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Archive 1Archive 2

Reducing the information in this article

There are a lot of really long paragraphs in this article. The information is all good, but perhaps too comprehensive for an overview like this. I might go through and try to shorten some sections. To me, it seems like the people who will be reading this article are looking more for a presentation of the performance differences, and less for technical details about how they work. There are already individual articles that have comprehensive details about the formats, and this article is supposed to be a comparison of the two. There's also a note that the neutrality is disputed in this article. Not really sure why. The article just presents the facts and doesn't really argue one way or the other about which is "better". Radiodef (talk) 18:43, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I've made some changes. The article really needs more sources too, and is pretty filled with weasel words ("some", "many", etc). Wording could use a lot of improvements. Radiodef (talk) 19:32, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Good work so far. Any reduction in useless wordiness is, in my view, a practical increase in information because the article is more easily read.
We could use better sources, too. John Eargle's Handbook of Recording Engineering and Audio Engineering for Live Sound are excellent books. One relevant section is on page 44 of the latter book: "Is digital always better than analog?" He says an outstanding advantage of digital audio is in signal processing, an advantage that is not always utilized by the consumer but is ever present during audio production. The article says almost nothing about that. Bruce and Marty Fries have a good book in Digital Audio Essentials. Binksternet (talk) 20:09, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
I hinted at it at the top, where I added a comment about "more transparent filtering", and I'll probably clarify that. You're right that the article doesn't really say much about DSP advantages, one obvious one being linear-phase equalization. That's a great source, too. I may just add a section on this. I added a bit about analog modeling plug-ins, and it's a little out of place where it is now, and could go in that section too. Radiodef (talk) 16:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree. Shorter and verifiable is what we want. Some of the recent edits have added new uncited information and that's not the right direction. --Kvng (talk) 21:23, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
A lot of the larger paragraphs in the beginning would be a lot better as a main article/summary. It also looks like the article was originally written as arguments for analog --> counter-arguments, but it's been convoluted along the way and is a little confusing now. I don't really think that is the right tone anyway since the article is called a comparison.
I think the article could be fairly long since there's a lot of information to cover, as long as it's concise, and right now the layout is vague. Radiodef (talk) 16:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Lots of Wikipedia early-written articles end up looking like a patchwork quilt; this one is a prime example. The first version of this article, though it was terribly insufficient and though it made a wrong assumption (mechanical impression on magnetic tape?) it was surprisingly ambivalent about which format was better.
Such patchwork articles are superb candidates for a complete rewrite by someone with a lot of good references and a solid focus. Throw out the wobbly parts and keep the good wood. Binksternet (talk) 16:43, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Yep. And I think this article is also relatively important since the subject is so often debated, sometimes viciously. I can revise the information about digital audio pretty heavily, but I don't know enough about analog technology to rewrite those parts confidently. Radiodef (talk) 17:10, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
There is a subsection titled "Digital fundamentals" under the "Noise and distortion" section. This subsection doesn't really have to do with noise, so much as it is an overview of how digital audio is sampled and stored. Could someone who knows more about analog technology write a similar (but shorter) subsection that summarizes how analog technology works? Then both can be put under a new section, each with respective Main Article redirects, and I will shorten "Digital fundamentals". Radiodef (talk) 17:04, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
The quicker solution is to throw out the "Digital fundamentals" section. The only relevant information would be a direct comparison of this or that feature of analog vs digital recording. There is no need for a whole section on each format. Binksternet (talk) 17:36, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
We could do that too, but a brief overview of sampling technology is needed for elsewhere in the article, mainly quantization. We could toss it and put a very brief overview (3-5 sentences) in the quantization section. That'd work for me. Radiodef (talk) 18:34, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Done, and done. Radiodef (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

New section: Signal processing

I've started a new section, titled "Signal processing". I put some information in there about analog gear and digital filters, and moved my paragraph about analog modeling there as well. I don't know much about vintage analog processors, so that could easily be expanded. This section at Digital filters could also be linked somewhere, though it's a technical comparison of filter design, not recording equipment. Radiodef (talk) 19:57, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

In audio recording, digital or analog, instantaneous air pressure is converted by a microphone into a varying voltage, or an analog electrical signal. In the "analog" recording process, that voltage is used (in cutting a record) to move a cutting head, whose position is only an approximation of the voltage, subject to constraints of mass, velocity, resistance, and more, not to mention the effects of local magnetic fields, vibrations, temperature, air pressure, humidity, and more. In recording to tape, there is a similarly long list of potentially distorting effects.

In the "digital" process, the measured voltage in each instant is represented with a number whose accuracy is limited by the number of bits used to represent the number, the accuracy of the voltage-to-number (analog to digital, A/D) converter, and the rate at which samples are taken. The A/D converter's accuracy may also depend on a number of factors, including manufacturing processes, materials variation, temperature and more.

Modern recording processes utilize a staggering level of precision in these processes, analog or digital.

Hence, arguments that the analog process somehow captured some characteristic of the sound that the digital process missed are at best fanciful, at worst exploitive.

That is not to say that analog recordings sound exactly the same as digital recordings, as all the effects mentioned above surely alter the recorded waveform (and likewise for playback) in a way that some people might indeed prefer. Just as the sound of an electric guitar is often preferred with a measure of distortion, so too might be a musical performance be preferred with specific kinds of distortion. But if this is the case, let us be clear that it is the distortion, not the greater accuracy of reproduction, that is responsible for the preferred sound. Nancy N (talk) 03:06, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you proposing to add this to the article? ~KvnG 00:14, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Was it ever entirely analog or digital?

This section makes the claim that the human ear is an analog-digital hybrid system (without claim, but that is aside from this point), and then two sentences later says that considering any part of the ear as acting digitally is a misconception.

I would say that this section could benefit from editing, but really, it is just a conversational piece, with nothing to back the claims. While it is interesting information, it might just be best to delete this section, lest someone wants to completely rewrite it. 72.29.164.238 (talk) 00:16, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

this article really sucks as s. thank you.

a — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.187.168.119 (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Frequency response of master recording

I think the essential thing that is missing is the drequency response of the first step of the recording, the multitrack master reels and the ginal mised tape master. Anyonw can add anything?

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