Here's why "digital is sterile"... one man's opinion

I've barely started reading this thread, and I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on this. I'm not saying it was me you were posting in response to, however, a recent post I did could easily qualify 

Thank you for taking the time. It's one of many things I love about this forum...and thanks to Johnkenn for starting the forum to provide such a place.

Ya know, I think the “digital is sterile” thing is a holdover from when converters sucked (think MBox 1 days). These days I think digital can be described lots of ways but “sterile” is not what comes to mind for me, even on prosumer interfaces. I feel like it’s just a myth at this point…

Now if you said digital doesn’t sound as good, or as 3D etc, I think there’s an argument to be had. But all the people saying digital is sterile due to bad mic technique, room sound, crappy mics etc…that all existed in analog too. I’m not saying everyone is wrong in saying those things matter, or that they don’t harm lots of productions etc. Just saying they the whole “sterile” argument holds no water for me.

YMMV

This is exactly my point but stated differently. You nailed it.

Bob, oh beard of audio wisdom, I think & please correct me if you disagree, we need to separate “ digital processing “ & “ digital recording “. They are to different concepts that we have a tendency to group together.

I’ve been using a Mackie 1402 as my monitoring mixer for the last over 20 years - I can’t stand latency it ruins groove and feel and my little mixer gives my close on true ZLM.

Unless of course you meant every should be mixing through a small mixer?

Record to a speaker instead of headphones and you'll kick the quality of the performance up dramatically.

The problem is that most solid state gear hasn't even enough headroom to be run at plus 4. Headroom is a big big deal.

I was just thinking about how a reduced cost of entry (for recording) has lead to a market saturated with mediocrity. Not that the equipment is bad, which some have pointed out, but that the skills/experience with everything involved (signal chain, room, etc.) are lacking or non-existent in the home/amateur recordist. I say this, acknowledging I am in the "lacking experience" camp and considering the "everything else" is an eye opener. 


If I could have re-phrased describing what I heard from "sterile" to something else, it would have been a "lack of depth of field, dimension," etc. Thank you for making this coherent for me. I honestly believe this is what I hear, or think I hear is lacking. When my skills/room/etc., are sufficient, I am rather certain that the outboard gear will matter to me. 


Yup. After reading through all these responses, "sterile" is the wrong word to describe what I was asking about. 

I think the most qualified ears to overall judge the relevancy of the analog/digital debate are mastering engineers who have been mastering before the digital revolution and since.

Our guy is adamant the overall standard and quality has declined as the major commercial studios have closed and the home/project studios have become the norm.

But can that be attributed to digital being sterile ?

While seasoned experienced audio peeps can spend hours A/B’ing the subtleties of various digital/analog recording and mixing techniques and each come to their own personal conclusions I would argue that professional mastering engineers are exposed to a much bigger picture as to what constitutes good quality audio production and what are the main issues affecting the quality.

And from what I’m hearing from our former mastering guy it’s mostly lack of experience in both technique and gear selection combined with poor acoustics.

Take an already bright sibilant mic recorded adjacent to reflective gyprock surfaces combined with 6-10db of 10khz EQ boost and a bunch of plugins trying to simulate Abbey Road Studio Two and then ask someone whether it would sound better if it was all analog or not.

Maybe different but better?

If all the other boxes are ticked in terms of quality sound recording production and technique then the analog/digital debate is probably the least of the issue and something that for most is more esoteric than it is problematic.

Our mastering guy used to load mixes onto an ATR-102 and he hasn’t done that for at least 10 years.

But is that why the standard has dropped?

Or was it because a 1/2” 30ips stereo mix tape was more likely to have come from one of the top half dozen professional studios in the area that had been operating for at least 30 years with everything that comes along with that?

The analog/digital debate was far more relevant in the early days of digital especially with the advent of CD’s.

IMO many early CD’s were almost unlistenable compared to the vinyl versions almost certainly due to poor quality masters or incompatible mastering. Or remixes that still used high end EQ boosts to compensate for multi-generational tape transfer losses. And of course first generation DA converters in the CD players.

But I had a Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with an Accuphase MC2 moving coil cartridge and a pretty decent phono preamp stage.

While the majority of the customers I demonstrated CD’s to when I worked in audio/visual retail in the early 1980’s thought CD’s were audio nirvana compared to what they had previously heard.

I think you may have misread the point being made with those sorts of statements. I can't speak for everyone, but what I meant earlier was that the medium -- be it analog or digital -- is not the issue at all. The very notion that "digital is sterile" is, in itself, a fallacy. In the analog era, only trained professionals were making records, and largely in professional facilities with high-calibre musicians. Digital changed all that, and put recording within reach of both untrained operators and under-qualified musicians alike.

Thus, a bevy of bad recordings.

Agreed, I think we’re saying the same thing from two different angles.

i agree 100%, a linear logic disconnect, bad is bad