On 08/02/2015 03:27, Rick Ruskin wrote:
On 7 Feb 2015 20:43:50 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
JackA wrote:
snip.............
The first digital pop stuff was almost entirely multitracked... and really
digital recording (in the form of the horrible 3M, Mitsubishi, and DASH
machines didn't take off in the pop world at all.
Why were these machines horrible? Bad sound? Unreliable? Cost?
All of the above.
In the pop world, there was really no reason to go the digital route, and
while a few folks used it, analogue production remained popular even decades
after the classical guys had all gone digital.
snip
No reason? Kindly explain.
There was a workflow in place when recording and editing popular music
that took a while to change. There was also a lot of money invested in
analogue equipment that worked very well indeed. The workflow for
classical music is much simpler, and there is less equipment involved.
The digital equipment quality took a while to get to the point where it
was worth making the effort to change for the pop guys. Just one
example, in the early days of digital, the early computers available
couldn't render plugins and effects in real time, so you had to record,
then apply the plugins, then you could mix down, and any changes in the
settings had to be applied off line before you had another go at the
mix. In analogue, this all happened in real time, and initially, at
least, in better quality. One random example to show how things have
changed is that in the early '90s, the average home PC took about twice
the playing time to convert a file from .wav format to .mp3. Now, even
the slowest PC in my collection can convert a 2 minute track in a few
seconds.
--
Tciao for Now!
John.