“there’s only one way to find out!!!! ..FIGHT!” (google it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPrcr5Mj4y0

good tips

old people always bang on about analogue and tube amps. and if you think about it their hearing is really impaired with age.

with the replies you can tell who read Sound on Sound (boring magazine) and who read computer music

I read future music, although sometimes they are wrong

anyway

good work

Due to the nature of the band and their music, I didn’t even think of trying to get them to play with a click, and I think it worked out best that way.
As for #8, quite a few of the tracks we did have one or two vocal takes, and in the end I usually just ended up picking one.

Also, despite having a higher quality condenser at our disposal, I opted to have the singer go through an SM58, into his guitar amp, and we mic’d it with the condenser (okay okay, so I stole that one from Julian Casablancas). He’s a really loud, high-energy singer who likes to close his eyes and grab the stand, and trying to get him to be careful with his levels and mic handling on a condenser just sucked the life out of his performance.

We did our best to keep the energy high and every performance as fresh as possible. I’d rather get one raw, high-energy take with a couple of “mistakes” here and there, than ten “perfect” takes that sound stale.
Glad to hear I’m doing things “right”. haha.

I’m starting to see, it’s all about #1.

Thanks again!

Yeah, no, tape doesn’t always sound better.

That is inaccurate. Do you have any specific science? I do.

To give an even more specific example from my previous post. If you are recording a 20khz tone at 441.khz digital, you are only getting one sample per waveform cycle. This means you are getting a triangle wave, which will sound a lot different than the original waveform. Not only that, but there is no chance the sample is going to fall directly on the peak and trough of the waveform, giving you and even more inaccurate reproduction of the waveform. Neither one of these things are an issue with tape, considering it does not use samples to record like digital.

Also, it absolutely matters if someone has heard 2″ analog tape. People are listening with their ears, not with science, although in this situation science does prove that 2″ analog tape produces the more accurate waveform. I don’t know any pro engineers that think digital sounds better than analog, although most engineers do work with digital because it is cheaper, easier to edit, quicker and less of a hassle to work with, and because these days it is going to end up in the digital medium eventually anyways.

Pick up “Principles of Digital Audio” by Ken Pohlman, and you can learn about the science behind digital recording.

Also, regarding the loss of quality when copying cds, no one mentioned the difference between cd replication and cd duplication, which makes all the difference as far a quality loss.

Science. Doesn’t matter whether we’ve heard 2″ tape or not (though I have); science says that digital recordings most accurately reproduce the waveform.

First of all lets make one thing clear: the term Digital Recording does not mean “Higher Fidelity”, it means recording sound to digital media through the interpretation of bits and bytes. I can record digitally at 22Khz and 32-bit sound depth. This is a digital recording, but it is nowhere near a high-fidelity recording.

Secondly, the “mild level of distortion” you speak of is not created by a lack of quality, it is actually a harmonic resonance created by the reel system, which causes the high end of your audio signal to become slightly depressed while the bass frequencies are “thickened up” (causing the often sought-after “warmth” effect of tape). This effect is very slight and should be in no way interpreted as a loss of signal quality. Signal quality on tape has to do with the speed at which the audio was recorded (much like bitrate in digital recordings). If you record on lower-speed tape, you will have a lower fidelity recording. If you record on higher-speed tape, you will have a higher fidelity recording. Distortion, in the way that you mean, really has nothing to do with which media you record to, but is more a factor of what preamps you are using.

This is also why i disagree with myth #7. You DO need outboard processors to get a good sound. Plug-ins emulate hardware gear, however there is one major problem…. They have no hardware! Most quality processors sound good because of the capacitors and transistors through which their currents flow. When you try to emulate the “sound” created by certain types of hardware, you cannot achieve the same results (this is especially notable in any “tube” plug-ins you might play around with – Vacuum Tubes physically drive audio in a specific way, no emulation comes close to reproducing the warmth of this sound). There are notable exceptions to the rule (some of the new Convolution Reverb plug-ins are a really nice alternative to an expensive reverb box or echo chamber) but for the most part, plug-ins will not rival the real thing.

By using terms like “Tape fan boys” or by saying “This myth (#4) is perpetuated by people who don’t really understand digital technology, and by the same crowd who insists that tape is inherently ‘better.’ ” you are displaying an undue bias towards tape recording that really denigrates the entirety of this article. Considering that that “myth” #4 is true when it comes to Tape, the “Tape Fan Boys” are in no way perpetuating this “myth.” They are probably just talking about the media that they know.

Furthermore, the reason you may pay more money for a studio session on tape is because any editing done on tape requires much more time and skill than computer based editing. This is the biggest drawback of reel to reel recording in our day and age. I myself like to use a mixed media approach – recording my pre-production work digitally, doing my editing in a digital editing suite, and then re-recording my live/final mix to a 2″ reel. I think the sound of the final product (on tape) is inherently better. Does this make me a “Tape Fan Boy”? If you would like more opinions on the subject look up some articles about the recording process for Amy Winehouse’s latest album, or the Motown sound of the 60s (Yes, I personally prefer these sounds to the Nickleback or Goo-Goo-Dolls Sound).

In closing, digital recording is not accurate representation. Neither is tape recording. Both are interpretation of sound using different technologies. Each has its strengths and drawbacks. To claim that either is worse than the other, or is perpetuated by ridiculous “fan boys” who don’t know what they’re talking about is utter poppycock.

Also… Why would I use Pro Tools (or, for that matter, Logic or CuBase) when I could use Reaper? Hmmm….