Pro Tools Master Fader Degrades Audio Quality ?

Don't know how many times I would walk into a studio run tones , my polarity clicker or find some hummmm and ask
" where's your tech"
Only to here,
"Ummm we thought you could do that stuff, you know what the problem is!"
My reply
" we are so screwed"

IMO, if you have the curiosity, there is nothing wrong with reaching for all of it(really thats why being here is interesting to me, lots to learn from all), whens the last time you learned anything that didn't cross apply to something else? especially in music, i think all things in this field are inextricably combined, meaning the more you know about any of it the better your overall package... the better your song writing, the better your producing, the better your producing, the better your engineering, the better your engineering, the better your drumming, the better your drumming, the better your guitar playing, and vice versa, it goes on and on. each builds on another in ways you cant always predict.

A recent example of this for me, I had a myopic hatred for autotune until i realized that singing into it gave me graphical feedback on the mistakes i've been making, allowing me to visualize ways to improve myself, i've been becoming a much better singer because of it, my listening and intonation skills are sharpening as well, another example, building DIY gear has made me better at understanding, and using the tools, its all in the name of opening up doors... 

still hate autotune though lol.

I use dither, all sorts of waveforms are available. That is applied after the damage has been done. It doesn't solve the audio quality problems I hear with Pro Tools and modern DAW mixes/productions. Something happens to the music that doesn't sound for lack of a better word, 'human'.

"Somewhat" is a common excuse I hear. I remember when PT3 or 4 or ? came out with those new converter racks. I asked a user if they fixed their sonic problems but all I could get back was 'it's better'.

Maybe ya'll are all used to it by now but I find myself listening to pre-digital/DAW music almost exclusively. I find myself muting the TV during commercials and for music, it's a bit rough sounding for these tired ears. Even movies now suffer from this. I had expected that by now these artifacts would be eliminated but the music still sounds like crap to me compared to anything recorded before a computer touched it.

YMMV

You can't name me five records that were mixed on a 32bit float mixer. Or the early PT. 24bit fixed mixer. I'm not sure you could name 10 at ALL if we agree they had to be released by a major label AND not fall under the umbrella of rap/dance/EDM....or if we scratch things using analog summing.

The difference you hear in post 95 label recordings is mastering level....take your fave 70s recording and make it 16/44 and DR5.....get back to me on how amazing those old recordings are. Hint--they're actually inferior to modern ones....if they're both left at normal mix levels, which haven't changed much in 50 years.

I think I asked you this before but I can't remember the answer .....

If you record to Pro tools 24bit48k and don't touch a fader or anything in pro tools , then go out your d/a converters to an analog console , do you need to use dither ? 

Yes, in theory. The dither, that is. That said "not changing any volume"....you mean you have pan law disabled? If not, it's changing the volume. Obviously, Bob is the dither guy...He's who you want to answer.

I love plenty of new music. I was just lamenting that I bought too much music this year to fit it LOSSLESSLY on my iPhone. But, as an engineer, I can differentiate good music from good recordings. Remasters are the devil....except the current high Rez ones and companies like Mofi and analogue productions...they usually correct the damage done originally. I think there's a sad irony in that more people have the capability to make better sounding recordings than ever did back in the day, and a huge majority use the better sounding tools to emulate truly poor commercial examples.

I can remember, speaking of the early shots in the loudness war, coming home one Tuesday with a new Susanah Hoffs, Sheryl Crow, and Shawn Colvin CDs....one Tuesday....and thinking my stereo had somehow broken because they seemed "hard and distorted"....putting on the last releases by those same artists....and no issue...and thinking it must be some kind of CD manufacturing malfunction. This would've been 96 or so...they never went back to sounding like they did.

You should be able to go in and out transparently provided you don't overload the analog stages or converter which tropically means peaking at - 12.

All the top end converter chips have a decreasing amount of THD with increasing levels. They get their best specs at -1 db full scale, that's where they measure the chipset's THD specs.

Since they operate at 5 volts, the audio signals are attenuated by the analog stages before the ADC. Most of the time the analog stages are running on a + - 15 or 12 volt power supply to ensure the converter chips clip far before any analog stage does.

Converters have been built this way for years, if there is any percieved changes at -12 db fc, it's more than likely expectation bias, not a measureable effect.

I was watching a Pensado Place yesterday with Mick Guzauski. He was talking about plugin EQ's and was talking about how much easier it was to use them than analog, because of headroom.  I don't know if he was just selling plugins or not, but it made me think after seeing your statement that perhaps there is more major league mixing being done in a 32 bit floating point environment than you are stating. I really don't know, but there it is.

Well, setting aside that both of those guys mix almost exclusively 44.1 dance music....they both mix on HD Accel systems....which was my point. Those are not floating point software mixers.

Now, Mick also has a Sony Oxford, which is even less resolution...it's 32bit fixed....to HD's 48bit fixed. I didn't look far enough to see if he does any analog summing or anything, because that's not my point....they're not using floating point native mixers. 

Hey Pop, sorry man, it's very clear to me that you certainly know your stuff, respect, but im having a hard time wrapping my peanut around what you're saying, how does it fit into all of this? I think i missed something? but i'm very curious to understand this. Can you black n white your point for me 8/ lol