:
Has anyone ever denied this? apl and I have said repeatedly the implementation of digital audio is limited both to its theoretical constraints of bandwidth and dynamic range as well as the real-world performance of its circuits. We have admitted that REPEATEDLY.

Truth is, no electronic circuit can faithfully reproduce a square wave.
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MSH, welcome to Analog Only. Peace. I really cannot speak for anyone else but I want to welcome you as someone who I hope will hang around and because I think that you have a lot to offer.

We are in general users of digital as well as analog. We are pro analog for a number of reasons. For myself I like to repair decks as well as the sounds I get from them. We have pipe organs in common it appears. I took almost 2 years off back when I was a burnt out real time assembly software engineer to apprentice with an old-world organ tech. I spent a lot of time tuning and repairing pipe organs.

One of my goals is to get back into recording organ music but work and other commitments keep getting in the way. Just gotta do it....

Regards, Ehtan
 
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