USB recording interface vs. analog recording interface

can the human ear tell the difference

The trained ear can hear the difference. When your in the music business and listen to raw music all day, you can 100% tell.

i imagine for most people this is really only an academic point.
running a set-up with a completely analogue signal path is such a pain.

what is an analog recording interface? a mixer and a tape deck?

mr_debauch wrote:what is an analog recording interface? a mixer and a tape deck?

that's what i took it to be.

In the digital console the output of the microphone preamplifier is sent to an A/D converter that changes the signal into a digital audio signal. All mixing, level changes and signal processing is done by the central processor, the "brain" of the console. The brain will simply change the number values of the digital words in order to affect the changes needed. An algorithm will tell to processor which change to make first, which second, etc. Since consoles usually use ultra-low error 32-bit processing, the number of changes made to the signal does not, for all practical purposes, diminish the audio quality of the signal. In an analog console changes are accomplished by running the signal though device that will affect the changes. If the signal is to be reduced, it is run through a fader; if the signal is to be equalized, it is run though and equalizer; if the signal is to be compressed, it is run through a dynamics processor; if the signal is to be mixed with other signals, it is routed to a buss. The order of the processing and changes is determined which device is first, which second, which third, etc. in the signal flow. In analog consoles, amplifiers are used to boost the signal for any loss incurred in any of the signal processing or mixing functions. There will be an amplifier associated with the console channel, one for the equalizer, one for the dynamics processor, one for the mixing buss and possibly one for the fader of the channel. The recording engineer is concerned with a thing called "level-structure" where the signal is kept at the correct level in each stage of the signal's travels through the console to prevents adding unacceptable levels of noise or distortion to the signal.

From a cool book.

A digital console opens up a new world of options for working with your inputs and outputs. Due to the fact that it is software driven, the user is really at the helm for deciding how they want to interface with everything. Most digital mixers are designed to look and have the ability to function much like an analogue mixer; they have faders, channel strips, and many similar layout features; the difference however, is that all of those items are programmable, and can be set to control whatever you want them to control. A digital console allows you to program everything, including levels, and save them for recalling at a later time; also, they allow for a massive number of inputs to be connected, though you are limited as to how many you can quickly control once you’ve exceed the number of channel strips available.

On the analogue console, you simply have a fixed set of inputs, which have their fixed knobs and faders, which accomplish their fixed set of functions. The only ‘save’ function an analogue console has, is what is left the same from the previous Sunday or practice, or a sketch made of knob positions and fader levels. There are certainly many other highlights and features to both types of mixers, but for simplicities sake and what this article is intended .

cool artical.

Just want to be clear. There is a difference and its not tape. Lol.

Analog recording versus digital recording compares the two ways in which sound is recorded and stored. Actual sound waves consist of continuous variations in air pressure. Representations of these signals can be recorded using either digital or analog techniques. An analog recording is one where a property or characteristic of a physical recording medium is made to vary in a manner analogous to the variations in air pressure of the original sound. Generally, the air pressure variations are first converted (by a transducer such as a microphone) into an electrical analog signal in which either the instantaneous voltage or current is directly proportional to the instantaneous air pressure (or is a function of the pressure). The variations of the electrical signal in turn are converted to variations in the recording medium by a recording machine such as a tape recorder or record cutter—the variable property of the medium is modulated by the signal. Examples of properties that are modified are the magnetization of magnetic tape or the deviation (or displacement) of the groove of a gramophone disc from a smooth, flat spiral track. A digital recording is produced by converting the physical properties of the original sound into a sequence of numbers, which can then be stored and read back for reproduction. Usually (virtually always), the sound is transduced (as by a microphone) to an analog signal in the same way as for analog recording, and then the analog signal is digitized, or converted to a digital signal, through an Analog-to-Digital converter (an electronic device) either integrated into the digital audio recorder or separate and connected between the recorder and the analog source. An electrical digital signal has variations in voltage and/or current which represent discrete numbers instead of being continuously mathematically related as a function to the air pressure variations of sound. There are two chief distinctions between an analog and a digital signal. The first is that the analog signal is continuous in time, meaning that it varies smoothly over time no matter how short a time period you consider, whereas the digital signal, in contrast, is discrete in time, meaning it has distinct parts that follow one after another with definite, unambiguous division points (called signal transitions) between them. Each numerical value measured at a single instant in time for a single signal is called a sample; samples are measured at a regular periodic rate to record a signal. The accuracy of the conversion process depends on the sampling rate (how often the sound is sampled and a related numerical value is recorded) and the sampling depth, also called the quantization depth (how much information each sample contains, which can also be described as the maximum numerical size of each sampled value). However, unlike analog recording in which the quality of playback depends critically on the "fidelity" or accuracy of the medium and of the playback device, the physical medium storing digital samples may somewhat distort the encoded information without degrading the quality of playback so long as the original sequence of numbers can be recovered.

yeah true ghostly, but what I was wondering is..... what does the topic poster mean? like... if he was comparing recording and mixing entirely analog like your articles suggest compared to recording and mixing in the computer... or was he comparing lets say a motu vs a porta studio? or was he referring to a standalone hard disk recorder (which is also digital) as being analog or what?

kinda vague question if you ask me... there are billions of recording interfaces... however when he asked the question, does he want to compare a mixer+tape machine to a computer? you know what I mean?