Analog Vs Digital

[giskardsb 12,565]

Since Mark made the "analog" comment there has been ongoing confusion as to what that meant.  Many of you have only lived after the advent of Digital dominance so I guess this isn't that surprising.  So I thought I'd make this post to clarify the analog vs digital aspect when it comes to music making and production.   

The fact is that Music production can be all digital, all analog, or a mix.   Digital or Analog can be introduced at any stage of the process.   It's not an all or nothing proposition.

TL/DR - Mark Ronson is likely referring to using a combination of real instruments and digital samples, converted into digital and sequenced in ProTools or Logic, and distributed via CD and MP3, and also probably on Vinyl for those of us that love vinyl.

There are many stages to the pipeline, but I will just break things down into 3 major stages.  Instrumentation, Recording/Mastering, Output.

First an actual (layperson level) definition of Analog vs Digital.  Analog means waveforms as produced naturally.  When I pluck a string or blow a trumpet note it produces a mixture of continuous sine waves that effect the air.  Analog equipment, recording, effects, and output maintain these continuous sine waves through the process.  Analog circuits consist of discrete electronic components including capacitors, resistors, transistors, etc, all of which pass electrical signals and make modifications of them but don't change the continuous nature of the original waveform.   Analog doesn't "lose" information unless circuits are designed for intentional distortion of the waveform, aka, a nicely roaring Mesa Mark IIC+ guitar amplifier in Metallica's Master of Puppets, where analog Vacuum Tubes are driven beyond specification to squash and pummel an analog waveform into submission. 

Digital.  As soon as a microprocessor becomes involved, a device is digital.  To get an analog wave into digital form, it is broken up by a device called an Analog to Digital converter.   This device breaks the incoming waveform into "samples" and translates these samples to the digital nomenclature of computers.  They are called "samples" because the waveform is no longer continuous... at a certain period of time the waveform is looked at and assigned a numeric value that represents it at that time, then at another time it's sampled again, etc.  This is what the term "sample rate" means.   Computers don't work analog, they have to have things in discrete chunks.  When it comes time to output such a digital representation to an analog signal in your headphones (because ears are analog), a Digital to Analog converter is employed to attempt to recreate a continuous analog wave form as good as it can.  The entire process is "lossy", the output wave will never look exactly like the input, and depending on the equipment in the middle, the sample rate, the quality of the D/A and A/D converters, etc, the result can be better or worse.   Unfortunately many young people in the modern world have actually been trained to accept "worse" with bad sample rates and bad MP3's,  poor quality converters,  cheap earbuds, etc, and don't actually know how good music can really sound.  If you ever hear "old farts" like myself ( or Jimmy Iiovine) complaining that modern music often sounds like crap, this is why.  Digital CAN sound great and essentially indistinguishable from analog... it often sounds bad, especially in the high ranges.

Instruments.  Simply put, an analog instrument produces analog waveforms.  Traditionally of course this means pianos, guitars, horns, voices,  drums, percussion, any other traditional instrument you can think of.  It can also mean analog synthesis.  Analog synthesizers use analog circuit stages to generate and modify analog waveforms, to create entirely new sounds or sometimes try to mimic other ones.   Analog instruments are played directly by human beings, who are adept at changing the way they play the instruments via touch, breath, etc, and in changes to timing, to add a lot of subtly that is often missing in digital productions.  This is why people will often say that Analog has "life" compared to digital.  This is more a problem with the way digital productions are put together than the technology itself, but also as with the sound quality modern music fans have been trained to accept these robotic highly quantized productions as "normal", leaving yet another reason for old people and hipsters to complain about how modern songs have no life to them. Digital instruments are computers, even if they don't look like one.   In a digital keyboard, pressing each key causes the internal computer to call up a "sample" ( different use of the word then previously), which is essentially a small digital recording of what a piano for example might sound like when that key is pressed.  Most digital sound production is via these types of samples.   There is also digital synthesis and other techniques for digital sound production.  Digital instruments may have an analog output ( via D/A converter) or may have direct digital output compatible with digital "recorders."  In many modern digital production, a physical instrument is not used at all, instead software instruments and samples are entered directly in the sequencing software, described next.

Recording/Mixing/Mastering.  In analog, Instruments or Microphones are sent to a purely analog mixing board and then recorded to analog tape.  The analog tape master mix may then be played back to another analog tape and remixed for a specific need, which is called Mastering.  Analog tape sounds great but is non trivial for moving parts of songs around, making changes to small sections, etc.   In 1989 a revolution occurred, named Pro Tools. ProTools is a digital recording and "sequencing" software program.  In Protools ( or Apple Logic, or other package of your choice) everything is "recorded" digitally.  An analog instrument will have to be recorded through a A/D converter.  Digital instruments may have direct digital outputs that can feed into Protools.  ProTools has a huge selection of plug ins for software instruments and samples, meaning that songs can be put together and laid out without ever touching a "real" instrument.   This in fact is how the majority of modern pop production is accomplished, by laying out samples in a sequence and loops.  A good producer could lay out a sequence with a lot of nuance and micro-changes in timing, to mimic what happens when humans play real instruments.   The vast majority of producers don't do this however, which is why modern pop productions can feel stiff and a bit robotic.  Unfortunately modern pop audiences now treat this as "normal" because they've been trained that way.  Mixing and Mastering stages quite often also occur with Protools or compatible software packages.   Unless your band name is "Foo Fighters" there is a 99% chance you are recording and mastering digitally, very few people go direct to Tape anymore.  Note this is not necessarily a bad thing.... using ProTools in a professional studio with professional A/D converters primarily as a recording and mixing environment for analog instruments will still obtain excellent results and will be way more cost and time effective than going to tape.

Output. In pure analog, the master tape is either recorded down to other tape, such as cassette or reel to reel, or those 8 tracks from the 70's, or of course the most traditional method is use it to cut Vinyl records.    So the most pure analog path is analog instruments and microphones recorded to tape, mastered to tape, and output to Vinyl.  Digital output consists of CD's, MP3's, BlueRay sound, etc.  Unfortunately most people experience music via MP3's, which is the worst of the output options, and often with cheap D/A converters and $5 earbuds.  When a digitally recorded or sequenced production is produced for Vinyl, it goes through D/A converters in order to be mastered for the Vinyl cutters.  Those D/A converters are really expensive and good so the Vinyl can end up being the best representation of the digital source.

Analog output was harder to pirate.   You had to get your friends copy and make a cassette recording of it, and nobody had a way of home pressing vinyl.  Every copy was not as good as the original, those there was built-in motivation to actually buy stuff.   Digital doesn't degrade as it copies, and in the modern world transferring digital copies of stuff around is perfectly easy.   This is why there is a critical problem with labels, their source of revenue has dried up due to easy and excellent copies.   It's completely impossible to control illegal distribution, which is why every album shows up on torrent within minutes of the physical CD or MP3's being available somewhere.  I think this is why you will likely see physical CD distribution happening more often after an initial digital distribution.  Labels can keep pretty tight control over digital copies and don't have to send to Apple or any 3rd party until the last minute.   CD's have to be distributed earlier and some retail employee will undoubtedly rip a copy immediately and upload it.

Mark Ronson.  What this probably means in terms of Ronson's comment, is that many true analog instruments, played by humans, are being employed.  They are almost %100 likely recording using A/D converters into Logic or ProTools, and overdubbing, sequencing, and mixing there.  They are probably also employing some software digital instruments directly.  The end result will be digital output to MP3, Flac, CD, et al, and probably also D/A converted and cut to Vinyl.

[JustAnotherDay 8,402]

Yeah, I'm sure they just recorded the live instrumentation instead of a digital instrument, maybe they recorded with analog microphones, it's pretty much confirmed that some digital work was done considering bloodpop helped produce the lead single and he makes edm

[KURUSHITOVSKA 20,439]

Good research but there are also analog synths that sound digital. Music from the 70s and 80s was made with analog instruments and it doesnt mean they're acoustic. I think that's wat they meant, there's no way they've recorded the album in tapes. 

[15jocart 2,305]

Very informative 

[giskardsb 12,565]

4 minutes ago, KURUSHITOVSKA said:

Good research but there are also analog synths that sound digital. Music from the 70s and 80s was made with analog instruments and it doesnt mean they're acoustic. I think that's wat they meant, there's no way they've recorded the album in tapes. 

they don't sound "digital", they sound like Analog synths.  Everything about them is analog including the output waveform.  "Analog" doesn't mean that they have to produce a sound similar to a traditional "acoustic" instrument.  Those 70's and 80's synths would have been recorded to Tape.

 

[KURUSHITOVSKA 20,439]

1 minute ago, giskardsb said:

they don't sound "digital", they sound like Analog synths.  Everything about them is analog including the output waveform.  "Analog" doesn't mean that they have to produce a sound similar to a traditional "acoustic" instrument.  Those 70's and 80's synths would have been recorded to Tape.

 

What I tried to mean is that they're just instruments not based on computers 

just like this

and of course they were recorded on tapes but they wont do it now. 

the album won't be AAD 

[giskardsb 12,565]

1 minute ago, KURUSHITOVSKA said:

What I tried to mean is that they're just instruments not based on computers 

just like this

and of course they were recorded on tapes but they wont do it now. 

the album won't be AAD 

I agree, it will be ADD.

How bout this one.

 

[KURUSHITOVSKA 20,439]

2 minutes ago, giskardsb said:

I agree, it will be ADD.

How bout this one.

 

Amazing!