Analog vs Digital - Pop Science for a Day

In last week’s episode, PBS pop-science magazine show Wired Science covered the issue of analog vs digital sound – and predictably, the piece was highly compressed and lacked in dynamic range.

The Wired piece opens with the promise of a competition between compressed mp3 file formats and audio engineers who take exception to compressed digital sound. But that debate never actually surfaces. In keeping with pop-science-show format, you get a lot of disjointed clips strung together to keep things fast-paced and shallow.

The episode touches on the recording industry and how it has converted from analog to digital. Great Northern is their example of a digitally recorded band. They also happen to be an indie band, and like most of the genre, are receptive of digital distribution.

Representing the die-hard analog proponent is accomplished recording engineer Steve Albini. He kicks off the so-called debate by making a statement nobody can argue… to paraphrase:

“A well-made LP record will sound better than a compressed MP3 downloaded from a bogus website.”

Then we’re introduced to Ken Andrews, another successful sound engineer, who describes the superiority of the digital recording process. Even though nobody tries to argue Steve Albini’s position on LPs vs highly compressed MP3s. The show gives a quick science lesson describing the difference between analog and digital sound, graphically illustrating the process of pulse code modulation by sampling analog sound. Then, the narrator makes the blanket statement that audiophiles find sampled sound to be a cheap imitation of the original.

That depends on your definition of audiophile!

Even analog proponent Steve Albini admits digital recording has come a long way. So, everyone seems to agree there’s a wide disparity between digital recordings.

An ABX test is taken by self-professed “golden ears” and members of Great Northern. The test is between an analog studio recording and a digital studio recording. No spoilers here, you’ll have to watch the clip for the result.

Even though it was a lightweight pop-science show, one underlying idea it captured is that there are differences in quality between recordings. Introducing mainstream viewers to differences in acoustic quality is something we should all appreciate regardless of where on the analog/digital divide you stand.