The case for Analog

[Dr ZEE]

“What can tape do for us now?”

YES! that IS the question. and the answer is: "To be"

 

[ofajen]

Tim:

First, remember that I like analog tape a lot, but I'm an evil digital collaborator, not a noble analog partisan ranger. I'm aware of the concerns of the LOC and alluded to them. Howard Sanner, moderator of the Ampex list, works for the LOC in the recorded sound section and we've discussed this both individually and through his comments on the discussion list. They can't afford to ever have to transfer stuff and make the correct decision to use tape.

OTOH, lots of us can go either way. My digital audio files fit on a typical FW hard drive and I back them up to CD. 50 years from now, I'll probably be dead and if I'm alive, I'll be lucky to hear 12KHz in both ears. But I won't have so much stuff that occasional transfers will really be a problem. OTOH, if we still have tape and my machines work, I'll probably mix important stuff to tape and have archival copies that way, too. In the mean time, I'm going to have digital and analog stuff all over the place, and the party goes on!

Cheers,

Otto

 

[ofajen]

If you are going to build your own studio that is built primarily for your own needs, put the gear in there that you feel most comfortable working with and if that includes some nice open reel decks, good for you but don't buy them just because you think it will be your ticket to friends, fame and fortune. There's more to that formula then just that.

Cheers!

I couldn't agree more, nor could I have said it as well.

Otto

 

[Eric Altizer]

Tim:

First, remember that I like analog tape a lot, but I'm an evil digital collaborator, not a noble analog partisan ranger. I'm aware of the concerns of the LOC and alluded to them. Howard Sanner, moderator of the Ampex list, works for the LOC in the recorded sound section and we've discussed this both individually and through his comments on the discussion list. They can't afford to ever have to transfer stuff and make the correct decision to use tape.

OTOH, lots of us can go either way. My digital audio files fit on a typical FW hard drive and I back them up to CD. 50 years from now, I'll probably be dead and if I'm alive, I'll be lucky to hear 12KHz in both ears. But I won't have so much stuff that occasional transfers will really be a problem. OTOH, if we still have tape and my machines work, I'll probably mix important stuff to tape and have archival copies that way, too. In the mean time, I'm going to have digital and analog stuff all over the place, and the party goes on!

Cheers,

Otto

Many of us are in the process of archiving analog tape recordings and baking tapes before transfering to whatever long-term storage medium we decide is best. I use a food dehydrator for baking sticky-shed tapes as has been suggested in this forum. Thanks guys! Analog tape is a proven storage medium so it makes sense to transfer the masters back to tape. Sounds like the safest way to archive right now is to transfer to both analog tape and to make wav files. The wav files can then be stored on gold archival quality cds and an extra hard drive for safe keeping. I often wonder what new technologies we will be migrating to in the future and how much time an effort will be involved in the archiving process.

 

[Beck]

Tim:

First, remember that I like analog tape a lot, but I'm an evil digital collaborator, not a noble analog partisan ranger. I'm aware of the concerns of the LOC and alluded to them. Howard Sanner, moderator of the Ampex list, works for the LOC in the recorded sound section and we've discussed this both individually and through his comments on the discussion list. They can't afford to ever have to transfer stuff and make the correct decision to use tape.

OTOH, lots of us can go either way. My digital audio files fit on a typical FW hard drive and I back them up to CD. 50 years from now, I'll probably be dead and if I'm alive, I'll be lucky to hear 12KHz in both ears. But I won't have so much stuff that occasional transfers will really be a problem. OTOH, if we still have tape and my machines work, I'll probably mix important stuff to tape and have archival copies that way, too. In the mean time, I'm going to have digital and analog stuff all over the place, and the party goes on!

Yep, me too... same party!

And since it can be done cheaply for the average Joe, I have digital and analog backups. I love my Fostex CR300 (as much as one can love CD audio). In fact I wax nostalgic for the early Alesis ADAT… alas, “Hope crushed in its infancy.”

However, being an IT consultant I wouldn’t sleep well if my compositions were only preserved in 1’s and 0’s. Recovering data, including hard drives is one of the services I provide, but even I have lost enough hard drives over the years to tile my bathroom with. If it can be recovered I can recover it… sometimes it’s just gone. Same with CD-Rs. You won’t have to wait 50 years with many brands, rather more like 2 years.

So yeah, tape is still King in my studio, but digital is utilized as well.

"Playback: This time it's for real!"

 

[cjacek]

Recovering data, including hard drives is one of the services I provide................

.........."Playback: This time it's for real!"

Now I know where to send my hard drive should I need data recovery.

BTW, I thought I was the only one who got a kick out of that commercial! Hehe!

 

[cjacek]

Tim, perhaps you could help these guys out:

http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.a...9c586ef35?tvc=2&q=lost+files#41f29e09c586ef35

Some stories there are pretty frightening. One lost 132 GIGS of song files and another 60Gigs of samples downloaded over a 2 year period.... And so it goes .....

Not to mention, massive failure rates of hard drives etc .....

 

[Eric Altizer]

Tim, perhaps you could help these guys out:

http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.a...9c586ef35?tvc=2&q=lost+files#41f29e09c586ef35

Some stories there are pretty frightening. One lost 132 GIGS of song files and another 60Gigs of samples downloaded over a 2 year period.... And so it goes .....

Not to mention, massive failure rates of hard drives etc .....

Remember to backup those important digital recordings onto analog tape

 

[cjacek]

Remember to backup those important digital recordings onto analog tape

Actually, backing up to tapes made specifically for data is a superior storage medium. Take a look at this:

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=184198&highlight=ibm

 

[Beck]

Tim, perhaps you could help these guys out:

http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.a...9c586ef35?tvc=2&q=lost+files#41f29e09c586ef35

Some stories there are pretty frightening. One lost 132 GIGS of song files and another 60Gigs of samples downloaded over a 2 year period.... And so it goes .....

Not to mention, massive failure rates of hard drives etc .....

Shucks, I'm a PC Windows and Linux guy... but I will let them listen to my 26-year-old Foreigner "Double Vision." Cassette. My 28-year-old LP sounds a bit better, but the cassette sounds great, even after kicking around in different cars and houses, and then lost in my garage for about ten years …

 

[cjacek]

Shucks, I'm a PC Windows and Linux guy... but I will let them listen to my 26-year-old Foreigner "Double Vision." Cassette. My 28-year-old LP sounds a bit better, but the cassette sounds great, even after kicking around in different cars and houses, and then lost in my garage for about ten years …

Out of curiosity, Tim, which cassette and record player do you use ?

 

[mstcraig]

I am enjoying this thread alot-I started it after all! Beck makes some strong points, and actually everyone has. For starters, regarding which tape to use, I will NOT, and have not, used anything by Quantegy. All my recordings are on BASF/EMTEC/RMGI tape. Have not had a single problem yet in over 10 years. Incidentally, I got some some still-sealed BASF LP35 tape from a guy who bought it while he was stationed in Vietnam. Opened it up, recorded on it, and it was just fine mechanically and sonically. This stuff is close to 40 years old, BTW! So much for the logevity argument, I would say. I'm looking forward to trying the ATR tape, if it EVER appears! Initial reports are very positive that I've seen from people I trust. I echo the statement about leaving your compositions as 1's and 0's-Makes me shudder. As I said earlier, I do not have all the answers. But, LONG TERM, I feel analog is the way to go. No, it is not perfect-nothing is. But 50 years from now, it will play with a (comparative) minimum of effort.

 

[ausrock]

I've seen a few credible discussions around the WWW about the longevity issue and the final opinion is virtually always, that digital is still a flawed medium for "archival" storage when compared to the older "analogue" technologies.

 

[Muckelroy]

The devil's advocate for a second....

Indeed, nothing is a perfect medium. Stories, songs, interviews, images, photograps, information, statistics---- ANYTHING worthy of being recorded onto any medium other than the human memory will undergo evolutionary change.

Take paper for instance. Though we see ancient Egyptian papayrus documents that are 4,500 years old and still readable, there's VERY few of these documents still surviving as paper is, well, flammable, corrosive, yummy to bugs, and brittle over time.

Every medium used to store stuff degrades. Heck, if you wanna consider the human brain as a medium, please do! How much do stories get changed as they are passed down from person to person? How much does the human mind warp things?

In much the same way, we can only do so much to capture recordings on a medium, and archive them to the fullest extent possible. The purist method would be to have one, and only one, master copy of something, and to make as many second-generation transcriptions as possible from just one pass/play of that master copy, to minimize degredation/wear on that master. If this master is an analog tape, well, quite frankly, no telling how long it will last, but chances are it will, much like paper, eventually become unusable. At the very least, it will definately CHANGE over time. If you're talking about art, change can be a good thing or a bad thing, but if you think all those cracks covering oil/canvas paintings from the renaissaince are a good thing......................um, probably not. Nor do I think that sticky shed, wow/flutter, high-end loss, and drop-outs are desireable things.

So you want the copy of this sonic artwork to be as accurately preserved as possible. Now, my brain wants to say that digital is the way to go on this one, simply because the ultimate master copy may consist of discrete, defineable zeroes and ones. If this copy exists on a hard drive, it can easily be copied to 2 or 3 drives and vaulted up. Once every few months, turn on the drives, and give them a spin for a few hours. While the drive is on, hey, why not make some more copies to new hard drives just in case these "old" drives crap out? So you see, digital technology has provided the only means to accurately make EXACT copies of something. As long as this data is bounced and recycled to new media to precaution against media failure, it exists, and is as clean and pure as the original first generation. (That's where data verification comes into play. Advanced mastering software has features where you can verify, bit-for-bit, a copy to the original, just to make sure the copy was 100% successful.)

BUT---I LOVE analog recording. WHY? Because I just might LOVE the way it sounds. No it's not sonically perfect, but damn it sounds awesome. Analog multitracking with digital mastering may not be a bad way to go.

-callie-

 

[ofajen]

Do I even need to say this? Store your tapes "tails out" unless you want pre-echo. Every tape has a level of print-through that it will inevitably reach. Heat and elevated temperature get it there quicker, but the end state is defined by the print-through characteristics of the tape (and the actual magnetization levels encoded on it). Unfortunately, the old-style non-back-coated tapes that have the longest proven history of not going sticky generally have more problems with print through.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[Muckelroy]

Do I even need to say this? Store your tapes "tails out" unless you want pre-echo. Every tape has a level of print-through that it will inevitably reach. Heat and elevated temperature get it there quicker, but the end state is defined by the print-through characteristics of the tape (and the actual magnetization levels encoded on it). Unfortunately, the old-style non-back-coated tapes that have the longest proven history of not going sticky generally have more problems with print through.

Cheers,

Otto

Print-through or no print-through, an analog tape will not last forever. It will become subject to chemical degredation processes. Whether it takes 10 years or 200 years, it will happen. As an archival medium, however, 200 years is a pretty damn long time, and I will be QUITE impressed if ANY manufacturer of tape manages to make that happen. But that lifespan can be lengthened, to a theoretical infinite amount of time, with properly maintained, updated, and verified digital storage medium. That's all I have to say about that.

But hey, like I said, I still LOVE analog recording

-callie-

 

[MCI2424]

Hi out there. I have given much thought to recording lately, specifically archiving. I wonder how all those that have gone over to the digital 'dark side' (most people) will be able to play their recordings in the coming years? Lets look at this tale. First, Sony made the PCM-F1 so you could use your Beta VCR and record digitally. Know anybody that still has a Beta VCR to, play these back? Then Sony, Mitsubishi, 3M and Denon made Open Reel digital machines. How many of these beasts are still around? And the condition of those said tapes is... Then came ADAT, DAT, etc. Can YOU find any of these that still work, and reliably to play your recordings? What will happen in 5, 10, 20 years when you want to listen to all the stuff you did in Pro Tools? Will Pro Tools still exist, and will the new systems be backward compatible with it to allow this? My point is very simple. Analog recording has existed for 60+ years now. 50 years from now, I WILL be able to play my 2-track tapes back. PERIOD!!! I use a ReVox B-77 every week to record big band jazz here in New York. I have many many tapes. Aside from possbly having to bake them, I will never have a problem playing these. THIS CANNOT BE SAID OF ANY OTHER RECORDING MEDIUM, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS DIGITALLY BASED!! To use another analogy, know anyone still using DOS or Windows 3.1? People have lots of old software that's perfectly usable. The problem? The hardware grew at one rate while the software did not. Speaking for myself, I am, and always will be, in the Analog domain. I've made my choice based on wisdom for the future. And I feel very comforatble with it. Comments?

A few comments:
I have a 2" 24trach MCI
2 Fostex E-16s
1 Fostex D2424LV Hard Disk Recorder
1 Panasonic DAT machine
1 DVD Burner
4 CD Burners
1 Nakamichi Cassette Deck


I just checked all my DAT tapes from 1998 stored in my locker. Every one plays perfect.
All my burners work great and all my burned CDRs from 1995 and above play fine. I have had no problems with anything digital. I am working on an album now that many of my buddies (most recording AEs) love the sound of. The tracks are coming out very well (I may not even have to master the mixes).

This is the first all digital project usind my 24 track HD recorder exclusively. Not on engineer or non-engineer even asked if it was analog. They pretty much know I use the 2" for anything important. I am waiting for someone to realize it is not an analog recording.

I have had tape go bad fron sticky shed, oxide shed, breaks etc.

I know that tape usually lasts forever and digital has and is still going through format pains. However, my point in this rambling is that I have had way more problems with analog than digital. Maybe some reasons are I build my own computors for DAW only and I work on, upgrade and repair all my own equipment. A great mixing console, 2 racks of high-end EQs.compressors,effects,pre-amps, treated rooms etc.

In the end, the sound of my HD recorder and my 2" is so similar that even I have trouble remembering which I recorded on.
I am sure when my buds find out it was not analog they will come up with a thousand reasons that it sounds "brittle, cold, one-dimension yada-yada"

I am waiting and YMMV considerably.

Enjoy your analog life. Whatever makes people happy, and for me, not threading a 2" reel makes me more than happy once in a while.

 

[MCI2424]

.



No one has said it better than Eddie Ciletti a few years ago”

“Analog machines will continue to be serviceable—now, after 20, 30 or 40 years and in the future -- because they mostly consist of hardware that any skilled machinist can re-create. (No digital format will be as easy to support after manufacturers throw in the towel.)"

-Eddie Ciletti
Mix Magazine Aug. 2000

In addition to looking 20, 30, 50 or 100 years down the road, the question for those of us using analog tape as musicians, producers, etc is “What can tape do for us now?” We know the answer to that, and like what we hear.

Tim

Mr. Cilettie and Steve Albini share the same common wisdom however wierd it is. That is a true statement BUT go to a machinist and ASK for some parts to be made and stand back in amazement at the cost.

A replacement pinch roller made from scratch will cost more that a whole used machine. Studer STILL has a bunch of 2" 24 track decks from the last run in 1999!

Otari makes a 2 track reel to reel that goes for almost $5000

Tape may last forever, but the home recordist will run out of machines period.

USED heads for my 2" deck go for $1500 each. I paid less for the whole deck with 75% remaining head life.

The truth is that tape machines can be made from scratch if one wanted, but it would cost like $100,000 to do so.

These guys are not wrong, but they are not living in reality.

Digital is here to stay because the market WANTS IT. Any home recordist who has to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads can record today for under $1000. When I started in 1975, there was no way of recording other than a Radio Shack cassette deck and a couple of mics.

People can damn digital all they want, but to most people being able to record their songs for themselves is everything and today they can do it.

I stay on both sides of the fence and use both analog and digital. I see the merits of each and have gotten around their limitations. It just takes experience and patience.

 

[Beck]

The cost of living appears to be quite a bit more where you are than where I live. There may also be a human resource disparity. Machinists are competing for business in the Mid-West... in my part anyway.

However, for most of us we aren't anywhere near the time when we will need parts to be fashioned ex nihilo. IMO, The last ADAT will grind to a halt before the last reel-to-reel does, and the latter will be easier to restore. I will go through many more CPUs, RAM modules and hard drives before my TSR-8 is even broken-in. I bought it with about 99% head life remaining and I use it in my home studio just for my music. I dare say we will run out of oil and I'll be driving a hydrogen powered car before my TSR-8 and other decks stop serving me.

I am sincere when I say I will pass these machines down to my grandchildren along with my grandfathers's 100-year-old Iver Johson shotgun, which is also in perfect operating condition.

And once again, this is why many capable, experienced (and patient) recordists have purposely tapped into yesterdays's semi-pro market for analog-based home/project studios. It's a gold mine for people that know what they're doing.

What occurred over the last two decades is that many pro machines were worn out in commercial environments... so it's true that there are some already on the trash heap.

In contrast, a great many Tascam, Fostex, and Otari machines were bought by home recordists that fell short of completing their musical pursuits. They were used in homes by individuals that ultimately moved on to other interests, just like what we see happening today.

We are still discovering these basement treasures, and it hasn't yet peaked. The biggest caveat right now is getting the sellers to ship without destroying the unit.

Yes, PCs and DAWs are handy and useful. They allow the average Joe to capture his art like never before possible. However, those like me that have been recording in some form or fashion since the 70's and before are far beyond settling for passable when it comes to recording. We aren't beginners trying to figure it all out. We've achieved excellence... fully professional results with our analog gear. There is no going back to digital, and no reason to.

Tim

 

[cjacek]

Hear, hear!