Genius
Thank you. 
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Thank you. [/quote]
No problem, guess you just “purposefully forgot” about high quality analog tape, which is still the preferred medium for virtually every high end music studio out there.
As for high end studios still using analog audio tapes for new productions, can you name one ? I’d be honestly curious to know about that. I thought we were in 2012 and everything was now digital in the professional world of music production ? Maybe I’m wrong…? (you’ll surely say that I am, of course 
)
Digital is used exclusively in post production houses, but for music, just look up any studio’s equipment list and a multitrack and mxing/mastering analog tape machine will most likely be on there. Of course inevitably Pro Tools will be on there too, but when price is no object, analog tape is the preferred format. No one makes machines anymore, but several companies still make tape, and now some companies they are making very wide track format heads for existing machines like this:
http://www.jrfmagnetics.com/index.html?JRF_mainframe=/JRF_ultimateanalog.html
Look up Abbey Road studios or Ocean Way in LA (they have like 4 ampex atr-124’s best machines ever made) for example. Digital is more convenient, easier to distribute, and more editable, but as far as sound and fidelity, high quality tape can’t be beat. I have a digital 16 track system I have used for a while, but bought a 1" 8 track machine, and it blows the digital away, especially for analog synths, bass/guitars, drums, etc. Like I said in another thread, when I record my Model D into Pro Tools and play it back, it sounds like I am looking at a picture of the sound, while recording it onto tape, what I am hearing IS the model D (almost like a time-delayed wire). Technically digital has a larger dynamic range, but you can clip tape quite a bit and it will still sound good or better, so with wide tracks, it actually has a better useful dynamic range. High quality analog tape is still unsurpassed in realistic fidelity, and seems to capture the “air” of certain acoustic instruments a lot better than digital. I agree digital does do a better job with dialogue, and certain instruments like piano, but tape still reigns supreme with analog synths. And everyone can agree that Dolby or any other noise reduction is crap. Also check this site out, where the highest quality recordings available to the public are made:
Jack White’s studio in Detroit is 100% analog, but he also has digital equipment for the masses. The album Elephant was recorded entirely on an Akai deck. 
I use an Echo Audiofire 12. Am happy with it but I’m not as demanding as some here.
I was naturally aware that most high-end studios still had analog tape equipment (for re-mastering purposes), but I had assumed that since time is money, especially in studios, they weren’t using it in new productions. But I was obviously wrong. I didn’t think that some artists cared enough about the few benefits of using analog tape, despite the prohibitive costs nowadays, to request it.
Learn something new everyday, I guess. And thanks unfiltered37 for a decent, rational and informative answer. Really. 
We already know that we agree on other things too…
There are quite a few benefits from tape, which vary greatly from machine to machine.
- Older ones’ electronics add nice coloration (at the cost of transparency).
- You get cohesion of tracks adding a certain “Tape” quality to all instruments.
- Wow and flutter can add a pleasing quality on certain sources in small amounts.
- Useful limitation: everyone today takes for granted the concept of unlimited tracks and takes. Being forced, even arbitrarily, to do it right the first time and to make decisions is a great motivator.
- Less ear fatigue: I admit that digital can sound just as good as analog, for a while, until the the harshness of digital music makes your ears tired. Being able to listen to tracks over and over without tiring your ears is invaluable when mixing.
- Saturation/compression: Best sounding subtle distortion I have ever heard, and snips off the transients like on hard drum hits, smoothing the sound out
- Loudness: tape sounds “louder”, which has always meant “better” according to scientific studies (see loudness wars)
- Variability: In the past a lot more tape manufactures existed, with many different formulations for tape, allowing to vary the sound of the recording with the medium itself
- Coolness: As hardware lovers, we know real hardware is way cooler than a computer, and tape machines are large and imposing (which clients always love)
- Contrast with digital: with so much digital music today, analog mixes (even ones that were recorded/mixed on tape but mastered to digital) sound way different if not way better than most stuff recorded mixed and mastered in the box
Sorry, this is unscientific rot.
Again, unscientific rot. It’s louder? If I turn up my volume knob my digital recording is now louder. And the loudness wars is all about mastering out dynamics to the point of making them ear fatiguing.
Scientific or not, it has been confirmed by many engineers. I went to a school where we had an SSL board hooked up to a studer machine and pro tools HD. We spent hours mixing on both, and tape mix ended up much better, since we didn’t have to take as many breaks while mixing because our ears were not hurting. Analog audio is a continuous waveform and much more natural to the human ear than dots reconstructed into a waveform.
As far as loudness, when both pro tools and my 1/4" analog machine are reading at same level on the board, tape sounds louder. Loudness wars are about attempting to sound louder than other records mostly by compression and (digital) clipping, which is what tape is doing in comparison to digital without nasty digital distortion.
As long as you don’t peak over 0dB anywhere in the signal path there is no digital distortion.
And comparing a tape to Pro Tools - well you would have to add some form of compression/saturation to the digital side to be a fair test, as the analogue tape is quite probably being driven into saturation, even though the meters read the same level (and you would need to use PPMs not VUs to properly ascertain this).
Unfiltered37, I agree with you on most of the points, but I would like to point out a few things.
Point number 5: “..until the the harshness of digital music makes your ears tired.”
I mostly agree here but, to me, it’s not so much the harshness, but rather the extreme fidelity each time you listen to it. It will never change, it will sound exactly the same, each and every time you play it. And our ears get tired and finds it dull and repetitive. Our brain is an expert system at analyzing and recognizing patterns, and likes to always receive new information. Be it the wow and flutter, or noise, or slight distortion of analog recordings. That’s why vinyl records will always surpass compact discs, or digital, because each time they’re played, they play differently from the last time and our brain really enjoys that.
Point 7: Loudness war. Here I disagree completely with this. It’s a question of how efficient can an audio limiter be ? And that is being done ad nauseam, digitally or otherwise, to try to get an impressive sound. Which is destroying any type of nuance in the music. And has nothing to do with the properties of only analog tapes. If anything, digital media, with its vastly superior dynamic range, is much more suited to get the loudest sound possible before distorting. In this case, I strongly disagree with scientific studies that louder is better. Have they surveyed people who only listened to heavy metal music or what ? Have they ever heard of classical music ? Can’t have a loudness war there, because what would be the point ?
I agree on all the rest.
Yeah but almost every song at least in pop today, they are clipping the digital equipment to sound louder. It works, but talk about ear fatigue. As far as pro tools, the point is that one medium is louder than the other even without saturation, putting compression on the digital track defeats the premise of my point.
I can assure you no-one is clipping anything in the digital domain to make it sound louder - unless they’re a complete numpty. No pro mastering engineer would clip any digital signal above 0dB. The top places use nice analogue kit to achieve the limiting we’re seeing, so it’s not an issue of digital/analogue at all.
Loudness is not better - dynamics is better. Which as mentioned the digitally recorded classical world (which is very fussy about sound) seem happy with.
Oh, and I always hated wow and flutter except on Mellotrons and Space Echoes.
No I wasn’t referring to tape as part of the loudness war, I was just pointing out that tape sounds louder and used the loudness war as an example of why “louder” means “better”. I am not talking about pop songs or anything in particular, just that it has been proven that when someone hears two identical pieces of music, increasing the volume by any perceivable amount, the listener will choose the louder version as “better” or more pleasing. There’s a lecture by Bob Clearmountain I think on youtube, where he talk about getting new A/D converters and upon hearing them in action, he said they sounded clearer, wider, more dynamic, like night and day compared to the old ones. Then he found out that the box was calibrated a fraction of a DB higher than the old one, adjusted it, and lost all of the qualities in comparison.
No, it is happening, you wouldn’t believe it, but there are already lots of pop songs that are clipped to brim. I will find the lecture I referred to earlier on youtube. I think he referenced one song by Ricky Martin, and subtracted all of the noise/digital clipping from the signal, and played it back by itself. It was pure nasty digital distortion.
Loudness is better, as a point of psychology. I agree dynamics are a great thing and being destroyed by modern music, but loudness is better to the human ear in general.
Ricky Martin would not be my barometer of high end. 
I didn’t say it was high end, but I’m sure they had a huge budget. No matter if you use analog gear to master or not, they still have to have a digital stage, and the loudness war is forcing digital distortion, which probably will get worse.
Some might like it louder, but certainly not everyone. And certainly not me. I vastly prefer wide dynamic range, rather than uniformity. I want to get pleasantly surprised by music, not being constantly overwhelmed by it.
Loudness wars are probably responsible for ear fatigue also, digital or not. It’s like the never-ending, over-use of autotune for singers in pop songs. When will it end ?
Music recording techniques are as subjective as analog synths themselves. What’s good for someone might not be for others, and vice-versa.