2. digital
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Is it possible to transfer analog tone and soundstage of vintage reel to reel to digital.

Sam here again. I have a hi-res digital rip of the rolling stones sticky fingers album from an original commercial reel to reel tape from 1971 and the analog warmth and soundstage is as good as it gets to my  ears. loudness war free sound.   https://postimg.cc/rDmzvR80

I realize there are many digital plugins that emulate the sound of analog tape and vinyl, however when I use them in post processing of digital audio I seem to get further away from the sound I'm trying to achieve? Now I may be naive on the subject, but if I want to digitally replicate the sound of vintage analog tape in the digital domain, why not go directly to the source? Heres what I did I extracted 1 second of analog tape sound between tracks and made an impulse file for the convolver dsp filter for foobar2000. I believe it made the digital download sound better, however, I'm not 100% sure.  Here are my audio samples (1) reel to reel (2) commercial digital download (3) commercial digital download with the impulse filter applied. I used replay gain to normalize the volume to 89db for all three samples.

(1) reel to reel (1971) 24/192 http://u.pc.cd/d2qrtalK

(2) commercial digital download flac16/44 2009 remaster http://u.pc.cd/4oditalK

(3)  commercial digital download flac16/44 2009 remaster.impulse applied http://u.pc.cd/99ActalK
guitarsam

Showing 2 responses by cd318

cd318
2,636 posts
 
I believe you’re right. But really only at the edge of perception. Might have been better if you asked which we preferred without telling us beforehand. You know expectation bias and all that.

Listening over headphones my preference was as follows. But only just.

1 hint of lovely bloom over both 2 or 3
3 tad more warmth over 2
2 what you would expect from digital

Now I'm worried you might tell us that 2 was the reel to reel and 3 was the unaltered digital! 😃
cd318
2,636 posts
 
roberttdid,

"I think you have your answer already in the last 4 words of your statement. It is all in the mixing, and what you like is the mixing. The format is secondary in this case.

Sam here again. I have a hi-res digital rip of the rolling stones sticky fingers album from an original commercial reel to reel tape from 1971 and the analog warmth and soundstage is as good as it gets to my ears. loudness war free sound."


So it's not the digital plug-ins but simply different mixes?

I think it might be time for guitarsam to come back with his conclusion. 
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