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Topic ClosedThe Role of Computers in Prog

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Kati View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 04:51
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:


Originally posted by Surrealist Surrealist wrote:

The problem with headphones is that you can't feel the music in your body.  The digital argument is that we can't hear below 35 hz or above 18Khz.  But what about what the body can feel at lower frequencies?  If I stand behind you and grab your shoulders.. I could rock you back and forth slowly and you would surely feel that.. but not be able to hear that.Who knows about high frequencies that we might experience on our skin or hair that our ears can't hear.  Animals hear things in recordings we don't.. but I can't and won't rule out that I am still being affected outside of what my ears can hear.I agree that headphones can be useful for mixing and soundstage placement.  But I prefer big high efficiency horn driven speakers to really feel the music.  I know it's not always accessible for many living in small quarters or flats.  That's a good reason to make friends with someone who has a proper set up.

We've been through this before - vinyl cuts off at 20Hz and 20KHz, this is a feature of RIAA pre-emphasis that cannot be recovered with de-emphasis filters, <span style="line-height: 1.2;">any apparent subsonics you can feel are much higher frequency, (and any supersonics are at a much lower frequency), than you imagine they are.</span>
<span style="line-height: 1.2;"></span>
<span style="line-height: 1.2;">For example: if you mix a 210Hz signal with a 220Hz signal you will "feel" a 5Hz beat frequency:</span>
<span style="line-height: 1.2;"></span>
<blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;">
<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-center;">sin(210) + sin (220) = 2(sin((220+210)÷2) × cos((220-210)÷2)) =<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-center;"> 2(sin((430)÷2) × cos((10)÷2)) = <b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-center;"> 2(sin(215) × cos(5))
<span style="line-height: 1.2;"></span>
<span style="line-height: 1.2;">This will happen off vinyl and off CD as both can happily reproduce the 210Hz and 220Hz tones, but neither of them can record a single 5Hz tone - it is physically impossible.</span>
Also, as we have discussed before: you are not using "big high efficiency horn driven speakers", you are only using horn tweeters, a horn speaker that covers the full audio range would be the size of a house. High efficiency is immaterial to the listener, to design a balanced speaker you have compensate for the extra efficiency of a horn-tweeter in the design by attenuating the signal more - you cannot simply replace a dome tweeter with a horn without redesigning the cross-over network accordingly. Also horn speakers are NOT horn-driven, the horn is an acoustic amplifier, the driver is the transducer behind that,these are moving coils pushing a diaphragm just like any other speaker.
\
true plus maximum music per side on an LP is 15 minutes per side, thus limited.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 04:55
Originally posted by Surrealist Surrealist wrote:

I still have a studio.. yes.. and it's a good one.  It's a great one.. but to release music on vinyl while everyone is listening to music on hand held digital phone.. well it doesn't make much sense.

So, yes, I still release on vinyl to about 5 people I know.
You continue to confuse me Mr Not Given [I wish you would add your real name to your profile, I dislike referring to people by anonymous usernames - you've been posting here for two years and you and I have exchanged 1000s of words, we should be on first name terms by now Tongue] ... you have a niche service/product in a world that devours such things with a voracious appetite, vinyl has never been more popular in the last 20 years than it is now, analogue may not be king any more but it is respected and loved by a lot of people. Those people live in the 21st century, they want the benefits of both worlds, they don't want compromise and they don't want to live in the past, call them hipsters if you wish, but they are a significant market that could so easily be tapped into.

I can understand (and respect) why you defend analogue recording, some of the more esoteric skills are fast becoming a lost art - EQing for tape is a specialist skill, as is choosing the right tape and the right recording speed for the music you are recording, you cannot record onto tape without EQ (emphasis) and you cannot record onto tape without understanding the characteristics and limitations of the tape itself, such as its dynamic range and noise characteristics. This is no different to choosing the right film-stock when taking "analogue" photographs - you need to have an understanding of the grain, colouration and processing of the film to get the best out of it.

Similarly new esoteric skills are required in the digital studio, just as a digital photographer needs new skills to get the best out of the new medium, or an oil painter needs new skills when switching to acrylics. However, the core skills required to produce and engineer a great recording remain unchanged, the tools have changed but the requirement is the same.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 05:01
damn, I seem to be one the only of the few nincompoops here, very happy to be using my real profile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 05:05
Originally posted by Surrealist Surrealist wrote:

If the choosen format is tape reel...  not cassette tapes which are awful... then you can do a straight transfer.  The best quality possible.  Think about it Dean... if you go on Ebay and look for original reel to reel releases from the age of the audiophile 60's and 70's... they sell for much more than mint vinyl pressings.  Why? because those that know.. know its' better.  The quality is there.. and it's understood for those really in touch.

I have a first generation copy of a 1974 Grateful Dead concert and it sounds amazing on reel to reel.
Erm, no. A domestic ¼" reel-to-reel tape running at 7½ in/s is not comparable to a ½" or 1" tape running at 15 in/s, the characteristics are different and they have different pre-emphasis and compression. 

Tape prices are high because of their rarity and their collectability. The prices that collectors will pay for anything is not a measure of quality.


Edited by Dean - September 23 2014 at 05:06
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 05:07
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

damn, I seem to be one the only of the few nincompoops here, very happy to be using my real profile
I call you Sonia, never Kati. and never a ninny Wink
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 05:14
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:


Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

damn, I seem to be one the only of the few nincompoops here, very happy to be using my real profile

I call you Sonia, never Kati. and never a ninny Wink


Awww Dean, you are my utmost favorite grumpy, yes Bruford was not necessary classically or jazz trained unlike other drummers, among other things which you clearly pointed out that I was wrong lol   
All this said you are my adorable fav very grumpy one hugs
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 05:28
Originally posted by Surrealist Surrealist wrote:

I would love to...
But anything posted here would be digitized into the lowest format.. MP3 etc. 
I could send you a vinyl record and a complete stereo system for Christmas!

Think of it this way... if you go into a digital photography with a magnifying glass.. eventually you will see squares.. pixels.
It's essentially the same with sound.  With analog photography.. that doesn't happen.. you zoom in and everything just gets more and more interesting... same with analog recording.

I'm not trying to be argumentative.. just enlightening for a few who inspire the explore and venture into higher quality audio experience.
We've also been here before - with analogue photography this DOES happen... go over an analogue photograph with a magnifying glass and you will see the grain of the film-stock and the photographic paper (both add to the overall image, making it worse). As any analogue photographer will tell you there is a limit to how big you can blow up a 35mm negative, and that is dependant upon the film itself, its ISO rating, the exposure and the image recorded on to it. There is a limit to how much detail any analogue photograph can capture. Analogue is not turtles all the way down.

In the recording world this grain is the equivalent of noise, all systems have noise, that is an inescapable physical limitation of the real world. On vinyl this noise is around -50dB, on tape it is around -70dB, on the best professional 1" tape this can be as low as -100dB but never better. In the digital domain this is -98dB for 16-bit and -146dB for 24-bit. As you "zoom-in" the more this noise becomes apparent. 

No amount of high-end equipment can improve on the noise level that is fed into it, if your system has a -120dB noise-floor it will not make the noise from source any better, the noise adds, it can never subtract.


Edited by Dean - September 23 2014 at 05:29
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 05:46
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Originally posted by Surrealist Surrealist wrote:


Originally posted by addictedtoprog addictedtoprog wrote:

 I listen to my music using earphones. I believe my experience is complete and i miss nothing.
When you go to a concert... and the music has enough bass and volume.. can't you feel that in your body? In your chest etc?You can't get that using earphones.

When you are at concert the vibe is different, this has nothing to do with the recording topic here nor listening experience. Everything sounds great when you are seeing a band perform live.
Early recordings strived to recreate the live experience but it was soon realised that this was impossible (even for analogue recording). People like Les Paul and Tom Dowd took a different approach to this and made studio recordings that could only be made in a studio. For popular music this was a game-changer, now the studio was seen as something removed from the live setting of a concert hall, in the 60s Phil Spector and Joe Meek led the way and others soon followed.

Progressive Rock took this approach and ran with it. Now the problem was not how to reproduce a live experience in the studio but how to reproduce the studio experience in a live setting. Where once sheer volume was used to blast the audience, multichannel PAs were being employed so people could hear what was being played on stage.

Headphones were the key to listening to Progressive Rock at home, it is no coincidence that the biggest advances in headphone design occurred in the 1970s when "headphone" music was at its most popular. Now people are plugging top-end headphones into their iPlods, some even go the extra expense of buying portable headphone amplifiers designed to drive these medium-impedance headphones from low-impedance iPlods.


Edited by Dean - September 23 2014 at 05:47
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 06:10
Interesting posts Dean! It's nice to read some solid arguments. Smile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 07:33
From a musicians' perspective - and one who uses a lot of computers - 

(1) Cost. Let's say I want a track with a decent Hammond organ on it and a Moog Modular. I can use VST instruments (Virtual Studio Technology) (Computer simulation) and it costs me a few hundred dollars. Or I can pay $40,000 just to get these two instruments. Which are totally unreliable, by the way (a Moog 55, that is.) 
(2) Then I think, right, I'll find a drummer. There are none in my area. So that'd involve me paying someone to sit in. Bring money. Or I can just ... use a VST instrument.
(3) Studio time. Look up how much studio time costs, folks. This is incidentally all done digitally nowadays, computers again. Doing what is done today on master tape would be exceptionally difficult.

If we all went back to using 1970's or even 1980's technology, there would be no prog albums made, as the audience for such music is now pretty small and most people prefer to either "appropriate" music off the internet, use download platforms as free radio stations and generally dislike paying for music, anyway. Piracy will eventually kill most decent music off, that's for sure, but it's also another post. Suffice it to say that it's pretty much impractical NOT to use computers in some way, shape or form, now.

You could take the argument back a generation and say "Do we really need amplified instruments ? " Musicians have nearly always embraced technology. So long as it's used well, it's fine. Plus. My keyboard player is in Finland, my guitarist is 15 miles away, we have never all met up but it's now possible to collaborate and play music together. 

Another point worth mentioning is that most people who listen to music now are listening to VST instruments. You are probably not hearing a Hammond C3, Fender Rhodes, Gretsch USA Custom drum kit or ARP 2600 synthesizer but a computer simulated or sampled version. It is, in a lot of cases, very difficult to tell the difference, unless you know what to look for. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 07:43
As for the "analogue vs digital" - a lot of people of a certain bent somehow seem to believe that analogue is better. 
So. Let's get out an old Revox tape recorder. Before recording, I have to make sure that the playback and record heads are correctly set up in three axes. To a fraction of a millimetre. I have to clean the heads carefully. I have to make sure the transport rollers are all OK and not worn. If anything goes out of synch, then it's an utter pain to set right, and expensive. 

Is the sound quality better ? Well. Subjectively yes. However, I can achieve the same effect with NONE of the problems by using a decent microphone (or DI) into a valve preamp and then passing the output.... directly into a PC. I can also run tape simulations which can actually put the warmth or crackles and pops and hiss back in, if I like. Generally, I don't. :-)

To suggest that a lot of 1970's albums were superbly recorded and sound wonderful is, er, nostalgia at best. If you listen to them with a proper musicians' trained ear, most are pretty amateurish. It's not until everyone moves away from analogue that mixing albums becomes easier and a more professional finish becomes possible. There are a lot of hi fi buffs still around who frankly talk rubbish, most of what they think they hear is purely psychological and can only be picked up on an oscilloscope. 

Pass the computer, please. 

However. There are some things PC's can't do.

It is extremely difficult to simulate brass or woodwind instrument (take this from a sax player who's been playing since 1976.) Some instruments are better played directly in.... to a computer. As Dean says in a post previously, the revolution has been in home studio technology.
Drums can still be problematic, but they're getting better and better.
And it can be very difficult to inject "energy" into some tracks. However, if you know what you're doing, it's possible to produce a good and interesting album using a home studio. The problem comes when musicians don't, or just slap something together.

There are some things, also, you can do in a home studio that you can't do with a PC, as well. Longer story, there. ;-)



Edited by Davesax1965 - September 23 2014 at 07:49
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 07:54
This is $8,200 - a REAL Moog 55 would be 3 to 4 times that, minimum.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 07:58

And this is $100.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:04
The Arturia Moog Modular V in the shot above is.....
More reliable
SLIGHTLY cheaper
Much easier to use
Never breaks down, it's a software program
Sounds almost exactly the same - it's endorsed by Moog, anyway
And it's one eightieth the price.

Can't be used on stage

But then again, y'see, a lot of people say "Do you have a Moog ? When will you be doing a gig near us ? "- without realising that most musicians make almost no money as people no longer pay for music..... so it's not worth buying a Moog to do a gig, as capital investment like that is just suicide. 

So the future of music will be
Computers are here to stay
The average musician nowadays has access to more stuff than in his wildest dreams of even 20 years ago
There'll be a lot more music
- which no one will pay for
Therefore there'll be less live gigs (anyone want to spend a fortune to have two men and a dog turn up ? ;-) )
But all this is for another post. ;-)

http://brotherhoodofthemachine.bandcamp.com/track/hin-und-zuruck-3 - when I wrote this track, I worked out that just for the first 5 minutes alone, to recreate it using real instruments would cost about $350k and be almost technically impossible. So far, I've sold less than 100 copies of the entire album. Commercial suicide if I don't use a computer. (Poverty if I do. ;-) ) 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:07
http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/downloads/demos.html - bottom of the page, free demo of a Moog Modular. Lasts for about 30 days, I think. 

Now everyone can have one. And I think Moog only made 30 System 55's in the past. One of my friends nearly bought an old one that Tangerine Dream had been using. The choice was either to buy a house or a synthesizer. He chose the house. Then regretted it. ;-)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:12
Originally posted by Davesax1965 Davesax1965 wrote:

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/downloads/demos.html - bottom of the page, free demo of a Moog Modular. Lasts for about 30 days, I think. 

Now everyone can have one. And I think Moog only made 30 System 55's in the past. One of my friends nearly bought an old one that Tangerine Dream had been using. The choice was either to buy a house or a synthesizer. He chose the house. Then regretted it. ;-)

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:14
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Surrealist, send us something to listen to prove your fact.

Again, have you anything to reply? I have not received any reply to this!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:26
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Surrealist, send us something to listen to prove your fact.

Again, have you anything to reply? I have not received any reply to this!


I think he answered it here:

Originally posted by Surrealist Surrealist wrote:

I would love to...
But anything posted here would be digitized into the lowest format.. MP3 etc. 
I could send you a vinyl record and a complete stereo system for Christmas!


I say you hold him to that promise. Cool
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:26
Ninja'd by the SteveEmbarrassed

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Surrealist, send us something to listen to prove your fact.

Again, have you anything to reply? I have not received any reply to this!


I think his point was that he couldn't, because it would entail Jootooob vids with their horrible sound, and that's not the way he rolls.
He does have a point though. Posting a vid from YouTube in order to make a point on sound quality is rather like serving paper wine to highlight the distinguished nuances of crimsonian red wine.


Edited by Guldbamsen - September 23 2014 at 08:27
“The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2014 at 08:38
Originally posted by Guldbamsen Guldbamsen wrote:

Ninja'd by the SteveEmbarrassed


Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Surrealist, send us something to listen to prove your fact.

Again, have you anything to reply? I have not received any reply to this!

I think his point was that he couldn't, because it would entail Jootooob vids with their horrible sound, and that's not the way he rolls.
He does have a point though. Posting a vid from YouTube in order to make a point on sound quality is rather like serving paper wine to highlight the distinguished nuances of crimsonian red wine.


yep it seems so, one cannot Papier-mâché into marble artwork unless i.e. one is a true artistic sculpture artist.
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