I know I have a hardon that could cut glass in anticipation of digital audio being able to have the 'sack' that analog audio has. Nothing would make me happier than working through my favorite 'analog desk/front end path' to a DAW, then staying in the digital domain to get the shit mixed in the world of 1 & 0 accounting.

I'm pretty sure it's going to happen too...perhaps not in 5 years, but certainly within the next 10. It seems to me that digital audio improves exponentially every year...so in a few years, perhaps 5, it should be fucking awesome to the the 3rd power.

At the moment, it's 'demo acceptable' IMHO...but to quote the Beatles..."it's getting better all the time"

Well, I suppose I am pro in that I make (most of) my living doing this, but I wouldn't put myself up on a pedestal.

That aside, I could give a shit about tape emulation software.

Now, digital is really close to being able to spit out, track by track, what I put into it. I don't have much of a problem with it in that regard, given good converters. Makes for a hell of a tape machine. I have a Mackie D8B in my studio, and while I think it's perfectly acceptible, I really think that the mixing is where digital falls apart- every time I have an opportunity to mix on an analog board, I wonder if the bells and whistles of the D8B (which isn't horrible sounding) is worth the sonic tradeoff. It's not huge, but it's there.

It will be nice when it's not a consideration, and digital sounds right.

Until then, I need to get that honking Quad 8 in my living room up and running.... :)

Prediction: Digital audio will NEVER sound like analog.

Whether one utilizes one or the other will always depend upon an array of factors including budget, application, taste, and deadline issues.

I have a digital rig in my crib, and Sigma Sound is 8 blocks up the street from my crib. I've recorded at both, and f*ck with me if you like, but I just can't help seeing the debate as "how do you get an apple to taste like an orange?"

You don't.

I have had clients who wanted 4 minutes of my music, yesterday, on a CD, on a budget, and they don't care if it sounds within an inch of mp3. They get digital.

I want to record some of my songs with a crack-team of local jazz musicians. We will be using analog, or nothing. Will I utilize the luxury of my digital rig to work out arrangements, so that we'll know EXACTLY what to do when that 24-track 2 inch analog clock starts ticking? F*ckin'-eh right I will. That's an added bonus of having a digital rig sitting in the crib.

It's like your toolbox. You have tools that you own, sitting in your toolbox in your basement, that you use for jobs around the house. Someday, you may need to install a commercial air-conditioning unit on your roof. That doesn't mean that you need to keep a crane in your toolbox - you rent that f*cker when you need it. When you're done with it, it goes away, off to hoist another big load.

This analog vs digital debate is counter-productive to our shared goals. Composers need digital tools to develop compositions that will one day be realized by analog pros. Nome sayn?

Originally posted by Curve Dominant:
Prediction: Digital audio will NEVER sound like analog.

All I care about is that it sounds great. Analog, digital, or whatever the next revelation is, I just want it to sound musical, pleasing, and I want it to make my life easier.

Mixerman

Curve Dominant wrote: Prediction: Digital audio will NEVER sound like analog.

I'm not sure I agree. It may be that digital gets so close to analog with the added advantage of price and ease of use that no one will care. There is a precedent for this. Take reverb units for example: You find digital reverb units in even the most die hard of analog studios. After nearly two decades of digital reverb/effects top engineers know how to use it and have got very few complaints at least with the high end reverb/effects units.

Today, given the choice and unlimited funds, I would choose high end analog gear over digital. I see this situation continuing for the foreseeable future but not indefinitely.

Greg

I'll second that, with one caveat- I do this recording thing pretty well, and people leave here uniformly happy. However, until I get a few levels up, I think digital vs. analog is much less of an impediment to truly amazing recordings than _I_ am.

I mean, really, probably 5% of us here are actually good enough to point to whatever we're recording on/with and say definitively, "_that_ is the thing that's holding me back!"

Originally posted by Mixerman:

Mixerman

If you think that digital will never sound as good as analog... well, I'd beg to differ.

It won't happen today, or tomorrow, but eventually. Eventually, we will have bit depths and sample rates that meet and exceed the human ear's natural capabilities.

In some cases, it's already happened. There are people whose ears are so damaged, they can't tell the difference between CD quality and DVD quality.

Eventually, technology will progress to the point where even the finest ears will be unable to distinguish between an analog and a digital recording.

Consider this: 5 years ago, who wouldn't dream of sending .wav files over the internet. Today, with our digital broadband ultra-high-speed cable / DSL modems, it's no big thing. What will happen in the next 5 years?

What kind of digital audio will we have in the next 5 years? 56 bits @ 392kHz? Higher? OTOH, how much does it matter... CDs will still be 16/44.1. :)

--Paul, who points at himself as what's holding his studio back. ;)

If you think that digital will never sound as good as analog... well, I'd beg to differ.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't being misunderstood on this point, because what I had offered was a prediction that digital would not sound LIKE analog. I record digitally, and I think it sounds as good or better in many ways, depending upon what's being used, who's using it, the signal path, and what's being recorded. Face it, a killer song recorded digitally will sound better than a sh*tty song recorded on magnetic tape, right? But analog tape has a certain quality that digital recording seems to not be able to duplicate, due mainly but not exclusively to the fact that you cannot "push" digital like you can "push" tape.

Let me approach this from another angle: do you all think that digital recordings will ever sound JUST LIKE analog recordings, other variables notwithstanding? I'll retract my prediction and leave it as an open question.

By the way, Happy 4th Of July, everybody. I'm gonna go party now...

Eric Vincent
Curve Dominant Sound&Vision http://www.mp3.com/TransluxTheater

i dont want digital to sound just like analog. i want digital to sound just like i want it to sound... it doesnt always but neither does analog.

and i agree with jon best although id say maybe 2%. in order of compromise id say players, me, then equipment. if the players are good, my job is really easy... if it still sounds like shit, its probably me... if the players are good and i know i got the sounds but its still lacking, then it falls into the equipment [right now its my monitors... soon to change next week, then it will be a myriad of other things]

I agree with Fletcher, but IMO I'd have to say that even at this point in time digital can be a (small) cut above demo quality, though getting even a great digital rig to sound the way you want is not easily done when compared to analog.
Hummm, lets see, fifty years of development for analog verses twenty years tops for digital audio. Not bad so far.
On the other hand I’d go so as to say that once digital audio has reached the level of hi end analog the price for those rigs will skyrocket when compared to the DAWs we see around now a days.
Meanwhile, I think that those of us who are using digital now (myself included) are being used to test and research digital audio products. That’s why some of it sucks so much. Why should companies spend a fortune on R&D when they can do the research AND make money at the same time? My two cents.

the only problem i have with staying digital is there are just too many cool analog toys that i want to incorporate into a mix. i dont think that will ever go away. what i do see for the future is converters keep getting better so that another DADC isnt going to be such a paraniod thing as it is today with a lot of engineers. personally i dont give a crap, it either sounds better doing it or i just dont do it... i just cant play by rules anyways, they tend to just get in the way.

as for it being demo quality only, i totally disagree... i have heard too many albums lately done digitally that i love the sound of to take that stance. and most of them arent even done by "pros" but musicians who engineered themselves, i cant remember any good "pro" albums done in the past few years... course a lot of the "pro" work has been some pretty crappy music.

....

Considering that technology is increasing exponentially and at incredible rates, I wouldn't be suprised to see incredible and unimaginable leaps in 5 years. The technological leaps that happened say from '96 to now will happen in 1/2-1/3 the time. YOMV

Regards
Nathan Eldred
Atlas Pro Audio, Inc.
http://www.atlasproaudio.com

Originally posted by Curve Dominant:
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't being misunderstood on this point, because what I had offered was a prediction that digital would not sound LIKE analog.
Ah, pardon me, I misunderstood what you said.

While I think that digital will eventually sound as good as analog (not that I can tell the difference at this point), I wouldn't be surprised to find that it never sounds exactly like analog.

Although, there are attempts towards this idea, at least in the terms of synthesizers. The current big thing is "virtual analog", which includes modeling all the imperfections of analog on a DSP chip. Whether this ever gets applied to things like mixers and DATs is anyone's guess.

Again, sorry for the confusion. :)

Something to think about! :D

I think the other thing is that marketing has done a lot to brain wash these kids as well!

For what its worth!!! :confused:

I've been doing digital mastering for an independent record label for ten years. One of the things we do is put together compilations taken from all of the various CDs we've done over the years.

In many cases, early DAT tapes made on a Panasonic 3500 have been better on a no-brainer basis than what we get from the same artists and engineers today in high resolution formats. I have no doubt that a lot of this was simply that people couldn't do the amount of tweaking we take for granted today but the fact remains that you would be hard pressed to claim there has been any advancement at all when you just listen to the masters.

I think analog is going to be around for a good while, even if digital surpasses analog tape as a storage medium. I know myself, and many others who like our music to sound kinda like what our heros sounded like, and most of my heros recorded hot to analog tape. For better or worse I find I just unconciously gravitate to that sound of saturation and tape bumps cause it sounds like all those great memories of kick ass albums I listen to. Now probably someday there will be so few albums recorded with analog tape that nobody will have fond memories of that sound, but I think that'll take a while. When I think of a great album I think of something like Layla, Exile on Main Street, or Freddy King Sings (none of which are technically fantastic)and I'm sure on some subconcious level I use analog tape and record that way cause that's the sound I associate with great albums, for better or worse.
But that said, I think DSD kicks fuckin' ass and I'd probably jump on that bandwagon once the price comes down, although I'd probably use analog on some stuff.

Paul Brousseau posted:
Ah, pardon me, I misunderstood what you said.
While I think that digital will eventually sound as good as analog (not that I can tell the difference at this point), I wouldn't be surprised to find that it never sounds exactly like analog.
Although, there are attempts towards this idea, at least in the terms of synthesizers. The current big thing is "virtual analog", which includes modeling all the imperfections of analog on a DSP chip. Whether this ever gets applied to things like mixers and DATs is anyone's guess.
Again, sorry for the confusion.

Paul, thanks for your clarification, and I can see how I could have been more succinct in stating my view. It's funny actually that you mentioned "virtual analog," because my original post was inspired by this statement by Jon Best:
I could give a shit about tape emulation software.

Now, knowing that Jon has been at this for a little longer than I have, I kind of took that statement and ran with it. If analog tape exponentially compresses high frequencies as you progressively approach it's saturation point, it would seem silly to try to duplicate this effect in the digital realm, in which the saturation point is a hard wall. It would seem smarter to create this effect in the signal chain pre-digital, and record it to a digital resolution that would faithfully reproduce that effect. It might still not have THAT sound, but it would have A sound. It still comes back around to the over-all effect of recording an entire ensemble to analog tape as opposed to digital, and the comparitive "quality" - that is, not "better/worse" type of quality, but "essence," rather. It would seem that no matter how "good" digital gets, there will be a home for analog for certain applications. Or no?

Thanks, tho, to Mixerman, Greg, Jon, Paul, AJ (wassup, craze?), Tony, Brad, Nathan, David and Bob for your feedback. I have some more questions and ideas about this subject, and maybe I can bend some of y'all's ears at the AES meeting in Sept in NYC, and we can get into it in more depth.

Eric Vincent
Curve Dominant Sound&Vision
Philadelphia USA

How about using both? Sync them together for analog drums (yum yum!) bass and guitar. Edit vox, VSTis MIDI on the digi side. Master to analog.

There are some things digital cannot (imho) do. Getting a decent drum sound with plugins is one on them.

Some of us welcome every advance in digital technology - but for a very different reason. Just as top quality analog reel recorders are being given away today for absurd prices, so will more and more analog technology lose its value (but NOT its utility) over the coming years. Close behind analog recorders will be analog consoles. 80 series Neves, APIs and Trident A-range boards are gonna hold their value, but the less famous consoles are already seeing their sales prices falling thru the floor. And its just a matter of time before outboard gear follows along, maybe not soon, but eventually, once people get used to working 100% digital. For some of us, this is a dream come true; the ability to afford an entire studio of "world class" equipment (circa '74) on a hobbyist budget. Bring it on!

A lot of us are already working FULLY digital. I think digital has gotten a bad rap because it "doesn't sound like tape." No shit!

I personally haven't found any tape/analog emulation that's worth anything. Low end "tube" gear isn't worth much either, imho. Digital has it way over analog in ease of editing, portability, and yes, I'm going to even argue that digital has the edge when it comes to stability in long-term storage.

Digital effects don't act the same as analog effects, I prefer analog reverbs (plates, that new Demeter Spring 'verb looks cool!) and chambers over digital verbs, but recently there have been a few that are very pleasant.

We as engineers split hairs over the sound of things sometimes that the general public doesn't notice. I can hear the difference between a plate and a chamber on some of my favorite tunes, but a lot of times the casual listener won't even realize that they're hearing a 'verb on the vocals!

Our hair-splitting tendencies spill over to our work in the digital realm. Work fast, don't get bogged down - get the sounds and don't obsess over trying to get everything as HOT as possible. It's pretty easy to make a PT 24MIX system spit out a good mix if you're not obsessed with getting the LAST BIT of reslution on each and every channel. I mean, yes, you do lose res. when you don't have everything smooshed up against .001, but yaknow what? It's still cleaner than an analog mix, in my experience.

Digital will NEVER sound like tape, nope, not unless we MAKE it sound like tape. It CAN sound like tape, just not inherently. I think we should be exploring the new possibilities of the format, rather than hanging on to conventions of yore.

Don't get me wrong, I love both, I'll work with both, I do prefer digital when it comes to editing, and I don't like to beat the hell out of tape - so if I were to track on tape, I'd spit it into a DAW pretty quickly.

Classic pieces of gear are classic pieces of gear and they're a joy to work with and you can currently get the best of both worlds happening in your mix...rather than bitch about it, I say bring it on, we're in a golden era at the moment!

Dan Roth
Otitis Media

There are two things that come to mind with each medium that I find attractive.

Analog:

1. Forgiveness in regards to, and (sometimes)magical treatment of heavy duty transients.
2. It's perceived depth, the way it snuggles up to and around the human ear.

Digital:

1. UNDO.
2. Quick and easy "what if" nondestructive changes to sonics, arrangements, processing and drummers.

I'd choose both even at 192/384.

Kevin: "UNDO" - I laughed out loud when I saw that, but yeah, Undo is pretty damn cool. Not having to worry about permanantly losing bits when doing tight punches, or just making the occasional space-cadet move that results in erasing a track, kinda takes the pressure off.

Just a couple of questions for the group:

1. There was a thread on another board that discussed sound deterioration when summing tracks on DAWs. Has anyone experienced this? Or do most of you mix out all of your tracks to a digital board and sum to stereo from there?

2. Does anyone mix through analog gear to "warm" the digital sound? I ask this, because one friend of mine has a studio that's equipped with Neve, Avalon and Universal Audio tube preamps. He offered to let me do my final mixes from the Roland VS in his studio, and experiment with putting the stereo mix through one or more of these units, and then into the finalizer, just to see what the result would be. I'm not done my tracks yet (still waiting on the Joe Meek so I can cut the vocals), so I have absolutely no idea if this will enhance the sound or not. I'm sure there is room for abuse here, which I want to avoid. Any thoughts?

An aside to Jon Best - this studio I refer to also has the Mackie d8b, and I'm going to try to spend some time familiarizing myself with that console.

Once again, thanks everybody for candidly sharing your knowledge. I'm trying to be objective and open-minded about everything I'm reading in everybody's posts, all of which I've found highly informative.

Well I packed up my skill set, threw it into kerchife, tied that to a stick and have been walking down digital road for a few years now.
I havn't had any bad comments about my sound, despite in my mind some early days goofs (still made experienced clients happy & landed the first act a Major lable deal and the recordings weren't 'the demos'either, they were singles 1&2!) - so go figure)

Digital was what I was looking for sound wise, it DOES however have it's PITA moments.

I did some on analog recently and transfered it into PT - big deal, no big improvement IMHO.

I have taken all my time to develop my chops on Pro Tools. I hope it continues to pay off.

I wont forget how to use analog.

Moove on and get good at it.

:)

Jules

Curve,
I'm kind of like Julian. I do almost all my work completely in Pro Tools (mixing out of PT on a O2R), but this week end a great engineer friend of mine (Mark Williams) let me use his Manley Vairiable MU compressor and rack of Langaven Pultec eq's to do the final mix on a couple of projects. It took me a while to dial them in but then WOW! Was I sursrised! Beyond the overall definition being significantly better, the spatial imageing blew me away! (even my accountant, non-musical wife heard a huge difference. She kindly asked for Mark to be banned from our studio - sighting him as a bad influence on our finances!) Needless to say by Friday afternoon I was playing phone tag with Fletcher. I can't even imagine what I could've ended up with if I had used some great sounding analog gear to track into Pro Tools with.
Just my 2 cents.
Marc McManeus
SoundPost Productions

Originally posted by dbeng@bellsouth.net:
I sometimes say just to get their attention that the big bands still use analog tape. (It's JUST a white lie!!!) :D

I think the other thing is that marketing has done a lot to brain wash these kids as well!

That's not a white lie. The Lifehouse album was recorded and mixed completely analog. (If you aren't familiar with it, your kids will be) Many big rock albums are a hybrid, recorded on analog, edited and mixed in digital.

Mixerman

marc@soundpost posts:
this week end a great engineer friend of mine (Mark Williams) let me use his Manley Vairiable MU compressor and rack of Langaven Pultec eq's to do the final mix on a couple of projects. It took me a while to dial them in but then WOW! Was I sursrised! Beyond the overall definition being significantly better, the spatial imageing blew me away!

marc, thanks bro - this is somewhat along the lines of information I was fishing for.

Could I bug you to post some general settings that you eventually arrived at? IOW, did you hit these units hard, or was it more "subtle shading." I realize that every mix is different, but I'm curious if you found certain compression ratios that you feel work well with digital signal, or "trends" in the EQ settings you might have gravitated towards on the Pultecs.

You also posted:
I can't even imagine what I could've ended up with if I had used some great sounding analog gear to track into Pro Tools with.

Yo Jules, could you share with us some of your favorite front-end analog units that work well with PT?

The Joe Meek pre didn't happen, and I ended up with an ART PRO MPA as a consolation prize (it's free). I've been tracking vocals with it all evening and, I dunno. I wish I had the Meek. Maybe I'm hitting the ART to hard; gonna try again tomorrow.

Mixerman, Thanks for the conformation! I thought that was what I was hearing on some of the material I've been listening to lately. I have not listened to the Lifehouse CD yet but plan to. I seem to remember you talking about it before.

I do however think WE need to educate these young artist to ALL the options they have so as to keep the Analog/Digital debate alive! :)

Marc, I ran into Mark Williams last Fri over at Studio B. You guys need to come see me sometime. Mark keeps saying he's going to, so load him up and yaw come on out!

Originally posted by dbeng@bellsouth.net:

BTW, how did you get the member # "1176" ? :)

Luck of the draw I guess...

Mixerman

Originally posted by Curve Dominant:
1. There was a thread on another board that discussed sound deterioration when summing tracks on DAWs.
2. Does anyone mix through analog gear to "warm" the digital sound? I ask this, because one friend of mine has a studio that's equipped with Neve, Avalon and Universal Audio tube preamps. He offered to let me do my final mixes from the Roland VS in his studio, and experiment with putting the stereo mix through one or more of these units, and then into the finalizer, just to see what the result would be. .[/QB]

#1 . I don't use a DAW (professionally)but everyone I've worked with that does would rather sum on the board than inside the DAW. When we do mixes at our place with other peoples DAW I find it better to hit the board with individual outs. Just my (friends) .02.

#2. How odd that you would go through the trouble to do anything before it hits the finalizer. I hate them but I also hate eating someone elses hairy child so...
The warm it up thing seems pretty odd to me except in the case of high end devices that are intended to do this. The fatso, Hedd etc. come to mind.
Admittedly I use a VS880 for fucking around with my vintage synths, theremin, and guitar tracks and dump them to tape when I feel they add to a project. I normally run through either a 2 track or a Phoenix audio GTQ2 which imparts some class(y) A (N word) BS to the sound along with some minor eq. It's mainly a signal matching device in this mode but it has replced the API for these duties on the synths anyway.
Julian had mentioned using the API 3124 in the bus method you discussed on RAP. Jules?
The last record I did for my band we mixed the entire record through a 2 track on the way to DAT. Don't ask why.

Eric,
Sorry for the delay in responding to your questions. (I've been figuring out how I'm going to pay for some of that high end gear!)
With regards to the Manley Variable MU settings, I allowed my self to just play with the unit a bit. In general I tried not to beat up the mix more than 1 to 2 db (in the compression mode) Most of the music was rather dynamic so too much killed the feel. The EQ was really transparent. All in all, I found the gear to be extraordinarily benificial. It made it really hard to completly ruin an otherwise mediocre mix.

David,
I'll try to get Mark to join me over 'cross the river some day soon! Thanks for the call.
Marc McManeus
SoundPost Productions
Charlotte, NC
marc@soundpostaudio.com

Wow, great thread, a lot to respond to...

everyone I've worked with that does would rather sum on the board than inside the DAW. When we do mixes at our place with other peoples DAW I find it better to hit the board with individual outs. Just my (friends) .02.

Makes sense. This is why I prefer stand-alone units - you don't get that kind of agita. Has anyone checked out the Tascam SX-1?

How odd that you would go through the trouble to do anything before it hits the finalizer.

Kevin, you read my mind. If the mix is good, why muck it up?

In general I tried not to beat up the mix more than 1 to 2 db (in the compression mode) Most of the music was rather dynamic so too much killed the feel. The EQ was really transparent.

Marc, thanks for the info, I appreciate you taking the time to share that. I'm going to approach this carefully. We're getting into "mastering" territory here...

Fletcher, you know, you have quite a good forum here...

Originally posted by Kevin F. Rose:
I don't use a DAW (professionally)but everyone I've worked with that does would rather sum on the board than inside the DAW. When we do mixes at our place with other peoples DAW I find it better to hit the board with individual outs. Just my (friends) .02

thats because there are just too many damn analog toys to play with during mixing. and until we get to >192k sampling and drop the converter latency well under a ms, then how else CAN you do it unless you want to mix totally in the box? [aside from printing the analog devices and lining them all back up in the DAW] i guess you could get an Oxford...

one thing i do get tired of is analog emulation for the digital enviroment. its like trying to tell a dog its a cat [although i did have a friend who named his dog 'cat']

im pretty much with jules on this one. i mean analog people tend to ignore its weak points and emphasize the good points. just gotta learn to do the same thing with digital [and it has many fine points], it certainly isnt going away and the technique is totally different.

Originally posted by alphajerk:

thats because there are just too many damn analog toys to play with during mixing. and until we get to >192k sampling and drop the converter latency well under a ms, then how else CAN you do it unless you want to mix totally in the box? one thing i do get tired of is analog emulation for the digital enviroment. its like trying to tell a dog its a cat [although i did have a friend who named his dog 'cat']
.

The analog emulation stuff isn't quite where I'd like to see it and I'm not sure if it's necessary if things are done right on the way in. What I would like to see is a high powered plugin tht could emulate the "signatures" of different pres/channel strips like a souped up version of that crappy mic modeler. Today the items out there aren't even close but in a few years...
Shit all this talk is making me want to buy a DAW now. Must wait, got to f;jng/lfm;r.
Hey Fletcher did you get the Furburger pic I sent you? Sorry.

I though I had read somewhere that even Studer was no longer making 2" machines.

Is that true? Is anyone even making new 2" machines anymore? If not, then I'd have to say the beginning of the end for analog (at least 2") has begun.

Even if Studer or someone else continues to make these fat-sounding machines, as the demand and manufacturing runs drop, won't the price spiral up, making them unaffordable for all except maybe Oceanway or similar high-end studios?

BTW, Billboard keeps a section on platforms used to record the latest #1 hits in all genres (recorded on; mixed on, mastered on, etc). Many, if not most, of these tunes are still recorded on analog, but you'll see ProTools in there at some stage in most cases.

Originally posted by Kevin F. Rose:
What I would like to see is a high powered plugin tht could emulate the "signatures" of different pres/channel strips like a souped up version of that crappy mic modeler. Today the items out there aren't even close but in a few years...
Shit all this talk is making me want to buy a DAW now. Must wait, got to f;jng/lfm;r..

i would rather have a power plugin that spit out lots of money so i could go buy all those different pres :D hmmm, i got a scanner and a color printer... :roll: j.k.

next time you are in town, you gotta come out to my place. then you'd totally be hooked on getting a DAW... DP3 is on its way to me any day now, those monitors arrive tomorrow. man i need a new fucking mac!!! a new FAST FUCKING MAC! MACWORLD!!! DAMMIT! pacing patiently.

I believe that at least Otari is still making 2" tape machines.

As for Analog Modelling, check out the McDSP Analog Channel, does just what you say it does, and you can create your own analog models of your favorite gear.

McDSP makes some of the best stuff out there, very efficient algorithms, and he actually tests his plugins against the hardware it's emulating. Class act all the way, imho.

Dan Roth
Otitis Media

Analog has been here a LONG time. it works. it's proven it sounds GREAT.
They stopped making tubes how long ago in the US? Someone, somewhere, will pick up what ever slack there is and continue to make/service highend analog gear for the forseeable future. There is still a large cross section of the Big Artist/Producer/Engineers/Studio
community that uses analog...and they have the money to buy...so supply and demand.
that said. Digital is only going to evolve. Tt will improve. Probably not as neat or logical as any of us would like, because the audio community is and has been for a long time the poor step child of other industries. But, PEOPLE make music and recordings of music. If all we had technology-wise, right now, were wire recorders someone would make some interesting art/music on them that is enjoyble to others around him/her.
That brings us to the point of relativity. We have lived for about 96 years now in a world that has shifted from an absolute/Newtonian paradigm to a relativistic/Einsteinian paradigm. It's all relative. If Kids listen to everything digital, analog is almost irrelavent...except to us...the passionate ones. No one said that life is fair. Evolution has always been blind, and we as a society aren't using our intelligence to change that; either on this or any other issue-most of them way more important(how about the ENVIORMENT of our planet,for one). Capitalism fucks up everything except life for a few .

Analog is GREAT and easy to make sound good. But I for one am not going to stop making records just because the budget can't always afford it. And...music today is of a type that is rarely condusive to just going in and recording an Album live...like the first Beatles or Led Zeppelin Albums( Boy those were the days). we have Loops and samples and DJ's, etc. to deal with...

I like them both (Analog and Digital)..but I like good music, a paycheck and my family a whole lot more.

RecorderMan

Yeah AJ, I will stop by and bring the beer... I've been watching for the new Macs and my friend who is a salesperson says mid-july.
I'm aware of the Mcdsp stuff and I think it will be a contender when digital gets the resolution it requires to sound like the human ear hears. Analog (maybe by conditioning) tends to be more akin to the human ears response.
Another Plug in I would like to see is like a brick wall limiter but totally different. I would call it "the finger" and it would act like a fader would riding the signal to tape to keep peaks out of the loop by using a "look ahead" kinda gizmo. I've always beem more fond of my finger as a "comp/limiter/ for things such as voice on the way in but... Shoot me even though I wear a vest.

its mid-july today. im thinking by the end of july. man those monitors are the shit.