professional recordings: analog vs digital

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ytse_jam

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I was wondering if bands which pay so much attention to their tone, like Dream Theater, still record the basic tracks on analog devices and then digitalize it all or if they record straight digitally.
 
it varies. a lot of times things will be tracked to tape then bounced into like a pro tools system to mix. i think while there is still a healthy amount of tape being used to tracks stuff or to bounce back and fourth for the tape compression and saturation it's safe to say there's few if any professional mixing engineers that mix without the help of a DAW most notably pro tools.
 
I saw something about this recently on Wired Science (PBS).

Looks like you can watch it online (click play video).

From what I recall, the general conclusion was that in the past digital recording wasn't so great and so an analog master was needed.
But today professional digital recording gear has caught up with analog recording that the difference is not noticeable to normal people. :wink:
 
as long as good outboard gear is used and an engineer that knows what he is doing i think you can get away with getting it to sound close. there is a warmth that physically incapable of being reproduced digitally that tape saturation adds. its just physics. however it was proven that like digital stuff has high res stuff that tape don't have, but it's the lack of hi res that makes tape warm.
 
MOST PEOPLE...
really can't tell the difference anyway.

so if it sounds good, it is good.
 
so we could say that digital recording is more high-fidelity than analog recording on tape?

gonzo said:
if it sounds good, it is good.

yeah you're right, in the end that's what's important. Sometimes it is just interesting getting into every detail!
 
Aramism said:
as long as good outboard gear is used and an engineer that knows what he is doing i think you can get away with getting it to sound close. there is a warmth that physically incapable of being reproduced digitally that tape saturation adds. its just physics. however it was proven that like digital stuff has high res stuff that tape don't have, but it's the lack of hi res that makes tape warm.
Yeah I agree with you, the cool part is allot of the programs out there have “Tape Simulation” that you can use and works not perfect but good. At least you have a choice which is a plus in my book. With the tape sim in Sonar 6 you have a choice of tape speeds 7.5, 15, 30 ips and of course within that there are more controls.

I love the digital stuff that’s out there and getting better, I come from old school BTW. Good old 12 channel board 6 bus and reel to reel 8 track running 7.5 ips and back in 1980 this was a cool setup for home recording.

ytse_jam said:
I was wondering if bands which pay so much attention to their tone, like Dream Theater, still record the basic tracks on analog devices and then digitalize it all or if they record straight digitally.
I suspect the last DT album is all digital, just for one reason really. The video that came with the special edition, showed them in the studio and they were using a computer you could see the wave files on the computer, this was while tracking BTW.
 
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