Analog Recording People

[tony_carey]

Well said Greg! MP3's in a studio or good hi-fi environment are truly unlistenable to, at least to my ears!

You spend your life trying to better your standard of recording & then MP3 comes along....they almost make mini-disc bearable!!!

[soundmasterg]

Isn't it ironic that the bulk of the public that spends their money for these mp3 downloads has no idea that they're getting a song that is probably almost worse sound quality than a cassette tape!

I actually think mini-disc sounds pretty good. I use a Sony mini-disc to record live shows that I go to and it certainly sounds better than mp3's to my ears.

[tony_carey]

Agreed on the cassette thing Greg.

That was my point...MP3 is a lot worse than mini-disc. But in the big scheme, mini-disc is still a bit short of real quality. Clients are astounded when I correctly tell them that their CD's have been recorded from mini-disk...but it's pretty easy to hear! Mini-disk does sound pretty good...but it depends what you're comparing it too. I think that we are as one here Greg!

[soundmasterg]

Ok, I see what you're saying Tony. I only use the mini-disc for live recordings that I go to, and its fine for that. But you couldn't get me to want to listen to much else recorded to mini-disc when I could get the real cd or a record of the same thing. Its pretty good, but anyone with a good ear can hear the difference. I think good ears are hard to come by in the general population though!

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

Well, I'm certainly on my way to digital now. Playing around with Cubase and Audacity is an eye-opener...I can mess around with my old tape recordings, though recording track by track is a hit and miss affair, trying to sync each one...blahblahblah. Point is, this is some powerful stuff! Only wish I had an assistant to deal with the computer while I think like a musician.

Frank, you're right about wishing to see the record spin. Funny story about that--my wife always used to say "I sound like a broken record" when she was tired of repeating things to our kids. Not long ago, they confessed that they had no idea what she meant by that, having never heard a record skip. They thought it had something to do with the lonely feeling that an old sports record must feel when a new athlete breaks it...

[jeff_ulmer]

"I just feel the initial recording sounds best going to tape, especially for bass heavy signals."

Like anything else, the quality you will get from digital gear depends on the quality of the equipment, and your ability to use it. I have no problem whatsoever getting excellent bass response from my gear, but it certainly isn't consumer quality either.

I have nothing good to say about MP3.

[revolver]

MP3's are fine if they are encoded at a high bit rate, (At least 192 kbps or higher). This is pretty near CD quality, albeit using lossy compression. Most manufacturers (like Apple) base their MP3 player capacity on MP3's encoded at 128kbps.

Unfortunately most rips are obviously encoded at a much lower bit rate which causes those horrible "swooshy" artefacts.

These are the same people that would hold their cassette recorder up to their stereo speaker to record songs off the radio.

Go figure.

p.s. I hate mp3 players

[expomick]

We NEVER use mp3's here at my work. Everything form outside sources has to be sent to us as wave.

[soundmasterg]

Jeff, I've been in some professional studios with very expensive gear, and very good and experienced engineers, where they've recorded an identical signal to both formats at the same time. Almost everyone that doesn't have a tin ear can hear a difference between the two, with tape having a more pleasing sound to it, with more definition and richness, probably due to distortion that our ears find pleasant. Tape also has more hiss, is much more expensinve, and is much harder to work with. Tape gives a natural compression effect that digital doesn't, which is variable depending on how hard you hit it with the signal. Partly because of this, tape has more useable headroom than digital, which is probably a big reason why bass signals take so well to it, since they are usually large signals.

I'm not saying that digital is bad, or that you can't get good sounds from it....far from it. Digital is great, especially since most engineers have learned to use it nowadays verses when it first came out. I just believe from my own experience that recording initially to tape and then bouncing over to digital gives a superior sound than recording straight to digital from the beginning does. There are a lot of people who agree, and others who disagree, which is fine since everyone hears differently. Even with the high sampling and bit rates common nowadays for digital sounds, I don't think you'll find anyone who would say that digital has more of the complete sound than analog does though. MP3 is another thing entirely, and I don't believe it has any place in a professional studio environment since parts of the sound are chopped out in the converting process to make the file smaller, and this compromises sound quality pretty severely in some cases.

[revolver]

Mike, We too request all sessions be at the very least 48 kHz 24 bit bwav, but you'd be shocked at what some clients bring with them.

[johnhall]

The discussion of MP3's is really totally irrelevant in the context of recording. Obviously it's not a serious, useable recording format, but rather an acceptable compromise for the purposes of convenient end-user listening, just as AM radio was and FM radio is.

They DO have some place in a studio however; they're great as a protective device. It's possible to give musicians copies to practice with, even through the 'Net, or to share work samples such as on a website. By being in a degraded format, the market still remains for the studio quality version.

It's just another tool in the kit which can be used improperly or to good effect.

[soundmasterg]

Those are good points John. I've found that the bulk of the public that isn't into playing music themselves, or into recording themselves, doesn't have any idea that mp3's are a greatly inferior sound sample however, so they won't go out and buy the actual cd when then can get their hands on the mp3, sometimes illegally.

[rickenmetal]

I agree, some people don't even mind really bad recordings of MP3s at a very low bit rate, and they can't tell the difference.

As for analog, I think even a cassette with dbx noise reduction sounds really good, a little bit of tape hiss but the quality of the sound is much nicer than digital: nice deep bass and less annoying high end.

Drawbacks:
1. No automated mixing, you have to adjust the levels by hand.
2. You still need to mix it down to something, and there's not much point of mixing down to another cassette. Still, some people work with analog and then transfer the final mix to digital (tracks or final mix).
3. Cassette and open reel devices break.
4. Cassettes could still be bought cheap, but open reel tape is hard to find and expensive.
5. The medium degrades in time, especially if not stored properly.
6. Analog gear used to cost about 7-10 times more (probably not the case anymore).

[soundmasterg]

Analog gear, especially professional quality reel to reel recorders have come down greatly i price in the last couple years, but the expense with these is the maintainence and finding parts when something breaks. I think both analog and digital have their place and there are pros and cons to each. Like anything else each one is a tool and you just need to learn to use the right tool for the job.

Greg

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

I've posted this elsewhere before, but this is a great interview with Pete Townshend discussing his recording process and history. He is entirely familiar with all the latest gear, software, products, what have you...but he still records on tape, then he goes to digital for mixing and effects processing, then puts it back on tape. Great article for the tech-minded:

http://www.eqmag.com/article/tracking-t ... g-07/32549