AnalogCameraVsDigitalCamera

Rain


No.

Digital is 0s and 1s. There's no distortion at the top when it gets hotter and the noise floor is way below what it was in the analog days.  Actually, there is no real noise floor to speak of, beside the one introduced on the analog level. 

Anything between those 2 extremes will be captured as is in the digital format. There is no optimal range per se w/ digital because you don't have to compromise between distortion and noise floor.

John


What is an analog camera?

mudgel


For a person who  makes so much of their status as a self proclaimed Master of Music Technology you could do with some courses in communication.

I'm sorry Ben but if you mix your sounds the way you mix your words in constructing intelligible communications you are in deed in need of help.

Sorry for the unkind words but you're just a bit too puffed up for your own good.

Jeff Evans


I may be able to throw some light onto the subject. Ben is quoting a chapter from Mike Stavrou's book 'Mixing with your Mind' from the chapter 9 Digital VS Analogue. Mike uses the analogy of a large skyscraper. He says that because of its enormous height it is hard to capture the whole thing in focus. He is saying the best sound from analog is in the middle of the skyscraper and this is similar to level. Right at the top transients and things will get distorted and right at the bottom the tape hiss starts to mask low level information.

In Digital recording however Mike says the very top of the skyscraper is the cleanest and sharpest part of the picture and it gets progressively blurry as you go down to the bottom. Level wise we know that the maximum number of bits is used when our signal is high and as we go down lower in level we are using less bits to capture important information.

Mike is saying that setting your digital reference level way down at -18 or even -20 db FS as Bob Katz points out may not be the best idea because we are not using all the available bits to capture most of the music or where most of our music lies level wise. Mike also suggests that a better digital ref level might be the Katz -12 db FS instead where more bits are being used. But this requires you to lift your entire gain structure up there and also requires some effort in preventing clipping as we now only have 12 db of headroom. (I actually work at -14 a lot of the time)

But I must also remind Ben that Mike's book was written in 2003 and I really get the impression he is referring to 16 bit recording most of the time and if you are working at 16 bit level then what Mike is saying is probably true. But things have changed a lot since then and we are now in a different situation where 24 bit recording is common place. The skyscraper is different now and much more of it is in focus and the bits down the bottom are now -144 dB away from the very top of that sharp focus image.

So Ben a very recent article in the said Audio Technology magazine has completely debunked this concept of having to record at higher levels in the digital world and with 24 bit recording we are not under that pressure anymore so the -18 dB or Katz -20 dB ref level is perfectly acceptable. You are not loosing any detail now even at -20 because the noise floor is now still -124 dB below that. In the 16 Bit world if you are using a ref level of -20 db with only 96 dB of dynamic range (and we know we really only have -90 dB  in fact)  then the noise floor is only sitting 70 dB below that which could be considered dangerous in terms of very important low level harmonic material. Not so with 24 bit though.

John T


Stick by whatever you like, it won't make you right.