Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

wuwulf, Re “ambience”:

I hope it is ok to take the liberty of quoting another poster:

Schubert 12-23-2020 11:28am

All that matters is what YOUR brain thinks .
Mine thinks vinyl is in a airy room.
It thinks CD is playing in a room with no air in it .

 My opinion and that of many colleagues (not all) has been that ON BALANCE analog tape gets closer to the sound of real. 

You see now I know you are lying. Why because I am quite open about my experience having developed, modified, optimized, world class studio equipment much of my life and spent too much time listening to live feeds and recording feeds from just before digital when analog was at its peak (I optimized many a tape machine) all the way through the digital revolution.  I started my career with tape optimization. I spent 100s of hours listening to what was being played and recorded live. 


I would have a very hard time finding a recording engineer with the relevant experience, and I have dealt with 100s, who would claim that the analog recording was more "real" or true to the source. Ones that work with high end professional gear and have experience with both just don't say that because it is not true. You won't be able to tell the difference between a live feed and the digital studio recording. They are indistinguishable.  With tape you always knew ... Always. The artifacts are readily noticable.


Recording engineers don't use terms like dynamic micro nuance or whatever made up term you created.

Now many engineers and artists preferred the euphonic colorations of tape. Took some of the edge off perhaps, fattened the bass, etc.  That is why we have digital plug ins to simulate those effects.

I don't expect people to believe me. Do a search for highly experienced engineers who worked from the 80s -2000s. Some have written articles. All will say digital is what accurately recreates the source (warts and all).  Many will also say that tape presented a more pleasing recreation, but not more accurate.  Now they just recreate that in software and get the best of both worlds.

Low Level.Listening to digital I hear every insrument beautiful rendered, often betters analog. There is enough of everything, but still somehow it is presented as it is recorded in space. Where on analog the music is more like craftet.

Remember helping out on a recording of a three piece trio with one singer.  Very simple music, absolute dark background done in a studio environment.  The result was not good. The quiet was unnatural and the brain just does not like that. It was fixed by adding in some environmental noise.   Ever noticed how hearing chairs move in an orchestral recording isn't distracting and adds a more real quality?

There are lots of tools now for adding pleasant (to most) euphonic colorations. It's an interesting area.   For me personally i prefer the dark background on orchestral music, likely because their is so much going on and digital allows me to pick out all the nuance including that chair moving.  Rock and Pop I often prefer vinyl but modern releases are changing that.

“Lying”

Nice! Way to go. I have no idea what exactly your experience has been, or what genre(s) you have worked with. I could also point out and expound on the fact that recording engineers and musicians are often at odds as to what sounds closer to real (one reason so many recordings sound subpar), but that would surely not lead to anything positive here. Obviously, we have had very different experiences. It is also obvious that it is not possible to have a discussion with you. Perhaps our paths will cross some day? I tend to doubt it.

They don't argue about what is real, they argue because many (most?) artists have a much different impression of how they sound versus how they actually do.  Digital captures every wart in their playing or singing. It does not add anything nor take anything away.  It is totally unforgiving.  Lots of artists don't like to know they are not as good as they think they are :-)


Amateur musician, not awful :-). I know it is very hard to hear accurately yourself while playing. Singing impossible. Your position in relationship to your instrument makes for a quite different sound compared to what is recorded in front of you. There are quite different masking effects due to body placement, direction of the instrument, etc.


You are not discussing with me. You are trying to tell me things that are not true are.