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Author Topic: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?  (Read 62374 times)

bushwick

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #15 on: December 10, 2005, 07:30:28 PM »


Mr. Nicklaus, the reason for the transfer to digital is cost. The client cannot afford to do his whole record on tape so we used one reel of GP9, recorded, dumped, one pass to erase tape and then on to the next tune.



Cool.

j
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Johnny B

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #16 on: December 10, 2005, 07:38:09 PM »

Personally, I blame the design engineers at the chip houses for all the problems people find with digital. From my perspective, the A-to-D and D-to-A chips are still too slow, too weak, and far too wimpy.

In fact, the closer you look at the entire digital process the more errors and anomalies you find. They can't even get the math right...and then you have latency, truncation, dither, time smear, phasing and all sorts of nasty artifacts in the digital process.

And let's not forget for one minute that these same digital chip design engineers made the wild claim that "44.1kHz is all you'll ever need." They also said that "The 16-bit CD format is all you'll ever need."

And then, after they damn well knew that the 16-bit CD format was sorely lacking and wholly defective, they went right ahead and got behind MPfreakin3's...And then, to add insult to injury, they made even more false claims to hype MPfreakin3's...

Talk about big lies....

Bush needed to look no further than what these chip designers have done to sound quality...Had Bush investigated the liars inside the digital chip houses he would have found out all the weapons of mass destruction ended up in digital sound.

And many of these weapons of mass destruction are called "digital chip design engineers."





 
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CCC

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #17 on: December 10, 2005, 08:12:58 PM »

Johnny B wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 19:38

Personally, I blame the design engineers at the chip houses for all the problems people find with digital. From my perspective, the A-to-D and D-to-A chips are still too slow, too weak, and far too wimpy.

In fact, the closer you look at the entire digital process the more errors and anomalies you find. They can't even get the math right...and then you have latency, truncation, dither, time smear, phasing and all sorts of nasty artifacts in the digital process.

And let's not forget for one minute that these same digital chip design engineers made the wild claim that "4XkHz is all you'll ever need." They also said that "The 16-bit CD format is all you'll ever need."

And then, after they damn well knew that the 16-bit CD format was sorely lacking and wholly defective, they went right ahead and got behind MPfreakin3's...And then, to add insult to injury, they made even more false claims to hype MPfreakin3's...

Talk about big lies....

Bush needed to look no further than what these chip designers have done to sound quality...Had Bush investigated the liars inside the digital chip houses he would have found out all the weapons of mass destruction ended up in digital sound.

And many of these weapons of mass destruction are called "digital chip design engineers."
 


I think we are all well aware of your feelings about digital audio from your many posts on Dan Lavry's forum. You do remember the debacle(s) you created on that forum that led to someone posting a poll in which 85% of readers said that you should be prohibited from further posting. Are you trying to be the PSW version of 'whack-a-mole' by popping up periodically in different places so that people can take swipes at you? At least the thorbing helmet person is an amusing troll.

Why not do something novel and offer some kind of evidence to support your otherwise random conjecture? Can you name some of the musicians with whom you have liaised that prefer analog, and can you enlighten us as to what they said? Perhaps you'd like to substantiate your perspective by relating some of your personal experience with shooting out different analog and digital decks or DAWs. I for one would take you a lot more seriously if you could post something like "hey guys, I recorded a band yesterday on 2 inch and we ran a ProTewls too, then we locked up up and A/B'd them and the musicians all said abc, which leads me to think xyz. To what do you guys attribute the subjective comments of these musicians?" See, now that would be at least a START at making a worthwhile inquiry, notwithstanding the fact that the analog/digital thing is a dead horse.

Oh yea, before I go - I prefer analog.
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rnicklaus

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #18 on: December 10, 2005, 08:55:24 PM »

bushwick wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 16:30


Mr. Nicklaus, the reason for the transfer to digital is cost. The client cannot afford to do his whole record on tape so we used one reel of GP9, recorded, dumped, one pass to erase tape and then on to the next tune.



Cool.

j


Understood.

How much time does that take between each song?
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Johnny B

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #19 on: December 10, 2005, 09:00:55 PM »

John Sorensen wrote on Sun, 11 December 2005 01:12


Oh yea, before I go - I prefer analog.


Yeah, almost everybody feels the same way you do about preferring the sound of analogue.

To my small mind, that suggests that the digital chip design engineers have a lot more work to do...

In the meantime, people can always go to a well-equipped analogue studio for the real deal...And, they can do so for reasonable prices...If you do not believe me,  just ask our host.

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"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
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rnicklaus

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Re: Proof is in the pudding ...
« Reply #20 on: December 10, 2005, 09:01:07 PM »

vernier wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 15:44

Listen to Nat Cole's "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire".


I believe that's called "The Christmas Song"
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bblackwood

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #21 on: December 10, 2005, 09:10:34 PM »

Johnny B wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 20:00

John Sorensen wrote on Sun, 11 December 2005 01:12


Oh yea, before I go - I prefer analog.


Yeah, almost everybody feels the same way you do about preferring the sound of analogue.

You have some proof of this statement?

Quote:

To my small mind,

We agree on something!

Quote:

that suggests that the digital chip design engineers have a lot more work to do...

A baseless assumption without some proof to your statement above.

I too prefer analog most every time. But the question is not whether or not the digital chips work correctly but even more basic - do I prefer analog because I logged far more time working with/listening to it or because it's better?

Why is it the most critical recordists in the world - those in classical recording - choose digital virtually 100% of them time?

And why did I allow myself to get sucked into another pointless JohnnyB thread?
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Brad Blackwood
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CCC

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #22 on: December 10, 2005, 09:28:08 PM »

Johnny B wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 21:00

John Sorensen wrote on Sun, 11 December 2005 01:12


Oh yea, before I go - I prefer analog.


Yeah, almost everybody feels the same way you do about preferring the sound of analogue.



I'm not sure why you bolded my statement - but kudos on sidestepping every other pointed barb I tossed at you.

Johnny B wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 21:00


To my small mind, that suggests that the digital chip design engineers have a lot more work to do...



The formats are different. They are not the same thing. They are different. Do you know the actual attributes of tape? Do you know why people like it?

As far as whether or not digital audio hardware and software developers have more work to do - no one said they don't....least of all the hardware and software developers I've met. So what exactly does your comment add to the debate? Nothing is perfect, and just about anything in the world that has relevance to humankind that is worth pursuing is being pursued. Cancer isn't cured, there's world hunger, climate change, and some convertors suck. The world knows. Some of the world cares, some of the world contributes. What's the point of saying 'chip designers have more work to do'? What do you think, the engineers at Meridian are going to show up at work on Monday and sit on their hands to spite Jonny B?

Johnny B wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 21:00


In the meantime, people can always go to a well-equipped analogue studio for the real deal...And, they can do so for reasonable prices...If you do not believe me,  just ask our host.



Whoa, no kiddin, analog is affordable and good? Dude, you gotta be kiddin me. Naw, I need a confirmation on this.

Seriously, do you like work in the Quantegy factory or something?
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Ronny

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #23 on: December 10, 2005, 10:22:13 PM »




What a way to start a new forum. An annie/digi discussion with a multi-approach scientist. It's like christening the Titantic with an iceberg.
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chrisj

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #24 on: December 10, 2005, 11:10:31 PM »

bblackwood wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 21:10


Why is it the most critical recordists in the world - those in classical recording - choose digital virtually 100% of them time?


Because when they're audiophiles they're much less likely to be processing the heck out of the signal and more likely to leave it alone?

Because when they are processing the heck out of the signal they need to do insanely heavy editing to cover for the weaknesses of current-day orchestras?

Because dynamic range is always their nemesis and they really use and need the exaggerated dynamic performance of digital, especially 24 bit?

Makes perfect sense to me...

maxim

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #25 on: December 11, 2005, 12:22:01 AM »

gas v electric?

steam v nuclear?

of course we have to have a dva stoush

i think it's unarguable that digital is the more precise medium, which allows more level to noise and better definition

interestingly, the first thing to leave the analog domain was the vocal, and the last, the drums, which are hanging on still

clearly, it's not why digital sux, but what does tape add

chris has pointed out a few things, but, imo, it's compression that the tapeheads seek

if you're not running in the red, tube amps and solidstate aren't that much different, but push it to 11, and you'll hear the difference

it's the distortion that, somehow, perhaps due to the order of dominant harmonics, can sound anything from sweet to monstrous according to the source

so when i record, i saturate the analog end to taste, but leave the digital levels well away from the peaks

i have an electric stove top, but also use a gasring for my wok (and a microwave to heat up the coffee)

and i think steam trains are the pinnacle of modern technology
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vernier

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #26 on: December 11, 2005, 01:09:17 AM »

In time, I believe classical people will come back to analog.
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Tidewater

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #27 on: December 11, 2005, 02:15:21 AM »

I was just going to say something along those same lines.

I dunno what will go back to anything, analog is important only to the ears of the people who have heard it.. crunch..


M
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J.J. Blair

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #28 on: December 11, 2005, 02:46:40 AM »

I had always talked about how analog seems to have a 3 dimensional quality that digital seems to be lacking.  It has been explained to me that this might be a result of "pre-ringing" in the filters of the AD converters.  I'm not a very technical guy, so I don't really have much to comment on in that way, other than what I know I hear.  

I can make great recordings on both, but anything that requires an explosive dynamic, whether it be rock, or some hard boppin' jazz, I am always happier with the sound I hear back when going to 2" than using a DAW.  I haven't A/B'd with RADAR though,  so I can't tell you about that digital format.  I am assuming that even the Nyquist converters have the pre-ringing issue?  I do agree with what somebody else said though, I would rather record through a great digital rig than a mediocre analog deck.  

On another note, I like to use the limitations of analog to get a drum sound I like.  For instance, I like getting tape compression  on kick and snare.  It's a specific sound that a box just can't give me.  I also like the non-linear response of tape, like the low end head bump I get at 15ips.  
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kraster

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Re: How Come Many Musicians Prefer The Sound Of Analogue?
« Reply #29 on: December 11, 2005, 04:25:48 AM »

Johnny B wrote on Sun, 11 December 2005 02:00



Yeah, almost everybody feels the same way you do about preferring the sound of analogue.




I'll bet you 3 Sanken Mics that this isn't nearly as much as you assume.


They claim 100khz....


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