From: feit@ERA.COM (Mark Feit)
Subject: Digital's "shortcomings" (Was the "golden ear" thing)
Organization: Engineering Research Associates, Vienna, VA
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 15:20:33 GMT

[Ed. Note: Yeah, the title's lousy, but it was the best I could do.]

On rec.audio, <U58402@uicvm.uic.edu> posts:
 > Why hasn't anyone put forth the proposition that the difference between
 > analog and digital sound is due to the software, not the hardware?

Maybe because it isn't.  A recording is the sum of its parts.  ALL of
its parts, hardware included.  Read on.

 > Analog recordings have been made for over sixty years. Over that
 > period of time, mike placement, reverb/tone control, and mixing have
 > been refined to the point that "audiophile" recordings (whatever that
 > means) are held to be the ultimate in sound reproduction.

Personally, I think the concept of an "audiophile" recording is a
crock, but that's another story.  Some recordings get cut willy-nilly
and others have the extra attention paid to them to make a better
finished product.  Maybe the better ones get classified as
"audiophile," but the only reason for that classification is the extra
care taken during production.  In those cases, the extra effort pays
off, since the bulk of the listeners will be listening as much to the
recording as they will the contents.

Not to bring back December's fidelity flame war, but the ultimate in
sound reproduction for any recording is the equipment on which the
final version was mixed connected to the ears and mind of the
producer.  (MHO, take it or leave it.)

 > Now digital
 > recordings are being made. What once was a proper mike placement for an
 > analog recording may not be the proper mike placement for a digital
 > recording, since the EQ inherent in analog sound reproduction has been
 > changed. (Note that I did not say either for the worse or for the
 > better.)

I can show you plenty of all-analog recordings that sound great [a
subjective term] and an equal number of all-digital recordings that
sound lousy.  The converse is true, too.  The high points and problems
lie in the production, not the medium.  A good producer will (a) know
how to massage the basic tracks into something good and (b) actually
take the time to do it.  Unless you have an utterly catastrophic
equipment failure while actually making the recording, it's usually
(but not always) possible to compensate for a wide variety of problems
during mixdown, regardless of the medium.

 > So, the first digital recordings may sound "steely"...

Early digital recordings sounded "steely" because designers hadn't got
the hang of building filters for their repro sections yet.  If you
take an older digital recording, transfer it to a more recent format,
remix and play the finished product back on recent gear, you'll find
that some of the edginess will go away.

 > ...because
 > recording techniques for analog may have boosted treble response a bit
 > to account for the lowered treble response in an analog system.

Even though some do a better job than others, a recorder is a recorder
is a recorder.  It's not programmed into producers that treble must
always get a boost; it'll be put there if it's decided the need is
there.

 > For
 > digital, decreased treble response is not a factor and the result
 > is shrill violins.

If your violins are "shrill," then somebody neglected to EQ them
properly.  Either that or it wasn't mixed by someone with golden ears.
;) Now I'm assuming that to come to this conclusion, you took the same
performance, simultaneously recorded to both analog and digital decks
using matching identically placed mics, connected them with a chaser
and did an A/B comparison.  The analog deck will lose something in the
treble department, but there are ways to compensate for that.

 > I know that over the past ten years of digital
 > recordings, mike placement and frequency response of mikes have changed
 > as recording engineers gained more experience with digital recording.

Funny, you coulda fooled me...  Many of the most popular mics haven't
changed a shred in years.  I (and others I've worked with) don't take
the recording medium into account when placing the mic; all that
concerns me at that point is getting the best possible signal [another
subjective term] into the recorder.  (I'm one of those that record the
basic tracks dry.)  I haven't seen any Neumanns or Sennheisers
advertised as "ideal for digital" recently, have you?

 > Digital recordings being released now are better than recordings
 > released 8-10 years ago, on average.

Better material or better recordings?  :) In all seriousness, though,
the people who make the gear have learned to make it better.

						- Mark

 ................................. .................................
: Mark A. Feit, Software Engineer : Internet: feit@era.com          :
: Engineering Research Associates : USENET: ...!uunet!era!feit      :
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 "Software development is 10% science, 25% ingenuity and 65% getting
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