WIRED SCIENCE sat down with the members of the band Great Northern and two top recording industry engineers - pros who have worked with everyone from Duran Duran to Justin Timberlake - to see if they could tell the difference between analog and digital recordings. The results surprised everybody.

Awesome post, thanks nfx. Ive been wondering myself on the debate, but i took the challenge without watching the video to see which was analog and which was digital and i truly couldnt tell a difference but then after it was made into a video it all became digital :D Anyways real cool!

when that test came i was hearing that the analog mix was a bit low on the highs which give the mix a richness.... anyway i'm on the Digital Side....

The dude on the digital side was a nerd haha. Digital from this video can clearly be seen as better. If an analog recording can be emulated digitally, then theres really no reason why analog is better.

its funny how each only got it right like 1/2 of the time. which pretty much shows that it's all talk when they say analog is better. If this ish like gets out to a wider population then this will hit the analog studios in the pocket easily

idk maybe for recording its indistingwishable.

but i can hear a differance in my vinyl (they're clearer, richer, fuller) than my .mp3's

and even my cd's.

I agree, I can also hear a clear difference when listening to vinyl compared to MP3's on my computer, even MP3's at high quality bitrates.

The main thing that I prefer about the analog equipment is that it produces that "vintage" sound that set the mark for the music of today. Even though I get laughed at by my friends because I record vocals with an old analog Pioneer tape deck recorder from 1975, it produces quality results that you can't argue with. I think by using the analog equipment, one can further respect the musicians who pioneered the industry for the musicians of today (just look at how hard it was to record with analog compared to how easy it is to record with digital).

Besides, those old knobs on analog equipment are way too sexy for this new digital age. :P

I can hear the difference. Much cleaner.

they were talkin about digidesign...on their site, they have an analog vs digital to see if you can tell a difference...i could tell the difference everytime...the cleaner one was walways digital...but analog does feel more earthy, if thats your thing

but....haha forgot to add this...mp3's dont compare to vinyl...mp3's are waaaay too compressed but if youre talkin .wav or cd...then id go digital on that too

I feel that digital is better just for the simple fact of editing... but i couldnt tell a difference either...

I hope they are just using MP3 as a generic term..... MP3 is a superanuated format for the most part. OGG produces comparible results at lower bitrates which allows potentially much higher quality. FLAC however is one of the best options due to being a lossless format. If digital work was all done in FLAC or another lossless format, then the whole digital vs analog debate would be more or less pointless so long as the recording equipment for the digital was up to par and i think thats really all it amounts to is how good is the original quality, and how badly does it degrade between original recording and the version which gets put on CDs and/or online.

So yeah, analog has its place but digital has the potential to be far better quality and easier to work with ultimatly

Ok let me try to explain.

U cant raly tell the diference and anyone who thinks he can hear it hm...lets just say they are thinkig wrong...

Mp3 and vinly cant be even compared tho... People who invented mp3 neded something that will not take so much space on disc. So they cut of frequencies and stuff that they think its not so important. Lets make it clear that  they didnt cut of frequencies that cant be heard, they can be heard just not so important (to tham) so they removed it and practicly just left bone of the song but cut of "soul" of it...

Cd and wave cant be compared to...lol cos they are same thing. Both are digital

Now diference cant be heard but for u computer producers thats not that great news... why? Becouse they recorded analog instruments. So basicly its no diference in recording instruments but for u is more important is there diference in analog and digital instruments(vst-i). And sadly it is big diference and itll always be! So analog and digital recording diference isnt something that should bother u....

Now analog instruments reproduce sound waves, real sound waves and vsti "take" just one part of that wave lets say just 1/100 of real wave and reapet it over and over (lat say loop it). So it dont reproduce sound wave it just repeat one part of it overe and over. So we can say difference betwen analog and digital instruments are 1/100....

btw 1/100 is not real number i made it up just for exmple... ill check and tell u real diference

Well thats MP3s, thats a lossy format. Compare it with a good wav file recorded correctly qnd there isn't much of  a difference. Plus recording digitally is much cheaper as well.

no its not cheaper... I work in alnalog/digital studio... Wahever u prefer we recor it that way and prices are same...25euros/hour

haha how weird is it that i actually saw this on tv, surfin channels and i caught it

if those engineers/musicians are getting it right/wrong half the time, i dont think u can really tell the difference

and yo slavebell how much does tape cost vs the cost of hard drive space? thats the real question

We use 2500 feet tape and it cost bout 40$ but u can find it for 15$ with no problem.