In the world of music production, there are a couple of different approaches or workflows. Analog workflows generally involve the use of hardware outboard processors, mixing desks, and tape machines, whereas digital workflows rely on software for processing audio ‘in-the-box’ (i.e., in computers). Many also adopt a Hybrid Approach, utilising software Digital Audio Workstations (or DAWs) to capture, store, and reproduce recorded audio, but then using analog hardware to process that audio. These days, purely analog workflows are rare, mainly owing to the expensiveness of it. Much more common are digital and hybrid workflows.
The debate about the best workflow contains many sound and valid points on every side. For example, those in favour of an analog workflow may argue that it is superior because it imparts a certain “analog warmth” (or words to that effect) on the audio that nothing in the digital realm will ever be able to provide, or that the tactile response you get from physically turning knobs and sliding faders is highly satisfying. On the other hand, those arguing for a digital workflow would likely highlight the fact that software is easily recallable (compared to hardware, in which you might have to take a photo of the position of all the knobs and then refer back to that photo after settings have changed should you wish to revert to previous settings), the setup is a lot more portable and convenient, or that importantly, it’s a lot more cost effective.
Proponents of the Hybrid Approach may espouse that their approach offers a middle ground or the best of both worlds – having (some) of the convenience and cost-effectiveness of storing audio in digital format, whilst using analog outboard equipment to process the audio, and thus enjoying the associated sonic characteristics argued to be exclusive to analog hardware.
But first, let’s talk about audio itself. Audio in the physical world exists as an electronic signal that can be manipulated by electronic components found within analog audio-processing hardware. On the other hand, audio in the digital world exists in binary code, as a bunch of 0’s and 1’s.
These days, ‘finished product’ audio (e.g., the songs you listen to on CDs or streaming platforms) rarely exists in forms other than digital, as cassette or vinyl players have long since been replaced as the primary medium of consuming audio. Consequently, in whichever workflow used in the production process, the audio will most likely undergo the process of analog-to-digital conversion at least once, from conception by the recording artist/engineer, to consumption by the listener.
For audio (which exists in the physical world to begin with) to be processed in the digital realm (i.e., recorded onto DAWs), it must undergo a process of conversion from analog to digital. Special hardware known as analog-to-digital converters are required. The same is required for digital audio to become analog audio (so you can listen back to recorded digital audio, for example), and digital-to-analog converters are required. I won’t discuss exactly how these converters do their converting, because to be honest, I don’t even know, but I will discuss at length the implications of the conversion process.
Whenever conversion happens either way, some audio quality is lost. How much is lost depends entirely on the quality of the converters as well as how many conversions have been run. If you run enough conversions back and forth, from analog to digital and back again, your audio will be quite noticeably different and of lesser quality than before.
Things become even more complicated when utilising the Hybrid Approach, because this workflow necessarily involves multiple conversions between analog and digital and back again. Therefore, the Hybrid Approach results in more quality loss than, I would argue, is worth it. This will be the focus of the present article.
Let’s discuss an example scenario in which a mixing and mastering engineer utilising a Hybrid Approach might work. The engineer may have been sent a DAW session containing all the tracks of their client’s song, and they want to “print” all of these tracks through their analog gear. They may also want to utilise software plugins in the signal chain for each individual track (afterall, there are some things that analog equipment can’t do). They may also want to do these two things in no particular order. And then, they want to either bounce down or sum up all the tracks into a single stereo file, and master that stereo file using a Hybrid Approach involving both software plugins in-the-box, as well as analog hardware in the physical world.
To mix this way, the engineer needs each individual track converted from digital to analog, run the (electrical) signal through their analog devices that manipulate the signal, and then convert the signal from analog back to digital in order to process that track using software. They would need to run each track for the song’s entire length of time. If the client has a session with, say, 50 tracks, and the song goes for 4 minutes, this process by itself would take 3 hours and 20 minutes. Time notwithstanding, that’s at least one digital-to-analog conversion, and one analog-to-digital conversion, for each track. This isn’t counting the fact that some or all of these tracks may have been recorded audio (e.g., a singer or live drums), in which case there is an additional analog-to-digital conversion for each of these tracks during the recording process.
And then, should the engineer wish to use an analog summing mixer to prepare for mastering, all the tracks would need to be converted from digital to analog, passed through the summing mixer, and then (maybe) converted back from analog to digital to proceed to mastering (depending on what’s next in the planned signal chain for the stereo file – analog hardware or software plugins).
After the stereo file is created, mastering begins. The stereo file is converted from digital to analog to be run through outboard analog gear. Then, the signal is converted back from analog to digital to either continue processing using software plugins, or to prepare for delivery.
That’s a lot of conversions, back-and-forth, between analog and digital. With all of these conversions degrading the quality of the audio a little bit each time a conversion happens, every little bit adds up.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to whether using analog gear is more or less important than keeping as much quality as possible. I would argue that using analog gear isn’t worth the consequence of losing quality, especially because these days, software emulations of analog gear do very well in capturing the sound and nuances of the analog hardware they are modelled after. But what do you think?
