DCC Archive The DCC's digital mastering philosophy--by Todd...

Just wanted to repeat this here. Todd nailed it, exactly:

"I've done a lot of recording, editing, mangling, etc. in the digital domain and the "character" of the tone does change with even the slightest edits. Try some off your experiments with a pink noise tone. It changes sometimes very slightly. I think Steve's philosophy with creating a digital master makes a lot of sense and the end result shows it. He seems to keep as little signal routing as possible before reaching the final step of going to his digital master. I've always noticed how the character of an analog source changes when it is digitized. In the past when I used to do all of my music on an analog 4-track (and spent tons of time listening to every aspect of the work in progress) I definately noticed the change when bumping the info to DAT. It's difficult to explain what the change was but I'll try. The overall tone of the music usually became a little leaner and a bit colder (not in a negative way but just different). I especially noticed this with acoustic guitars, the strings lost some of their width. I sometimes made some EQ adjustments to work with the percieved changes. All the digital workstations (IMO) have different sonic signitures because of the specific software dependant algorithms they each use. I think Steve wants to keep the master tape source as pure as possible keeping out as many digital thumbprints as possible. Whatever he's doing is working great. Also, as annoying as some poor edits can be, sometimes they are just the historical reality of a given piece. As sick as it sounds, I actually miss the guitar drop out in "Day Tripper". I'm used to it and to me it sounds strange for not being there in the new version. I always appreciate the flaws in a finished work from the past being left alone (not corrected by future cooks) because it shows what the artists were able to achieve at the time and also over-look. Anyway, it's only my opinion. I'm glad to be back in NY. We had a great time in Montreal (beautiful city).

All the best,

Todd

 

The thread was "Workstation comment for Steve"

 

Oh yeah...Sorry