Which Should Sound Better: (1) Analog Recording (Re)Mastered at 24-96 or (2) Digital Recording at 16-44?

[Wonderer]

From the point of view of this amateur with no experience in music production, the history of music recording in the stereo era can be divided into 3 more or less distinct phases (with of course some overlap during transition periods):

 

1. Pure analog recording and recording - roughly late 1950's to late 1970s on vinyl records and magnetic tape (the Analog Era)

2. Digital recording and (re)mastering at 16 bits 44,100 on compact discs - early 1980s to approximately 2010 (just to pick a date) on compact discs and digital tape (the Compact Disc era)

3. High Resolution digital recording and (re)mastering at 24 bits and 44,100, 48,000, 88,200, 96,000 (more or less the norm at the moment), and 192,000 - 2010 - present via HiRes downloads and streaming (the HiRes era.

 

During the Compact disc era, the most common recordings were either pure digital recordings made with digital mics, mastering, and medium (so-called DDD), and analog recordings mastered digitally at 16-44 and distributed digitally (so-called ADD).

 

During the Hi-Res era, the most common recordings are made digitally at 24-96 and distributed via download, streaming, or audio discs capable of storing the larger sized hi-res recordings.

 

My question concerns primarily the quality (theoretically speaking) of 16-44 digital recordings made during Compact Disc era as compared to Hi-Res remasters of analog recordings made today. Put another way, if it were possible to make 2 recordings of the same music, with one recorded with analog mics and then mastered at 24-96, and a second recorded with digital mics and mastered at 16-44, which recording should objectively sound better? (I am operating under the assumption that a purely hi-res digital recording and mastering would be superior to both.)

 

The reason I ask this is because if it were the case that the hi-res remastered analog recordings are superior to the 16-44 digital recordings, then purely as a matter of historical interest, the Compact Disc era could be considered a step backward in terms of audio fidelity. I say this because we can remaster old analog recordings, but we can't improve 16-44 recordings except by upsampling, as to which again, I operate under the assumption does not objectively improve audio quality. Thus recordings made during the Compact Disc era that were considered benchmarks in terms of performance and recording quality at the time cannot be made better in the hi-res era, whereas pre-Compact Disc era recordings can be improved.

 

Does this question make any sense? Am I missing something? Are any of my underlying assumptions faulty? Has this already been discussed ad naueum? (If so, I apologize and ask that someone might kindly direct me to a prior discussion).

 

Thanks very much,

Rod

 

P.S. I am ignoring DSD because it is not directly comparable to the digital-analog comparisons I am interested in here. I am also deliberately ignoring historical differences between performers, venues, producers, etc. that may make objective comparison between recordings over time impossible. Rather, my question goes simply to the theoretical comparison under identical circumstances between hi-res remastered analog vs. 16-44 pure digital recording. If the question has any validity, then one can speculate about whether listeners may have suffered because of the inability to improve recordings made during the Compact Disc era. In other words, would we as listeners be better off today if recordings during the Compact Disc era were made with analog mics?

 

 

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, Wonderer said:

Put another way, if it were possible to make 2 recordings of the same music, with one recorded with analog mics and then mastered at 24-96, and a second recorded with digital mics...

 

Sorry, but there is no such thing as a "digital microphone" so the premise of your question does not quite hold up.

Microphones output a very low-level analog voltage which gets fed into a microphone preamplifier.  As an oversimplification, the resulting line-level signal is then fed either to an analog mixing console and analog tape recording machine or it is fed to an analog-to-digital converter then mixed and reordered (these days to digital media--hard drives, SSD, etc.,--other than digital tape).

 

As important to the realism of the final recording--really more so--than than the above are factors such as:

--The room(s) the musicians are playing in (are they playing together or at separate times);

--The selection and qualities of the microphones chosen--for each instrument/vocalist or as an array capturing the entire ensemble together--and the expertise of the people positioning those mics;

--The quality of the microphone preamplifiers (these are extremely low-level signals, think magnetic phono cartridge levels but without the non-linear EQ);

--The quality of the A>D converters;

--The quality of the mixing console--and more importantly the expertise of the people performing the tasks with it.

 

So you can see that most all the above comes into play well before the considerations of how the final recording is going to be mastered into a format that can be distributed.

 

Again, the above is a VAST oversimplification of the recording process and its issues and factors affecting quality.  But I figure we need to start somewhere with the beginnings of an answer for the @Wonderer. 

As I see the above is your first post, on behalf of all the friendly and knowledgeable members, WELCOME TO AUDIOPHILE STYLE!

 

[firedog]

No answer to your question. I'm ignoring you idea of "digital mics", which don't exist.

In modern recordings, there are recordings in which the signal from non-acoustic instruments are recorded directly, without a microphone; either a digital or analog signal is sent directly to the recording format without a microphone. Depending on the type of recording, the signal may need to be converted to either analog or digital to be recorded. 

In either format a good or bad recording can be made. The format isn't the determining factor; the quality of the recording is.

The real world answer to your question is: either one could sound better, it depends.

BTW, state of the art recordings can be made with 16/44.1. It's not a given that a hi-res recording will sound better. 

[davide256]

IME the quality of CD recordings depends on the original engineers skills and the data density of the material. If the original instrumentation is not complex CD rate

does fine. But if it is, thats when 48/24 or better makes a difference. Remasters can be less enjoyable, if the next engineer isn't as skilled or the original masters weren't that great.

 

[scan80269]

MEMS microphones with PDM or I2S output should technically count as digital microphones.  These are very popular for modern laptop PC designs since MEMS mics are typically quite small in size, interface easily to main boards, and can have superior specs due to lack of need for separate analog microphone amplifier and A/D conversion.

 

SiSonic™ Surface Mount MEMS Microphones (knowles.com)

 

 

[GUTB]

Without a doubt a 24-96 conversion taken from an analog source would be the better quality audio. That is because it encompasses a lot more audio information than Redbook (16-44) -- and perhaps most importantly of all it has a greater time-domain resolution. Those are aside from the extra headroom for doing mixing, just talking about the audio quality aspect.

 

Now, in my experience there's only a minor improvement in perceived quality vs Redbook. The differences becomes fairly obvious once you hit 24-176/192. And DXD (24-352) seems to be similar to DSD.

 

So, long story short 16-44 is a bad format and should be avoided if there's any better option.

[Wonderer]

I hope I haven't lost all credibility with my blunder about digital mics. 😬

 

What I really was trying to focus on is the point at which the music is captured in some medium, which should have been expressed as analog tape vs some digital means (DTR, hard disk, SSD, etc). 

 

My question is really a kind of thought experiment that aims at comparing analog capturing with later hi-res mastering as opposed to 16-44 capturing with 16-44 mastering, with all other considerations (such as venue, skill, quality of equipment, etc) being held constant. It also takes the following assumptions as true which, if they are not, would probably render the exercise meaningless. Those assumptions are (1) much of the music captured during the Compact Disc era was captured digitally at 16-44 (and not at some higher resolution and later down-sampled to 16-44 just so it would fit on a CD; (2) that music captured and mastered today at some higher resolution (whether that is 24-96 or some higher level) is objectively superior (to the majority of listeners, at least) to pure analog (for purposes of this discussion, I am trying to avoid a debate as to the overall merits of digital vs. analog); and (3) 16-44 digital captures cannot be improved by higher resolution remastering (again, I seek to avoid issues such as whether adding some effect here or a filter there during remastering might result in a "better" final product; the assumption here is simply that upsampling to a higher resolution by itself should not objectively improve the original capture).

 

So, to reformulate my question; Objectively speaking, with all other factors being equal, which recording should be superior:

(1) an analog capture mastered digitally at a resolution higher than 16-44

(2) a 16-44 capture and master

 

Assuming the validity of the question, then if the answer is, to quote @GUTB, "a 24-96 conversion taken from an analog source would be the better quality audio" than 16-44, then it might be possible to speculate as to whether the 16-44 era of music was actually a step back in terms of audio quality, given what we can do now with analog recordings digitally, and what we can accomplish with original higher resolution digital captures and mastering.

 

 

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

First of all, GUTB is a terrible source.  Second, either can sound great, better, or worse, it depends on the mastering. That is the only determining factor in final sound quality.

[davide256]

1 hour ago, Wonderer said:

I hope I haven't lost all credibility with my blunder about digital mics. 😬

 

What I really was trying to focus on is the point at which the music is captured in some medium, which should have been expressed as analog tape vs some digital means (DTR, hard disk, SSD, etc). 

 

My question is really a kind of thought experiment that aims at comparing analog capturing with later hi-res mastering as opposed to 16-44 capturing with 16-44 mastering, with all other considerations (such as venue, skill, quality of equipment, etc) being held constant. It also takes the following assumptions as true which, if they are not, would probably render the exercise meaningless. Those assumptions are (1) much of the music captured during the Compact Disc era was captured digitally at 16-44 (and not at some higher resolution and later down-sampled to 16-44 just so it would fit on a CD; (2) that music captured and mastered today at some higher resolution (whether that is 24-96 or some higher level) is objectively superior (to the majority of listeners, at least) to pure analog (for purposes of this discussion, I am trying to avoid a debate as to the overall merits of digital vs. analog); and (3) 16-44 digital captures cannot be improved by higher resolution remastering (again, I seek to avoid issues such as whether adding some effect here or a filter there during remastering might result in a "better" final product; the assumption here is simply that upsampling to a higher resolution by itself should not objectively improve the original capture).

 

So, to reformulate my question; Objectively speaking, with all other factors being equal, which recording should be superior:

(1) an analog capture mastered digitally at a resolution higher than 16-44

(2) a 16-44 capture and master

 

Assuming the validity of the question, then if the answer is, to quote @GUTB, "a 24-96 conversion taken from an analog source would be the better quality audio" than 16-44, then it might be possible to speculate as to whether the 16-44 era of music was actually a step back in terms of audio quality, given what we can do now with analog recordings digitally, and what we can accomplish with original higher resolution digital captures and mastering.

 

If the original master was good, used with an information rich piece, an analog tape master can have more data density than a 24/96 recording.

 

But 44/16 was not a step back for the average consumer who had a built in Garrard turntable in the early 80's with a flip needle for 33 1/3 &78's... it was a more reliable

technology that could sound better at the low end of price for a player. Most of the woes of CD rate have turned out to be the time it's taken to bring  a decent DAC

down to an affordable consumer price and to reach the point where we  use music ripped to disc vs using a CD "spinner". 

 

As I understand it the virtues of higher rates often aren't from more information but rather that many DAC's behave better for  D/A conversion filters, in moving

distortion products out of the audible range. It is quite popular to up-sample music for this reason alone with DAC's that behave this way

 

 

[Josh Mound]

This is a great topic, @Wonderer. I posted my thoughts in my blog:

 

 

[GUTB]

Yes, 16-44 was an enormous move backwards for audio. The average consumer doesn't place a high value in audio quality; they did value reliability and low-noise aspect of early digital audio. Audiophiles were stuck in dark ages of early DACs, first built into CD players. The break-out of high-resolution digital audio did offer us (audiophiles) some relief, but it really took the super high-end DACs based on discrete ladders and, later, super chips like the 9018 and equivalents.

[JoeWhip]

A real step backwards? Ah, no. I have quite a few CD rips with their 24/96 and 24/192 counterparts, same master where I cannot tell them apart. Done carefully, 16/44.1 can sound wonderful.

[davide256]

2 hours ago, GUTB said:

Yes, 16-44 was an enormous move backwards for audio. The average consumer doesn't place a high value in audio quality; they did value reliability and low-noise aspect of early digital audio. Audiophiles were stuck in dark ages of early DACs, first built into CD players. The break-out of high-resolution digital audio did offer us (audiophiles) some relief, but it really took the super high-end DACs based on discrete ladders and, later, super chips like the 9018 and equivalents.

money can disconnect you from the differing  reality of what ordinary people can afford...

[davide256]

52 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

A real step backwards? Ah, no. I have quite a few CD rips with their 24/96 and 24/192 counterparts, same master where I cannot tell them apart. Done carefully, 16/44.1 can sound wonderful.

and I have some 96/24 remasters that sound worse than the original... but thats usually where the original had an exceptional engineer.

[JoeWhip]

Or the remaster was not done with accurate fidelity in mind.

[Josh Mound]

9 hours ago, GUTB said:

Yes, 16-44 was an enormous move backwards for audio. The average consumer doesn't place a high value in audio quality; they did value reliability and low-noise aspect of early digital audio. Audiophiles were stuck in dark ages of early DACs, first built into CD players. The break-out of high-resolution digital audio did offer us (audiophiles) some relief, but it really took the super high-end DACs based on discrete ladders and, later, super chips like the 9018 and equivalents.

 

I'm actually working on a long-term project about Redbook, consisting of analyzing both early CDs and early DACs. IMHO, there were plenty of great CDs right from the start, but also a lot of bad ones. CD players and DACs took a little while longer to get good. Going by measurements, there were some atrocious early CD players. But there also were some solid ones. By the mid-'90s, at the latest, we had some exceptional DACs. I'd argue that there are mid-'90s CD/DAC combos that would sound as good as the best hi-res/DAC combos today. So I think it's a complex, nuanced story. For consumers, 16/44.1 is sufficient for great sound. The issue was that many early DACs were terrible and some early CD masterings were lackluster.

[JoeWhip]

I still have a Theta  Pro Basic 3 DAC that still works. Limited to 16/44.1 and 48 but when feed CD content still sounds pretty good. No not like my Yggys, but pretty good.