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Daddy-O Daddy-O Baby
Flangerhans said:
I think your point is well taken in that the level of performance of inexpensive, home audio recording electronics has really improved over time. Really, studio acoustics and recording knowledge, skill and practice, not gear, are what separate the "men from the boys" these days.
However, I'm not so sure that a lot of this digital gear with consumer level analog electronics and low voltage rails with limited input and output levels is really anywhere close to the performance of the mature, high performing electronics, either tube or discrete transistor, in those older machines.
As far as being easy to use, when you are using some gear that really can work with +4 dBu reference levels with plenty of headroom and then you have to incorporate this consumer level gear, perhaps a firewire or other digital interface, it makes things less convenient. And working with old, quality analog gear and VU meters goes a long way toward developing good skills and intuition in level setting practices.
I read questions from so many younger folk starting out now with cheap digital stuff and no real concept of proper level practices. They think they should set levels based upon where peaks show up relative to 0 dBFS! Peaks tell you nothing about perceived loudness, but that's what you see in the little digital meters in your DAW, so that's what you use. If you actually understand level practices, you can find digital meters that will show you peak and RMS levels, but so many newbies are clueless on such matters. They would be better off starting with a Teac 4-track.
I do think that some of the better gear made today is equal to and in some ways better than even the best of the older gear. Of course, that's if you strive for a very clean and quiet sound, not a thick, meaty, loud sound. Wide tape still totally rules in that arena.
However, there is a very dark side to the whole development of even the larger format analog machines, such as 24 track. That dark side is the shift in studio practice away from live tracking in a hurry by skilled musicians who can really play to single part tracking over long periods of time as the normal practice. There is often a benefit to having to work within limitations of time and available tracks and to playing music as an ensemble. The music ends up more authentic.
I also find that so much music these days is so obviously the product of working one part at a time in a totally beat enslaved digital environment where everything is synced to the same, repetitive beat. One of the joys of analog tape is that it doesn't try to force you into beat slavery, it just records what you play.
Of course, societal factors like media consolidation and Clear Channel are much more corrosive to the music scene. Also, there's too much of a self-satisfied, individual, consumer focus to all of our existence these days for there to really be the sense of rebellion that fueled much of the music scene in the 60s and early 70s. The most recent real expression of that rebellion has been in the rap world, but it too is pretty much corrupted and soulless at this point. And digital media allows free swapping and copying to a degree that music as a commercial enterprise may never recover from (not that I really care that much about music as product instead of art, anyway). Not that I'm cynical or anything!
My apologies... this turned rather into a rant. Well, I feel better.
Cheers,
Otto
