Michael Thomas Connolly a musician, recording engineer, and producer writes an interesting and thought provoking article describing the analog and digital production processes and tradeoffs.
In part he writes:
Recording does not capture an objective reality any more than a photograph would. Although this might seem controversial, notice that a photographer makes aesthetic choices in lens, camera, lighting, composition, editing, and printing. Similarly, recording engineers and producers make choices at each stage of recording—from selecting and positioning microphones, coaching a certain performance, editing and mixing the recording, and finally mastering the recording onto a consumable format (vinyl, CD, MP3, etc.).
The distinction between analog and digital recording methods can be a confusing one, so here’s the simplest rule of thumb. Digitally recording anything (whether it be a sound wave in the air, the daily temperature, or a photograph) involves measurement, i.e., assigning a value on a numerical scale of some kind (decibels, degrees, or pixel color values). Analog recording methods do not.
Analog records cannot be reproduced, processed, or transformed without introducing distortions.
In contrast, the wonderful property of digital recording—and the reason that it has become dominant in audio, video, photography, telephony, radio, and other domains—is that, once I have made my initial measurement, the resulting “recording” can be copied and reproduced without generating any further error!
Admittedly, digital recordings are not 100% accurate. My tape measure can only measure to the nearest 1/16 inch, so I must round off the measurement when recording it in my notebook. Still, there is still much less chance for cumulative error, and finer-grained scales can decrease even those inaccuracies.
While distortion in analog systems is unavoidable, with digital systems distortion becomes an aesthetic choice which can be added as desired.
I want to emphasize that distortion is not necessarily a bad thing! I like the sound of analog distortion and the warmth it adds, as do many listeners and other audio professionals, and I take active steps to add it to recordings that I produce as it can create a pleasant listening experience—and that’s great! An audio engineer’s view is simply that you are adding (desirable) distortion to your listening experience. But like garlic, there is such a thing as too much harmonic distortion.
So is analog better than digital? Does a record sound better than an MP3 or a CD? The answer is not an easy one. The story is much simpler, however, if we embrace the idea I suggested at the beginning of this piece, namely that the playback of audio recording is the product of a long series transformations. We can accept that a musical performance was transformed through many processing steps to create a master recording. In general, the analog transformation steps add distortion, which many people find pleasant, and the digital transformation steps add very little distortion, unless intentionally designed to do so.
This is a rather long article and covers all areas of the recording and mastering processes. I'm attaching the article.https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2021/04/07/an-audio-professionals-take-on-vinyl/
In part he writes:
Recording does not capture an objective reality any more than a photograph would. Although this might seem controversial, notice that a photographer makes aesthetic choices in lens, camera, lighting, composition, editing, and printing. Similarly, recording engineers and producers make choices at each stage of recording—from selecting and positioning microphones, coaching a certain performance, editing and mixing the recording, and finally mastering the recording onto a consumable format (vinyl, CD, MP3, etc.).
The distinction between analog and digital recording methods can be a confusing one, so here’s the simplest rule of thumb. Digitally recording anything (whether it be a sound wave in the air, the daily temperature, or a photograph) involves measurement, i.e., assigning a value on a numerical scale of some kind (decibels, degrees, or pixel color values). Analog recording methods do not.
Analog records cannot be reproduced, processed, or transformed without introducing distortions.
In contrast, the wonderful property of digital recording—and the reason that it has become dominant in audio, video, photography, telephony, radio, and other domains—is that, once I have made my initial measurement, the resulting “recording” can be copied and reproduced without generating any further error!
Admittedly, digital recordings are not 100% accurate. My tape measure can only measure to the nearest 1/16 inch, so I must round off the measurement when recording it in my notebook. Still, there is still much less chance for cumulative error, and finer-grained scales can decrease even those inaccuracies.
While distortion in analog systems is unavoidable, with digital systems distortion becomes an aesthetic choice which can be added as desired.
I want to emphasize that distortion is not necessarily a bad thing! I like the sound of analog distortion and the warmth it adds, as do many listeners and other audio professionals, and I take active steps to add it to recordings that I produce as it can create a pleasant listening experience—and that’s great! An audio engineer’s view is simply that you are adding (desirable) distortion to your listening experience. But like garlic, there is such a thing as too much harmonic distortion.
So is analog better than digital? Does a record sound better than an MP3 or a CD? The answer is not an easy one. The story is much simpler, however, if we embrace the idea I suggested at the beginning of this piece, namely that the playback of audio recording is the product of a long series transformations. We can accept that a musical performance was transformed through many processing steps to create a master recording. In general, the analog transformation steps add distortion, which many people find pleasant, and the digital transformation steps add very little distortion, unless intentionally designed to do so.
This is a rather long article and covers all areas of the recording and mastering processes. I'm attaching the article.https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2021/04/07/an-audio-professionals-take-on-vinyl/
