In my option analog recordings produced at home are far from over, many of the recording techniques we use today are based around analog methodology that have been used for many, many years, but the debate will continue for a long time to come.
The reason why analog recorders have now fallen out of favor with the majority is that they are expensive, take time to clean and care for and are more prone to failure. They also create significant noise and distortion, and that was once thought to be a bad thing but today artists are trying to re-create. There are many plug ins for DAW's that try to produce the sound of analog equipment but they are not there yet.
You may think that reading above I only use analogue but this is not the case, depending on what I am recording I will use whatever equipment is required i.e. if I am recording vocal tracks which need to be pure then I would use digital but if I was recording a big ballad number then I may choose to use analog which will keep the warmth and depth of the voice, remember in this type of recording the voice can easily be exposed so keeping as much of the warmth as possible will sometimes shelter the vocalist and I have personally found that they are please with the results.
But despite these problems, top professional studios still use analog recorders simply because they have a sound quality that digital just can't match. Top recording studios still use analog recorders more than you would imagine.
This isn't really to say that they sound better than digital; in fact their faults are easily quantifiable, but their sound is often said to be 'warm', and it is often true to say that it is easier to mix a recording made on analog than it is to mix a digital multi track recording. Unlike digital recording equipment analog has no real limits to what it can capture. All analog recording engineers will tell you that they run their equipment "hot", as high a signal as possible is captured whereas digital cannot be recorded that way as it to easy to blow a track thru the levels being to high.
As digital formats become increasingly diverse, individual studios become more and more isolated with audio being subject to an often complex export process to transfer it from one studio's system to another.
With tape, you just mount the reel on the recorder and press play (and if you have remembered to place test tones on the beginning of the tape for the studio engineer the sonic output will be the same).
It took analog around thirty years to get from the point it first become feasible to record music successfully, to its full maturity beyond which further significant improvement, other than convenience, was impossible.
Digital recording has been with us nearly thirty years, but maturity somehow still seems a long way off... |
