The State of Digital Recording

[johnnyproaol.com]

Ok..... I'm a dynosaur, I admit it. I record onto a Tascam MSR16 16 track analog deck, with a Fostex R8 as my session backup. I do this mostly by choice as my one big excursion into Digital (after 20 years of project analog), sucked big time. I bought 2 LX20 ADATs a couple of years ago, (the cheap ones) and really didn't like them. In fact, at one point I went and listened to everything I'd recorded for the last 10 years and felt the sound quality and warmth went down the tubes the day the ADATs went online. After I bought the MSR16, I've had a LOT of compliments on how warm my stuff sounds. One female singer (Who'd never recorded on analog) was shocked that I could get such a great vocal sound in the basement. (CAD E-100 and......a Mackie 24*8.....I know....get some pre's...)

 

At that point, I went online and found tons of other recording geeks like me who had dumped the digital stuff and gone back to analog. I also read a lot of articles in EQ and other mags where all these top producers are interviewed, and they say how they track to analog and mix to digital, or vice versa.

 

Sooooooooooo, what am I getting to???? I see these new machines coming out now, the Mackie and Tascam 24 tracks,....especially the upcoming Alesis 24 track HD recorder that'll sell in the $2K range and the new 24 track Roland Portastudio (That actually has more than 2 XLR ins, yeah!!!). These look awful good to me. But I still haven't seen an article anywhere that says if 24bit 96mhz is all it's cracked up to be. Will it blow my 15ips machine out of the water??? We all know it'll be a lot more user friendly, or will it. Whattya guys think????????

[Anderton]

Look at it this way...tape is a signal processor. So is digital gear, of course, bcause everything affects the signal. But tape is more drastic in its effects, soaking up transients, adding natural compression, and introducing a subjectively pleasing type of distortion.

 

Steinberg now has "TrueTape" on Cubase 5, and it sounds great. But interestingly, it works only if your track is set to 32 bit mode! I wonder if this means that you really need 32 bits to do the processing needed for analog tape warmth.

 

Then again, there's my cheezy trick of running tracks I want to have "analogued" through an old reel-to-reel before it gets captured on digital. Definitely sounds like the real thing.

 

I think both digital and analog have certain good characteristics and certain negative ones. The Direct Stream Digital sound is very much like analog, but without the signal processing aspects. Then again, analog's hiss and intermodulation distortion drives me up the wall. Analog has pretty much reached its peak; digital is still in its youth. Eventually, I think digital will win over the most analog-minded. But for some, that will take a while...and a little bit of 24/96 thrown in.

[Philip OKeefe]

Craig Anderton said:

 

>>Then again, there's my cheezy trick of running tracks I want to have "analogued" through an old reel-to-reel before it gets captured on digital. Definitely sounds like the real thing.<<

 

Hey Craig, I still prefer to grab the take on digital, and then pass it through the analog machine (record it, and monitor the playback head) and send the analog machine's outputs out into another set of digital tracks in "reel time" (sorry, couldn't resist) and then offset the digital tracks to compensate for the signal delay caused by the space between the analog's record and playback heads... This way a "once in a lifetime" take isn't blown because of too much or too little signal to the analog tape (too much hiss one way, too much distortion the other way).

 

This allows me (as you pointed out when you wrote the article I snagged the trick from) to experiment with different tape formulations, signal levels, etc. without losing the original performance - essentially using the reel to reel as a "analog tape tone effect" processor.

 

Are you saying that you prefer to do the analog processing at the front end as you're tracking instead of going to digital first??

 

Johnnypro, I'd suggest you keep the MSR-16 (especially if you have the Dolby S equipped model). Those are pretty good sounding machines, and I'd hang on to it and get yourself something digital to go along with it.

 

Since you already have a Mackie 24*8, you might want to consider the new Alesis HDR. I might consider getting one if they become a "standard" (really popular) and clients and other studios start using them as much as the original ADATs were used a few years ago.

 

The new Roland VS2480 looks interesting, but I'm not a real big fan of their data compression, mic preamps or A/D converters. I've heard conflictng reports about the converters - some say they've been improved over the earlier VS machines, others say nyet. I do know from the brief read I did over at the Roland US site that the machine will only do 16 tracks of uncompressed (no data reduction algorithm) audio, and there's a track count penalty for higher sample rates too (ie 96 KHz).

 

It does look interesting, and having moving fader automation is great. There's all sorts of new products coming out now, and a lot of choices to make. Tascam has a new digital mixer coming out (DM-24) which will list for $3,000 and is a perfect match for their HDR. Might even work with the Alesis HDR, but you'd have to either add extra ADAT type I/O to it, or convert to Tascam's digital I/O format. Again, the Alesis HDR has digital AND analog I/O on it STANDARD (you'll pay extra for this with Mackie and Tascam) and so you could use it right away with your existing board.

 

I was using a Mackie 32*8 and 4 "blackface" ADAT's, and just did an upgrade a few months back to a Yamaha AW4416, two LX20 ADAT's and a new computer DAW with 32 channels of ADAT lightpipe I/O (933 MHz PIII, 256 MB RAM, 2 X 60 GB HDD, Frontier Dakota and Montana cards running Logic Platinum 4.6, Vegas, etc). I lock my computer (or ADATs) to my AW4416 and send the extra channels of audio (from either ADATs or computer) into the AW's optional lighpipe cards, so all the channels appear on AW faders and are fully automated. Pretty slick system, and (after a few headaches got solved) works like a charm. I'm actually considering adding a second AW4416 and locking that up with everything else for 64 tracks...

 

I "grew up" as an engineer on analog machines - 1/4" four tracks all the way up to 2" 16 and 24 tracks. I like both analog and digital, and keep a Otari analog multitrack around just to do that trick that Craig and I were talking about. I DO use digital almost all of the time now. 24 bit digital makes a HUGE difference over 16 bit, although I find less of a difference between 20 and 24 bit, it's still noticable. I think bit rate makes more of a difference than higher sample rates. All of this is subjective and up to debate, and if you ask 20 engineers, you might get 20 different opinions.

 

One thing for certain - you have to approach digital differently than you do analog. Different tools, different techniques. I find that digital gives me a more accurate representation of what I put into the machine on playback than analog does. If I want "warm fat and punchy" on a digital machine, I make sure I get it wam fat and punchy as I'm tracking it.

 

There's lots of techniques you can try to help you get those sounds from digital, and this is an EXCELLENT place to learn.

 

Keep us posted on what you decide.

 

Take care.

 

 

Phil O'Keefe

Sound Sanctuary Recording

Riverside CA

http://members.aol.com/ssanctuary/index.html

email: pokeefe777@msn.com

[Anderton]

>>Hey Craig, I still prefer to grab the take on digital, and then pass it through the analog machine ... <<

 

That's what I meant to get across, thanks for clarifying.

[jraffertyuswest.net]

How much of the "analog" sound actually comes from the tape? It seems to me alot must come from the fact that old records were tracked through analog pres, and passed one more time AGAIN through those channels plus analog compression, EQ etc during mixdown. It seems to me that no matter how good digital gets having clean analog signal paths around could never hurt.

 

It really seems like the tape is the major pain with all that head aligning and degaussing and all. So I think analog pres,channels but still with the capability to cut and paste in daw and maybe even use digital EQ during final mixdown so you can save all your presets is the ultimate answer. (It might be hard to get used to not having every band parametric)

 

To me analog doesnt just color the sound, it changes the way the sound or note reacts when recorded. Each note seems to have a journey, where straight digital seems to be one dimensional. I think it will be a long time before they truly make digital provide the same musically pleasing sound.

 

I definately want to be able to cut/paste choruses etc. So a hybrid seems to be the answer. Unfortunately as of right now I can only visualize the answer. Now all I need are some channel strips and or pres for my O1v! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

 

-Josh.