Digital=cold(???)=bs.

First I would read a comparison briefly explained here:

Comparison of analog and digital recording

Then I would suggest to all ppl who didn't live in those old times to stfu if they don't know what it means to fight with noises, buzzes, wow & flutter, tape damage and splicing, and so fcking on (hey you got a lot of vsts that gives you back those "analogue warmths").

Alan Parsons in Abbey Road used to downmix/bounce several times tracks because multitracks were much limited in numbers but only up to a certain point because of increasing noise, I guess he could have avoided willingly this problem if he had the (digital) technology then.

BTW as you can see the best analogue tapes could handle dynamics of 77dB against the 96dB of an humble CD.
77dB are about less than 13bits (CD is 16).
ln(10^(77/20))/ln(2)=12.789

Then I would like to remember how the analogue "war" is just marketing, see MOFI case.

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2024

Remember taking blind test many moons ago, raw saw synth bass sound (no post processing, just usual sound design), there was some plugins and some hardware, can't recall exact units, but there was Moog for sure and etc, think most of us there just picked plugins because they sounded the way we actually wanted, clean, phat and ready to go, thinking this must be hardware because it's so phat and those must be software, they are so dirty and full of artifacts, yeah, turns out most of us were wrong lol

 

My couscous tastes loud

 

It can't be reproduced with Pro-Q natural phase or Equilibrium FIR? There are some Airwindows plugins that also intend to do this thing. I'm i missing something?

 

In this context, "digital" meant low bitrate, low bit depth, high noise floor and probably high latency as well.
Bear in mind that the interview is from 1997.
In the prior years, average digital recordings had lower bandwidth, higher noise floor and more distortion than average tape recordings, not to mention all the other conversion shenanigans. They just say in the interview that by 1997 it was no longer the case.

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2024

Just use IIR. Analog filters are almost exclusively IIR anyway. When analog gear compensates for inherent component rolloff (Miller effect, slew limiting), plenty phase shift is added anyway, particularly in the high frequencies.

 

It's a filter that not doing what filters do. Something like that. I was repeating Chris' words about those and I totally forgot what type of filter he is talking about. 2 3 years ago I think. Whatever it is that is happening digital that has got to be a little artifact of phase shift here and there because of filters design in DSP, Chris is trying to undo it with.. a filter. LOL. The phenomena doesnt happen on analog as the high end rolls off naturally till end, and only get filtered once for the AD stage (which others then add to the argument that converters matter). When signals (that has natural high end rolloffs) stacks on top of each other it has a nice pleasant effect to the human ears. Those that swear by the summing mixer actually want that.

 

The Airwindows plugins may work well for you - and that's perfectly fine - they're good plugins if they're good for you -> but I'd strongly caution against repeating what Chris says, because frankly, dead serious, 100% honest, no BS - Chris just makes stuff up.

 

I'm not arguing warm vs cold in the context of subjective/objective ideas but rather that digitally recorded music be solely defined based on a medium of storage. If a drum and bass track made with vsti/vst was stored on 2 inch tape would the above argument need to concede that it was an analog song?

I'm probably not going to respond as I'm kinda ill right now, but I really needed to post this between trying to breathe through a touch of pneumonia.

Carry on fam.

 

That's completely incorrect, he's autistic and thinks in abstract/non-verbal terms, verbal language is clunky for the things he's describing, especially since he often makes experimental plugins, i.e. hybridizing features often not combined in that fashion.

Other plugin makers typically just make things that have been made many, many, times before, so they're relatively easy to describe.

If you're doing something that is highly abstract and typically not done, then it's obviously difficult to verbalize.

The normal things he makes, when he makes normal things, he describes perfectly well . . .

 

Nowadays cold means good.. "Thats cold"

 

The one thing about that is people use "analog" to mean at least two different thongs.

Part of what they mean is continuous even into higher frequency ranges. Digital stuff aliases at higher frequency unless oversampling is used, analog does not.

When you're dealing with higher frequncies, some of it is going to sound "off" unless done correctly, it will sound harsh from the distortion.

Presumably that's also true of higher order harmonics applied to lower frequency sound.

But there's two meanings and people often conflate them, "analog" can mean "includes noise generated by hardware that's not supposed to be there" or "continuous functioning across all frequency spectrums".

Some people call the noise "warmth" but it's just additional saturation and/or low frequency hum.

It does modify stuff, but you're better off using digital without it then being able to add it back in rather than having to always have it.

The second definition of "analog" is why that person who uses those high sample rates would prefer them, there should be less aliasing in that case.

The 24 bit part is true of he's recording outboard gear, if he's doing it all "in the box", then it's nonsense, you only need 16 but for that.

The lower noise floor of 24 bit depth can be useful when dealing with low frequency hum, but all digital has none of that, so only 16 but depth is necessary.

 

First the measured values of the record:
- Frequency range: 20 – 20,000Hz
- Dynamic range: 50 – 60dB
- Distortion: 0.2% (at 1kHz)

…and those of digital sources:
- Frequency range: 5 – 45,000Hz
- Dynamic range: 120 dB
- Distortion: 0.003% (at 1kHz)

 

That's very true. Per statements he made on his stream, Chris suffers from "a learning disability" and mental illness causing him to have "episodes of cognitive dissonance and derealisation".

Yes, good example of "...and there are good reasons for that", the part that Chris often omits when he says "nobody else does this...".

I appreciate him trying new stuff and I like the quirky Airwindows "what the fuck" plugins; but Chris' stuff is rarely new, much less innovative. It usually is the opposite - very old stuff that he found on musicdsp, dsprelated, earlevel or some other source that lets you copy/paste code in full (as opposed to research papers like DAFX).

Again, if the plugins do what you want them to do, they're good plugins. They're not good plugins for me personally, because more often than not, they're just bad implementations of ideas or practices that were proven wrong/subpar long ago.

In other words: worse versions of stuff I already have, but that Chris wants to sell me as "you too can be special!".

 

42 years. The first commercial recordings were in the early 70's, but it wasn't until CDs in 1982 that the arguments really started in earnest.

 

'Zactly, I'm rounding

 

If anything... if I had to use a generic adjective I'd go with "sterile" but then again that could be used to describe EMG pickups in any guitar run to any dirty amp.

 

Analog gear had to be used and it creates distortion.
Today analog gear and analog simulations are used to create distortion intentionally.
Digital = free of distortion.

Reading some of the comments I am wondering is some do not hear what distortion is doing?
If you do not hear it, you have a problem: a pleasant sound, a sound "like a record", is dependent on... distortion.
Digital = free of distortion => "cold".