Analog a dying breed

I don't have a crystal ball so I don't know. But....

1. Redbook CD's will likely be reduced to a niche market prior to vinyls demise or, not be produced at all because of copyright protection. Still, Redbook will be a huge niche market and catered to, thank you.

2. Digital is in its infancy. Most likely every device and format currently in production will disappear to be replaced by machines and software with no moving parts. Again, all this current technology will be catered to in a niche market.

3. Money rules. Wherever there is a market there will be suppliers.

Your dealers comments may reflect the direction he hopes the market will go. Digital? Plug and play. Great analog? Now, this takes some work. I think he might just be lazy.

I'm certain he also realizes that digital playback will continue to evolve which will offer him opportunities to replace previous devices repeatedly throughout a customers life. IMHO, he's forcasting a major f*#@^$g of the high end consumer.

In the end I don't know and I'm beginning to not care. Just being an analog guy brings insults from certain members for no intellectual reason. I'm happy that as long as software is produced from carbon based material and rotates at either 33 1/3 or 45 rpm I will continue to be forward compatible. I'm already backwards compatable for over 1/2 a century.

Thanks for the crystal ball, Lugnut. :-)

Is anybody bothered by the fact that as far as new music is concerned the percentage of pure analog recordings is getting smaller and smaller. Even if the basic tracks are recorded on analog tape, the subsequent editing and some mixing is nearly always done digitally. The last Steely Dan recording, "Everything Must Go" is a good example. The basic tracks were recorded an 2" analog tape, but there was extensive editing with ProTools. The recent Ron Isley/Burt Bacharach "Here I Am" says it was recorded live at Capitol studios (on tape), but the production credits list a ProTools operator. I love vinyl, but the writing is on the wall.

Onhwy61,

Yeah, I can agree somewhat. The difference is that when using ProTools the sampling rate is off the chart. Now, if they could place that information on a shiny little disk they would have something. But no, they must have multiple layers/channels rather than offering a single higher resolution two channel format. Steely Dan, being as highly produced as they are, is one group that benefits from the exactness of digital editing. Neil Young abandoned using digital editing because it allowed the process to be taken too far (in his opinion) and therefore sucking the life out of the end result. Don't get mad at me. It's his opinion.

Lugnut, there are many versions and configurations of ProTools and they can run at sampling rates from 44kHz up to 192kHz. The earlier systems were 16 bit and generally were considered quite poor sounding. Newer systems are 24 bit and sound somewhat better. Still there has been a lively debate among engineers as to whether the internal PtoTools mix channels squash the sound quality of audio run through it. Many people actually edit within ProTools and then output to an analog desk for the actual mixing. Even with the added conversion stage(s) these people think the final mixes sound better than those done internally within ProTools.

Here's a link to a discussion forum hosted by George Massenburg about the negative effects of ProTools style manipulation on the quality of music prodction.

Sorry if I've gotten off topic.