Simon Phillips Puts To Rest the Digital VS Analog Debate!
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- Опубліковано 12 січ 2025
- Simon Phillips, who has been in the engineering game for about 50 years, explains why the medium is not that important regarding "analog"-sounding records! The Digital VS Analog debate is over!
For full interview go to: • Simon Phillips Intervi...
#vinylcommunity
#homerecording
#simonphillips
I appreciate everyone coming by and leaving their comments. This is always a fun engaging topic. Everyone is welcome to agree or disagree just don't make personal attacks like referring to someone's "celebrity" status, calling their reasoning "pure smack" or such. Simon was very generous with his time and was very down to earth. I asked him to come on and talk about how he made his latest records sound so 'analog.' He was nice enough to do that. I hope to have him on again. If anyone has any questions feel free to leave them, perhaps we can get a follow-up at some point. Please check out the entire interview, since this segment was pulled from that longer interview. Thanks again!
The biggest reason to move up from 48KHz is that the antialiasing filters can be shifted up to where they have less effect on the audible band. Back in the '80s when it had to be done with analog brick wall filters operating between 20 and 22KHz, the effect on the midrange was quite noticeable.
I keep listening to Enigma and how clean that mix was. It sounded like glory. Analog synths and samplers, I think it was an Emulator 3 with analog filters. But the album was so clean. That sold digital to me. Again, everything comes down to the mix.
Maybe we hear it when recording a symphony orchestra with ultra dynamic parts but for most use cases 24bit/48kHz is perfectly fine. 96kHz is nice for processing plugins because they tend to work better at higher sample rates. When doubling your sample rate you also need double the processing power and file size to run the tracks and when they add up to over a hundred tracks on a session it may not be worth the costs. Most people won’t hear the difference between 48 and 96 kHz in a blind test. Eventually we can add things in and out when mixing but the results will always rely on the performance and the production itself. A mediocre song will not get better with higher quality converters, same as a great song stays a great song even on a shitty playback system. Converters are the least of a problem nowadays.
Exactly my thoughts. Also, at his age, no matter what, you lose higher-end hearing and the ability to parse harmonics as well. I think he may be "mentally" hearing the difference, which happens to us all the time. Someone tells us something is remastered and we "automatically" hear that it sounds better. No matter what, I still say Sinon Phillips and Gavin Harrison are two of the best drummers out there!
@@odmusicman He's not hearing it unless he's hearing it in a double blind test. I'm guessing he can "hear" it when he knows which is which.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating! The early '80's produced some fine sounding rock LPs. I loved Mike Oldfield's *Crises* (with Simon on drums), which was recorded on an Ampex multitrack. I also loved Hawkwind's *Levitation* (Ginger Baker pounding the skins) which was done on the 3M digital tape system. I never consider how "analogue" those records sound, but they are both very true to life & musical. Over the years there have been discussions about recording consoles with Harrison claiming to be very straight wire & Neve using motorized faders to avoid voltage controlled amplifiers. My copy of Brian Eno's *Before & After Science* notes that noise reduction was not used much like a milk carton proclaims "non-GMO!" I'm content to let the engineers & producers work their magic & leave the provenance for collectors to pursue.
At 96khz I did a test and could hear more separation between OH mics high frequencies and cymbals. Lots of delicate higher frequencies on cymbals. At 44.1 the cymbals kind of sounded one dimensional and blurring together still ok sound but 96khz gave a better feel and dimension. Could be converter issue but 96khz does sound good even on distorted guitars. Sounds smoother on the highs. But the final product is what counts and you do get good results with 44.1khz 24-bit. Audiophiles likes 96khz because it sounds closer to original recording and its good for time stretching when needed or archiving.
I gotta be honest - I've worked in music for years, and I do a lot of production music. The libraries like the mixes to be at 48 and I often forget and upsample when I bounce out of a 44.1 session - I can't hear any meaningful difference between the 2....but I can 100% believe guys like Simon can hear it given what he does.
He absolutely can not hear it. He's 67 years old. He probably can't hear above 8 or 10K at this time in his life.
I'm sure he can "hear" it when he knows which is which, but in a proper double blind test, people cannot tell 44.1 from 48 from 96.
There's this flawed assumption out there that all analog recordings are superior to all digital recordings, just by virtue of the fact that they were made on an analog platform. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. Just because you have fallen in love with the analog format doesn't make it inherently better - nor does it remove its many shortcomings and drawbacks, many of which are noted in the above video.
Exactly. Many analog recordings sound bad. Modern digital technology is definitely allowing for some great-sounding recordings!
All analogue recordings are superior to digital as they are nature copying nature. Digital is a bad copy of nature that has been sold as superior. A corrupt sound wave is always inferior to analogue. The mind may not realise this, but the body does.
In the recording studio I ran for 10 years I started with 16 track analogue moving on to adat.I now record in the box using Cubase. Listening to my old recordings against what I do now I can't hear much difference.
Not sure what bit rates and sample rates you are using. I can hear the difference between a 24-bit 96K and 16-bit 44.1K on the same recordings when comparing on my home stereo system.
This is just the topic I needed to hear as I mourn over not being able to do my album analog. Thank you both for your knowledge. Good luck with your work.
@@SanjaMarkovic just get someone good to record your album well. Get it mixed and mastered by someone who has a good ear and knows how to get an analog sound. Thanks for commenting
I'm not much of a techie guy, especially when it comes to computing, which is supposed to be an exact science that is somehow never quite that exact. But I am a musician. I think people get very finnicky with these minute details that seem to be completely negligible to any musician for the most part, and all the more so to the average listener, most of whom do their listening on ear buds or their mobile phone. The very best you get is usually a car audio system, and even then, with the noise of the motor, the traffic, the road, etc., the chances of hearing any difference are very slim, if any at all. Then you have the audiophiles, with their high-end fancy systems, which probably comprise not more than 1% of all music listeners. If indeed there is a muddiness in the lower mids, what's wrong with filtering the offending frequencies and be done with it? Recording, mixing, and mastering at 96k requires a huge amount of very expensive computing power. Is it really cost-effective for what you get in return in terms of improved audio quality?
Thanks for your comment. I think it does matter when listening on a home stereo system on vinyl. So this is the context of the discussion. The two vinyl releases that I referred to at the beginning of the video clip sound like an analog recording but are digital. Most of the time new records especially in this genre do not sound as warm as these. So I wanted to know how he is able to make them sound "analog."
Sorry, I think I missed the analog part of the debate.
The analog part of the "debate" is that the two vinyl releases I referred to at the beginning of the clip sound like analog recordings although they are in fact digital sources. The gist of the argument is that it no longer matters that the source is analog or digital but how you get digital recordings to sound like the old analog recordings, since many still do not have that warm sound to them.
@@bellisariosonic This is something to question imo. When analog instruments are recorded through an high-end pre-amp and high-end eq or compressor the analog sound is already backed in to the recording. Simon Phillips uses high-end Elysia equipment, excellent mics and excellent pre-amps in a dedicated studio. The analog ‘sound’ is there from the beginning when tracking.
If you want a digital recording you’ll need digital instruments. Any recorded acoustic instrument will start in the analog domain. So the question ‘what is analog and what is digital’ is a very legit question.
@@Chaos-Dynamics But we can question what the inputs are going into. So is it going into a PC or going straight to tape? That is the question. So we can deduce what is analog or digital there which is the point of the discussion.
@@bellisariosonic Digital or tape doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe 15 years ago when converters were not that great. Some converters have a color to them and are not clean, so what is being used? Burll and Apogee converters tend to color the sound which gives an analog feel. When mixing and mastering completely in the box you can get that ‘analog’ sound, there are so many engineers who work exclusively in the box. Eventually we would need to know the complete signal chain in order to understand the process. There are so many ways to achieve a certain sonic palette. Also we have to take in account that mastering for vinyl has different targets than mastering for a digital release.
Im glad he’s talking about the advantage of 96k. I actually record 192khz whenever I can
There is no advantage to recording at 96K. Any frequencies in the higher domains can't be heard by humans. There is no point in recording in 96k.
It's just another "audiophile" vs science guy. All "audiophiles" pretend they can hear it, but it's just narcissism. They want to think they can hear better than the rest of the world. But they can't.
‘There’s this, muddiness at around 180-240hz, and at 96(kHz) it seems to smooth it out like tape does. I’ve done this test various times, and it really does work’ - Yeah? Prove it. He even says that he upscales the audio (which was already recorded at 44.1khz/48khz) ‘the damage is done on the way in’… When you up-sample, the audio stays 1/1 the same; it will null. There’s an argument to be made for processing purposes to up-sample audio in a digital environment, absolutely… But not this guys reasoning, talking pure smack there.
@@jackflynn-oakley1937 yeah ok I’ll take his word over yours any day since he has actually done it for around 50 years now. How long have you been in the professional recording post-production engineering business? The proof is in how good it sounds. End of argument
He was actually talking about when he's recording drums for external projects already recorded at say 44.1, he'll still record at 96, then downsample, so the opposite of your example. but still, I agree, if this makes a difference in his case, he's got a faulty AD converter. I've done albums with some songs at 96, some at 44.1. Even with plugin processing at different samplerates, the difference is negligble. Nobody is immune to the placebo effect I guess.
@@bellisariosonic Just an elitist argument, sorry. This isn’t a case of anyone ‘knowing’ better, it’s a case of someone claiming something which has since been proven otherwise countless times, it’s not an argument of stature. ‘I’ve been doing this ‘x’ amount of years so how can anyone question me’, or ‘I’m this person, so what I say is gospel’.
I repeat what I said… Prove it. Make a video, show this mystical smoothness between 180-240hz that working at a higher sample rate provides. Again, there are absolutely benefits to working at higher sample rates, especially in regards to aliasing and oversampling, but upscaling keeps the audio exactly as is it. A 44.1khz file up scaled to 96/192khz doesn’t do ANYTHING to the audio, it will perfectly null with the same file at 44.1khz, there’s tests you can easily do to prove this.
So yeah, I’m a random guy on the internet questioning a 50 year veteran, prove me wrong.
@@bellisariosonic You're sounding like a proper twat. Learn to take opinions for what they are, opinions. Be respectful.
Who has the elitist attitude here? It is apparent that you didn't listen to what he was actually saying about his drum tracks. Your "random guy" argument proves my point, that you don't have ears to hear. The recording is the proof say what you will. I just love that this topic brings people like you out who have no experience whatsoever in the field but insist that you know better than the guy who is actually making great sounding records. At least this makes for entertaining reading for folks. Thanks for contributing.
in 2025 (almost) with the amount of firepower a MacBook Pro has, not to mention if you can afford to own a MacPro, I don't see why any amount of takes of any vocal or instrument would be a problem. If it has to do with engineer etiquette, that's something else. Huge respect to Simon Phillips though and all he has done. Superb drummer!
It is mostly the storage space that he is referring to which takes up more room when exponentially increasing the bit and sample rate.
My ears was fresh enough in 1989 the first time i listen to a CD the sound was so clear to my 6 year old ears that i knew immediatly that this thing was a tape and LP killer at the Time it was the only analog medium i could afford and those CD was not so brand New but was expensive as fuck and became more spread nation wide in the begining of the 90's it was before de we're able to burn CD at home with the help of bigger hard drive and more powerfull computer.