Guest Anonymous Posted June 7, 2003 Report Share Posted June 7, 2003 how large is the difference in these different recording methods? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystyler Posted June 7, 2003 Report Share Posted June 7, 2003 Digital all basically sounds the same - analogue depends on how much care you take while recording. Done properly it will be very hard to tell the two methods apart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skagen Posted June 8, 2003 Report Share Posted June 8, 2003 In theory sure, you can come close, but in practice, its very hard to do a analog recording that will match the digital. Analog recording often have much thinner bass and slightly lower max volume. If you're using a Sony player/recorder that means your stuff will sound somewhat lame compared to a CD. Digital give you an exact copy of the original recording - no volume problems, no weirdness. Its much closer to CD quality with nothing to tweak or stress about, except to hit the "record" button. Why mess with analog? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJ Posted June 14, 2003 Report Share Posted June 14, 2003 Half of my collection is recorded analogue (I just didn't have the digital option for a while), and they sound fine. After a little practise, you get a feel for the levels, and though the sound is different, it's no better or worse. Some points in analogue's favour: all the levels are the same; I don't have 'quieter' recordings followed by 'louder' recordings on the same mix and I can dub digitally off my analogue MDs. I know you can adjust the digital record level, too--I'm just lazy these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted July 3, 2003 Report Share Posted July 3, 2003 Actually, there is a clear difference between the two. 90% of my collection was recorded in analogue due to my lack of an optical CD player. And altough they sound great, when I purchased my PS2 and utilized it's opitical out, I was astounded and somewhat socked when I made my first digital recording. On a quality stereo, the music sounds noticably "cleaner", "sharper" and more "crisp." What I mean by this is that the treble is noticably more clear and sounds less "muffled." Even with Sony's 24bit D/A converter, (which does a great job in analogue recording) you can clearly hear the limitations of the D/A converter when you skip it altogether in digital recording. Bass is also noticably more crisp as well. A great way to check this for yourself is to record Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory" in analogue and then in digital. As stated, on a quality stereo, you should very cleary be able to tell the difference. I've actually gone back and re-recorded (in digital) some of my albums that I still owned the original CD's for. All this was done on my MDS-JB920 (and my MDS-JE510 '97 - '00). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pookyhead34 Posted July 14, 2003 Report Share Posted July 14, 2003 It can depend on what sounds better to you. Analog recordings can sound "warmer" and "airier" than digital recordings, depending on the quality of the D/A converter of your source device. If you have a sound card that can play back 24-bit audio and you use foobar2k to play it back, adding 24-bit ATH-based dither can give you an extremely clear, noise-free recording. By the same token, using a low-quality sound card can give you really thin-sounding analog recordings. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, given good equipment and recording, a little D/A-> A/D in your signal path isn't a bad thing at all. Digital is definitely more convenient, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted July 16, 2003 Report Share Posted July 16, 2003 I do agree with you that analouge recordings do sound "warmer." That is--if it remains in the analouge world (unless the analouge source is connected to a very high sample rate ditigal recorder..like SACD). If I were to record a symphony with great digital equipment and put it on a MD or CD, it would sound great. However, if I were to do the same recording with very high quality analouge equipment, it would sound more "natural." Nonetheless, I love recording in both modes, depending on what I'm recording. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BADFISH Posted July 23, 2003 Report Share Posted July 23, 2003 on top of all that digitally recorded tracks carry all of the track information while analog does not, or it does it poorly with some pre-programed program. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightid Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 :shock: i think the topic is "analog" &"optical",but we were all discussing the "digital",so we all ignored D/O(digital to optical)&O/D,the siginal would be weakened when this change happened,although it also sounds like the digital recording,but it got worse than the digital.the really digital recoed is just in decks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 its basically the same thing when talking MD recorders. Optical to me is alot better than analog. analog sounds like crap to me. but the only thing ive ever known with my minisdisc is optical Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted November 1, 2003 Report Share Posted November 1, 2003 lightid, a digital signal cannot be weakened if it stays digital. It can become corrupted, but this wouldn't sound at all like a weakening of the volume. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazirker Posted November 1, 2003 Report Share Posted November 1, 2003 NRen2k5 is right. The point of making a digital recording from a digital source is to maintain signal quality. With digital, you aren't transferring a wave like you would with analog, instead you're transferring 1's and 0's like your computer would if you were downloading a track off the internet or something of the like. Sometimes the 1's and 0's aren't transferred perfectly, but when that happens it very rarely results in any kind of change that we can perceive. As for "digital to optical" and the reverse, there is no such thing. Optical is digital, it's simply a method of transferring the data. Optical lines carry 1's and 0's from one device to another, nothing more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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