grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
Possibly. However, I gamble on the assumption that anyone reading the title would know what I meant........and thus far, everyone has. John Willet brought up the bit about mikes and pre~amps etc as an afterthought and long after he'd answered the questions as it seems everyone thus far has understood them.It seems once the discussion introduced the fact that EVERYONE uses analog in their recording process....and that most digital plugs/apps emulate analog gear.....the thread is turning into a tape VS digital recorder....????
To be fair, he hasn't done that here. There were equal measures of opinion and humour. I personally think everyone's contribution thus far has been good.Why you destroy every thread? It's really a poor show.
I don't now.I have no problem with the sound quality of digital but I knows others prefer the "tape sound". Nothing wrong with that--it's just not something I feel strongly about.
I still recall the first time I recorded with my Akai DPS12i standalone. I recorded my drummer mate playing congas and myself on acoustic guitar and I was expecting this thin, sterile sound. And it sounded more or less how my Tascam 488 recordings sounded, thick and glumpy !
I wasn't very impressed with some of the CDs I'd had in the mid 90s of vinyl that I'd had in the 80s because they seemed really thin and trebley to me. But by the time I got into actual digital recording there had been a levelling of the field, at least to my ears.
Perhaps this wasn't something I made particularly clear in the OP but Bobbsy has nailed it perfectly. Some of the scenario painted is obviously hypothetical. That's partly why it doesn't really matter what level one is/was at.Of course, the other part of this hypothetical discussion is the phrase "if they were freely available".
But it is the process of recording that interests me, and for me, the digital process is much more efficient.
Because I recorded on analogue for 17 years {yes, they were only lowly portastudios but I put together 25 hour long albums worth of songs}, I fell into a particular workflow pattern that developed over the years. When I made the jump to digital {yes, only a lowly 12 track standalone and a lowly 8 track for backwards recording}, my workflow really didn't alter that much. Yes, there have been changes in certain ways, but it was neither exclusively analogue or digital recording that forced all the changes. It's progression and what I've learned. For example, if I'm doing electric guitar, I might record simultaneously from two different amps and/or pedals for a left/right guitar balance.I really prefer the workflow and results I get from digital recording.
Most of the things I've learned since going over to digital recording, even in terms of what happens on the actual recorder, would apply to whatever recorder I was recording on. Even in terms of editing and bouncing, I used to do that before anyway. The 'undo' button does help me breathe a whole lot easier though !