In article aOf9d.9621$x65.2094@trnddc06, Hev wrote:
"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

Takes me about 15 minutes to do a full alignment on the Ampex machines.
You gotta do it every week or so.

Then you have a standard tape you always use and the client always has to
use? Don't clients bring various tapes in, used at another studio for
example? You would have to set up the machine everytime that happened. Not
to mention the time of making a back-up of a master reel. Archaic.

Of course, but you still need to align equipment on a regular basis because
it drifts. And yes, whenever you change tape types or batches of tapes,
you need to spend 15 minutes and realign. The bad thing about analogue is
that it drifts... the good thing is that you can tell how it's drifting and
what is going on. With digital, it drifts but you never notice it until
finally all hell breaks loose.

This viewpoint of yours will lead to your demise.

Maybe, but I'm looking at the numbers and I'm still seeing better ROI on
the
analogue gear so far. Although I have to admit that the DA-88s have done
a
lot better than I ever expected in terms of investment.

I'm guessing what you have seen with the DA-88 will occur with higher end
digital before too long.

Maybe. It depends more on manufacturer support than anything else. When
you spend $50K for a console, you expect to keep it for a long time and
long-term support becomes a big issue. In the digital world, the equipment
cost is very low and the operating cost is very high, in part because the
life cycle on most of the gear is so short. I'm not seeing that change
right now, but Neve has some of the right ideas, and Sony's modular DSD
stuff looks interesting as well in terms of customizability and long-term
repairability.

PCs are a major issue because you basically can't expect to keep a PC running
for a decade with a static configuration. Take a look at what a typical
Pro Tools shop takes in terms of maintenance time to keep the system clean
and updated. On the other end of the scale, take a RADAR install which for
the most part seems to be pretty stable, but whose long-term maintainability
is somewhat questionable. It'll be exciting to see how these systems hold
up on a 15-year depreciation schedule. I'm watching the numbers to see.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."