disadvantages of hard disk recording?

[CyberSpy]

Aside from the sound, what (if any) are the disadvantages of recording on to a hard disk as opposed to analog tape?

[phait]

I would think the risk of hard drive failure, but tapes are prone to problems too. Although, you don't have to do any tape splicing with a hard drive...

And then there is the purist weenies argument of which has the best sound...

[Family Hoof]

Hard drives don't have a sound. It's the converters, clock, and the software. I don't see that as a disadvantage though. The only thing that comes to mind right now is compatibilty and archive-worthiness. Hard drives suck big time in those departments. Already I have a hard time with my SCSI drives. I doubt IDE will be around much longer either. Digital data has to be constantly transfered as formats become obsolete, whereas reels from 1956 may stay the same for another several decades.

[drumsound]

An odd "disadvantage" I have found is the lack of rewind time while mixing. first it gives you little ear breaks. Second it gives time top think a bit. I like the instant access during tracking, and for take evaluation.

[phait]

He said hard drive recording so I factored that into sound. I know HD's don't have a character sound. (Or maybe they do... oooh.)

[cgarges]

Format compatibility. It's getting better, but that can be a really big one.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Knights Who Say Neve]

Tape fails graduallly. You can bake a shedding tape, splice a broken one etc. Failure of one part leaves the rest still useable (unless you accidently erase it or tape over it). And most failures announce themselves long before the tape becomes unplayable.

Digital media fails all at once. One moment it's working, the next it isn't. Not all data errors are catastrophic but many are. And all hard drives will fail eventually. They have motors, bearings and so on. When they crash, they crash hard. Restore from backup to a new drive, or you're done. There are expensive counters to these facts of digital life- RAID arrays, data recovery services and such, but they're not guaranteed. Other digital media, though longer lived, will also fail eventually, leaving you hosed, unless you recopy it to a new format every 5 years or so.

One other disadvantage to hard disk recording- once you record at 16 bits or 24 or whatever, your level of sound quality is more-or-less locked in (I'm oversimplifying here, there are improvements to d-a converters, dithering methods etc but the basic point still stands). With analog you can keep going back to the tape master as new delivery formats come along and do a new transfer, and the consumer's percieved sound quality will continue to improve. Have you heard the SACD version of Kind of Blue? Now imagine if they'd recorded that album on 16 bit DASH 80's digital . Think the SACD would sound that good?

[terencepalmer]

Another disadvantage is the idea that you can fix anything. So many bands just assumed you can fix their mistakes and so they don't even try a second take. It seems to move responsibility from the player to the engineer. And... as an effect of that, I find myself thinking about what I can fix about someone's performance instead of pushing them to get it better. I just had that realization, so I hope it goes away with that awareness. A fixed performance never seems as good as one done right.

Plus, I never had a track just plain disappear on analog.

Terry

[Tim Casey]

Other than hard drive failure, the only problem with digital in general is that when something goes wrong, it usually results in a total loss. With analog tape, it's a matter of degrees - the error may not even be noticeable to most people.

That's also what I love about digital - I'm not always wondering if there's something wrong with the alignment (etc) that I'm overlooking. And there's no hiss, wow or flutter - a factor if you're on a tight budget.

As much as I enjoyed working with tape decks, I don't miss them.

[Mark Alan Miller]

An odd "disadvantage" I have found is the lack of rewind time while mixing. first it gives you little ear breaks. Second it gives time top think a bit. I like the instant access during tracking, and for take evaluation.

I had to create some discipline for ear breaks in the first few months after going hard-drive. Keeping a sane monitor level (with the aid of an SPL meter) realled was a good habit to refine as well.

I also agree that cross-platform swapping of tracks can be a pain, but there are ways that it is getting easier (fully 'rendered' tracks from the same starting point, ideally Broadcast Wave with timestamps for added sync security...)

Yes, catastrophic data failure is a potential caveat, but diligent and regular backups make that a non-issue in an overwhelmingly vast majority of the time. (In that regard, it can be safer than tape, and you'll know what I mean if you've ever had a transport go haywire and munch a 2" reel in the middle of a song... where as losing a hard drive that was backed up very recently only means a little loss at worst...) Don't get me wrong, I still love tape too, and yes, usually tape decays gradually... so I know what people mean there.
(And everyone backs up their digital tracks after every session, don't they??!!??)

I am already sick of the 'you can just fix that, right?" thing too... But come to think of it, I've had those same requests for years, on analog sessions, and folks were somehow willing to take the time for me to edit/splice/fly in stuff when they could have just performed it again...

If you're gonna record digital it's all in the sound of the converters, and how good the clocking is, then secondly what you put into the deck and how you get it back out... IMHO.

[GLEA]

I've only been recording to hard disc since this fall. So far I only see it as a new tool. The sound is great, and generally everything works well.

I did do a whole album straight away, but on that one, the computer was just used as a tape deck. The fast locate is a huge improvement. While doing overdubs, I was able to get to the sections easily. We had only two days to do all the recording. Zipping through the ovedubs was a real time saver.

Since then I've returned to work on our album All the tracks had been cut to tape. We'd filled all the tracks, but the songs weren't really done. I put everything into the computer, and added the last bits needed. I also split out the bits that were bunched up on one track. This has made mixing much easier.

We now have cut two songs all in the computer. I just finished mixing one last night. Right from the start we took complete advantage of the hard disc capibilities. I'd done the basic parts to a click and had the drummer come in and play over that. He did two takes. There were a couple of fills in the first take that I flew into the second take, seemlessly. In the end I filled up 29 tracks. I just meant that everything had it's one track, and I wa able to try all the ideas I had...

As for file exchange. It's been no problem. I send six songs to a studio in London so we could get our UK pal to play on the record. I exported the DP files as WAV and they line up in Cuebase perfectly. I just got back the solos, with a click to make sure they were aligned. No problems at all. I sent others to our bass player in Seattle who works on ADATs. Same thing, just dropped them back in, and converted them back to 24 bit. Easy as pie. I could have never done this so easily in the past.

I can see it's going to be hard to go back to recording on tape.

[nacho459]

I know HD's don't have a character sound. (Or maybe they do... oooh.)

I beg to differ. I put some C37 on my HD and WOW! all my 16/44 files had this Round, Warm, Punchy, Tube, Class A, Discreet, Vintage sound!

[hammertime]

Alot of the strengths of hard disc recording can also potentially be weaknesses. Like the fluidity of technology. Tape hasn't changed, and isn't likely to change all that much -- so you get a machine, you're satisfied. Digital audio, although it doesn't change as fast as it should, changes so fast that you get upgradeitis -- you always want that brand new wiz bang super hd what the fuck, if just to keep up with the Joneses.

[swingdoc]

All of the above are good points.

Just one more to add is the relative inability to "clip" a digital signal.
When tracking to tape, you can occasionally (or ride), and sometimes with good effect, hit the red light. With digital, if you clip into the red light, most of the time you need to re-do it. Digital clipping is aweful sound.
That being said, once you get used to the media and the levels on your pres, its not a major problem.
Its just a different approach from tacking to tape vs HD.

I started tape, then added HD. I love the ease and flexibilty the HD gave me. HD and digital editing opens up such a different level of flexibilty.
Also remember that although digital media crashes, tape machines can need alot of maintenance and servicing as well.

[bigtoe]

watching some people record onto computer and hd is a trip. the music suffers a lot with an untrained hand on the mouse. you can do it all and some do. intelligence with no wisdom.

everything ends up sounding like a couple jigsaw puzzles crammed together...use scissors to cut the pieces to make em fit if you need too...but still the picture is fucked.

also the evaluation thing is a big one, to me. there was a great npr story on digital photography and photographers editing/ deleting what could be the best pictures...they make judgements without thinking. i think the same thing goes for the hard disc way of recording.

it's not the tools though. i could picture a protools gig to be amazingly efficient.

See ya!
MIke