KVR Audio

bludreamsounds · Post by **bludreamsounds** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 8:17 pm

I've considered getting an external compressor for the master bus but now I'm wondering if I should, read the below:

"As someone who’s been on the equipment side of the recording industry for 40 years (Quad-Eight, Capitol Records, and now Jensen Transformers), I firmly believe that most of the “damage” to audio is done by successive A/D and D/A conversions … no matter how “wonderful” and “state of the art” their makers claim. I’d highly recommend using an analog mixer and analog outboard gear for everything except the final “master” recording. Digital is still a long way from capturing the “magic” of those wonderful, and lasting recordings made in the 70s and 80s. I think going back and forth from analog to digital is likely worse that staying entirely in one domain or the other. Just my 2-cents worth! — Bill Whitlock, president & chief engineer, Jensen Transformers, AES Life Fellow and IEEE Life Senior"

kbaccki · Post by **kbaccki** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 8:58 pm

Well… sure… it's like you can fill your ferrari with really cheap motor oil, and you get what you get. But if you know what's in all that outboard gear, then chances are the .00001% distortions in nanosecond jitters introduced don't matter to you unless you're sitting around with measuring equipment looking for such things. If you use a cheap D/A or outboard reverb, compressor, whatever connected to your $100,000 analog desk, then yeah, maybe you're doing yourself a disservice. But if you're going in and out of good quality D/A and analog stages, then I think the bit destructions would be imperceptible. I'm no expert, of course, so YMMV… would like to see some hard numbers and specific examples, actually...

kbaccki · Post by **kbaccki** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 9:31 pm

I would also say that statements of what's "likely" from a "IEEE Life Senior" are a bit dubious. It either is or isn't destructive. Dunno... maybe that was a quote from 1991?

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:31 pm

Tools these days are so great that you do not need to worry about "cheap quality" anymore.

Such comments are what make it hard for entry level musicians and ongoing audio engineers. They are indoctrinated with the rule "you have to mix outboard, else it's not great". This can't be any more far off these days.

Analog mixing and summing still has it's use and advantages. But it's definitely not massively superior to working ITB.

And I say that as someone that is NOT an AES member yet, neither am I an award winning engineer. But I worked with both realms. And loading a plain project within your host clearly beats recalling a session on the analog console. But it also has it's disadvantages.

Several sides to a medal - always keep that in mind.

Though yes... D->A and A->D conversion can damage the material, if you don't know to do that. Or you have a not so great ADC/DAC (barely existing these days - even low budget is acceptable, unless you go out of your PC's audio port and back).

No_Use · Post by **No_Use** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:38 pm

Do a loopback test (analog out your mix and re-rerecord to analog in) and compare for yourself if/how much of a difference you hear compared to the original because of the additional DA/AD conversion.

bludreamsounds · Post by **bludreamsounds** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:53 pm

No_Use wrote:Do a loopback test (analog out your mix and re-rerecord to analog in) and compare for yourself if/how much of a difference you hear compared to the original because of the additional DA/AD conversion.

A must, I too only believe it ince I hear it.

What would be a proper , measured approach to this with a control.

I'd be happy to post results once I get my gear.

Don't spare on items in the list

kbaccki · Post by **kbaccki** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:09 pm

A lot of those loopback tests have been done ad nauseam to date. To Compyfox's point, even a $200 "prosumer" DAC has really good noise, distortion, component, etc. specs these days... well, even for several years now. I can only imagine he's talking about really old gear...

... listen if you have some ca. 1989 digital verb unit with some dirty stanky DAC and no filter, then you get what you pay for. There's a reason it was on ebay for $75. But with even a $200-500 low end DAC being infinitely more capable than the same unit 10-15 years ago, I just don't see how making such blanket statements about mixing digital and analog could be backed up these days. I just pulled this randomly off google:

http://www.harmonycentral.com/expert-re ... n-30955937

Basically, for $150 you get -112dB noise floor, no distortion, little to no crosstalk, etc. etc. Come on now, anything you do in the analog domain would no more than equal those measurements for noise floor, distortion, etc...

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:41 pm

Hey hey!
Even shitty old digital reverb units from 1989 off of ebay for 50quids have their charme!

You only need to know how to handle it.

Else, yes... for >200USD (sometimes even >150USD), you can get VERY GOOD stereo ADC/DAC's. Some of them even 96/24. And I'm not even scratching the second hand topic here.

kbaccki · Post by **kbaccki** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 2:04 am

Compyfox wrote:Hey hey!
Even shitty old digital reverb units from 1989 off of ebay for 50quids have their charme!

You only need to know how to handle it.

I like my verbs with a "Shittiness" knob, so I can dial in the right amount of shizzle for my trax, yo...

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 11:37 am

bludreamsounds wrote:What would be a proper , measured approach to this with a control.

I'd be happy to post results once I get my gear.

The best tool for measuring the damage done by round-tripping to analog and back to digital is the RightMark Audio Analyser suite.
http://audio.rightmark.org/manifest.shtml

Does Hybrid Mixing - tracking damagae audio?