Better than 100%? So what about the missing parts digital does not capture that nobody can hear? Just asking.

Agreed preferred versus perfect but neither of them are perfect.

Also if digital could do a perfect reproduction of analog then there would be no need for the abundance of not to par analog emulation vst's. That statement speaks for itself. To reiterate, not 100% other than a mathematical representation. There would be no need for analog simulations or people saying "Oh, it only misses what you cannot hear". That is not 100%. 100% is everything captured.

EDIT: That's like me saying now in age that because I cannot hear above 12Khz that every frequency I cannot hear above that does not exist so therefore, I am hearing 100%. That is only true within the limits of what I can hear and also, audio phonically untrue. We would not need spectral analyzers or oscilloscopes to attempt to to show mathematical representations of what we cannot hear if we could hear everything. An oscilloscope line representing a supposed exact reproduction has never explained why digital lacks the warmth of analog and that's fairly agreed that digital lacks the warmth of analog. Does 10Hz or 30Khz exist? Or do we dismiss it simply because it is useless and subsonically and super-high frequency irrelevant and not in our environment?

 

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Seeing articles and videos are the go..

https://www.adorama.com/alc/analog-vs-digital-audio/#:~:text=Analog audio takes the cake,audio recording a fixed bandwidth.

https://www.fairobserver.com/more/s...ital-audio-science-news-william-softky-39078/

https://integraudio.com/analog-vs-digital-audio/

https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/analog-vs-digital-signal/

https://academic.oup.com/book/27042/chapter-abstract/196334346?redirectedFrom=fulltext



There's plenty more..

The funniest part for anyone who lived through analog is hearing people who weren't even born tell us how digital reproduces analog perfectly by citing mathematics. And we're the joke?

 

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"Do analog saturation plugins actually sound like analog tape" is a very different question from "can digital reproduce what you ask it to accurately". One's about physics and science, the other's about programming and marketing, not to mention subjectivity.
I don't care really, as long as the end result makes the artist happy. But I hate to see people bummed out because they think, oh, my stuff is crap because I don't have that authentic (and potentially expensive) analog vibe and they don't need to be. At the end of the day I'd love to have an analog tape deck because they're just FUN, I grew up with them, they're tactile, they move, you get to thread them up, they're great. But not because I think they're a magic way to get a sound.

 

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Agreed totally - but only academically. That's like saying here is a picture taken perfectly of a bottle of 100 year old aged vintage wine. It won't taste like it though. It's a mathematical digital representation. Someone can take it further put the wine under an electron microscope and digitally reproduce it with all the ingredients they found but it won't taste the same.

Some people making digital vs analog statements were not even born to EXPERIENCE the noticeable differences to know any better. Sometimes it is better to say nothing I guess.

 

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1. Which are these, please?
2. Why should I care about what I (or anyone else) can't hear?

Emulating and recording are two different topics, right? Right.

No measurements, no blind test, just statements.

adorama wants me to turn of my ad blocker. Not gonna happen.
fairobserver ist just babbling, not a single proof.
integraudio: 'why does analog sound better than digital?' Better is a matter of taste and he's just trying to proof his taste, completely unscientific.

And honestly, I stopped there, there're better things I can waste my time with.

So you're not reffering to me.

Who's saying this?

 

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There's something spectacularly absurd about this thread that has me intrigued.

Now if you were sitting with me right now, I could play & sing, or whatever, live for you, and it would then be a matter of interesting debate to figure out the best way to capture all that analogue acoustic loveliness as a recording.

Given that a lot of people on this forum appear to use samples, digital synths, drum machines, digital delays, digital reverbs, digital fx, rigid quantisation etc etc as source material, and none of it is live ... then I fail to see much of a point to it.

Or am I missing something?

 

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It has a record button. I can upload a picture of it if you want. I got it for $45, but I see sold online for up to $300.

 

They also have an Akai reel 2 reel that looks to be from the 80's, but I just assumed it was out of my price range. I might go back and ask them Monday.

 

Ok. I have just been recording all digitally since I was 14, and I'm 40 now. Kind of just dipping my feet into the analog world, I guess and I know very little about it. So thank you, and everyone else, for the replies. People like me are probably why analog is making a comeback, even if slightly, due to never using analog recording in our lifetime. When I was young all the old heads were so excited about pro tools, digital recording etc... I wonder if they still are.

 

Could you use this re-recorded through tape version to "phatten" up the original song through layering? Or would it still have phase issues?

 

Interesting to see, starting from the 80's on many vintage artist records, vinyl or cd, the label "Digitally remastered", never saw "Analog remastered".

I think that if in the past Elvis, Beatles, or anyone else could have accessed digital gear as we have now they would have used it, who cares about the "analog warmth, saturation, noise, hiss, etc."

I have a lot of old gear and I like it, I see it with nostalgia, but it ends there, I'll never use it again.
If you're a collector, it's another story.

Screw the good ol' time. They were good, but they're gone.

 

Congratulations on missing the point entirely!

 

If it's really a Library of Congress C1, it doesn't have a record button (red one is 'Stop').



It's a mono player for audio books in libraries. From the Library of Michigan:

 

Yep, that's the question.

 

you can just try for yourself, play music on all the analog goodness you have. record the output digitally. blind ab test the level matched recording against your analog gear.... there will be no difference ergo is digital 100% capable to capture everything analog does and more. The physical restrictions of stuff like tape and vinyl are long outdone by digital formats.

 

dont forget there are also digital R2R Tape machines

 

For those interested, for the n...th time this page is posted:

Comparison of analog and digital recording

Triple