Re: [ARSCLIST] Fred Layn's post on the Studer list re: Quantegy

[Dave Bradley <db65@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> By definition, a digital waveform is a series of finite steps, not a
> smooth curve.

I disagree with that assessment.  A "digital waveform" is a wave, not a
series of steps. However, that wave is created from a numerical
quantization of a series of steps.  The final output, though, is NOT a
series of steps, but a wave representing the original wave that those steps
were part of.  A minor nit-picking technicality, but I'm a stickler in this
regard. Digital is NOT inferior, only different. Mastering engineers have
learned to greatly improve the sound quality of analog tape over a 60+ year
life span.  Digital has been around less than 30 as a commercially
available format and as such has improved drastically during those 30
years, and at a pace far outdoing the pace with which analog improved.

The biggest problem with sound recording these days is that the labels and
the radio stations and the club DJs all want the disc to be the loudest one
out there, or at the very least NOT softer than the others being played in
rotation with it. As a result, they tweak and compress and squeeze the life
out of a digital recording. A properly mastered digital recording, or for
that matter a properly mastered digital version of an analog recording,
will sound as good as analog. It all depends on what the engineer doing the
recording and the mastering engineer do to capture and reproduce the sound.

In years gone by, anyone with high quality equipment had money and
experience to go with it and ran a studio properly.  Today, people with
high quality equipment can be the flat-broke high school kid who doesn't
know what he's doing.  The difference in the recordings they produce will
be astounding.

The other thing to keep in mind is that playback equipment has been
drastically altered in the past 20 years.  It used to be that you could buy
equipment that was designed to give the absolute best playback you could
want.  These days, more and more of what is out there is portable, small,
and unable to deliver the quality that used to be out there. They make up
for it by pushing the bass and dropping the high end and people think
they're hearing smooth, warm sound quality.  If that's the market that most
releases are mastered for, then the sound isn't going to be what it used to
be.

> however, I tend to doubt that, if an existing analog sound source is
> converted to a digital file without any further processing, there
> exists anyone who can notice a difference?

That depends on what you're talking about for a "sound source".  An analog
tape of the biggest selling album the Who ever put out?  No, probably
not.  The digital reproduction of that analog recording can be done in such
a way as to not lose one bit of the quality if they take the time and spend
the money to do it right.  However, if by "analog sound source" you mean an
artist performing in the studio, yes, definitely.  A digital recording will
capture more of the nuances of that performance. That doesn't necessarily
mean it will sound better. Sometimes those nuances can detract from a
recording.  Again, if engineered, produced, mixed and mastered properly, it
will rival analog.

And besides, all anyone is going to do with this stuff these days is rip
it, compress it into a low bit rate MP3 and stick it in an iPod and think
they're getting great sound. Yuck!



-----------------
Diamond Productions
Specializing in analog tape & film preservation / restoration in the
digital domain.
Dave Bradley   President