compasspnt wrote on Wed, 09 February 2005 05:16 |
OK, points taken.
Then if analogue indeed does retain more information than digital, is there any advantage to mixing (or any recording) first to analogue tape, then transferring through high-Q converters into digital, or will the information/quality gained by the analogue just "go away" on transfer, just as if it had never been? In other words, is analogue a desirable, non-losable "effect" that can be utilised?
I maintain that it is.
TM
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when a signal is recorded in digital, it can come out sounding 'dryer' than it came in.
a sound which is very close to the source is like a fine line drawn on paper, so to speak, digital can't seem to reproduce the fine line, similar to what happens on an lcd screen.
good analog tape will, by nature of it's distortion, reproduce transients and complex waveforms, in a similar way that some high quality film will add grain to an image and create an effect of depth etc.
the distortion and added harmonics created by tape tend to mask the defective reproduction of digital of the 'fine' information that is present in waveforms which have a lot of irregular high frequency information.
Tape also creates a distortion which is harmonically related to the input signal which I believe in a way tends to increase intelligibility.
this is also true of old un-maintained tube equipment: the old tubes and caps will smooth over detail to a point that the resolution and slew rate are reduced etc.
When the fine detail passes through digital the sound can actually be off in a way that it sounds dull, no matter how much high freq. eq, and if you do eq a digitized waveform the sound of the high end is never going to be as smooth or detailed on those frequencies as it was before it went in.
Apparent brightness or liveliness is a result of the quality of the high frequency content as well as quantity.
the cleaner a signal goes in the easier it is to hear the limitations of the reproducer.
then there is the issue of using tape as a saturator by pushing it, or by over/under biasing etc. to create distortion to a point where it becomes a primary part of the sound and adds significant character, but that is a different story I guess..
digital really pushed the standards of the industry toward lower noise and 'broadband' sound, also due to the bottom end capability of CD, but analog is a simpler method and simplicity is important with music.