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Old 07-03-2019, 12:47 AM   #21
fred garvin
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2018
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Quote:
Originally Posted by brainwreck View Post
Given the nature of digital and what should be a reasonably neutral sound, there is an obvious question here on what is going on in the first example (1/4" tape vs. digital transferred to 1/4" tape): Why do these recordings sound so different?
Because the "tape" (#1) is louder, for starters? Again, you can see it in the waveform, and again, I'd suggest confirmation bias. He wanted a result and went to quite a bit of trouble to give it to himself lol. Also multiple conversions etc. are definitely going to have an effect, less of a effect to be sure with the digital than the tape transfers, but still, plus the other kajiggery involved, preamps, gain staging/compensation, etc. Which all is most obvious listening to #2 vs. #4, original source material vs. two conversions. In addition to whatever character the tape tranfer is providing I clearly hear an overall loss of fidelity.

Because I found that guy and his video a bit hard to take and dull as dirt, (It's so AWESOME that everything on YT has to be OVER 10 min. now so people can maximize their ratings or whatever, isn't it????) I kinda started out with what I was interested in, which was comparing to see which one I liked best; I picked the section of music I thought was most interesting, and skipped around quickly between the different takes to that section until I was sure of my opinion. Resulting in:

1st, #2. Digital digital lol. I thought this had the most dynamic range, detail, and liveliness of sound.

2nd, tie, #1 "tape" and #5, plugin, depending on what you wanted from it. #1 was definitely a bit warmer and fuzzier than #2, which is fine but I didn't prefer. #5, I thought the plugin did its job reasonably well, it sounded to me more polished/produced/warmer/"tape"/whatever without being too obviously an "effect". I'd have liked to hear it used a bit more subtly though. If I had to use one or the other for a demo I think I'd pick #1 if I was going to take my time with it and #5 if I was in a hurry so, tie.

Tie for 5th, the other two. These sounded a bit dull to me compared to the other 3 and I just kinda lost interest.

Anyone else have opinions?

Last edited by fred garvin; 07-03-2019 at 12:54 AM.
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