Tour 3 - For Instance...
Here is a Basic Example of how much positive skew distortion can be introduced in a simple audio chain from Recording to Playback:
- A sound is played out through an electric guitar. Signal travels from the guitar through an instrument cable, into various FX pedals, and the to a guitar amplifier.
- The signal then makes its way through all the ampli.r circuitry before reaching the speaker wire and woofer.
- Voiced out through the speaker, it is picked up by the microphone. It proceeds to travel down the microphone cable, through any networking and pre-amplification, and into the mixing console.
- From there, the amplified signal may travel thousands of feet through wire, resistors, transistors, coils, patch bays, Equalizers, Compressors, External Devices, FX units, Finalizers, and more before being recorded to CD. This comprises the Mixdown process - only half of the entire recording phase. The signal routes, patches, and conversions that were all stressed on the signal in Mixing, are once again repeated during the Mastering phase of recording.
- A song may be converted to a Compact Disc (CD) version after both the Mixdown and Mastering portions of the recording process. This harsh conversion process from an analog track to a digital CD format can create more skew than any other process to this point If the song is to be pressed straight to LP Record, no digital conversion process takes place.
- By this time, the signal has traveled such a distance from where it originated in the electric guitar, that an enormous skew in sound has already built up. Don't forget to mix that single guitar sound together with all the other instrumentation running in the song. This will compound a heavy Ioad of various complex waves together into one single song. Running this complex mix through the vast number of processors and equipment in the recording phase is going to create some serious skewed signal.
- So now that song, already quite altered from it's original character, has been pressed onto a CD or LP Record. That disc is then played out in your own system at home.
- If it is a compact disc, the signal will again have to undergo a harsh re-conversion process from a digital format back to analog. Follow that up with more amplifier circuitry, wires, cables, and anything else before finally reaching your speakers. What you hear at home is hardly the same sound as was played live when it was recorded, or even as it sounded during Mixdown.
Want an example you can actually listen to? Try this:
Just listen and compare the differences in sound of an LP Record versus a CD versus an MP3 file. Using the same system with the same song or album, the results are easily noticeable.
Relatively speaking, an LP will have low skew, a CD will have high skew, and an MP3 will have very high skew. This is due directly to the amount of processing the signal endures before ending up on each medium.
- An LP wRI have a much smaller skew distortion due to the fact it bypasses any analog-to-digital conversion in both the recording and playback phases. Just cutting the skew buildup in these areas produces extremely noticeable differences in the way an album sounds, feels, and draws the listener in.
- A CD seems like a cleaner representation of an LP, but it always seems to have a harshness, with sounds of "crunch" and "tizz" in the mid to high registers. That in tum causes distortion and speaker breakup at higher levels causing Estener fatigue and perhaps a little less enjoyment - Something an LP will combat a little better due to le. skew.
- An MP3 has the same comparison to a CD, only worse. It goes a step further from digital conversion by actually compacting to a smaller size. This process MI actually remove certain frequencies that consume large amounts of file space. What you are left with in essence is only °part" of the total song. What you actually here as a result is a loud and large pile-up of remaining frequencies that simply cannot reproduce the clarity, spatial arrangement, or character of the original sound.
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