By Chuck Kirkpatrick

Analog v.s. Digital
how many countless hours have been spent discussing this topic?

It was one evening sometime around 1979 at Quadradial Studios in North Miami where I heard a compact disc for the first time in my life....and it was like having knives and forks blasted into my eardrums. If ever the word "brittle" could apply, this would have been the occasion.

Digital audio and the compact disc have certainly come a long way. I cannot elaborate on nor will I attempt explain the technical side for lack of education, but the truth about digital audio is, is that it is very simply, the truth. Save for the almost imperceptible effects of sampling (some will beg to differ) and the quality of the A/D - D/A converters employed, "digital" neither adds nor takes away anything from the original audio signal

Looking back at the recording process 30 or more years ago, we begin with the microphone where the energy conversion from mechanical to electrical first begins. And from there to the final destination - the loudspeaker (where the electrical energy goes back to mechanical) - that electrical signal makes it's journey through a maze of iron (transformers), air (capacitors), carbon and metal (resistors), then through vacuum tubes, more resistors, capacitors, transformers, and wire. For storage purposes, yet another conversion of electrical energy to magnetic energy takes place via a small coil (the record head of the tape machine) to rearrange random molecules on a strip of thin plastic tape coated with iron oxide into an organized linear array. Scraping past the record and play heads of the tape machine at over a foot per second, this magnetic array is once again converted back to electrical energy and continues yet another journey through much the same as above. When you listen to those old recordings now, it's astonishing how good most of them sound ...perhaps too good? All similarities end at the A/D ("analog-to-digital") converter where the analog audio signal is sliced up much like a hard-boiled egg, and each slice is a measurement of the audio signal at a particular point in time, represented by a binary number. From here on throughout the chain of equipment, this number remains unaffected, and as long as it is properly "clocked" in sequence with measurements before and after it, the audio signal these numbers represent remains unaltered.

Noted engineer/producer Don Gehman once made a great analogy... "analog is like film and digital is like video. I prefer to work in film." There is that certain "warmth" in analog, much like the gorgeous color saturation associated with good film that, until a few years ago, was lacking in pure analog video recordings. However, we have seen huge advancements in digital video quality as well as digital audio that bring a new treat to the listener/viewer . I was amazed to learn that "The Shield" Fox cable series was shot all in pure video but made to look like film via digital technology.

I'm always amazed at the "fatness" of the kick and snare on some of my old Game recordings from Criteria, all done to analog multi-track tape. I understand why so many producers still track to analog tape, then transfer to digital for ease of editing and tape preservation. And look at all the plug ins available for digital workstations, all designed to emulate good old analog equipment by degradation of the audio signal! And it is that actual degradation (I hate using that word in this context) that we have come to love in our old vinyl and tape. The top-end harshness is smoothed, the bottom-end is fattened, and rich pleasing harmonics are generated...all this stuff that was never there to begin with!! And here we are now in an era where a laptop computer is capable of doing what once took half a million dollars' worth (and 3 tons) of equipment to do, and does it more accurately. Our track limit in the old days was 24 - unless you synced up more tape machines (and you old-timers know what what a nightmare that was). Today, there is virtually no limit to the number of tracks available if your processor and RAM are adequate.

Imagine for a moment if you will, where the music biz - and music itself - would be without digital audio today. No downloading, no I--Tunes, no I-Pod, and still having to depend on FEDEX to deliver rough mixes for approval on DAT (remember that format?) reel-to-reel, or cassette. Every cassette tape you ever bought was a third or more generation copy, complete with all the hiss and signal degradation and even further twisted by 6 different flavors of noise reduction. Every commercially released vinyl record was mastered from 2nd generation safety tape copies.

Digital is here to stay...and I am glad. I wouldn't have a job otherwise. The real beauty is, it's nothing but a bunch of "ones" and "zeros" - little switches that are either "on" or "off". Digital copies can go dozens of generations with absolutely no signal degradation, just so long as those "ones" and "zeroes" remain as they are supposed to.

I just finished an album, most of which was done in a 10 X 11 bedroom and on equipment that I could fit in the back seat of my car. Sure....I would have loved to have done it on 2" 24 analog through a Neve console. But in the end, it's the expression on the canvas that matters, not the paints, brushes or easel.