this is a very old thread ... It's nice to see that people are going through the archives ...

I may be only 18 (be 19 this May), raised in the digital age, but I still stick to the analog gear. I remember when I was 14, 15, 16, dreaming of a ProTools rig. I finally decided to blow some money on it. I was outright disgusted. Sure it made things faster and easier, but what's more important - to build something with efficiency or to build something with quality? You can either go with the former or the latter in America since we have freedom of choice, but what do you think is really going to be worth more as a finished product? Believe it or not, kids are picking up the Led Zeppelin, Yes, Chicago, and Kansas hits from the pre-digital era not because its what their parents listened to, but because they claim that music today is crap the the older music has much more feel to it. Everything today is done in perfect time, perfect pitch, perfect bull**** and compressed to hell just to please the radio stations and the heads of record companies who say "to hell with quality, let's make the most of what we've got!" Music is not meant to be perfect. Music is meant as a means of expressing one's own emotions. Take "Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd for example. That song sucks you in and makes you relate to it. However, Ronnie Van Zant is having trouble hitting the pitches. He's all over the place in that key. Also, I'm sure you can "find the beat", but try to keep a steady beat. That song in its original form is all over the place. Its almost spread enough off of its central tempo to be considered in the realms of "free time". The younger generation is moving back towards that because of the emotion that is expressed through not only the lyrics, but the music and the recording as well. Music has become so redundant since ProTools came along to make everything perfect. Now that everything is perfect, the artist doesn't have to perform; the artist just has to sell. If you have been to a recent major concert, you'll notice that its physically impossible to change chords on 32nd notes at 160bpm without moving a finger (Slipknot comes to mind) or to sing on key (or even in time for that matter) while moving and dancing all over the place on stage (ANY pop artist, not just Ashley Simpson). Because of ProTools, we can have anything be perfect at anytime we want with only a modest amount of effort. A band who got signed to a larger label (not a major, but a couple steps down with worldwide distribution) recently commented to me about how much better their demos sounded (recorded by me when I was 15 onto an Otari 24-track and mixed down to stereo on a Studer) than the two $300,000 recordings they've had done almost exclusively in ProTools since being signed. A lot of their diehard fans still want the demos back. That said, I think I'll stick to my analog guns until they quit producing replacement parts.

There are a couple of useful flavours that can be added to most any music to make it interesting, alive and more expressive. One of them is variations in time and signature, a ritardando for example. Well, today it's clicktrack-mania so that's out of the question. Another is dynamic variations. Well, hardly anymore since everything seems to be around 0dB VU all the time. I'm not pointing fingers here, just trying to shine some light on the fact that buying expensive gear to eliminate the very basic variations and colorations in music makes no sense to me. It's not Pro Tools. It's a trend that Pro Tools and other DAWs are all part of creating. And, not to forget, all of us using it. We're all responsible. But there will be an anti-trend very soon. In the 80's there was an obsession with technology compareable to what's happening today. Computers became instruments and that's what happens today aswell, only now we do with audio what was done with MIDI in the 80's. Out came Nirvana in early 90's and retired a lot of Ataris. The next Nirvana will soon be out there.

I think people get way too caught up in the analog versus digital debate. I was reading a book today and the author was an old analog engineer. He was saying how analog was crap...that analog sound came from constantly trying to stay above the noise floor, constantly raping your highs with noise reduction, compressing to get usable signal and then compressing again to make that signal usable after bouncing. The tools for recording today are better they were in the past...hands down. People talk with disdain about engineers and producers who use five or more plugs per channel, but would it be any better if they were using five peices of outboard gear per channel like they did in the past. I had some clients that completely depended on the DAW to sound like they were even in sync a while ago, and i pledged to keep the creativity in the tracking room, and use the DAW as a virtual tape machine and nothing more. I make my clients get it right...i allow them to punch in, but i don't tell them that they can have the old take if they don't like the new one. I don't autotune, at least while tracking. We make it perfect to our ears while tracking, and then while mixing we use effects. Its not the DAWs that sound like crap, its the fact that engineers like almost everyone in here uses the DAWs to make things sound like crap. If you want this "revolution" to change, don't go out and by a 2" tape machine! Why not uninstall autotune, vow to never hit the undo button, never sound replace drums, etc.... Its amazing how much of a better engineer one becomes when you do these things. Getting a great drum sound becomes much more important when you know you aren't going to have the option of sound replacing.... sorry this turned into a novel....just my two cents.

K