Analog Tape Vs. Digital Shootout (Sample-Rate.com

[lizichell2]

The analogue is only as good as the equipment used. For example, that tape recorder is out of the reach of most peoples financial and practical capacity. Digital just saves us a step and is a hell of a lot better than old cassettes at a fraction of the price.

[quantum8kid]

92 K uncompressed and u cant tell the difference

[neal00]

The samples need to be level matched

[aNdYmAtTeR]

If you can't get an extremely good mix ITB maybe you just suck at what you do and is too lazy to keep up with e.g. saturation and overdrive plugins. Face reality, you are left in the dust ...

so you blame the tools :)

[analyzingfunny]

I have a Scully 280-8 available if anyone needs to lease it for that special sound.

[FieserBauer]

sae... spams the market with audioidiots... most important thing is to have that fancy audient 20k soundboard to use it for... yeah... nothing

[TheFiyahfly]

Thanks Dr Evil's nephew!

[DigisoundRecording]

Sine we're not at the real studio to listen the tracks....we are listening both signals digital and quality compressed....through you tube....So what exactly we've comparing here?

[rubentirado09]

Voice is very annoying..

[thechazdarby]

I'll take the Studer! btw...although Pro Tools is the industry standard(and for that reason what I use at my studio), has anyone noticed that it sound SO MUCH WORSE than the Apple format or Sonar algorythms...hmm. let's just get that tape machine back out! GOD I MISS TAPE!

[dentunes]

Who mixed the bass riff while he was explaining the setup? They should be shot!

[TranceElevation]

The high frequencies in the analog sample are much more pleasand and clearer to the ear.

[dubified89]

I don't believe that digital is exact as it's coming in. Digital has a higher frequency pitch than real life if it's not tempered down by an analog source, or at least analog emulating software.

[adabass16]

maybe you shoulda done a shootout to see how to make you less annoying

[imsotired247]

i noticed that the snare drum is drastically louder in the analog clip......why is that?

[2009korte]

they both sucked bigtime

[respinozaaudio]

and your voice is annoying sorry

[respinozaaudio]

this is dumb this is like asking what sounds better on a guitar a 421 or a 57. waste of time even doing this we should all be knowledgeable enough to know that sometimes you dont got the cash for tape and your stuck with pt sometimes the musicians just arent that good and you need to edit a lot can we move past this and get to making records thanks

[visitinguncle]

@respinozaaudio The solution to those problems would be 1) save up for tape; and 2) don't even bother recording if the band is so shitty that you have to do 50 takes on ProTools. I heard the tape saturation which, to my ears, sounded way better than the cold digital file. This video was not a waste of time for me.

[algertsulka]

..::Yeahhhhhhhh Great!!::.

[girotube]

"Pro Tools HD" my rear end!! The so called HD system should have been 32bit float 12 years ago.. A format I've used all the time...32bit float since 1998

This "HD" one is doing 24bit.. loosing info... So! guess what? now Avid went 32bit float..mmmh! wow.12 years too late tho. And in the course of that time, they were dismissing 32bit float.LOL.! BUT! how much$ Avid wants you to pay to upgrade a PT HD system to 32bit now?. "$K".... WHAT?

Who said that 192kHz is HD?? LMBO.

[PeteBuchwald]

thanks for posting!



[TheOneartist]

The Beatles, Pink Floyd and other greats have survived 40+ years on tape and sound fabulous. Still used for new digital remasters.

So don't give me this 3-day aging bullshit.

[StandbyCymbalist]

Who watches youtube on a digital computer anymore???  I'm on my analog AKAT-1.

But srsly, digital cymbals always sound like $H!+

[wetbobo]

Sngzngzngh-huh-uh-ghuh-wha-wha­t....what were you just sayin? Sorry, I fell asleep once you started talking. Also, I just bounced a Grammy-award winning caliber mix ITB with PT in the time it took you to rewind your reels that sounded like SHIT!

[respinozaaudio]

@wetbobo doesn't count unless you win a Grammy and some of use care about how something sounds enough to take the time and pick the format we record to pt is great but sometimes you want that high end rounded off

[anycolouryouwant]

we are all listening through computers so this test it pretty futile

[beavis5706]

His digital theory is technically incorrect. If you are able to use a high enough sample rate (ie. more samples) then the space between samples becomes zero. I'm not sure if technology is there yet but technically this would be possible.

[muzapstar]

Both recordings sound shitty....

[cheapdirt07]

Kermit the frog come back all is forgiven !!!

[kruszielski]

Are we in the late 90's? I thought this discussion was over about a decade ago...

[jakemillermusic]

They both have purposes. There is technically no "better", only different.

Unfortunately for this test... the recordings themselves suck.

[EETFUK750]

digital theory lol

[Holdsworthands]

The good music is beyond the analog and digital. Is all in the mind

[koolbossjock]

Take your digital and stick it where the sun does not shine.Digital is nothing but a bench tech buzz word to sell crap to the idiots that buy it.can you say 1K-flat flat flat? can you say clip clip clip? DO NOT remaster anything digitaly,you will DESTROY the original curves aka tracks in the original recording.Plain and simple IT SOUNDS LIKE SHIT.Keep your digital,give me a record player. More BS buzz words..Rate/refresh rate,who fcking cares.Suckers are born a million a minute.Digital=SHIT .

[planet10]

is there a plugin for that guys voice!

[Diefordethklok333]

This video is pointless as the sound the listener is getting is digital anyway...

[chucksano]

If I want more warmth in my mix, I'll eq it that way.... want hiss? add it. If a engineer likes that sound it seems to me it should be relatively attainable in the digital realm. At the end of the day it's all compressed to shit and streemed online or as mp3's anyway. Do a comparison of the end goal.... 3 different mp3's we ca download and you figure out which is which. My guess? The vast majority would be wronng ad of the few that guessed right, half would be by luck.

[chucksano]

I agree the mix has variations to the analog, (snare is almost absent for one).

I would love to see them do a similar comparison and not tell anyone which is which til like 6 months later... Then everyone can guess & put it to a true "blind" test. I think there are some differences but not enough that he average listener would ever notice (or care). Certainly not enough to make it worth the analog editing process or digital (protools) would not be the new industry standard.

[MrDemilord]

I prefer Analog, because it cannot be clipped like hell with hyper compressor, or limiter

[tonygmas]

He speaks only what has been scripted by some marketing manager..& maybe he has memorised & rehearsed... Did you hear...sound quality of analog deteriorated in 3 days?? ridiculous.....

[paranormaalutrecht]

nice gay :)

[yappertrap]

is your voice analog or digital?

[PattyWhomperOFFICIAL]

analog is still sound data that can be measured with numbers... digital shows you that your mics and pre's sound brittle and hissy. someone should make an all modern analog tape machine that revolves like 10 times a second and hide it behind a curtain and watch as the tube guys say "listen to that digital crap!"

[plasmaforce11]

has anyone seen UA Audio's Studer® A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder Plug-In? ;)

[NoEgg4u]

@3:45

"Digital isn't colored"?

"It's exact as its coming in"?

You have it backwards.

.

Digital erases 100% of nature's analog original, turns it into numbers, and then a processing chip creates the sound from scratch. You are hearing that chip, and the computations made during the two conversions (analog to digital and then digital to analog for playback).

.

If your analog recording sounds colored, change your gear. Expensive (studio) gear does not guarantee uncolored sound.

[FrenchosaurusRex]

First of all, this guy is a dick and his constant "air quotes" make him look gay. Secondly, youtube compresson completly destroys sound quality so this is a bad experiment. And digital recording sucks. Its overly steril, processed, and lifeless. And everything is completly stereotypical about it. Want reverb? Just click and use the use the same reveb everyone else has! Tape lets you make a sound thats ALL YOURS! Think analog sucks? Tell that to every audio recording before 1995.

[siqkek9]

@FrenchosaurusRex happy to see that someone on youtube knows what their talking about, n agreed youtube compression does suck and changes the sound drastically, but you can still hear the sweet analog tape sound slightly but its there n comparable

[dubified89]

Excellent video, what he says at the end. This guy gets it. Digital formats are fine as long as the source recording was done to tape.

[siqkek9]

@dubified89 or external gear was used, summing mixer or tracked on some sweet console, or great preamps with color neve etc

[NoEgg4u]

Absent from this video are the problems that digital introduces, such as the low bit rate (how much data is (not) in each sample), and jitter (not uniformly playing back each sample)).

Analog, when done right, sounds better. Not because it adds color (that is not an example of analog done right), but because of the absence of color and the accurate reproduction of the original source.

[siqkek9]

@NoEgg4u incorrect first off you mean sample rate, 2nd theres as far as up 2 192k sample rate which is much higher than musical recordings are being made at on the radio, and as far as jitter your correct but thats due to clock issues, and honestly tape if done right does meaning sounding better you dont get high freqs with tape so used on high freqs sources wouldnt mean done right cuz u wuldnt get those freqs, anything is done right as long as it sounds better

[NoEgg4u]

@siqkek9

What I wrote is what I meant.

.

The sample rate was discussed in the video -- and that is not the same as the bit rate, which is how much information is stored in each sample.

99.9% of what we hear is not affected by high frequency roll-off on professional reel-to-reel tape. Everything else, such as voices (which the human ear is very tuned in to) is more accurate when exclusively analog.

.

Problem w/ analog is that studios toss quality control out the window when pressing.records.

[poisonousy]

i could've heard those differences in my sleep

[siqkek9]

@poisonousy lol

[genpatsusensei38]

In the first place the frequency spectrum doen't same to me. Defferent spectrum sound defferent is natural. If one of the method doesn't record whole frequency equal that'll be the problem. It's not benefit. Anyway you need more scientific explantion with using analyzers instead of showing an audio boosted low frequency.

[Parkinson9999]

Well it's difficult to tell, when mix is only drums and distorted guitar. The most obvious difference in the wav files - analog has much more bass. As if the EQ was turned up. The sound itself of analog may be described either as "muddier" or "smoother". Sound, that is often faked using plugins. One thing is clear for everyone - recording in digital is cheaper and simpler.

[teleradiomarvel]

always same kinda bullshit! It's quite useless discuss about digital quality while nowadays, digital music is broadcasted and distributes at low bitrates. The actual music killer is not the so called "digital theory" but who uses poor quality sampled mp3 and DTV sound

[dubified89]

@teleradiomarvel They're not low bit rates, they're high bit rates they just aren't lossless wav like cds and flacs are. But the difference in listening pleasure as far as an average v2 or v0 mp3 compared to wav is trivial as compared to the listening pleasure of an analog sourced recording compared to a pro tools sourced one. You can hardly tell the difference between high bitrate mp3 and lossless where as pro tools recordings just suck.

[dhampex]

Man I always tend to lean the analog route, cause it pure, unpredictable, or predictable and pure fat. Another thing to consider is that an mci will also sound different from a studer or a studer will sound different from an otari, or a 3m m79, or a scully or even ampex. The audio cards are different. Its hard to mimic a mechanical device. But without a doubt analog will always be first in my books!

[phillipmaz]

Most people who use analog, use it to record with, then dump that into pro tools and edit with PT. No one edits via analog editing anymore. Also I personally like analog because it sounds more "real" and somewhat live, in a way.

[Michael55443]

Learned and grew up on 2" analog tape. Been there, done that. I can't imagine going back to it now that I've been using PT for some time. Shuttling tape? Forget about it. Editing on tape? Not. And the fuzz of analog tape and background hiss is what people call "warm" sound. I guess my ears no longer accept a flawed format like analog tape.

[3replybiz]

I love the expression 'better'. All the analogue tape machines I have seen in studios over the last 10 years have been sitting idle while people use the HD system instead. I have only seen 24T analogue machines in action when a transfer to digital was being done. Why not transfer to 24T analogue? Nobody actually does this for a lot of very very good reasons.

[superspit]

So typical....even some video/audio ENGINEERS(?) don't understand the concept that ANNOYING sounds under important narration is distractive......turn that stuff down guys, maybe next time. Cheers.

[westernNYnativ]

Analog is almost always better than digital but this video sucks really bad at conveying that information. Right from the stumbled standup in the intro, it all goes south.

[pigletjr]

I hope that mix isn't the final mix.. That was terrible.

[j1mbafr0sty]

thumbs up if u saw it as " Digital Theory lol "

[methanedirigible]

What a shame that people are born with  voices like that...

[andreasoberholz]

acutely we learned nothing..the sound was awful and there was no real comparison...

[siqkek9]

@andreasoberholz you just have no real ears for music, the guitar sounded more present in all digital, the drums cymbals high hats etc sound way to harsh n to many high freq which would probably have been cut out during mix, the analog tape sound much mroe realistic and if gave the drums a better clarity for the cymbals n high freqs, listen again for details if not stop listening to music at the threshold of pain

[girotube]

@andreasoberholz This is why I did not go to that School! ;)

[wado1942]

I don't know if this is a joke, but the test is inherently flawed because everybody watching it will only hear badly compressed digital sound. You acknowledge this, but since there is no possible way for us to hear your analogue recording as analogue, we can't hear if the digital is adding its own negative side effects.

[borneo215]

analog sounds wayyyyyyy better

[Jhryanii]

voice is annoying as SHIT



[naomifullbloom93]

@Jhryanii kind of sounds like a mix between sheldon cooper and kermit the frog.

[skunkproductionsMLA]

Granting that you're given as much processing power to drag as many plugins to your busses or tracks, you can somewhat fake things to approach the smoothness and fatness of analog. Not that they're the same, but no one on earth nowadays would invest on a room full of rack processors with an analog deck and analog mixing board.

If you're talking straight analog+less processing vs. straight digital+less processing, the former wins.

[PattyWhomperOFFICIAL]

if these old fossils were so amazing they'd remake them like the akg c12...

[HatredPrime]

At the end of the day there is always brickwall limiter on mastering engineer rack that destroys sound of all modern music so why even bother with this analog vs digital

[RegionalChronicles]

To maintain your recordings transfer to digital, (fine I do it everyday) But, for artistic value, track on Professional open reel to reel Analog. Why?.. Because analog has that warm natural sound, Digital has that flat dynamic sound. All and I mean All Digital recordings sound exactly the same. Bands like Nickelback or Muse while yes the music is different, but their recordings sound exactly the same. And that makes the recording industry boring.

[TheGraal]

Dude, where's the snare on the digital? I agree, analogue has more of a punch, but there can't be that big of a difference that exists with the snare between the digital and the analogues.

[956miggz]

I use to do Analog and convert to digital. I never noticed how good it sounded until I switched to all digital. It has it's benefits, but there's just no replacement

[AnalogRocker]

This man speaks the truth about analog and digital! I'm so tired of people saying that analog tape has more resolution than digital. It's the harmonic distortion and other anomalies that are inherent in analog that make it seem that it's better than digital. And 15 IPS analog tape has a bass bump that also colors the sound in a pleasing way. Digital is just the cold, hard truth.

[westernNYnativ]

The digital sounded better to my ears.

[davidmendezrocks]

No Words, The Analog Tape of 3rd Day sounds Great! There is no comparison with the "heat" Plug ins and Tape Simulators, sounds very Natural! :D Nice Shoot out! 

[DuaLeaD]

The bass and drums had WAY more punch in the Analog mixes in my opinion....

[Meteotrance]

There is a lot of plus in quality in just using cassette tape deck, it cut the bad frequencie on high level and adding a saturation and cycle effect, Vinyle also win the Quality war ^^ using 2 inche tape with OTARI or MCI recorder is a very cool luxury stuff.

[dragonmobrecords]

Wow, what a difference! The 3rd day analog tape sounds amazing.

[jordaniothefourth]

@dragonmobrecords

it does... It almost seems like the drums have been turned up in the mix or something, they seem much louder and fuller.

[amayaflamencopuro]

i've been recording my masters with dome tricks in my tascam balanced cassette deck and it gives me the tape saturation effect i love...keeps the mix more real

[PlayItLoudPro]

I find that adding tape distortion in the master gives me the color I am looking for and keeps the mix more grimey. I grew up listening to eight tacks and tape distortion gives me the feellin all o the instruments sit together better. Cool vid 4 sho