WHAT IF… DIGITAL HAD COME FIRST???
By George Petersen
Our old friend analog recording has been around since 1877. That 130-years represents a lot of time for a technology to mature and improve. Meanwhile, digital recording has been around for about 30 years–not a whole lot of time.
In fact, if you look at the state of analog in 1907 (30 years after its birth), things were pretty grim. The acoustic recording era was the thing, where artists had to scream their performances into a horn with enough volume to make sure the needle cut the groove deeply enough. Bandwidth was about 3.5 kHz. Microphones were not part of the recording process until the mid-1920s.
But what if–and admittedly it’s a BIG what if–digital had come first and was 130 years old? And in that same imaginary world, what if you went to an AES show where analog recording technology was being shown for the first time in 2006? Here’s some user comments you might hear at the upcoming Analog World Expo in that imaginary universe:
ANALOG RECORDER BOOTH: “Sure, that upper frequency response is nice, but it won’t matter on a CD or MP3 anyway. No, what about that wow and flutter or nonlinear LF response due to head bump? The tape setup/alignment takes a lot of time. It’s impossible to clone tracks or make perfect safety backups. And that tape hiss…”
2-TRACK EDITING WORKSHOP: “Let me see… you take my original master tape, chop it up with razor blades, use adhesive tape to put it back together and there aren’t any levels of UNDO?”
PLATE REVERB BOOTH: “Man, that reverb would be great on drums or vocals! What do you mean it operates by vibrating a 7-foot steel sheet with a couple contact mics on it, mounted inside a 400-pound box? And it only does ONE sound? How do I tweak parameters, load new algorithms or store different spatial parameters?”
COPPER WIRE BOOTH: “You expect me to replace my 20-pound, 500-foot, 400-channel fiber-optic snake with eight 56-channel copper firehoses that weigh 1,500 pounds each? You gotta be kidding…”
VINYL LP RECORD DEMO: “Wow! That 12-inch disk is big enough to hold the entire history of the world’s music… What do you mean it only holds 20 minutes max per side, and I’m supposed to flip the disk over in the middle of the album? How am I supposed to play this in my car… or while jogging or flying? And if you bump into the player while it’s operating, the record is scratched and flawed forever? Oh yeah… the major labels are gonna love this one!”
TECHNICAL PAPERS SECTION: “And just how do you expect us to make music WITHOUT drum loops, vocal pitch adjustment, cut-and-paste assembly editing, quantized tempo correction, virtual tracking and pre-packaged sequences???”
Fortunately, it was all just a dream, and clearly there’s room for analog and digital technologies to co-exist. But if digital had come first, would analog have ever existed at all?
When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.
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What do YOU think?
CLICK ON THE “COMMENTS” BUG BELOW TO READ/LEAVE COMMENTS…
September 20th, 2006 @ 4:39 pm
But of course the superior technology of Analog would have existed. Everybody knows LPs sound “warmer”.
September 21st, 2006 @ 12:03 am
When you look at the negative side of anything, nothing will ever be appealing, ever; Evolution is a constant all over the universe, and we have known this since 2600 BC thanks to Greek philosophy, and this notion was set way before anyone ever thought music could be recorded.
The point is that some things have to evolve to be more practical, and to be much less complicated i.e. size, maneuverability, and cost. Digital platforms are meant to allow musicians and studios, amateur and pro, to accomplish many different tasks in one place, but most of all I believe that the main stream of the industry is to do more in less time with things that don’t weight tons, or require so much space and maintenance.
I didn’t read anything on the article about the good old vintage developments from last century, Most of the examples given are the impractical and outdated things that didn’t even last long during their time.
Why not visit the most excellent developments in the history of audio recording like the Neumann U-47, a microphone developed in 1928 and ever since to remain top choice for vocal and instrument recording, Neumann evolved from their vintage tube series and made the TLM series which don’t make use of tube technology, and anyone with some studio experience will say that nothing will ever compare to a U-47, or else look at the price tag; we can see that evolution never outdated analogue electrical tube excellence in Neumann microphones and of course there are lots of people who will think that the warm harmonic sound isn’t really for mp3’s but truth of the matter is it sounds great no matter what. I can at least mention 50 different pieces of gear that aren’t as modern that studios all over the world will still use over plug-ins.
I believe that Digital still has a permanent symbiosis with analogue, doesn’t matter if you are using top of the line HD systems an DSP, the source and the output is analogue, until the day we have 100% completely digital speakers and digital microphones it can be said that analogue is out.
Until we can change the physic laws of audio, analogue and digital will always rely on each other, don’t be fooled by marketing, just take a look at your old 1980’s Mix magazine editions and look at the advertisement, specially the digital products of that time, you will get some good insights about how gear manufacturers are always promising “best” “perfect” “top of the line” Sure some things got better, because they are faster, more affordable, and smaller, think about this fact: now you can carry in your pocket what used to take a whole 1,000 SQF facility to store, but no matter what the principles remains the same.
I believe your question is meant to discuss something like trying to find out what comes first: the chicken or the egg; but in this case I believe that history couldn’t have been otherwise.
September 23rd, 2006 @ 11:22 am
The age old Chicken or the Egg concept. Unfortunately in our Money driven world the beancounters would have found a way to screw-up Digital even if it had come first. The audiophiles of the world are held hostage to the Manufactures. Unfortunately they know the masses can be brain-washed thru propaganda into believing anything they throw enough money at thru marketing. Thank GOD George Massenburg Lives in our generation. Keep up the good work and Don’t stop banging that drum. Sanford, AABACAB Records
December 2nd, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site. I have learned a lot from your site. Thanks!!
December 19th, 2006 @ 5:48 pm
Thanks for such an interesting and thoughtful perspective