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Comparing Analog and Digital Recording Essay

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Comparing Analog and Digital Recording

In the present time we are always coming up with better electronics, because that is what we expect. So, in the recording industry we have moved from analog to digital recording. Musicians want the best recording gear to give them the fastest, easiest, and best sounding recordings for their music. Digital recording is the newer way of recording music since analog recording, but is it always better? There are obviously definite positives of digital recording or we wouldn’t be using it, but does it fall short to analog recording in some areas? When digital recording was first introduced, the audio capture abilities were not what they were now. Where it is now has gone a long way to strengthen the …show more content…

With those pieces missing it gives the music a much more crisp sound. “Subtleties like the overtones of violins and parts of the harmonic texture of music are simply omitted in a CD recording,” says Carl Smith, Owner and Vice President of Well Tempered Lab. “So what you have is a superficially superior sound” (Day 92). Superficial in the sense that analog recording is a more natural recording while digital is more crisp and clear. Another positive aspect of digital recording over analog recording is that digital recording has a much better bass sound. The bass is much easier to hear in a digital recording. Analog recording has low bass sound because for an LPs or records it needs big grooves for the bass and LPs and records use smaller grooves.

Analog recording does have benefits over digital recording. One was mentioned in the previous paragraph. Analog recordings have a more natural sound. Nothing is taken out of the original recording; it is all there on the record in one natural flow. Another positive of the analog recording is that it is played on a turntable. With the turntable a person can choose among various components that will affect the overall sound. On a CD player a person can not switch the laser to get better sound, but on a turntable a person can upgrade the cartridge. The cartridge holds the needle which tracks the grooves in the record (Day 92). The better the cartridge the better the sound quality. Also, for

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