Friday, April 01, 2005

Analogue, Digital Fatigue

I guess I'm part of a dying breed who is still using a tape recorder, as opposed to a digital one. Although I'll probably get a digital recorder, in order to make it easier to post tunes here, once the financial situation improves. I bought one of those little Tascam 4-track Portastudios a couple years back, and that's what I'm still using. So I'll have to have the demos converted somehow, or go to someone who can help me record new versions on digital.

I also got a turntable a couple years back and started buying some vinyl. To my ears, there is definitely a depth and warmth to the vinyl that isn't there with cds. I think it's because those records, mostly older used ones, were analogue recordings. The proprietor of Stan's Records in Lancaster told me about something called "digital fatigue", and swore that digital recordings, and even recordings later than the early '60s(something to do with transistors) lacked something that those earlier analogue recordings had. I did a search for "digital fatigue" on Google and found this article by an MD who says that digital music doesn't have the therapeutic effect that analogue does. Then there's a more technical discussion here.
It sort of makes sense to me, that if you break music down into ones and zeros, something is going to be lost. I don't know.

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