Difference between Analog and Digital recording

[Impulse 9]

Hey..

Could anyone be kind enough to explain the differences between Analog and Digital recording? In dummy terms if possible, and if you have a preference, which one do you prefer and why?

I'll explain when I've got more time.

Cheers,

[jet_noise]

Dear Impulse 9,

hiss for analogue, harshness for digital HTH

...but seriously at what stage are you calling analogue or digital?
Is it the storage device e.g. tape vs. memory?
Or somewhere else in the signal chain?

regards,
Jet

[KB_S1]

Each has benefits.
Each has drawbacks.

In very simplistic terms it is easier and cheaper to get good results with digital.
The same principles and basic groundwork apply to both though and to get great results still takes money and skill.

I use digital 90% of the time for my work but if I can I will mix back through a good analogue mixing desk.
The idea of tape to record is nice but very few have the budget to do so and even less will tolerate the editing constraints.

[Le TVR]

Just compare the cost of a reel of 2 inch 499 tape with that of a Gbyte of memory.
Should answer the question.

[Toffer]

Analogue music for my analogue ears, analogue recorded and replayed using my analogue hi-fi for my analogue ears to enjoy...no worries about bit-rates or compression algorithms(simplistically, what part of the music I keep and what I lose).
Digital recording is cheap and mostly cheerful, but just like bad analogue recordings, bad digital recordings/mixes are horrid.

[GetCarter]

Digital is quicker, cheaper and 99.99% of people will never tell the difference.

Analogue is better, but who gives a fk.

[KB_S1]

Toffer said:

Digital recording is cheap and mostly cheerful, but just like bad analogue recordings, bad digital recordings/mixes are horrid.

How would you define 'cheap' when it comes to professional recording?

[davepoth]

It's much easier to get a decent result with digital - once you have one decent microphone, one decent preamp and a fairly "dead" room you can do more or less anything the best studios can including piecing together takes (with my band we once put together a whole bassline one note at a time because the bassist couldn't play it fast enough)

Analogue means a desk that has a valve preamp in each channel (with the biggest desks there were usually a couple of "duff" channels that were uses for distortion) and cutting and pasting is exactly that, using scissors and tape. It's very time consuming, but that said the special colouring of analogue (tape compresses drum beats, soft clipping of vocals, valve style EQing and the harmonic overtones that get lost with digital) is especially pleasing to the human ear. You need an analog playback system to get any real benefit though.

[KB_S1]

You will struggle to find any modern analogue desks with valve pre's.

Only 2 I can think of are the TLA VTC stuff (not that good) and some other thing the name of which I cannot recall but is so massively expensive I think only 2 were sold.

[davepoth]

KB_S1 said:

You will struggle to find any modern analogue desks with valve pre's.

Only 2 I can think of are the TLA VTC stuff (not that good) and some other thing the name of which I cannot recall but is so massively expensive I think only 2 were sold.

Not really analogue with a solid state preamp though is it?

Vintec are making some pretty mental consoles.

http://www.tube-console.de/vintec/mainmenu/home/ph...

[JustinP1]

KB_S1 said:

You will struggle to find any modern analogue desks with valve pre's.

Only 2 I can think of are the TLA VTC stuff (not that good) and some other thing the name of which I cannot recall but is so massively expensive I think only 2 were sold.

Yup.

All the main big analogue desks were solid state.

It beggars belief that when these huge SSL, Sony and Focusrite desks were installed they were anything up to £700,000, and the top studios sometimes had two or three rooms with these in.

That was when there was money in the industry.