sdevino
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2002
Henrik I don't have a great system compared to Bob Ludwig but I do have a highend system compared to most recording studios. But I now I understand your point and I agree with you.
I can clearly hear very small errors in my system and have been amazed to listen to old and new commercial mixes to find lots of funny little mistakes.
Regarding Phase Distortion, it is easily measured relative to wavefront data by using a sinx/x impulse response which has almost equal energy at all frequencys, and looking at the time domain wveform after it passes through a system. Any changes in phase at varying frequencies will change the risetime and creat overshoots, undershoots and ringing. This is a very standard tranmission test through space.
Regarding analog v digital "reality", it is interesting that we say analog which has neasurable and noticable distortion, color and added noise sounds more like the source than a relatively undistorted digital copy of the same. This is a symantic arguement. Obviously we cannot argue about which someone prefers because that is personal taste, but we can argue about which one is closer to the original sound. I think we develop expectations for sounds on certain media, and even though nothing that was ever recorded actually sounds like the source, we all have our favorite variations.
When I record in digital I do not follow a formula or a particular practice. I experiment until I find a sound I really like, (applying common sense such as gain management and mic interference etc) then I push the button. What I really like about digital is once I set up the recording chain and print the recording, I get EXACTLY the same sound I heard through my monitors (listening through the digital signal chain) every single time I play it back.
Analog was always a moving target. You made the input monitored sound sound like A in order to get it to sound like B on playback. Playback was always an "enhanced" version of the input. Luckily it was a very cool enhancement and talented engineers developed secret recipes for getting to that final sound.
As a mix engineer I hated having to anticipate the high end rolloff that would occur from multiple playback passses of tape over the course of a mix. Digital does not degrade.
The trick with digital is to use great A/D converters and monitor the digital signal path while tracking, And to make sure you use great DACs for monitoring. I would argue that both ADC's and DACs have made orders of magnitude improvements in performance over the past 2 to 3 years and the equipment and mix buses we have now are very superior to what we had just 2 years ago.
Its funny but all I have to do to feel better about digital is listen to an old led zepplin song every once in a while. The music was great, the production was great, the sound quality was not as great, and this is true on a lot of 70s and 80s recordings that were very successful (might of had more to do with what they were smoking than what the medium was)
Steve
I can clearly hear very small errors in my system and have been amazed to listen to old and new commercial mixes to find lots of funny little mistakes.
Regarding Phase Distortion, it is easily measured relative to wavefront data by using a sinx/x impulse response which has almost equal energy at all frequencys, and looking at the time domain wveform after it passes through a system. Any changes in phase at varying frequencies will change the risetime and creat overshoots, undershoots and ringing. This is a very standard tranmission test through space.
Regarding analog v digital "reality", it is interesting that we say analog which has neasurable and noticable distortion, color and added noise sounds more like the source than a relatively undistorted digital copy of the same. This is a symantic arguement. Obviously we cannot argue about which someone prefers because that is personal taste, but we can argue about which one is closer to the original sound. I think we develop expectations for sounds on certain media, and even though nothing that was ever recorded actually sounds like the source, we all have our favorite variations.
When I record in digital I do not follow a formula or a particular practice. I experiment until I find a sound I really like, (applying common sense such as gain management and mic interference etc) then I push the button. What I really like about digital is once I set up the recording chain and print the recording, I get EXACTLY the same sound I heard through my monitors (listening through the digital signal chain) every single time I play it back.
Analog was always a moving target. You made the input monitored sound sound like A in order to get it to sound like B on playback. Playback was always an "enhanced" version of the input. Luckily it was a very cool enhancement and talented engineers developed secret recipes for getting to that final sound.
As a mix engineer I hated having to anticipate the high end rolloff that would occur from multiple playback passses of tape over the course of a mix. Digital does not degrade.
The trick with digital is to use great A/D converters and monitor the digital signal path while tracking, And to make sure you use great DACs for monitoring. I would argue that both ADC's and DACs have made orders of magnitude improvements in performance over the past 2 to 3 years and the equipment and mix buses we have now are very superior to what we had just 2 years ago.
Its funny but all I have to do to feel better about digital is listen to an old led zepplin song every once in a while. The music was great, the production was great, the sound quality was not as great, and this is true on a lot of 70s and 80s recordings that were very successful (might of had more to do with what they were smoking than what the medium was)
Steve
