"James Price" wrote in message
. ..
I find it unendingly hilarious that people who haven't used tape work so
hard to emulate the very problems and defects we tried so hard to avoid
when
using tape for recording, back in the day when that was all that was
available. Do you really think that the reason we got nice results
(sometimes) was *because* of the defects, rather than in spite of them?

So you're saying there's no truth to these stories you hear about this or
that engineer making use of tape saturation as an effect? I thought at
lower
levels, tape saturation was actually something desirable by quite a few.
So,
regardless the level, tape saturation is typically unwanted?

Most of the time, in the old days, engineers tried to run the tape in the
clean region. It wasn't until pretty late in the analog era that people
began using tape saturation as a special effect on things like drums.
Saturation was something we all had to live with, but we tried to minimize
its effects when possible -- and I think most of the folks working in analog
up to the 1980s worked that way. A few exceptions -- George Martin would try
anything at least twice, for example, when working with the Beatles. But
mostly, engineers worked clean, or as clean as the tape would let them.

Peace,
Paul