Lavry Gold?

[not_so_new]

Yeah so this is a spin off from THIS thread started by RB. More than anything I think I am thinking out loud.

I usually track more than two channels at a time only when doing drums and I have been happy with my AD-16X converters for the most part but I think I can do better.

I have been on the fence about getting a 24 track machine (I have a line on a JH24 that is supposed to be in great shape). Or for allot more I could get a Larvy Gold.

The pros of the JH24 are that I know it would sound great.... but how much of that would be lost going into the computer with the AD-16X? Also do I really want to get back into the maintenance dance again? It's not as bad as some people make it out to be but it is a 20 year old piece of kit with moving parts and all sorts of stuff that can go wrong. And trust me I know because back in the day I have personally stood in a studio or two cursing the godz of tape because the session was hosed by a dead machine.

On the other hand the Gold would probably last for years and years with little to no maintenance and it takes up a whole lot less space.... I could swing the money but is it really worth that kind of cash? If I track everything through it besides drums would I notice a difference in the end?

Yeah I know, try it and see.. but I would have to fork out the cash and do a whole song soup to nuts to really know.. of course I will have to do that anyway to really know...



Decisions decisions..... man that is allot of cash, can't decide if it is worth the investment for my rig or would I be better off with a new mic... or a tape machine or a compressor.. or a .... you get the idea.

*sigh*

[peeder]

I would love love love to do a shootout of high-end converters. And you know with me subjective listening would be about 1/4 of the equation.

Everyone says "try it and see" but to do a shootout you need to have an awful lot of money to put up...the sum total of all the boxes, if I'm not mistaken! Who has that kind of credit to throw around? So I view that as a non-answer.

One idea I had was to produce test files with a variety of test signals, digital black, program material etc. at different sample rates and send them out and have people who own these things run them through simple DA/AD loopbacks. Then I'd take the resulting files and null them to the originals. We'd then be left with the residual differences of a loopback, which we could gain up, listen to, plot on a spectragram, etc. With enough redundant results from different people we'd be pretty sure what was real and what wasn't. (And yeah, we could do clocks while we're at it huhhuhhuh...)

What do people think? The tests would take less than an hour to run...just hook up a couple short cables from out to in and re-record into your DAW and upload the results.

[RoundBadge]

The ideal drum/guitar/bass tracking setup for me will be transfering from the 16 track 2 inch[mm1200,etc] with AD16X's clocked to the Gold.
Nothing beats drums/guitars/bass tracked to tape.
going back to straight digital tracking just sounds anemic to mestike

[not_so_new]

Thanks guys...

Originally Posted by RoundBadge

The ideal drum/guitar/bass tracking setup for me will be transfering from the 16 track 2 inch[mm1200,etc] with AD16X's clocked to the Gold.
Nothing beats drums/guitars/bass tracked to tape.
going back to straight digital tracking just sounds anemic to mestike

Well.... I guess it is impossible to avoid this turning into a digital vs. analog debate because at it's hart that is what it is right?



So it is a basic law of physics that, as you make duplications of ORIGINAL information you can either make an exact one for one duplication (digital to digital for instance) of this ORIGINAL information or you can lose ORIGINAL information. You can never gain ORIGINAL information.

The reason I emphasized ORIGINAL information is because in the case of a transfer from a 24 track tape machine to digital you can not gain information from the original session, you can't get info back from what the microphones captured in the room without a time machine. Also the closer to the original source the more original information will be contained (this is simple generation loss that I am sure everyone is aware of).

That does not mean that other information can not be ADDED after the original information. In this case the tape machine adds it's own information in the way of transformer distortion and tape compression.

Anyway most people like the sound of this "added information" i.e. tape compression and transformers, I know I do. But that brings up two points.

1) Is the "added" information worth the loss of "original" information between the tape to digital conversion? I think it is but we have to be aware that we are, by the laws of physics, at best making a one for one copy and in the real world we are more likely almost assuredly losing original information. That is a negative no matter how you slice it.

2) Is it possible to recreate this "added information" i.e. tape compression and transformer distortion at the first generation digital conversion stage so less original information is lost? That would mean you could have the best representation of "original information" with the added benefit of the "added information." THAT would be the best solution of all.

For this to be true two things are needed, a REALLY good capture method and a convincing way to create the "added information." I personally believe that there are ways to do the latter, convincing "added information" is possible.

I think my real question is if the Lavry Gold is as good as or better at capturing the ORIGINAL information as say a JH24…. and I bet once you get past the hype and expectation bias it actually is able to equal or better the JH24 on ORIGINAL information only and the thing people really like about "tape" is the ADDED information.

Just my thinking… wonder if anyone is still reading…. LOL

[DSD_Mastering]

Originally Posted by not_so_new

Thanks guys...
I think my real question is if the Lavry Gold is as good as or better at capturing the ORIGINAL information as say a JH24…. and I bet once you get past the hype and expectation bias it actually is able to equal or better the JH24 on ORIGINAL information only and the thing people really like about "tape" is the ADDED information.
Just my thinking… wonder if anyone is still reading…. LOL

The best thing that I think will capture "ORIGINAL" information is DSD through EMM Labs converters. But that adds a whole lot of other problems.... not to mention learning a new format.
In the PCM Digital domain, the Lavry Gold is as good as it gets in capturing the "Original Information". You can always add effects later without mucking up the original. Tape hiss/distortion is added information that you can add later.

Regards,
Bruce

[peeder]

I might approach this like parallel compression. Use both tape and the best converters you can afford, and blend to taste (or even e.g. use crossovers...take the lows off tape and the highs off digital).

The Portico tape simulator might be a lot cheaper way to run this if you only need 2 tracks of it at a time...if you want to use it for drums then you'll need 2".

Digital is going to get a lot closer to the original than tape...but remember the "original" is the electronic signal the converter or tape machine sees, not the sound waves in the room. You can verify fidelity (match to the original) via nulling.

Mr. Lavry recently posted some pretty negative things about DSD here, of course he's biased but seems to be a straight-shooter.

[nandoanalog]

Nowadays digital wins this "analog vs digital" war hands down.

When in a budget, (lets say 4000$) you may get a tape deck that will sound better than a ADAC for the same dough.

But if high fidelity is your main concern, and you have no $ compromise, I believe that digital (lavry gold ie) sounds as good as a studer deck.

The digital route will be more expensive tho....

[soupking]

I've read that if you so much as curse as the JH24 it needs to be re-calibrated.

I'm strictly a tape guy right now, but I think I don't think I'd get a JH24 since I don't have a maintenance man. My neighbor has one. He finally rolled it out of his studio to make space because it just sat there.

Good conversion is my big beef with digital. I have a cheap 2-channel and it doesn't get used much. If you can afford something top shelf. You might be able to go a different route with tape and get the best of both worlds w/o living in a toolbox.

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by peeder

I might approach this like parallel compression. Use both tape and the best converters you can afford, and blend to taste (or even e.g. use crossovers...take the lows off tape and the highs off digital).

The Portico tape simulator might be a lot cheaper way to run this if you only need 2 tracks of it at a time...if you want to use it for drums then you'll need 2".

Yes, I have one actually. As I said above I do believe it is possible to use high (or even good) quality tools to get the "added information" that we like about analog. The Portico is one great example. Another would be preamps with transformers etc.

Digital is going to get a lot closer to the original than tape...but remember the "original" is the electronic signal the converter or tape machine sees, not the sound waves in the room. You can verify fidelity (match to the original) via nulling.

Yep, I didn't want to make my already long winded post even longer but yes, according to the law of physics every step introduced between the original source creating the sound wave and your ears will include a generation loss of some kind. My points above are making a "for sake of argument" example that both are seeing the "original" source as the output from the preamps... obviously there is a loss of "original" information and the accumulation of "added" information in each stage before the preamp as well.

Mr. Lavry recently posted some pretty negative things about DSD here, of course he's biased but seems to be a straight-shooter.

That is interesting. Yes Dan is a straight-shooter for sure. He is a little hard headed to some degree (but we all are) but if he has points against DSD then I am sure they are at least valid. I would love to see his post on this if you can find it.

[peeder]

Originally Posted by not_so_new

That is interesting. Yes Dan is a straight-shooter for sure. He is a little hard headed to some degree (but we all are) but if he has points against DSD then I am sure they are at least valid. I would love to see his post on this if you can find it.

Hearing above 20Khz & analog consoles.

And thereabouts

[Dan Lavry]

Originally Posted by peeder

I might approach this like parallel compression. Use both tape and the best converters you can afford, and blend to taste (or even e.g. use crossovers...take the lows off tape and the highs off digital).

The Portico tape simulator might be a lot cheaper way to run this if you only need 2 tracks of it at a time...if you want to use it for drums then you'll need 2".

Digital is going to get a lot closer to the original than tape...but remember the "original" is the electronic signal the converter or tape machine sees, not the sound waves in the room. You can verify fidelity (match to the original) via nulling.

Mr. Lavry recently posted some pretty negative things about DSD here, of course he's biased but seems to be a straight-shooter.

Hi,

I do not think my posts were against DSD. I was never against DSD as a format. I just stated some facts, such as that that DSD noise floor is rising fast above 22KHz, and that the dynamic range is somewhat limited, and that doing "pure" DSD processing is very difficult and costly, thus it is often done by conversion back and forth to and from PCM. It is also correct to point out that DSD is less data efficient then even 96KH 24 bit PCM

DSD was an attempt at high end, and therefore I respected it. I did not get into DSD for a number of reasons, the main one is the fact that the format is dead for all practical purposes. My understanding is that Sony supported it for around 5 years or a little longer, but they decided to stop supporting it because it did not take off commercially.

There was a time where DSD had an advantage. With 1 bit (DSD), one can get pretty close to perfect differential linearity (one of the goals in conversion). At the time when DSD was conceived, having multiple bits was somewhat of a problem, because with multi-bit one needs to keep the "distance" between all quantization levels equal, not an easy task at the high clock rates of sigma delta technology. The DSD was a "grid with one line" so it was free of that problem.

But the sigma delta conversion technology moved forward, and the issue has been resolved with some "new trick" (dynamic element matching) , thus the "engine" of DSD has been improved to accommodate multi-bit architecture which yields better performance, I would say around 2 bits better performance.

I do not believe there is an ounce of bias in that statement. It is all rather technical and factual.

Regards
Dan Lavry

[peeder]

Originally Posted by Dan Lavry

I do not think my posts were against DSD...

...the dynamic range is somewhat limited, and that doing "pure" DSD processing is very difficult and costly, thus it is often done by conversion back and forth to and from PCM. It is also correct to point out that DSD is less data efficient then even 96KH 24 bit PCM...

...the fact that the format is dead for all practical purposes....

I do not believe there is an ounce of bias in that statement. It is all rather technical and factual.

I'm sure it is...and it's a bit over my head certainly!

But it's not a stretch to interpret that as an overall negative assessment. I'm not running out to buy DSD devices after reading it, anyway.

And thanks as always for contributing it!

[RoundBadge]

Originally Posted by not_so_new

I think my real question is if the Lavry Gold is as good as or better at capturing the ORIGINAL information as say a JH24…. and I bet once you get past the hype and expectation bias it actually is able to equal or better the JH24 on ORIGINAL information only and the thing people really like about "tape" is the ADDED information.

Just my thinking… wonder if anyone is still reading…. LOL

Well as a great capture medium,I love radar.
But I look at the analog tape capture as part of an overall effect to getting the sound/vibe[saturation/tape compression which I can't get with emulations] for recording rock basic tracks..using a 16 track 2 inch then do as accurate a transfer as possible back to the DAW

[mixerguy]

the best digital: in = out

the best analog tape record + playback: in does not = out.... OUT is DIFFERENT, BUT VERY NICE!!!!!