Analogue / Digital : the never ending debate

dav | April 26, 2021, 3:05 a.m.

One debate that seems to come up time and time again over the last two decades in particular is the one about which sounds better: analogue or digital recordings? I'm so confused about it all that I really can't pick a winner. Perhaps I need a lot more exposure to the art of sound engineering to really know what the heck people are talking about in the first place. It was the same for me with the debate about which sounded better: vinyl or compact disk? Some felt CD's cleaned up the sound too much for some styles of music so they preferred listening to artists like Jimi Hendrix on vinyl. There is also a debate about analogue hardware vs software emulations of the hardware. How close do these emulations really get to the hardware and is it simply better to 'get the real thing' (i.e. hardware) rather than spend your money on emulations? Further, there's the debate about analogue summing, virtual amps and the list goes on.

My take on it at this time and with the experience I currently have is that while I can't make an educated call either way, there are a few things I feel I can say. I have realised through hard experience that the best chance you have to end up with a recording, mix and master you're happy with is to 'get it right at the source'. As cliched as this sounds, spending some extra time getting mic placements right and working on your guitar and amp settings is really worth it - whether you're using virtual or real equipment. 

Recently I got myself a hardware channel strip so that I could begin to understand this debate a little better. While it is a lot of fun to play with the knobs and controls on analogue gear, I found there were other benefits too. Firstly, I liked being able to control dynamics going into the DAW through the channel strip compressor. While you can do this to some extent through plugins it's a lot easier and takes up far less computer processing power to do this on the channel strip. Secondly, I appreciate being able to put some EQ shaping on the sound going into the DAW. By using compression and EQ in this way it can help you get a better sound at the source because you're focusing on exactly that - getting the best sound you can at recording time. Other features of channel strips such as saturation or colouring the sound by pushing the gain on the preamp, using the outboard de-essers and gates etc all go towards achieving this objective. Some outboard channel strips are modelled on consoles such as Neve, API and SSL (and even use many of the same components) which allow you to get something of the original analogue sound. Also, remember you can often use channel strips and their components (EQ, Compressor, Gate etc) as hardware plugins in your DAW too. 

While it is true that you can simply record clean and use plugins to achieve similar results, I feel there's some merit to using hardware in the way I outline above.   

Below is some further information that might be useful for you on this topic:

• The Infinite Studio Rack Concept 
• 6 Reasons Why Having An Outboard Channel Strip In Your Studio Could Help You To Improve Your Recordings
• Plugins vs Analog Console Which Is Better?

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The Efficient DAW

dav | April 10, 2021, 7:26 a.m.

Ever find when you're recording or mixing that once you start using too many tracks or plug ins you start to get system issues and error messages? I've had this happen to me many times! You're just about to record the take of your life when the music stops and a message box appears telling you your computer has run out of processing power. It's extremely frustrating.  

The lap top I use for recording is older and only has a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). HDD's are a lot slower than the newer Solid State Drives (SSD) and have a mechanical arm that jumps around writing information to disk, they are also quite fragile meaning they can be quite easy to damage. SSD's have no moving parts and information is stored on integrated circuits. There can be issues with SSD's failing however after excessive writes to the storage circuits. Have a read of this article to learn more about the drives and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Why the discussion on drives? Well it turns out you can make your DAW work far more efficiently by using a separate external drive alongside your internal drive. Using only my internal HDD to run my DAW and all other aspects of a session puts a lot of pressure on the drive to process the large amount of information I'm asking it to. Making use of a separate external drive means work can be shared between the drives leading to efficiencies and less system issues. The way I work it is that I have my DAW software running off the internal HDD but save my sessions to an external SSD. This frees up the internal HDD to run the DAW software while audio recording is written to the external SSD. 

I've found this set up has worked well for me, I still get error messages sometimes but it's far less frequent. By the way, I could have used another HDD as my external drive if I wanted to, the idea is to 'share the load' between drives. If you experience this issue, give this idea a try - I don't think you'll be disappointed.  

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Create a virtual analogue studio

dav | March 29, 2021, 7:23 a.m.

If you've been recording and mixing for any length of time, you've probably come across analogue simulation plugins such as virtual tape machines, consoles, channel strips and even mic pre-amps. I own some analogue simulation plugins myself including Tape by Softube and Steven Slate's Virtual Console Collection. While I understood the point of these plugins, at first I struggled to both hear and appreciate the subtle qualities the plugins were adding to a track, and to a mix as a whole. 

The purpose of using analogue gear and analogue simultion plugins is to add to your mix some of the sonic qualities of recordings from times past. Recording and mixing through analogue mixing consoles onto tape added warmth, saturation and colour some feel is missing in modern recordings, particularly those recorded and mixed in a 'clean' digital environment (i.e direct to your Digital Audio Workstation). It wasn't until I heard an A - B comparison of a mix with and without the emulations that I really began to appreciate what these tools could do for my mixes. 

If you'd like to learn more about using analogue simulation plugins and hear what they can do, take a look at this video by Dylan Roth from Musician on a Mission: How to Create an Analog Studio in your DAW.  

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