On 12/31/2015 10:11 AM, John Williamson wrote:
You will find that to make the analogue recording sound anything like
the original, you have to use a lot of processing both during and after
recording, while the digital will sound clean straight off the recorder.
Tape is not even roughly linear, while any modern A-D converter will be
linear to within the limits of most test equipment.
I get your point and understand your passion, but I think you're taking
this way too far. Whether or not a recording sounds like the original is
far more dependent on the microphones (and their placement) and the
playback speakers than whether the recording medium is analog or digital.
Analog recorders are remarkably good. It has always been the intent of
their designers to make them as linear as possible. Now I'll concede
that it's difficult to get THD down below 1% and frequency response over
the audio bandwidth flatter than +/- 1 dB, but those parameters are
easily achievable on a well designed and maintained recorder.
While a digital recorder will have lower THD (and THD isn't the best
measurement of what's wrong when you hear something wrong) and flatter
frequency response, but when it comes to real world sources and
listeners, a good analog recorder will do just fine. Where digital has
it over analog tape is that there's no flutter and 30 dB or more less
hiss. Bad flutter will make a piano sound "nothing like the original"
but it won't affect a railroad train.
Now what happens between recording and commercial release is a different
story. The only reason why analog recordings (newly) released in digital
format aren't severely buggered at the tail end of the production
process is because people like you-know-who insist that analog sounds
better. So the record companies make it so, and charge extra for it.
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