I'm up for a Laugh...Music...Digital vs. Analog?????

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Well, honestly, what you've stated is an opinion. It is not a fact from a scientific or engineering perspective, contrary to your assertions, but I guess we'll just agree to disagree on this front.

That's the root of our disagreement. We both come from different backgrounds having to do with digital technology. You're talking specs, and I'm talking practical application.

That digital made it's way into the music/audio world isn't because of quality, but rather because of $$$$. That's it. Digital is cheaper, and it is. And, when we get into reproduction, it's more reliable...because, well, it's digital (errors don't matter as much). It's binary.

On this statement, we have at least some level of agreement. I disagree that digital made its way into music because it was cheap. It made its way in because someone saw the potential. Nevertheless, the music industry has taken the potential of high-end digital reproduction down instead of up. Digital is capable of so much more than what is commonly sold to the masses on a CD or the dreadful compressed formats such as mp3, alc, flac, and even wav. And yes, it is exactly because of dollars and cheap mass reproduction. Producing high end digital audio, and the equipment needed to listen to that audio are expensive. Few of us are going to run out and buy a $2000 DAC. Just like few people bought a Pioneer RT909 or a Teac X2000R back in the day.

ETA: ALC should have been AAC(brainfart), and yes, there is such a thing as compressed WAV, though it is not typical.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: mysterioustranger

It's getting better, no doubt!

BUT, I think this is due in large to people finally beginning to understand the differences, and the resultant resurgence in analog technology in the music sector.

Several companies are even now talking about re-introducing reel to reel tape decks! That would be awesome! And you can even find tapes now!!

ETA - BTW....Mesa Boogie!

They already are. Ballfinger, Metaxas, and I think Phase among others are producing open reel decks.

originally posted by: Klassified

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: mysterioustranger

It's getting better, no doubt!

BUT, I think this is due in large to people finally beginning to understand the differences, and the resultant resurgence in analog technology in the music sector.

Several companies are even now talking about re-introducing reel to reel tape decks! That would be awesome! And you can even find tapes now!!

ETA - BTW....Mesa Boogie!

They already are. Ballfinger, Metaxas, and I think Phase among others are producing open reel decks.

Oh god. Gear Acquisition Syndrome, here I come. Oh who am I kidding? I've been there since day 1. Really wish you wouldn't've lifted the rock I've been living under.

a reply to: Klassified

That's the root of our disagreement. We both come from different backgrounds having to do with digital technology. You're talking specs, and I'm talking practical application.

Hence the "good enough" mantra. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

...the dreadful compressed formats such as mp3, alc, flac,...

Thank you! We are in full agreement on this front for sure!

originally posted by: DictionaryOfExcuses

originally posted by: Klassified

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: mysterioustranger

It's getting better, no doubt!

BUT, I think this is due in large to people finally beginning to understand the differences, and the resultant resurgence in analog technology in the music sector.

Several companies are even now talking about re-introducing reel to reel tape decks! That would be awesome! And you can even find tapes now!!

ETA - BTW....Mesa Boogie!

They already are. Ballfinger, Metaxas, and I think Phase among others are producing open reel decks.

Oh god. Gear Acquisition Syndrome, here I come. Oh who am I kidding? I've been there since day 1. Really wish you wouldn't've lifted the rock I've been living under.

Lol Yeah, I'd love to get my hands on this Ballfinger...

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

LOL!! I am the same exact way!!

"Gear" oil pulses through my veins!!!

My mantra...he who dies with the most gear...WINS!

All Hail to the great GEARHEAD god!

a reply to: Klassified

OH, OH, OH!!

I gotta' go smoke a cigarette...now that I've just had my orgasm!

Here is a video recording with an electron microscope as the needle travels across the vinyl.

The left channel is generated by left and right motion. And the right channel is generated by up and down movement.

You do know that almost every turntable boosts the bass frequencies before output? If not, your stereo must have the boost in the amplifier part.



Can you see how a little piece of dust can cause all the crackling?

If you have a professional digital recording of the source audio, crackling is a thing of the past. Now you can argue what hardware to play it back on, to get the best result.

Love vinyls too, its nostalgic to get a record out of the cover, put it on, dust it off, and set the needle position. But imho, everytime you listen to the record, it will change the groove in small fractions, changing the output the next time you listen.

As for wear-induced noise, most of that comes from playing records with a worn-out or damaged stylus (aka needle) that's literally gouging the grooves with each play. Any decent cartridge will play records without damaging the groove. Just make sure the stylus tracking force is set to the cartridge manufacturer's recommendation. A force setting that's too high or too low can accelerate record wear and noise.

source

Ofc that is also a thing of the past with digital.

Distribution wise, i think it would be a much better alternative, spreading music digitally (thru the interwebs ofc)
Whatever track you want, you pay lets say 1-5$ for, depending on the quality.
So your favourite track is out, and you can buy it in 320kbps mp3 for 1 $, or in 512kbps AAC for 3$, or a professionel version in 24 but FLAC for 5$. When you have bought your track you get to download it with covers, inlayes etc, in high resolution image files.
And then you can do with it what you want. Ofc not re destribute, but convert it to any format you like, legally. You always have the 100% digital copy, which you can go back to. Never lose music again, and consider the amount of plastic it saves

Here is a little bonus video... click on your own risk!
BONUS

When I was working in radio I had a TEAC A-3340S in my personal system at home. I worked night shifts at the station so I'd have the station all to myself. Every record company on earth sent us virgin master vinyl (multiple copies) hoping we'd play it, so we had this massive record collection (just massive!). I'd go in to the station with 4-5 reels of new tape. I'd run my shift from the on-air studio, and make recordings of all the music over in the production studio. In the production studio we used Studor B67 decks, and had REVOX 1/4 sec. hi fidelity turntables. I'd get a stack of brand new vinyl, all the classics, new and breaking stuff, set up one B67 recording off one TT, and set up the other B67 recording off the other REVOX, turn all the monitors off and turn the sound masking on in the studio (I'd even turn off the lights and physically disconnect the mics) and record music direct to tape for my home set up. I could put down about 12-14 hours of music on tape in a single shift. Man, those were the days!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Nice. I would love to have had that kind of access instead of having to record KSHE 95 every Sunday from the Seventh Day show. 7 albums straight, no commercial interruptions throughout the album. Then a break, and another album...

Wait! They actually sent promotional albums on virgin vinyl?

No doubt that Analog sounds lovely, it's why we have Tape saturation and Vinyl emulation plugins for our DAWs, That distortion is gorgeous! But most people don't care, most people don't even have a decent pair of headphones or speakers that they even listen to things on. Digital is great, I like the clean sound, it fits some types of music better, and I wouldn't have been able to teach myself how to make music without it.

Sound is subjective beyond the science though, so arguing which is better is just pointless and has been going on forever. People hear different things, what may sound amazing to us, the next 100 people just won't ever give a #.

a reply to: Klassified

Wait! They actually sent promotional albums on virgin vinyl?

YEP!

Worse, the Program Director would throw the stuff in the trash! **GASP** We couldn't play stuff we weren't licensed for (royalties), so the owner would trash the stuff so we wouldn't play it! But we had a secret stash of the stuff.

We used to get American Top 40 and King Biscuit Flower Hour on virgin vinyl too (those we were definitely licensed for). They'd generally arrive in 4-6 disc sets. Most people in the listening audience never knew how that stuff worked, they thought it was all piped in. I think I still may even have some of that stuff laying around somewhere. All the on-air personalities would fight over who got what for the King Biscuit stuff. Getting a full set was rare, but I managed to get quite a few. Problem there was the day shift jocks got dibs on stuff before the afternoon and evening guys came in, but there were ways (bribing the mail lady was one). I'll even bet some of that old AT40 stuff is worth a fortune now! They'd usually wind up in the trash by Sunday morning.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Virgin vinyl was not cheap back in the day, at least for consumers. I'd love to have a bunch of those AT60's and King Biscuit. You're right. Some of that stuff probably is worth a fortune today.

"In the trash." That just makes me cringe.

a reply to: Klassified

Want something even more cringe worthy??? This is a true story too!

In late May of 1979 we received several promotional copies of the much anticipated Eagles album - The Long Run from Asylum records. At the time The Long Run was still scheduled to be a double album, but the Eagles were seriously troubled and struggling badly to come up with enough material for the second album of the set. Most radio stations only received promotional copies of selected tracks on tape, but we (among others) received the album because we were an AOR format station. Promotional albums look different than the ones people see in stores, they don't have all the fancy artwork and they have the word "Promotional" stamped in red all over them.

Now remember, this was May of 1979. The actual Long Run album wouldn't be released until September of that year, so this was several months ahead of the release.

So the first thing which would happen when we would get an album like this from a group like the Eagles was the album would go into the production studio (which was practically a clean-room environment) and we'd record each track on to separate "carts". Carts were specialized tapes used in the radio industry; they looked similar to an 8 track tape, but had much higher fidelity and additional tracks for recording sub-audible tones which were used for triggering such things as lights and signals for various purposes in the studio. (It's complicated, but essentially things like different colored lights with different meanings such as 'open intro', 'five seconds to voice', '30 seconds to end of song', '10 seconds' etc.) So as soon as the promo came in we'd cut one cart for every track. Then we'd make several copies of the entire album in various slices (i.e. one cart for side 1, one cart for side 2, one cart for whole album, etc).

So, depending on what was going on, you could play the album just about any way. After all this got done, there was a piece of promotional vinyl available for the staff (there were several copies in reserve too, in case we had to do it again). Generally this first copy would go into the on-air studio for play (before anyone snagged it). People still liked vinyl over the air over tape, it just had more character. Anyway, I digress...

So, here was this promotional copy of the Eagles - The Long Run album, one disc of supposedly two to be released in the future. Obviously hits like "The Long Run", "I can't Tell You Why" and "Heartache Tonight" would go on to become multi-platinum hits (we knew that even then, before it happened...you could just tell).

BUT...no one had any idea at the time the Eagles would, falter to the point of ultimately disbanding. No one knew The Long Run would be caught up in decades of legal controversies over royalties and disputes to the point it would nearly disappear from the face of the Earth. No one knew it would be the Eagles final studio album.

The King Biscuit Flower Hour used to run on Sunday nights, and to keep it pristine the PD would keep it locked up in his office until Sunday afternoon so no one would jack it up listening to it. Consequently, no one knew who the feature group would be until the PD brought the four album set out. They were in these really nice cardboard boxes too. Well, I worked the Sunday night shift which meant I had first dibs on most of those shows after they aired. This one particular Sunday night the King Biscuit show was Pink Floyd. I had to have that one so I wrote my name on it (the rule was we had to leave them in the studio until the following Wednesday in case the advertising people needed them to do some kind of promotional stuff with). You followed the rules or you weren't eligible to get any (...unless someone stole them, which happened once). It was a great show, and I was really excited to bring it home!

Wednesday rolled around and I went to the station to pick up my albums which were kept in the on-air studio. The afternoon dork was on the air and I purposely barged into the studio while he was on the air just to piss him off, grabbed my box of albums, flipped him off and left.

Notice - Prepare to cry!

When I got home I opened the box and there were my four albums. Everything was fine. YAY! But wait...there was a 5th album inside! I looked and to my disbelief it was the promo of the Eagles - The Long Run!! HOLY S#!!! I don't know how it got there (I truly don't), but the only thing I could figure is one of the daytime guys planned to swipe my Pink Floyd stuff, and thought they'd include themselves a bonus of the Eagles promo. In any case, I'd hit the gold mine! This was a treasure, and over the years I coveted it as such. But life happens, and time passes...

Sadly, 40 years later...I can no longer locate that set.

Now, you want to talk about something which would be worth some serious money today, heh, I shudder to even think what something like that would bring! (BIG $$$$$$$$). Hell, you can't even find an Eagles - The Long Run album now, not from the original masters anyway. You can find all sorts of remastered stuff which cobble together the original album, but not the original. DAMMIT...just dammit!

**sniff**

The end

originally posted by: Lumenari
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Digital music takes the human out of the music. The soul, as it were. Just my 2 cents.

You are correct. Part of the draw of live music for musicians like myself (and others here) is knowing you're not going to hear the music with a bunch of studio processing and the like. I am not highly versed in production as some of our friends here but I know what I like when I hear it. I can't stand the sound of a purely digital recording because to my ears it's flat and has no dynamic response. No "life".

To FCD's point, there is no better method of transferring audio as digital because it's a perfect replication of the original (digital) every time. The media matters only in how reliable it is, 1s and 0s are the same. Digital media doesn't get stuck or wrapped around the capstan.

I used to repair tube guitar amps and still have several of my own in progress. I'm also building an all-tube stereo amplifier because I prefer the sound. A friend gave me a pair of RTR speakers for doing some repairs to one of his Twins. I hooked them up to a Pioneer stereo from the '60s that I freshened up for a client and I was stunned at the quality of the sound compared to my dad's Kenwood solid-state or my Pioneer digital stereo. Until then I didn't put much thought into what I used to listen to pre-recorded music but now I don't even want a solid-state or digital stereo amp of any kind. The only solid-state unit I care for now is my Fisher but it needs some work. I hate solid-state stuff...

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Lol. Great story, and yes I could cry that you can't find those now. S@#T!

a reply to: Fisherr

Digital = house
Vinyl = open field

But then vinyl really depends on the mastering. Some places actually master it as digital, compressing the hell out of the file with filters and what not. basically de-grading it and send it of to the pressing plants.

Hence why some newer vinyl sounds like utter garbage. It's those some people pick to use as a comparison to digital and digital will never achieve that fidelity.

I have a lot of vinyl. Originals from the 50, 60s, 70s0s, 45s and 33s (one 78), but I think the absolute best, crystal clearest, spacious, and broadest frequency albums I own are the ones mastered for vinyl by NIN. It truly is like being in an open field, and I hear things I cannot hear in the same compressed media.

I have a pretty cheap turntable, and relatively cheap home theater speakers, but when I listen to NIN, my god the absolute sonic space in the music is incredible.

Sigur Ros on vinyl is another very spacious analog mastering.

The Beatles Revolver is another one.

a reply to: HalWesten

Until you've heard analog, in its original state...you are not qualified to pass judgement on analog vs digital.

Just the quiet space before a song even played has so much more fidelity than anything most modern music listeners can comprehend it is amazing!

I can remember falling asleep on my friend's floor. I wasn't drunk, just tired. We had threaded a tape of a number of popular artists. I was sound asleep, with his Doberman licking my face, and Peter Tosh playing on a serious REVOX tape deck in the background.

Honestly, there's nothing like it!

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: madmac5150

Ah, a discerning ear.../sarc

FLAC...yeah the best "ear candy"! LOL. /sarc.

You do know the technology with FLAC, right? And why it even exists? It exists because people are revolting against MP3 like compression technology which is below zero in terms of quality. FLAC is an attempt to appeal to people wanting more fidelity from the music which already sucks in the industry right now. Seriously.

It's just a different "compression" CODEC.

Its not a different "compression" codec.

FLAC stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec". Read LOSSLESS.
This means when you make copy of any CD track (.WAV file) to FLAC format, when you play it back, you get the EXACT same bits/bytes back.

This is not the case with compressed formats like MP3.

From the website:

Lossy. FLAC is intended for lossless compression only, as there are many good lossy formats already, such as Vorbis, MPC, and MP3

FLAC Website

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
ETA - Tell me, how many "bits" is analog??? Okay, easier question, how many "megapixels" is a 35mm Ektachrome photographic slide? (Answer - It's like 2,000 times more than the best digital camera money can buy!)

See where I'm headed here?

Yea, far out!

Why not get a picture of the entire electromagnetic spectrum? Include radio- and even xrays in the pictures? People want details! This might work well with astronomy, but not with images for human eyes. That's also why the standard 44.100 hz sampling frequency was agreed upon, since

The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem says the sampling frequency must be greater than twice the maximum frequency one wishes to reproduce. Since human hearing range is roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, the sampling rate had to be greater than 40 kHz.

source


ETA:

Better is a matter of opinion. Audio recorded via analog tape has a small low end bump and a high end roll off, will probably have some small (barely noticeably) pitch shifts throughout the length of playback. It is often described as warm and has a nostalgic and pleasing effect (perhaps as much of the classics were recorded on this medium. Analog playback will only boost these effects.

Digital audio like a camera takes many many snapshots of the recorded audio over a length of time, standard playback has 44.1 thousand samples per second. The medium itself does not have any high end roll off or low end bump. As a medium, it allows for many new creative methods to edit and process audio that could not be done in the analog world, or at least without great difficulty.

Compressed digital audio (mp3s) use algorithms to subtract information from the file so it is a smaller size. I’ve been surprised how many folks in a blind test can not hear the difference from the mp3 to the full bandwidth file.

Vinyl has to be mastered with a low end roll off and higher limiting to avoid the needle from jumping during playback. Each playback is destructive to the medium and will lower the quality of each playback.

The each have their place, as to which is best? Totally a matter of opinion. I enjoy the vibe of analog, but it IS a filter on the captured audio, and in my opinion affects the playback more than modern 32 bit depth, 192k sample rate audio, and isn’t subject to micro variations from the playback device.

How the mediums affect artists is a totally different question. Having 30 minutes of tape for 250$ vs infinite HD space of today allows for lazy musicians to simply do take after take, and punch in individual notes, losing the feel of longer phrases.

I’d just like to hear some good tunes on a nice pair of speakers, today these things are simply another tool to use like your filters in photoshop.



a reply to: Flyingclaydisk