Shoot out: Reel to Reel Comparison to Direct Digital Recording

JackD201 · Dec 17, 2015

No idea but I'm pretty sure the digital is closer to the mic feed. That was always my experience doing the same thing at Full Sail recording to both Protools and 2" Tape at the same time. Now is that a good thing? In close mic'ed sessions, mic feeds very, very rarely sound good. Unless you like things in your face that is. Having your face a foot away from a guitar amp is no fun and neither is a raw recording presented at you that way. In both cases (D and A) artistic decisions still need to be made. There's the reason you need engineers after all. They aren't just level bots, the good ones anyway.

I liked the analog one better. Spotted the digital recording in the first few seconds. Like the others I did not like the post produced version. It sounded disjointed and unnatural.

microstrip · Dec 17, 2015

amirm said:
Question: in this video and example, which sound more closely matched the original? I know none of us were there to hear the original but I am going to ask the question anyway .

Unless you tell us the brand, model and age of the instrument, the temperature and humidity of the room with a precision of better than .5%, the RT60 of the room, the distance between the instrument and the walls and the distance to the microphone with 1 mil accuracy we can not answer in a scientific way.

But I can guess your comment to any answer ...

Joe Whip · Dec 17, 2015

The difference was immediately obvious to me due to the tape hiss. Tape clearly has its own sound. If you want that sound or color, use tape, If not, use digital. I find it interesting to note that the 24/96 transfer of the tape captured the roundness that some of you have described. However, that roundness was not captured in the original 24/96 recording. Perhaps it wasn't there to begin with and is simply an artifact of tape and the electronics in the tape deck. After all, why would it be captured off tape but not directly off the mic feed? I will say that I preferred tape 1 and 2 to the eq'd compressed final track which sounded very artificial.

TBone · Dec 17, 2015

Joe Whip said:
The difference was immediately obvious to me due to the tape hiss. Tape clearly has its own sound. If you want that sound or color, use tape, If not, use digital. I find it interesting to note that the 24/96 transfer of the tape captured the roundness that some of you have described. However, that roundness was not captured in the original 24/96 recording. Perhaps it wasn't there to begin with and is simply an artifact of tape and the electronics in the tape deck. After all, why would it be captured off tape but not directly off the mic feed? I will say that I preferred tape 1 and 2 to the eq'd compressed final track which sounded very artificial.

Over my crappy notebook speakers, all I heard was a brighter tonal shift. In my old tape days, that kind of tonal shift would have me thinking of adjusting playback azimuth.

Ron Party · Dec 17, 2015

JackD201 said:
Having your face a foot away from a guitar amp is no fun

Haha. Man does your statement bring back for me memories of a few jam sessions and performances. Still have my Fender amp too. I wish I had you there at the time to settle some band fights.

c1ferrari · Dec 17, 2015

JackD201 said:
No idea but I'm pretty sure the digital is closer to the mic feed. That was always my experience doing the same thing at Full Sail recording to both Protools and 2" Tape at the same time.

2"/24 trk? Have you ever recorded and reproduced with 2"/16 trk? How'd it sound

JackD201 · Dec 17, 2015

Never did Sam. The facility didn't have those head blocks if I recall. If they did we never used them.

JackD201 · Dec 17, 2015

Ron Party said:
Haha. Man does your statement bring back for me memories of a few jam sessions and performances. Still have my Fender amp too. I wish I had you there at the time to settle some band fights.

Hahahaha. Oh boy we witnessed a lot of that. We got pummeled by artists too. There was this one amateur group where almost every one of them wanted to be front and center in the mix. I learned a lot about diplomacy!

Schallfeldwebel · Mar 25, 2016

Probably most decision maiking in audio, is done visually. ;-)

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Shoot out: Reel to Reel Comparison to Direct Digital Recording

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