Another Analog Vs. Digital question?
Vocals - In my opinion the effects blended together better on Tape, maybe if I were a trained singer who sang with no effects I’d say Digital was better though
Synth - Tape wins HANDS DOWN, it sounded MUCH warmer and the ‘texture’ was much MUCH smoother, the digital recording sounded good too but it sounded ‘computerized’ which can be cool , but the tape recording was incredible.
Drums - I have a drum machine, this worked pretty much the same analog or digitally recorded, but the tape picked up more ambient sounds from the reverb and gain effects i added and the digital recording sounded ‘bigger’ . It’s all the same but i’ll go with digital on this one, i don’t like drum beats being hidden.
Guitar - this depends , on tape I got less noise and the notes blended better to form chords, but when fed directly into logic it sounded much clearer but could never sound exactly like my amp sounds live.. I can’t make a ruling on this one, I’m going to swtich back and forth as i need it.
Bass - pretty much same as guitar
MY QUESTION is this….why is it that if i record directly into Software it sounds different than when I record to tape then feed the TAPE into the software, shouldn’t it be the same?
By: Undead
Tags: Amp, Analog Vs Digital, Tape Recording
October 11th, 2009 at 19:57
absolutely not- the act of going to tape changes freq response, phase relationships, and alters dynamic range (tape compression)
October 14th, 2009 at 19:45
You say “direct feed” into Logic Pro. That’s the difference. The analog to digital interface colors the whole process. 16 bit? 24 bit? 192 kHz sampling? Tape is going to “saturate” with stuff like drums and low synth, but that can be duplicated with a tube pre. The effects are “seeing” the analog input with all its artifacts so it’s going to sound different than when it sees a digital signal. Basically, you want to reduce the number of times you’re going from digital to analog back to digital. Even some internal effects processors do a D-A-D conversion without you realizing.
October 17th, 2009 at 07:01
Good answers so far, I’ll add my 2 cents. When you record to tape you incur what is referred to as a “generation loss”. It’s what happens every time you record something to tape, so if you record a recording, 2nd generation, record that, 3rd generation, etc. Eventually it just sounds like muddy crap. Also tape compression and saturation, etc come in to play as well. Then when you capture the tape to digital, you’re limited by the bandwidth of your interface. 44.1KHz-16bit sounds pretty different than say 96KHz-24bit, or even 192KHz-24bit. Not to mention the analog limitations of your interfaces inputs.