Point well taken, Jason. That is at least one benefit of analog,CLIPPING. As much as I hate to admit it, I've clipped digital and its not a pretty thing, but a careful level adjustment is all you really need to make that right.What youre actually getting with analog pre-amps is a form of light compression , I still tend to lean in the direction of pianoman. The only digital I dont like is ATRAC compression used in minidisk. With analog ,the quality of a recording is dependent on the tape width,speed,the quality of the tracking deck and even the formulation of the recording tape. With digital, a quality recording is very dependent not only on the bit resolution of the converters, but also on the quality of the converters. A 16bit converter from XYZ may not be of the quality of one from company ZYX.
I think most of us believe we can hear better than we actually can. If we could hear what a perfect set of ears hear as compared to what most of us hear, I think the difference would be astounding. If you have good hearing, be thankful and keep those walkman headphones turned down or you wont have it for long.
I used to think I had a bad left channel on my monitors until I put on headphones and listened both ways, to my amazement, I am missing some high frequency in my left ear. I attribute this to the time I went shooting with a buddy and he had an antique powder load pistol. He aimed and fired this thing on my left pretty close to my ear. After that my ear just rang for awhile and now I have permenant frequency loss in that ear. At least I am aware of it and can compensate for it in my mixes. Its not extremely serious, but I know its there.I seem to have low frequency hearing better than my wife, because many a time I have heard rumbles in the distance that she never heard. I believe that just like noses and eyes are all different, so are ears, and everyone has a little different "equalizer" built into their inner ear. You might hear a tone just like me, but hear it in a different way.Digital seems"harsh" to some people, but then again that may be due to a mix that should have recieved some eq treatment. I know a lot of studios will try and compensate for the cheap systems most people listen to , by boosting highs, only problem is when you play it on a good system, you have to turn the highs down some.
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Smitty
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Smitty