Analog vs. Digital Music Technology
The Basics
Analog recording dates back to the days of Thomas Edison. It uses as certain form of media (for example, a cassette tape) to store a continual waveform representation of the recorded sound. This can be done in several ways, from the actual physical representation of a groove in a record, to the changing magnetic fields used on a magnetic tape.
The first recognised analog recording was made by Thomas Edison in 1877. Using a machine called a phonograph, a diaphragm controlled a vibrating needle which in turn scratched an analog signal onto a tinfoil cylinder. The needle could then be run back over the grooves that had been scratched into the tin, vibrating the diaphragm and reproducing the sound.
The Edison Phonograph
This device was then altered by Emil Berliner in 1887 to use what we know as “records”, a round disc with a spiral groove that the needle travels along. The diaphragm was eventually replaced with electronic amplification.
In digital recording, it is not an analogous representation of the sound but rather a very similar representation that does not deteriorate in quality no matter how many times it is played. The recording process is more complicated than that of analog recording. An analog to digital converter, also known as an ADC, is used to represent the analog wave as a series of numbers. To play the sound, the process is reversed with a digital to analog converter (DAC).
With digital recording, if a faithful reproduction of the original sound is to be done then the sampling rate and sampling precision must be as high as possible. This is controlled by the sampling rate, and sampling precision. The sampling rate controls how many samples are taken each second, and the precision how many gradations are available. A CD’s sampling rate is 44 100 samples per second and 65 536 gradations. A sound quality such as this will generally sound indiscernibly close to the real-life sound to most human ears.
Why Use Analog in the Digital Age?
A studio full of tasty analog and digital equipment, soundtracked by someone who fails to sync a synth line and beat
At the end of 2004, the last remaining company to manufacture analog tape, Quantegy, was shut down citing bankruptcy. It seemed like the end was near for analog recording. However, due to the realisation that analog is still the preferred way to record for many established and well-respected music producers and engineers, a company called Discount Tape recently bought out Quantegy and began producing tape again. Several other companies have announced their intention to start or re-start tape production as well. So it seems despite the prevalence of digital technology, and every second person having their own pro-tools setup in their bedroom, there are still many that prefer the sound of Analog.
Sound Engineer Steve Albini, responsible for hundreds of albums through the 90’s and 00’s including Nirvana’s In Utero, has a studio in Chicago called Electric Audio. This studio is one of the well-known analog only studios that remains in America. Most of the larger and more well-known places have moved to digital. Albini prefers the warmer sound of analog recording and effects, and feels that he has more control over the whole recording process. For example, if a certain module or effect is not working in the equipment rack, quite often the solution to fixing it can be as simple as making sure it is plugged in correctly!
Steve Albini recording Tom Cary. Gives a good sense of the beautiful organic sounds he manages to capture in his studio.
Certainly, it seems that familiarity and a small fear of the digital age could be key factors in certain studio engineers preference for analog. There are certainly less variables in the process – with a digital setup, there are an extraordinarily large amount of factors that can be changed in a computer and in each individual program the computer is using at the time. Add to that the chance that the entire system could crash at any second and you can see why an engineer that had grown up with analog would feel much safer with his work immortalised on tape rather than a hard disk!
Another point of contention against digital is the use of effects to treat the sound. In most cases with external effects and analog technology, the sound travels from the instrument being used, into the amplifier, then the effect processor, then is recorded onto tape. This means the sound is already manipulated when it is recorded onto the tape, giving the effected sound a “warmer” and more real feel.
But Digital Can….
However, if we cast the techno-paranoia to one side briefly we can see an amazing amount of versatility opened up by the advent of digital technology. For starters, high quality recordings can be made in the privacy of one’s bedroom and then produced in the same room. No longer are bedroom artists confined to using a crappy 4-track tape recorder until they can save up enough money to enter a recording studio before getting their demos down.
Digital effects have their advantages too. Although the analog style gives a warmer, fatter sound, with digital effects the recording process is non-destructive. This means that the sound from the instrument is recorded to a hard drive first, before effects are added. Thus, if the selected effect produces an undesirable sound, the effect can be swapped, changed or removed altogether without the need to re-record the instruments part. This gives great versatility and saves huge amounts of time in an industry that is becoming increasingly more expensive to work in for unknown artists.
He makes it seem so easy...
Spreading the Word
The broadband internet era has also opened up another world for digital music. Musicians can send an unfinished song via the net to a band member or producer. That second party can then open up the song on their copy of ProTools (or whatever platform they happen to be using) and begin adding parts, effects, and doing whatever they want! The internet is also a veritable smorgasboard of downloadable effects and programs, some of very high quality, that can be used to tweak and enhance music to an incredible degree.
The Test of Time
Finally, analog recordings have the unfortunate characteristic of deteriorating over time and with repeated use. The more the sound is played, the quicker the quality will degrade, as you will notice when you record onto a cassette tape more than a few times, or play a certain tape over and over. The same is true for analog recording tape- it only has so much lifespan.
But when media is stored in the digital format, provided the data is not corrupted in any way, it will be exactly the same sound that you hear whether it is played one hundred or one thousand times. The storage is also a lot less bulky – analog tape requires a fairly large amount of storage room, whereas hundreds of albums worth of music can fit on a single hard disk.
Conclusion
So, it seems like despite the fact there will always be people in the music world (for the next 50 years, at least) that will not give up the way of analog, digital has already taken over. For those of us without access to expensive and increasingly rare technology, digital allows us unprecedented control and ability over the creation of our music. It enables us to share our music with an incredibly large and diverse audience, and increases the odds of getting all the good unheard music out to the world.
