May Oh Eight – Analogue To Digital
I’m back in Armidale after being away for nearly 3 weeks. During that time I was up in Queensland on two separate missions. The first was a road trip out to Birdsville with R. The second was some obligatory participation in R’s family events. So >
Birdsville wasn’t quite the untouched desert gem I thought it was going to be, possibly all too willing to pose for the postcard. Windorah was more on the mark in terms of beautiful neglected stillness, along with Cooper’s Creek hosting amazing bird life. Either way, the drive was great fun, easy, and I got many good sound recordings of desert places along the way. And we shall upload at gallery of outback visual delights soon!
Hanging out with R’s family in Brisbane was mixed, and was mostly tiring in the sense of not being able to relate to ‘normal people’ and seeking peace in a world of endless TV and endless shopping. On the other hand these things invigorate the critical imagination and is more fuel for a big idea I have cooking in my head currently. If you visit the ‘normal world’ as an outsider it seems rather insane that no one is brave enough to come out and ‘say what is not being said’ and saying it with awesome style, soul and presence without leaving any cow held sacred. More on this later.
I return from being away from the internet for 3 weeks feeling that some things are less important than I originally thought in fluster and hurry. A lot of this is not important. A lot placating people is not important. Doing what my intuition tells me to is important. Just forget everyone else not understanding it, do it anyway. Not enough doing.
The technical part of my brain is consumed with the following issue: sample rates and analogue mastering process. I’ve recently found it very clear what the shortcomings of using 44.1khz sampling in the record/mix/master process – just about every aspect of the sound and effects sounds better at higher sample rates. My system can do up to 96khz but at the cost of using more of my CPU, which is an issue for some songs that have large ambitious mixes. There also is an issue with downsampling the master to 44.1khz for CD and mp3 playback (format restrictions) – there are issues with jitter and loss of depth in each melodic part.
One of my composing/engineering buddies Simon (aka Fable) has developed a mastering process that bypasses the downsampling problems above. He does his mix at a high sample rate, then records the mix onto professional Otari reel-to-reel tape deck using the highest quality tape he can get. The tape of course adds it’s own magic to the song’s mix and is analogue. The tape mix is then re-recorded into the computer at 44.1khz (and appropriately dithered from 32 to 16bit). I’ve heard some tests Simon has done using the setup and it sounds absolutely stunning for digital. It’s something I have to plan to angle toward, but at the moment it is more important to finish quite a few projects in front of me first.
Endless.
