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Digital Technology In Audio Mastering, Still An Excellent Solution?

In the 1990s, electro-mechanical processes were largely superseded by digital technology, with digital recordings transferred to digital masters by an optical etching process that employs laser technology.

The digital audio workstation (DAW) became common in many mastering facilities, allowing the off-line manipulation of recorded audio via a graphical user interface (GUI). Although many digital processing tools are common during mastering, it is also very common to use analog media and processing equipment for the mastering stage.

Just as in other areas of audio, the benefits and drawbacks of digital technology compared to analog technology is still a matter of debate. However, in the field of audio mastering, the debate is usually over the use of digital versus analog signal processing rather than the use of digital technology for storage of audio.

There are mastering engineers who feel that digital technology, has not progressed enough in quality to supersede analog technology entirely. Many top mastering studios still embrace analog signal processing (such as analog equalization) within the mastering process. Additionally, the latest advances in analog mastering technology include 120V signal rails for previously unavailable headroom of 150dB as well as frequency response ranging from 3 Hz to 300 kHz.

In order to duplicate this frequency response in digital domain, a sampling rate of at least 600 kHz would be required. However, it is pertinent that the extremes in these frequency ranges (3 Hz to 19 Hz and 21 kHz to 300 kHz) are effectively inaudible and only existing outside the range of both the human ear and most professional microphones.

Considering this, we can say that while analog is the best solution for "absolute" quality, digital is the best solution for "practical" quality, and that DAWs will be the future of any kind of Studio, small or big and for any kind of project.

Article Source: http://articlebarracks.com

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