Bill Mueller wrote on Sun, 30 January 2011 05:22 |
This is not about how awful analog tape is. This is about people saying how awful digital audio is, lumping both cheap ITB toys and excellent sounding large format consoles together and slandering them all with the same brush. This is my only point. All digital systems are not the same and all analog tape is not automatically better.
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I've used expensive digital and I'm still not impressed. The people who get great sound out of digital are using it as a middleman. They're doing as much processing as possible in the analog realm, using tube/transformer equipment that adds saturation, and mixing OTB.
A person can have a bad experience with a tape machine and conclude that tape is unreliable ... but engineers who use tape on a daily basis, who know how to maintain their machines and what models to avoid, will tell you that tape is FAR more reliable than any DAW system. Even when synchronizing two machines. And the tapes will be playable in 50 years. Digital files won't be.
You can do almost anything on 2" tape, if you have a later machine with quick-punch circuitry. I think Mutt Lange proved that in the 80's. Now compare Lange's analog productions to his later digital productions, same engineer, same caliber of musicians. Tell me with a straight face that digital comes even CLOSE to sounding as good as analog.
The only thing tape CAN'T do is quantizing, micro-editing, and autotuning. These tools are designed for bands who can't play their own music with any degree of proficiency and don't belong in the studio in the first place.
The backlash against over-processed music has already happened. The music industry is in ruins and DAW technology helped to destroy it. DAW technology took away our ability to say "no."
I'm just waiting for audio engineers to figure out that they don't need DAW technology to get work, and manufacturers to get back to making real equipment instead of disposable toys.
Thirty years ago, vacuum tube equipment was considered to be "obsolete." Microphones and compressors worth many thousands of dollars were literally being thrown away. Now we know better. So yes, attitudes toward recording technology CAN do a 180.
There's a consensus that digital is the future and analog is never coming back and we should be happy about it. I don't agree with the consensus. This is NOT an attack on anyone's engineering skills, I'm saying that the technology that was supposed to make our lives easier is actually making our lives harder.