Look at it the other way round. People are paying peanuts to get the crappy low resolution music that the majority of listeners seem to be perfectly happy with.
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Digital vs Analog
- Thread starter icarus88
- Start date
Unfair? That the minority has to pay more than the majority for specialization TELL ME IT Isn’t SO!
Who feels anything in this modern world?
Without getting political, abstracts of isolation is the norm, and it’s all about self gratification, and if the masses are gratified, your lamentation is simply a private anguish.
The Twinkie defense! Nice!
Most musicians would agree this has been the case for quite some time already! LOL
I was managing record stores when CD's came on the market. The fidelity compared to US pressings on vinyl was miles above vinyl and noticeable to anyone who heard them. Big reason for that was the with the "analog" LP's, the master tape is converted to an engraved master that produces a mother stamper, which produces the stampers that actually press the vinyl ribbon/puck. The more that stamper stamps the more it degrades - wears out. In Europe as well as Japan, the stampers were used for half the time that the stampers in the US were used. The US companies were happy to replace defective albums as long as they got to use the same stamper twice as long as their European and Japanese counterparts. So the analog pressings in the US were just as good as the best found anywhere as long as it was in the first half of the stamper's life cycle. After that, not so much.
When CD's came out, the CD had just as good fidelity as the master file because it was a file and not an actual physical piece that slowly wore out as it was used. The most amazing thing for most people when CD's came out was that in between songs there was dead silence - no scratching, no rumble, no Sssshk Sssshk sound in between songs, just dead silence. Plus the signal to noise ratio was much higher in the recording itself. Now don't confuse the fidelity of a CD with the fidelity of an mp4. CD fidelity is far above mp4. They are not the same.
Having managed record stores during that transitional period, when you say "the significant tonal superiority of vinyl" all I can think is "WHAT???" Import vs. US pressings, sure - unless you get pressings from the first half of the US stamper. After that the imports definitely have better fidelity. But vs. CD's??? All I can think is, "what have you been smoking?" When the first CD recordings were released, they often came with a disclaimer saying that they were converted from Master Tapes and not to expect as high of fidelity as a digitally mastered file. I have a number of Fleetwood Mac CD's such as Future Games and Bare Trees that have that disclaimer on them. That's why "Digitally Re-mastered" was a real plus early on. You got the best fidelity you could hear.
I've also personally been recorded at professional studios on tape in the early 70's (in Hollywood) and digitally in 2019. (in Seattle) The 2019 digital recordings are much better than the master tapes of the early 1970's which were then turned into vinyl.
Jeez man. If you don’t think that vinyl sounds better than early CDs then I’m done. A simple — and BRIEF — post about human quirks and we get a lecture on the consumer music production process? Breathe.
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What is really natural about taking sound (variations in air pressure that our eras are exquisitely designed to detect) and using magnets to convert to an electrical potential that is run through resistors, capacitors, tubes or transistors to finally run to another magnet to be converted back to sound in a speaker. During that trip, the signal is purposefully manipulated and, every one of those transductions introduces error, so that what goes in is not what comes out. If you record, that electrical signal is converted to organized molecular dipoles of a strip of plastic and stored until converted back to an electrical signal. Nothing in all of that is natural. .
Analog does not equal natural.
That's why artists can't make money anymore, they make money with concerts. This is the final nail in the coffin of music that the digital revolution has put in.
When was the last time you bought an album? It was a long time ago
The natural thing about analog is that the signal recording is a sine wave, the sound we hear, the song we sing, the instrument we play all emit imperfect sine waves,subtle nuances of the piece can be heard
digital is a square wave.
OK, the digital recording is later converted to a sine wave, but since it is converted to a square wave, its naturalness is reduced or lost.
:::checks calendar:::
Is it 1983 again?
Is it 1983 again?
I'm pretty sure it isn't. I'm neither drunk nor tripping.
You gotta try this. Seriously. Just respond to any point being made and wait for the response. It’s magical.
Now you're just showing off your ignorance. Please stop. You're not helping your case.
Signed - A (real) Electrical Engineer
Yep, that's how I like to work too.Kinda how I still do it with my DAW.I like music to sound human. But I’m a bit of a dinosaur about some things despite me being in computer technology for most of my adult work life.
Only real difference is I now have virtually unlimited tracks and the ability to use virtual instruments and studio gear I could never afford to by the physical versions of.
I also tend to prefer plugins with limited controls to force quick decision making: "Which sounds better, 60Hz or 100Hz?" Pick one, move on.
That's the one big advantage of analog recording -- it forces decisions and constraints that can keep the ball rolling.
Sometimes unlimited possibilities become a quagmire.
