Analogue versus Digital - Radio 4

[Ariosto]

I thought the programme a huge waste of time and was utter rubbish. It was all pointless, the only useful comment was for about 10 seconds which said that having paper and pen along with any equipment digital or analogue "was useful."

This is the sort of messing around in the rubble to try and fill out time and make a programme which the BBC seems happy to waste money, time and recourses on, which makes me wonder why the government allows the licence fee to increase so frequently. What is happening to quality programmes on the radio?

[Hugh Robjohns]

Yep... Glad it wasn't just me that thought it was rather poor.

[Arpangel]

I thought the programme a huge waste of time and was utter rubbish. It was all pointless, the only useful comment was for about 10 seconds which said that having paper and pen along with any equipment digital or analogue "was useful."

This is the sort of messing around in the rubble to try and fill out time and make a programme which the BBC seems happy to waste money, time and recourses on, which makes me wonder why the government allows the licence fee to increase so frequently. What is happening to quality programmes on the radio?

Yes, and can we do away with programs that pander to to the lowest common denominator, talk down, and patronise the listeners, with presenters that sound as though they're laughing at the same time as talking, like Tony Blackburn used to do.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z2myFLUDB74

[Terrible.dee]

Analog is a distinct flavor, it is entirely different from digital, the differences, to my ears are obvious. Thus, I record using tape and keep all signals analog until the last possible minute (Preferably, when making a digital reproduction of an all-analog mixdown)

If you can't hear the difference, I don't know what to tell you, the difference is important enough to me to be crucial. And to spend thousands of dollars on. Digitally recorded music does not sound good to me.

For the record: I've been signed to major labels twice, a major indie and many other indies. I've produced/engineered/mixed records for artist's releases on Epitaph, Network and other well-known labels. I've co/written with there same artists and MANY MANY more. I ditched the producing/engineering/mixing exactly BECAUSE I do not enjoy the sound or process of digital recording. I compose cues (ordered to spec from the production company) for most reality shows on SPIKE TV, DISCOVERY and others....all the "Real House Wives of.." and "Top Chef: "..." shows are me (And a crew of other guys, they probably use other companies as well, but our cue orders keep coming) This is the only place in my work where I record digitally, it's a speed game, so I have to,

So, decide for yourself whether I may know what I'm talking about or not.

[Ariosto]

Analog is a distinct flavor, it is entirely different from digital, the differences, to my ears are obvious. Thus, I record using tape and keep all signals analog until the last possible minute (Preferably, when making a digital reproduction of an all-analog mixdown)

If you can't hear the difference, I don't know what to tell you, the difference is important enough to me to be crucial. And to spend thousands of dollars on. Digitally recorded music does not sound good to me.

For the record: I've been signed to major labels twice, a major indie and many other indies. I've produced/engineered/mixed records for artist's releases on Epitaph, Network and other well-known labels. I've co/written with there same artists and MANY MANY more. I ditched the producing/engineering/mixing exactly BECAUSE I do not enjoy the sound or process of digital recording. I compose cues (ordered to spec from the production company) for most reality shows on SPIKE TV, DISCOVERY and others....all the "Real House Wives of.." and "Top Chef: "..." shows are me (And a crew of other guys, they probably use other companies as well, but our cue orders keep coming) This is the only place in my work where I record digitally, it's a speed game, so I have to,

So, decide for yourself whether I may know what I'm talking about or not.

You are making a lot of assumptions. I can hear the difference, and I prefer the truth, honesty and the way digital reflects real life. I have loads of old analogue recordings, and although many of the performances are wonderful, the surface noise and sound often leave a lot to be desired. So please don't assume that we can't hear the difference.

Some of us were criticising more the whole ethos of the programme, and the ridiculous way it had been conceived and presented. Originally I expected it to be a much more professionally made piece of work, and was extremely disappointed when I heard the end result.

[DGL.]

I suppose all this talk about the merits of analogue are similar to why people like the preamps in Midas consoles, where they go into distortion slowly or something to that effect.

As for the BBC, the R&D archive is an excellent resource.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Analog is a distinct flavor, it is entirely different from digital, the differences, to my ears are obvious.... So, decide for yourself whether I may know what I'm talking about or not.

I don't think anyone is doubting what you say. You're talking about a personal opinion and personal preferences, and I'm sure you're in the very best place to know what those are!

To my ears, neither analogue nor digital are 'perfect' systems. They both have a variety of technical limitations and implementation flaws at the heart of their designs, and both can be made a lot worse through incorrect usage. They both have their own innate characters or qualities too, some extremely subtle and some rather less so.

Most of the time, I find digital to be the more accurate in terms of reproducing the sound I fed into it, but analogue often sounds more musically flattering. Both attributes have their places in different situations...

[Elephone]

Do anyone really actually want tape and vinyl to become completely obsolete though? Isn't it good that people are still interested in this stuff and perhaps be a little in awe of it?

I think the high-end stuff is probably quite well emulated. The big high-end modular synths seem to be almost indistinguishable from uh-e emulations, at least the presets I've heard. Do you think that Slate VTM or the uh-e Satin has really nailed tape... finally?

I'm not sure, but I don't think the 'crappier' but often more interesting end of analogue gear (the 80's keyboard synths and low-end reel-to-reels with all the physical errors that occur) are as easy to emulate, or perhaps they just find it too perverse to try.

[Elephone]

To my ears, neither analogue nor digital are 'perfect' systems. They both have a variety of technical limitations and implementation flaws at the heart of their designs, and both can be made a lot worse through incorrect usage. They both have their own innate characters or qualities too, some extremely subtle and some rather less so.

Really? I honestly assumed present-day digital recording was really about as faithful as it's ever going to get in terms of the actual capture and storage of a signal. I believed the signal was recorded pretty much as it left the microphone or instrument. Is it D-A converters that still need improvement?

[Elephone]

...when 'film' went 'digital' was the idea that you could do as many takes as you wanted, or just let the tape (as it was then) run.
It really didn't work. And yes, you could fix it in post, but post production became very, very expensive. Time was money - lots of money.
I feel that it also affected performance, badly. Everything became too sloppy.
Having said that, for audio editing would I go back to analogue tape? No way!

Digital recording encourages us to become garbage collectors.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Really? I honestly assumed present-day digital recording was really about as faithful as it's ever going to get in terms of the actual capture and storage of a signal.

Digital doesn't have any of the characteristic distortions and speed variation problems associated with tape and vinyl. None of the rumbles, scrape flutter, wow and flutter, tracing distortion, crosstalk, phase shifts, frequency domain 'woodles', noise modulations, and so on, and so on....

But it's certainly not a perfect medium! Aliasing can still be a problem in some circumstances, as can jitter, and the hard bandwidth limitation causes issues with time domain smearing that doesn't afflict analogue systems. Signal processing can also bring in a raft of anomalies as we've been hearing about in another thread...

So there are still distortions, they're just different and arguably much less bothersome... but perhaps because they are different some people still seem to be sensitive to them.

Is it D-A converters that still need improvement?

Fundamentally, yes. Current converters are several orders of magnitude better than those in the early 80s, and the technology continues to improve... but I don't think anyone would dare to claim absolute perfection quite yet!

[Elephone]

Aliasing can still be a problem in some circumstances, as can jitter, and the hard bandwidth limitation causes issues with time domain smearing that doesn't afflict analogue systems.

There's an interesting video below regarding aliasing, which might also interest Martin since it involves AirWindows. I'd like to have read the actual email from Chris Johnson that was sent to the lad at White Sea Studio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4taroKS_N6Q

I do personally struggle with White Sea Studio videos due to the music itself, but I they do come up on the TV so I tend to watch them occasionally.

[ef37a]

I tried to listen to the programme some days ago on cans but it seemed a bit rambling and I dozed off! ("going for a WALK later dear")

FM better than digital? One of the lowest distortion FM demodulators was the pulse counting detector (if done right) Surely that is "digital" with a sampling rate of about 200kHz?

Tape could be said to be sampled by the bias at 50-120kHz? Vinyl "dithered" by surface noise and crud!

I shall give the programme another shot but from what I remember (" It's Sunday dear") it was not really an "analogue v digital" shootout?

Dave.(with apologise to "I am Sorry I Haven't a Clue")

[Elephone]

I'm not clued up on all this at all. I'd really like to eliminate as many 'things to blame' for things not sounding quite right, so even if this is a subtle problem, I'd like to know more about how to avoid digital artefacts...

If the plugin does not offer oversampling, would I have to use higher sample rates while using the plugin to render a file? If so, how high before they are outside the range of hearing? My audio interface offers 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz.

I don't think I'm going to be storing files at 192kHz, I might switch to 48kHz if it potentially makes an audible difference. I am happy to temporarily use higher sample rates however, especially for the plugins that don't offer oversampling, just to render them.

Thanks

[Hugh Robjohns]

One of the lowest distortion FM demodulators was the pulse counting detector (if done right) Surely that is "digital" with a sampling rate of about 200kHz?

Nope. It's an analogue sampling system. It only becomes digital if the amplitude for each sample is stored or processed as a numeric code... which it's not in a pulse-count detector.

H

[ef37a]

One of the lowest distortion FM demodulators was the pulse counting detector (if done right) Surely that is "digital" with a sampling rate of about 200kHz?

Nope. It's an analogue sampling system. It only becomes digital if the amplitude for each sample is stored or processed as a numeric code... which it's not in a pulse-count detector.

H

Ok, understood.
Elephone: Hugh has mentioned a few times that there are circumstances where 44.1kHz could give problems but I think these are rare and mainly occur with live recording?
I also understand that running at 96kHz removes most if not all of these issues but is not really needed for most of us most of the time?

Dave.

[Elephone]

Ok, understood.
Elephone: Hugh has mentioned a few times that there are circumstances where 44.1kHz could give problems but I think these are rare and mainly occur with live recording?
I also understand that running at 96kHz removes most if not all of these issues but is not really needed for most of us most of the time?

Dave.

Thanks. The video I linked to specified a problem with analogue simulation plugins. I presume they add harmonics or reinforce them via saturation and these cannot be managed when they spill over the 44.1kHz threshold without spilling back into the audible frequency range from 22.05kHz unless oversampling is used.

The video suggests this problem doesn't occur with his real analogue mixing desk, but only because it passes through the audio interface and gets attenuated as it passes through the filter at the A-D converters. It is suggested that the problem lies with plugins that don't offer oversampling.

I read that a lot of plugins, especially analogue emulations don't respond well when fed cranked up levels, and people assume you need crank everything up, that this is why analogue emulations might not produce as good results as people want or expect.

[Hugh Robjohns]

We discussed this issue in another thread:

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.phpf=22&t=66679&hilit=Robjohns%20+oversampling#p608652

Where complex non-linear processing is involved there will be a lot of strong harmonics, and working at a higher sample rate makes the calculations easier, hence the oversampling, while the anti-alias filtering used when down sampling cleans the spectrum up properly.

H

[N i g e l]

Just caught up with this, listening to the podcast on my portable audio player.

I like digital. For me, digital is democratising, more convenient, less maintenance and gives me quality and functionality at a nice price.

The mathematics of sampling and reconstruction from the 1930’s is spot on but the engineering of circuits and techniques to implement the mathematics is still evolving, as the limiting factors of the circuit techniques, psycho accoustic effects and the things they didn’t think of are all understood and corrected to give better audio quality for less money.

The original “CD quality” must be getting on for 40 years old now ?

I was recently surprised to hear of a design improvement to 1-bit DACs to reduce audible artifacts that manifested below the noise floor at over 100kHz !

But Digital v Analogue is much bigger than different sets of noise and distortion figures. There are consequences, social and musical !

Digital has put people out of work, changed work flows, closed factories, closed studios, allowed archival copying of disintegrating master tapes from the 1950’s, allowed copying of chart music from last week, impacted profit margins ...........

I have been greatly inspired by the music of the BBC Radiophonic workshop and their creative use of tape and tape recorders.

A composition that took them a week to record, slice and edit, I could probably now recreate in a morning using my sampling & multitrack software with non linear editing.

As a home musician that’s all very nice for me but for professionals, it means that a process which may have involved 10 tea breaks, 5 lunches and 4 good nights of sleep is now reduced to having only has a single break (perhaps you could skip tea break & work straight thru to lunchtime to guarantee the deadline...? )

“Sometimes its the spaces between the notes that make the music”

[Elephone]

We discussed this issue in another thread:

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.phpf=22&t=66679&hilit=Robjohns%20+oversampling#p608652

H

Thanks. That link didn't work but I corrected it in case anyone wanted it:

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... 9&start=40

[Arpangel]

The original “CD quality” must be getting on for 40 years old now ?

Yes, and I've been happy with it from day one, and I always record in 44/16. It's always fine for what I do. I've tried higher bit rates, but I cant hear any difference.

[Drew Stephenson]

Well, 16bit gives enough dynamic range for any practical purposes so unless something goes wrong you shouldn't hear any difference.
Recording at 24bit just gives loads more dynamic range so you can drop your levels and give yourself loads of headroom when recording.

[ef37a]

Well, 16bit gives enough dynamic range for any practical purposes so unless something goes wrong you shouldn't hear any difference.
Recording at 24bit just gives loads more dynamic range so you can drop your levels and give yourself loads of headroom when recording.

I always say "twenty four bits gives you more LEGroom"!

Dave.

[N i g e l]

16 bit is ok for CD playback as the audio will have been optimised to fit.
For recording on the PC, I find it easier to set the levels with 24 bits, as Blinddrew says, more headroom to avoid clipping.

Is a CD track today the same as it would have been in the 80’s or can they now do additional processing purely to the digital data (eg dithering or better dithering) to make it sound better on the playback machine ?

I use 96kHz to record on the PC ostensibly because a have a synth and some VSTs that run at 96k but mainly because I have that option on my sound card so I might as well use it. With modern hard disk sizes the extra data isn’t a burden to me. Theres a good SOS article on 96k and alising somewhere.

I also have a “studio in a box” hard disk recorder for PC-free jamming / practice (can be very good value on Ebay these days). Its 44.1k/16 bit and does a very good job.

I think It is worthwhile recording at the best quality you can as you never know what innovations and quality improvements future gear will have that show up flaws in recordings made today.

[The Elf]

The extra head/leg-room of 24-bit is very useful and the cost is minimal by modern standards. I can't see much value in tracking at 16-bit.