rauliruegas
Yeesh, you are mashing up so many ideas and drawing strange inferences it’s hard to know where to start.
Analog just can’t be nearer to that " truer to the recording " target as digital can. As digital and every other " stuff " analog has precise limits and are shorter than the digital alternative.
Geeze, thanks again for the lesson. I’ve only been recording sound for almost 40 years, much of that in a professional capacity. I moved from analog/tape recording to digital. I’m a bit familiar with the differences, and similarities.
Analog just can’t be nearer to that " truer to the recording " target as digital can. As digital and every other " stuff " analog has precise limits and are shorter than the digital alternative.
You are mangling a truth there.
It’s already been said, ad infinitum, and by me as well, that digital has the greater *potential* for accuracy to the source. But it’s sloppy to say that analog just can’t be nearer "to the recording" than digital. If something was recorded on analog, that IS the closest you can get to the "recording." It IS the recording. If you mean that analog recording can not capture the sound of instruments as accurately as digital, once again that needs caveats: You can have a badly made, inaccurate digital recording and a better, more accurately captured analog recording.If you mean that analog *reproduction* of the original recording "can not" be as accurate as a digital reproduction of a recording, again, we need to recognize caveats. It’s possible, and has happened often enough, to screw up a digital reproduction/mastering as it is analog. There have been plenty of digital mastering from original analog tapes that were crap - done by less talented mastering engineers, or with wrong assumptions, or on the cheap, etc.
This is why some original analog reproductions - e.g. reel to reel tape or even LPs, CAN and have been better, more accurate to the original than the later digital re-mastering. If you just think that playing a vinyl LP vs a CD version always defaults to the CD version for quality and accuracy, you just don’t know what you are talking about.
But IF you are ONLY saying that digital recording/mixing/mastering and reproduction of the original source has the greater technical potential for accuracy, well of course. That’s as I said already conceded!
And...all of THAT is a red herring! You’ve gone off on that tangent from the descriptions I gave of some vinyl recordings. Nowhere did I claim that THOSE records were technically more accurate than a digital version. I DID say I liked it, and that some aspects of the sound reminded me of certain qualities I hear in real life sounds.
Remember that when recording, microphones have colorations - exacerbated in any number of ways, through placement, angling, etc.And any additional EQ or mastering or mixing or production effects can typically add more colorations. The result of many, if not most, recordings of the human voice result in sibilant being sharpened/hardened/heightened to an unnatural degree. This is a very common coloration.
One of the tools used in mastering vinyl - due to limitations of viny/turntables - is "de-essing." to reduce sibilance. (It’ also used in mixing to a degree, but I’m talking of vinyl mastering now). The end result of this is that the sibilance emphasis that can be left on the digital version can be reduced in the vinyl version. I’ve heard this when comparing numerous digital vs vinyl counterparts of the same recordings. The result is that, when the sibilance isn’t sticking out as so obviously artificial and sharp, the voice on the vinyl sounds more naturally balanced to my ear, less artificial, more believable.
That’s just one way in which vinyl CAN sound "more natural, more like the real thing" vs digital versions. There are various other artifacts that can give a pleasing sense of ’realism.’ For instance, any number of LPs are eq’d differently, often with a bit more zip in the upper midrange/lower treble. (Or a cartridge, depending on how it’s set/impedance interaction etc can impart this). This CAN give a sense of greater immediacy and clarity. I was listening the other day to an LP of music that I also have as a digital file, and instruments like strumming guitar, bongos, snare drum etc just sounded more present, real, than the digital version.
I also have many old "library music" LPs recorded very beautifully in the analog era, and I have some of those that were released on CD or that can be streamed (CD quality) digitally from some sites. In terms of pure sound quality - richness, detail, spaciousness, texture, presence...in almost every parameter the LPs sound distinctly better. There are any number of factors why this may be so, including that whoever re-mastered them for the digital versions just didn’t do a great job. They sound very flat and canned vs the original LPs.
All that is to say is that it helps no one to just put blinders on and drive home one single view in a way that ignores all sorts of relevant details, and which presumes sometimes that someone is saying falsehoods when they have never done such a thing.
I’m out...
