Analog vs. Digital- why all the fighting?
I have been following, and commenting, on an ongoing thread at www.proaudiospace.com. There is a group entitled “Analog World” that started one heckuva discussion on Analog vs. Digital. It got pretty fiery but has calmed down a great deal in the past few days.
Also, one of the mixing consoles on campus at UMKC decided to not turn on ever again. It was an old (relatively) Soundcraft Spirit 328i. Not a bad little digital console, but power supplies have always been an issue in them, or so I’ve been told. In fact, I would say power supplies are usually one of the weakest links in gear, but I digress.
The board died and so we started scoping out new ones. Fixing it would cost north of $1K, so might as well just get something new in there. The choices were narrowed to a couple digital consoles: Yamaha 01V(with 8 bus expansion) and Presonus Studiolive 24; and one analog board; Allen and Heath Mixwizard 12M.
My money, in this instance, is definitely for the digital board. Having the incredibly flexible routing of the digital board, using them as a control surface with the DAW, having the option of keeping all the sound digital until the moment it heads off to the speakers (or even at the speakers, if they take digital.). That is incredibly inviting to me in a computer music mastering studio.
In various other places, there are plenty of other pros and cons. From my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience using all sorts of different boards, here are some of the breakdowns of pros and cons as I see them for digital and analogy
Digital Pros:
Routing flexibility
Built in effects (specifically comps, limiters, gates most handy)
Show recall and automation
Smaller overall footprint (less room is always good)
Normally, more bang for your buck (all those ins and outs and outboard gear add up!)
Digital Cons:
Possible latency issues (gotta tweak everything just so, at least when working with a DAW)
Possibly inferior sound (completely subjective)
Repair/maintenance difficulties (one pot goes, you’re in deep trouble buddy…)
Not always easy to navigate/harder learning curve (all those pages…so many pages…)
Constant updates/changing landscape
Analog Pros:
WYSIWYG- if it’s there, it’s there, all right in front of you
Less conversions (which some say is where inferior sound comes from)
Incredibly stable
Many have modular designs that make service, maintenance, and modification much easier (oh, this channel is bad? Eh, I’ll just take it out and pop a new one in!)
No possible OS crashes
Analog cons:
Less flexible routing (this is in comparison to digital. Large format boards have a large amount of routing available, however, it comes with other drawbacks)
Big Foot- the more you want, the bigger it is! Take the Yamaha PM4000, it’s a whopping 82” wide, 13-5/8” tall, and 44-18” wide and weighs 403 lbs!!! (Trust me, it’s every bit of that…add in a case, and you’re talking an easy 550-600 lbs to lift. Oy, my back!)
Huge amount of outboard gear needed (comps, gates, multieffects, limiters, harmonizers, etc)
Just from looking at that, I can think of specific scenarios where one board would definitely work much better than another. You’ve got a small gig, maybe a trio playing local clubs only? If you’re building your own PA, go with an analog desk. No reason to spend the money on a small format digital (which will run you around $2K still) when you only need 12 inputs, stereo outputs, and 3 buss outs. Starting up a new theater? I’d spend the money on a digital for sure. Being able to put comp/limiters on your vocal mics will be wonderful. And being able to just program in the show, just like the lighting board, will help alleviate the headache that comes with pushing faders up and down quickly, and hoping you don’t hear the actor that just walked into the bathroom…
Ah, but what about EA music? Well, EA music has some particular challenges we have to overcome in this digital vs. analog debate.
First off, there’s the speaker set-up convention. Traditionally, in most live reinforcement, there is only, really, a stereo out. From there it is broken up as needed for reinforcement: the main stacks (often times a left and right stack), subs, delay points (in larger applications) and sometimes some far remote points. All the bussing is done just to give finer control on a quick basis (oh man, the rhythm section, in general, is too loud! Ooo gotta boost those vocals). It isn’t about sending 8 separate mixes out to separate areas of the stadium. That is handled with a separate piece of gear, a loudspeaker management system.
There is a very good reason for this. In almost every other type of show, they are trying to create a homogenous sound. By homogenous, I mean all the sound being experienced in the same way at ever point. Perhaps that isn’t the best phrasing. How to say, every person is meant to experience the exact same sound at the exact same time in the exact same place. In EA music, there is a wider range between homogenous sound and heterogeneous point source sound. Somehow, the mixer has to accommodate those that want a unified stereo field, and being able to have sounds fly around the room almost as if programmed to do so.
Another big issue is this concept of diffusion. The idea of taking a single stereo in (or mono in) and spreading it to many different speakers, and being able to change that on the fly. Modern boards, in general, just aren’t set-up for that type of operation. This is true of digital or analog. Digital gives you much more control over your routing, with more possible outs for less money than an analog. However, doing quick changes of sends is a bit easier on an analog board, depending on how you’ve set-up your pages on the digital, of course. Like I mentioned earlier, that learning curve can be a problem, learning to set-up your pages quickly for easy concerts.
All in all, I don’t think there’s a clear-cut winner. Both analog and digital are good formats. It just depends on what exactly you are working with at the time. For EA concerts, I have my own ideals of how to set them up, and lists of gear that I think are important. Digital boards can cut down on how much gear I bring to a concert, but, in the end, it doesn’t make it “easier” for me. In the end, it completely depends on the operator and what s/he is used to using.
Chime in on the raging debate between digital and analog! It’s one that will rage for a long time, I am sure
- John Chittum-
UMKC DMA candidate and UMKC IMPACT Studio Manager
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