HOORAY for the continued use of analogue recording techniques

[paulsherwin]

Hamishboxer:

MP3 is one of several lossy compression codecs that will cause some loss in quality, depending on the bitrate used and the design of the coder. The idea is that the coder tries to work out what are the significant sounds and timbres in the source material and discards increasing quantities of what's left depending on the degree of compression required. 320kb MP3 is difficult to detect with most source material but can make the sound seem 'muddled' and lacking in definition with some complex sources. 192kb MP3 is clearly audible with most sources to any experienced listener. 128kb (a common default) is very obvious to anybody with any source material, causing an unpleasant granular texture in the sound and prominent sibilance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

MP3 has been technically overtaken by the later AAC codec, but is still widely used because most devices support it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

There are several lossless compression codecs, the best known being FLAC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC

The effect of digitizing an original analogue recording without compression is a matter of some dispute, and the significant factor here is the sampling frequency. CDs use the relatively low frequency of 44.1kHz, which appears to have been chosen to fit a 76 minute recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony onto a single CD, though the theory states that even this shouldn't have audible effects - 48kHz was the originally envisaged frequency during development. Analogue masters will usually be digitized at a higher bitrate than this, with a minimum of 48kHz but more usually at 96kHz or 192kHz. These digital masters will be resampled to 44.1kHz for CD release.

The skill of the remastering engineer and the quality of the surviving analogue tapes are as important as anything else.

[MajorWest]

Originally Posted by suebutcher

For me it's nothing to supposed better sound quality; tape recorders appeal because they are relatively simple machines, easy to understand, and easy to repair. Not like CD recorders. They go bust, that's it, goodbye!

I kind of like cassettes. I sort of grew up with cassettes as they seemed so easy to use. In fact, I can recall going to the big stores like Boots and downstairs would be shelves stocked with all the big name cassette options.

The best sound I got was cassette on a music centre. Some of those had fairly decent audio sound.

I'm told cassettes are back in Japan and becoming trendy again. One advantage they have is they're small.

As to Reel recorders I had a Ferguson. I have memories of both The Osmonds and Chris Montez on the reel tape and it sounded pretty good as I recall.

[Radio Wrangler]

The title of this thread makes me smile. It has something of the flavour of "Hooray for the current five-year plan and the great increase in tractor production figures" statements once heard on the shortwave broadcast bands.

Both analogue and digital things can be done well or badly.

Done well, our hearing becomes the limiting factor. Done badly, both can be gruesome.

I have no qualms about listening to good digital recordings, or even things with transistors in them. What gets my goat are over-produced recordings that have had all naturalness squeezed out of them. A friend demonstrated a series of recordings. The backing instruments got hit with a treble cut whenever the singer's voice was present, then the treble would be restored for a moment in her pauses before bobbing down out of her way again. They'd done it to the vinyl version as well, I found.

I enjoyed the old recordings done in a simple way with a decent recorder and a pair or tree of mikes. The stereo effect was real. It's there on Decca's LPs and it survived on the CD issues.

Using a large automated mixing desk and lots of tracks, whether numerical or magnetic has become too easy and few producers have the self-control to use it wisely.

After these excesses, the differences between good analogue and good digital stuff are relatively minor.

David

[G6Tanuki]

The whole issue of "appropriate fidelity" is interesting, from a sociological perspective too: the 1960s Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" recording/production style:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound

was to a large extent predicated on the listener having a cheap transistor-radio with a Class-B output stage likely to suffer crossover-distortion at low level and (rather less-noticeable) clipping at high level - which both got diabolically-worse as the battery drained!

So the producers learned to mix the recordings so as to avoid low audio-levels where the grosser crossover-distortion would be noticeable and sought to keep the peak-power-meter sitting in the 70%+ sector.

Understanding - and working with - the technological limitations of the listener's equipment gave rise to a sound that defined a decade.

[TIMTAPE]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

So the producers learned to mix the recordings so as to avoid low audio-levels where the grosser crossover-distortion would be noticeable and sought to keep the peak-power-meter sitting in the 70%+ sector.

That may be so but it's also true that once some producers started making their records "loud", any records which didnt follow suit would sound quiet in comparison. Hence the so called "loudness wars". It became a competition for the listener's attention.

[saxmaniac]

My preference towards analogue is due to a hatred of waste. Modern digital equipment is short lived and disposable, and systems will come and go so that people have to keep on buying the same music and equipment over and over again. The final quality of the sound depends more on the amp/speakers than the system. Look how many digital trannies are sold with appalling sound and short battery life, far worse than the 1960's tranny! The old analogue stuff us anoraks are in love with can be repaired for a very long life

[Diabolical Artificer]

I too hate over produced recording weather digital or analogue; there is a difference between The Beatles Rubber Soul and Floyds' DSOTM, both great and time capsules of recording tech. It's pretty certain Sir George would have used a big multitrack mixing setup if he had one. I hate to think what a Beatles album would sound like now if they'd had access to infinite tracks and numerous plugins, especially when things got a bit trippy.


Recording music is a crazy process. Lots of time and money are taken to get a record sounding just right technicaly, then it's mixed down to sound good on either on a crappy tranny or a phone and pair of ear buds.

Most of us here being of a certain age are fortunate in that we lived at a time when some of the best recordings were made and had the technology to reproduce what the producer/band/ensemble wanted us to hear. We could throw out our LP collection's and hifi and just go listen to a band/concert, but where would be the fun in that.

Andy.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Dr Wobble

Recording music is a crazy process. Lots of time and money are taken to get a record sounding just right technicaly, then it's mixed down to sound good on either on a crappy tranny or a phone and pair of ear buds.

I've been in more than one recording studio in the late-1970s where they had "a crappy tranny" [and a 'music-centre' style stereo record-player] so they could hear what their mix would sound like when played on the sort of equipment their real-life target audience could afford. Surely making it sound good for your intended audience is the sign of a good producer?

['LIVEWIRE?']

The above comments re; recording techniques, etc., remind me of the statement attributed to Phil Spector, which is that, back in the early 60s he insisted on hearing the results of his efforts on small transistor radios, because that's how most of the potential record buyers would first hear them. I guess though, that, at least some of those early Ronettes & Crystals discs were recorded at levels close to distortion anyway!

[paulsherwin]

The Wikipedia article describes Spector's recording techniques very well - some interesting stuff there.

[Diabolical Artificer]

I wasn't knocking the practice, I was just saying that it's a bit crazy to get recording levels etc bang on and sounding perfect on studio monitors, then undo a lot of your work and effort in order for it to sound ok on a device with a 2" speaker or earphones. I have to do it myself sometimes.

As you say G6Tunuki studio's do this and have a pair of Yamaha N10's or something similar to test their mix out for the target audience.

It didn't sit well with studio engineers in the early 60's when bands and oddballs like Joe Meek kept turning the level up into the red. Everyone wanted a distorted sound to colour their music; Pete Townsend amongst others pestered Jim Marshall to make an amp that distorted.They didn't have many ways to colour their music unlike now when their are thousands of plugins to alter your music.

Andy.

[Radio Wrangler]

Perhaps it was just a continuation of the loudness wars? Heavily distorted sound sounds louder than the same real power from an undistorted amplifier.

Guitarists have been prepared to try to do just about anything in pursuit of an elusive 'tone ' or sound. There are famous cases of grotty little transistor amplifiers and speakers ripped out of early transistor radios etc used as guitar amps, and their speakers miked-up in recording studios.

I reckon that when something is driven that hard into clipping and the waveform becomes a rectangular pulse train, it's no longer analogue, it's truly digital

But these grossly bent sounds have given us some marvellous period recordings to listen to.

Back in the day, I listened to it all on an AR88 with a 10 inch dual-cone driver in a home made cabinet.

Today, Phil Spector's wall of sound (though he now has a different sort of wall) is thought of as something special, while the work of Stock, Aitken and Waterman is best allowed to fade.

David

[Diabolical Artificer]

Dave Davies of the Kinks said he slashed a speaker cone to get the distorted sound for "You Really Got Me". We'll always be looking for the next "New" sound.

Back to Andy's OP, I think there is a movement towards analogue recording maybe in reaction to a lot of today's over produced recordings done on a DAW, but music today is far more diverse than it was in our youth where one style or fad prevailed. Tape based recording has had it's day and is a niche technology I'm afraid for those that have deep pockets.

Andy.

[AC/HL]

Speaking as one of those oddballs that listens to the content, not the medium, I wouldn't know whether the distortion was created deliberately, or by accidentally missing out or adding an analogue link or two in the rather convoluted chain between the instrument and my all too Human brain.
I have both Cassette and CD players, and listen to whichever is convenient at the time.

[SteveCG]

Further to Bill (post no 54),

Indeed. Analogue tape recorders had their own set of distortion issues. Just try recording a pure sine wave and then replay and look at the output with a spectrum analyser ...

[sp10mk11]

Modern Mainstream music to me ignoring the digital side is utterly contrived and bland, all this technology allowing the person in the street to produce there own music hasn't allowed music to evolve in my opinion.

When I were a lad in the 70s/80s there was a lot creativity in all sorts of music in my opinion

Gary

[MajorWest]

Amazing you should say that. I've been analysing and commenting on this very thing elsewhere to the point of being intrigued. Why has the huge scope of digital recording technology somehow led to the current stagnation? I mean, you would think by increasing access to recording techniques and the means to distribute music, there would be a whole series of Beatles, Abba, Stones, Hendrix, Beach Boys and so on.

If we go back a couple of decades or more, the costs of recording an album were really pretty substantial In many cases, if you got yourself a record label, they would lay out the money up front on recording your tracks. Then they'd take it back in royalties. However, the royalties weren't so bad at all. Your track went out on vinyl and filled the stores of record shops.

I've mulled all of this over a lot and I concluded I have very mixed thoughts on the subject. On the one hand, I really do think digital is wonderful so far as technology and opportunity is concerned. I mean, the musician can now actually record his or her own music and with multi-track recording in digital you can do what McCartney was doing back in 1980 when he made McCartney 2 in a home studio (except his gear then was probably 75 per cent analogue).

On the other hand, this has created a lazy environment with a saturated market of downloadable material, the decline of the cult status rock or pop band and too few people now learning instruments such as bass, piano, lead guitar and so on.

Really, I'm glad digital offers all this amazing technology but also I still feel analogue, vinyl, tapes even tubes will always have a place and the ideal is to use them both wisely. Digital is really all about portability and ease of distribution also perhaps to save money at recording studios (if you just want to get your music out and about. Analogue is less portable but offers unique, raw sound and very hard to ever displace at highest level.

Sorry if maybe I've jumped a bit around the main theme but I couldn't resist commenting on your point as I really know where you're coming from.

[MajorWest]

Originally Posted by 'LIVEWIRE?'

The above comments re; recording techniques, etc., remind me of the statement attributed to Phil Spector, which is that, back in the early 60s he insisted on hearing the results of his efforts on small transistor radios, because that's how most of the potential record buyers would first hear them. I guess though, that, at least some of those early Ronettes & Crystals discs were recorded at levels close to distortion anyway!

I'm very aware of this. I do a lot recording in notebook format using just a cheap mobile phone on voice record. This is really in order not to forget whatever it is that's been put together. Well, you find that the bass is really hard to pick up with a tiny speaker. I tried reducing volume way down and placing the phone real close just to pick up bass. Too little distance and too much volume can create massive, shrill distortion.

[Radio Wrangler]

A few points:

Analogue is harder to do, so you have to be serious to bother. The lightweight rubbish makers go for the easy route, and there are so many of them that the difference in material between two formats is apparant. It doesn't have to be a real, technical, difference created by the characteristics of the format, it's sociological.

Even if you want to do it digitally, or analogically, good microphones still cost good money, and some good quiet space with isolated floors and damped walls is still expensive.

There are many people wanting or expecting instant gratification. You see them on musical reality TV programmes. Are they working on their technique? No. Are they learning instruments? No. They just think all they need to do is to be 'discovered'. And they've got software to fix their lack of pitch control. The ones who do not fit into this stereotype are special, though.

Another vocalist/vocal group covering existing material? no thanks. I'm listening out for anyone who writes good original material and shows signs of putting some effort in.

Historically groups have come and gone, some have stuck around a while, some have been one-hit wonders, but the real money has gone to the songwriters after something they've written has become a standard.

I'm not inclined to believe it's an analogue/digital thing, rather it seems to be a new versus older thing and it only coincided with the analogue to digital shift.

David

[G6Tanuki]

Truth is, there's a vast slew of new creative music being produced today: though given the ease of production and distribution we don't get the "one size fits all" mass market groups/performers of the 50s/60s/70s.

"Chart hits" are really a rather quaint idea today.

Even though I'm in my sixth decade on this planet, I still follow some parts of the current music scene - in particularly the genres known as club/trance/lounge/chillout/ambient. OK, it's almost entirely created by a guy in a backroom with a couple of Macs, a rackful of servers under the stairs, and a few hundred Terabytes of storage, but a lot of it is really, spectacularly impressive [and would have been entirely impossible to produce a mere decade ago].

www.di.fm has plenty of examples - it's what my pantry-transmitter tends to be radiating.

The last person I know of that did serious analog-only-from-end-to-end recording/producing was Edwyn Collins - his album "Gorgeous George" from 1994 being his greatest achievement - it really does sound '1960s'.