Audio recording

[Matt Pacini]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by dogstarman:
[B]Hmmm... this topic again...
"I have to say that is not true in my experience. I think ou would be hard pressed to find a professional recording studio that was not based PRIMARILY around either Alesis ADAT's or Tascam DA-88's. The reason is because those units are so easy to slave together... you can run 20 ADAT's for EVER and they will never go out of sync. "


(Matt Pacini responds):
Well, I clearly made the distinction between music recording studios, and film/TV audio & post production studios.
Sync is totally irrelevant for music only recording, (unless you are referring to machines slaving together, which is no problem whatsoever with analog machines), that is not being used for film/TV, and if you go into a lot of professional studios (like I have, in L.A.) you will find that most are still using those nice, old 24trk analog machines. Some have Adat's & Tascam's, but those are generally NOT the absolute top of the line studios. You''re reference to sync means that you are, whether you know it or not, referring to post production sound facilities.
There simply is not any reason for studios to get rid of their wonderful sounding 24 track machines. New studios, that's a different story, but still, analog machines are sought after. Otherwise we'd be able to get them for $100 at garage sales.

(Originally posted by dogstarman
"Sure, Lenny Kravitz and the Black Crows have big analog studios, but if you look at people have have major, major world class studios, like Peter Gabriel and Prince, they went to digital in the early 80's and NEVER went back to analog."

(Matt Pacini responds):
Not true.
Peter Gabriel's studio is set up with two 24 track analog machines, and one 32 track digital machine, and he records onto all three for a total of 80 tracks! (I'm suffering from track envy).

So if you call the fact that he bought one 32 track digital machine, but still uses his two 24 track machines "going digital", that I guess that's a very creative way to refer to it!

Matt Pacini


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[technicolour]

I could of sworn Peter Gabriels ablbum "so" has AAD on it somewhere, i may of been mistaken mind.

Its strange that if you look at classical music cd's recorded by the BBC or any other big companys from about 1982 onwards are pretty much all DDD recordings, i assume thats because with classical they like it too sound pure and there isnt really a need for analouge.

I help out with the technical bits for a gof friend of mine who has a band with some of my other friends who play in it, Ive only just persuaded the guy who's band it is too use analouge rather then digital.

He wanted to use a minidisc player to do the original recording!!! and not a mini disc deck but an actually mini disc player that fits in your shirt pocket. I beleive in recording in analouge first which i will do onto TDK SAX cassette (no mulittrack folks ) and then onto my pc, and then onto cd.

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Jim

[dogstarman]

Hmmm... this topic again...

Anyway I just wanted to make a comment about most professional musicians using analog systems for recording: I have to say that is not true in my experience. I think ou would be hard pressed to find a professional recording studio that was not based PRIMARILY around either Alesis ADAT's or Tascam DA-88's. The reason is because those units are so easy to slave together... you can run 20 ADAT's for EVER and they will never go out of sync.

Sure, Lenny Kravitz and the Black Crows have big analog studios, but if you look at people have have major, major world class studios, like Peter Gabriel and Prince, they went to digital in the early 80's and NEVER went back to analog.

None-the-less, I would certainly recomend using a Hi-Fi VHS recorder for stuff recorded inside. Just don't try to run several miles of extention cord behind a moving car....

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[dogstarman]

Not trying to argue w/ the Peter Gabriel studio comment... but where did find that info? I had read something, I beleive it was concerning the Passion album and other WOMAD releases around that time, in which Gabriel had claimed he had made a total digital conversion- mixing counsoles, recorders, etc.
Perhaps I was mislead.

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[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by trevorbr:
Not trying to be a wise guy CD audio (16-bit) has a dynamic range of 96dB, so the signal to noise ratio would have to be less.


-trevor
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Is 16 bit the current standard for CD?

Your rating for CD is a bit lower than what I remember, althhough my source was not a print source for CD.

I think CD has more dynamic range than VHS HI-FI, so if VHS HI-FI is mid 80's to low 90's signal to noise, than it seems that CD would top 100 in signal to noise.

Anyone have a credible source?

-Alex



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[MovieStuff]

Matt, I have to disagree. There are three very good reasons for the old studios to give up their wonderful old 24 track machines. They're called "tape noise", "maintenance" and most importantly, "competition".

When snot nosed kids can create a flawless all digital system in their garage using daddy's credit card to buy either hard drive based or DA88 based or ADAT based recording hardware, the big boys aren't going to bat an eye to throw out equipment that is decades old, paid for many times over and isn't going to compete in today's communication environment. They aren't losing money by throwing it out. But they could seriously lose money by not throwing it out. And you CAN buy used 24 track machines for doodly squat. I know a studio here that has one for sell for around $200. If you want to replace the bearings in the capstan, it's a hell of a bargain. Better bring a forklift and a big truck, though.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an analog freak. But you are talking about top flight companies that change out hardware virtually every decade to take advantage of the most current technology; much of which has nothing to do with the digital issue being discussed here.

In the film mixing world, DA88s have more or less become the defacto standard because they can slave as many as they need and contributing artists such as composers or foley artists can give them DA88 cassettes with a stereo mix on channels one and two and seperate instrumentation or EFX on the other tracks; all in lock with the picture. This is either used right off the DA88 slaved to picture, or the digital info is transferred to a NLE system for finish with the rest of post.

Analog machines are quaint and some people (like me) like their sound, but in the competition for broadcast and film budget dollars, digital is king of the hill. No producer will go analog when they can get all digital for the same money or less.

I am not saying that you did not see these machines in use in some studios. But I think what you saw was an anomaly and not indicative of what current trends and standards are. Every production studio in Houston (music or film) is all digital now, with the exception of small analog studios that cater to garage bands that like the warm sound of analog and tube amps. I know several people here that compose for production companies based in both LA and NY and, to a person, they are all required to deliver on DA88 tape. The rest of the studios here use ADAT or hard drive based systems.

Roger

[trevorbr]

Alex, the CD standard for audio was locked in at 16-bit encoding with a sample rate of 44.1khz. This is what is refered to as "CD quality." In typical digital audio encoding (linear) each bit represents 6dB of dynamic range, therefore, 16x6dB=96dB of dynamic range. In a 24-bit system, the theoretical dynamic range is 144dB.
Signal to noise ratio is related to dynamic range in that its value will be less because of the amount of noise generated by the circuitry and or the media. So, for many different "CD quality" recording devices, you will have many different signal to noise ratios varying according to their quality. Hi-Fi VHS is very close and sometime equal to the CD standard, again, according to the quality of the machine being used.
The dynamic range of a given digital format can not exceed a value greater than it is capable of representing. CD audio has a dynamic range of 96dB, close to 100dB, but not quite. And again, the signal to noise ratio will be less.


-trevor

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[mattias]

alex: the maximum dynamic range of any digital signal is always 6db x number of bits. this comes from the definition of bits, db's and dynamic range, so it's impossible to go higher.

and i don't think you can compare md to cd and dat at the same time. most md's and dat's use 48khz (sadly not all of them) and cd's only use 44. this means that most anti aliasing (low pass) filters in cd "recorders" will cut some of the high frequencies that you can actually hear, while a dat or md recorder can filter only frequencies above 20khz, avoiding this. i'd say a properly recorded md should sound better than a cd, especially if we're talking dialogue, which is very easy to compress without artifacts. no way to beat dat though... (unless we're talking the new 20 bit md's of course)

/matt

[MovieStuff]

I was told there would be no math!

Seriously, this is all merely a distinction without a difference, isn't it? While I can appreciate the technical differences between the formats, in the end, most all film location sound is voice, which even the most basic analog recorder has no problem handling. In fact, considering the way digital tends to clip when hit with unexpectied sound over 0 VU (from inexperienced actors that frequently populate low budget productions), I'm not really that keen on digital recording for location sound work. For cheap stuff, I prefer to use the analog tracks of a video deck. I get stable synch sound and don't have to worry about clipping when someone decides to "emote".

My two centavos.

Roger

[mattias]

roger, i couldn't agree more. the numbers i gave are only relevant for the actual physical recording of the signal. 90% of the "quality" comes from the analog equipment before this in the food chain (mics, mixers, amps, limiters, compressors and so on), as well as (important!) the skill of the people who do it.

/matt