Analog "versus" Digital recording and playback

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The second paragraph you posted is marked with [citation needed]. Anyone could have written that, years or decades ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by labrat 

The only thing here that is a fact, is that there is no commercial digital system available for consumers able to reproduce audio more correct than an analog one!

All present digital audio systems available , for recording or playback, is lossy.

If this is a "fact", what or where is the source of this information?

Here is a fact:

"The peak of professional analog magnetic recording tape technology reached 90 dB dynamic range in the midband frequencies at 3% distortion, or about 80 dB in practical broadband applications." [1]

With digital audio you get at least 90 dB out of 16-bit audio (practical observation, 96 - 98 dB in theory), up to 120 or theoretically 144 dB with 20 or 24-bit audio respectively. Without crazy levels of distortion, of course.

[1] http://www.aes.org/journal/suppmat/hess_2001_7.pdf

Quote:

Originally Posted by labrat 

 

The only thing here that is a fact, is that there is no commercial digital system available for consumers able to reproduce audio more correct than an analog one!

All present digital audio systems available , for recording or playback, is lossy.

You are assuming that we start with an analog source such as a tape and then apply digitization to it. So a 2nd gen digitzation. You can stay digital all the way from the microphone so removing one level of analog recording. Aanlog recordngs are also lossy by definition, if not they would have infinite bandwidth and infinite SNR, they do not therefore loss is involved
 

So saying one is lossy and the other not is misleading

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I don't know what the state of analog media is.

I'll assume everything being discussed starts as an actual sound and is recorded with a microphone.

So no matter what, we are an analog electrical signal at some point. The question is: do we have better results recording that on analog media or converting it to the digital domain.

Assuming "the best of equipment" either way, I would think that the answer would depend on what we are going to do next. I suspect that a single recording and single play-back session in the analog domain is so accurate as to defy the ability of the ears to discern any difference.

Where digital really comes into its own is that it does not experience loss from repeated play. It does not experience generational loss from copies. I can be moved from one piece of gear to another, edited and re-edited, and put back all without ever adding a single bit of noise. Its superiority for modification and duplication (which software can do with far more flexability than analog gear) is pronounced.

So for the consumer: I would argue that digital offers far more fidelity in the end product... and if you *like* the distortions of some of the audio media: they can be added artifically.

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Sound is not really analog though to start with.

Sound is simply a set of compressions and rarefactions in air. We hear by these by the effect of them vibrating our eardrums and sending a set of discrete nerve pulses (nerves have latency so there is no instantaneous generation nor recovery from pulsing) so it is not truly continuous even at the ears. An analog microphone contains a membrane that vibrates (like a speaker in reverse) and moves a magnet within a coil (or vice versa) generating a voltage, again these are discrete pulses and while they may look continuous they really cannot be by definition. So really sound is much less analog to start with and recordings (analog or digital) are by definition approximations of the source...

Quote:

Originally Posted by JerryLove 

 

Where digital really comes into its own is that it ... can be moved from one piece of gear to another, edited and re-edited, and put back all without ever adding a single bit of noise. Its superiority for modification and duplication (which software can do with far more flexability than analog gear) is pronounced.

 

 

Absolutely, and IMO the real-world practices that each technology allows, encourages or mandates are far more important than the theoretical differences between the two.  In the old days of analog vinyl, tracks were often put together as close to live as possible, because of limited opportunities for correction and edit later, which carried advantages, which were then counterbalanced by disadvantages like suppressed bass ahead of the cutting lathe, and so on.  Now, downstream manipulation is effectively unlimited, and the old mantra "Hey, we'll fix it in the edit" is relied on more and more, which means the first-pass quality is often bad, later manipulation is extensive, and in particular the phase responses of one instrument related to another are all incoherent.  So as always, it's more about "How" than "What."

Quote:

Originally Posted by labrat 

That is the whole point I am trying to tell!

Sound is analog from the start, and up to today no commercial digital equipment is available that can do the recording more detailed that an analog, high-end recording equipment can!

Neither is equipment for replaying!

I would argue that, for a recording that will be played back repeatedly, or which will be edited, or which will be copied repeatedly (which I believe is almost all recordings), there are clear advantages of working in the digital domain.

Yes. The original was likely analog, and yes the end product is analog (speakers are analog). I would argue however that, if we agree that the material will at some point be digital: it makes sense to convert to digital as early as possible, and back to analog as late as possible.

But, I'm not familiar with the specific equipment used in the industry, nor the particular nuance of that equipment.

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