Newman
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But only since we gave up analogue tape recorders!
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analog vs digital recording
- Thread starter solderdude
- Start date
.. 'Oops :>)
You cant monitor off the tape while recording or you get an unaceptable delay for the musicians. Which reminds of another drawback of tape machines. The gap between erase head and record head can cause blips when punching in. The little bit of tape between those 2 heads dosnt get erased so its a mix of the old and new takes.
I've only had one desktop tower (I don't bother with laptops) fail in the last 30+ years, and that was due to a massive lightning strike right near by ?
On thing that's not mentioned in discussions between tape and digital is the inordinate amount of time taken up with aligning a tape machine before every recording session, and sometimes during a session if extended. Changes in temperature especially. My first job was in a company that had three studios, and the first job each morning was to align the tape machines, which would take two techs about an hour to do. On hot days (the studios didn't have aircon) sometimes the machines had to be checked during the lunch break. Talking to people in other studios, this was the usual routine. All changed when recording to hard-disc became possible in the late 1980s. No routine maintenance, although the PC spec in those days was fairly critical in getting the sound card to work properly. However, once working, very reliable.
S.
S.
As someone who admittedly is 100% totally ignorant of photography, and also somewhat of music, could someone explain in layman's terms how AI can "devalue" a quality photo or music recording project. You guys lost me there.
TIA, Sal
Let's not forget though that on a multitrack, 24 or more especially - monitoring for overdubs and punch in's, as well as later sessions - comes from the recording head.
And no - on a good machine nothing blips when punching in. Even at 15 inches, that gap is shorter than you can hit the button... My experience.
Cheers.
Keith_W
Master Contributor
In the past, if you wanted an image for advertising, you would pay a photographer. He would come along with an elaborate lighting setup, talk to the ad agency about what image was needed, then set everything up and take the photo. A bit of editing might be done in Photoshop to remove things like support cables, unwanted reflections, etc.
These days you can sit in front of an AI and ask it to generate an image. Keep going at it until you get the image that you want. No photographer gets paid, so the value of the photographer goes down.
AI isn't all doom and gloom for photography, IMO. You still need photographers for weddings, real estate, events, and so on. What used to require a long time in Lightroom and Photoshop to optimize the exposure of each picture, perform colour corrections, and remove unwanted distractions becomes a real cinch with AI. In the old days, when someone displeased Stalin and he wanted to remove them from a picture, a photographer had to carefully paint over the negative to get rid of the person. These days it's a few clicks and commands. I am sure you can see the benefit and the danger if this tech is used inappropriately.
WARNING - AI Created image incoming...
Just by way of an example, I took @Sal1950's avatar image, gave it to chatgpt, and with the prompt:
Chat GPT created this (It took less time to create the image than it took to download it from ASR, and upload it to chat gpt):
Amusingly ChatGPT thinks you pull the same face whether playing guitar, or pulling wheelies.
Maybe I wasnt clear, you cant monitor what your recording off the tape (your using the record head to record so you cant use it to monitor, so if theres a drop out or other tape problem you wont know it till playback. Theres always distance between the erase head and the record head. When your punching and you hit record the erase head starts to erase and the record head starts to record, the tape between the heads dosnt get erased but it gets recorded to. you get a jump in level for that small bit of tape and you can often hear it as a "blip". This used to happen even with Studer tape machines.
Well, that's on another page, Studer actually changed the distance of the erase head closer, after feedback from the filed. MCI, Otari especially, were better out of the gate, no pun intended. Once you got into punching-in syllables ... it got iffy. The real take between analog(ue) and digital was that there is no undoing what you did, on tape.
If something got messed up - the session would become a long one, and either you kept that to a minimum - or you were a master of the Art.
In Broadcast - especially when using pre-read on the DigiBeta's in online editing, it separated the men from the you know who's...
Never, and I mean never had dropouts on 2-inch tape, by the way. But those were different times, and Tape was Time was Money was Rolling...
Cheers
That's pretty incredible !
It's getting scary today that nearly nothing you see may be real unless you view it actually happening.
Studio machines allowed monitoring off tape using the record head, a function Ampex called SelSync. Studer had their own version. This meant that there was no latency for musicians. The audio quality was worse than off the proper playback head, but quite good enough for monitoring for overdub purposes.
S
In fact he is using digital all the way to create, upload and distribute his content via Youtube, which I find somewhat amusing.
Thats what I said, then I added stuff. Reread my post #71.
And it can do it with video also. There are many scams going around working on the principle that if the viewer sees a celebrity or financial expert endorsing an "investment opportunity" in a video - that it is real. Whereas it can easily be created by AI using a prompt not much more complex than the one I used above.
It is no longer possible to believe what you see on any screen.
The history of fakes is very long. Predates digital by thousands of years.
That said, yes, digital makes it much easier. I hesitate to attribute it to AI, because the tools were there before we started overusing the term AI.
Opportunities for scams are now very much greater. They can easily create a video of people you trust.The history of fakes is very long. Predates digital by thousands of years.
Or, imagine getting a video from your offspring, or grandchild, distraught, saying they are in trouble in south America, and need you to send money now.
This level of targeted customisation is possible, and all the scammer needs is to harvest a photo from your relatives facebook page. Better still if they've posted a video so the voice can be copied also.
EDIT : Sorry - this is massively off topic. Stopping now.
Don't miss this movie if you have not seen it. Very topical and funny for all ages teen and above. A good family holiday break.
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