Physical media is dead.

[harls]

Steve Birchall: Why did you convert your studio to a digital facility? What creative possibilities did digital recording offer that analog technology couldn't give you?

Frank Zappa: It's made a big difference in terms of what we can get on tape and how fast. You can do sounds on digital that you can't on analog. The sound is clear, and the dynamic range is ridiculous. Little things like that make all the difference in the world.

Steve Birchall: Do you like the expanded dynamic range? Have you found ways to make use of it creatively?

Frank Zappa: We don't compress the material; we leave the dynamic range wide open and usually worry about it when we put it on disc. If you compress everything just because you're putting it on vinyl, then you eventually wind up cheating the audience who buy it on CD.

The largest reason why vinyl sounds better then a cd is the way they are mastered. All to often engineers see the headroom available on a cd and compress the shit out of it to make it louder. Vinyl never had that option as it has the physical limitations.

[The Ref]

The largest reason why vinyl sounds better then a cd is the way they are mastered. All to often engineers see the headroom available on a cd and compress the shit out of it to make it louder. Vinyl never had that option as it has the physical limitations.

As the resident pro recording engineer, trust me, engineers had nothing to do with that. It was the record labels. Engineers prefer using compression tastefully and sparingly to control unwieldy performance.

The advantage of digital has always been dynamic range. But digital technology was birthed and grew up when radio play and record sales was still relevant. The over limiting (not just compression, but brick wall limiting) jumped the shark in the 90's.

If your track wasn't maxed to zero and it was played on radio right after a track that was, your music sounded tiny and small in comparison. Labels wanted none of that. Before long, it was industry standard to squash the hell out of everything. Never recovered.

Analog recording, especially vinyl, is distortion. Pleasant distortion. That's where the warmth and apparent life comes from. People call it saturation, but it's in fact tiny distortion. And it's fucking great! Softens the edges like magic. There are digital emulators for this but it's not the same.

I jumped on the digital bandwagon right from the get in the late 80's. Never looked back really, because Zappa is right. There are things you can do with digital that you can't with analog, even if it sounds colder.

But if digital recordings weren't over compressed it would sound so much better. Problem is, you would need to listen in a relatively quiet environment. eg, If you were driving while listening to uncompressed recordings, the road noise would be irritating, drowning out softer passages. You'd be constantly adjusting the volume.

[harls]

As the resident pro recording engineer, trust me, engineers had nothing to do with that. It was the record labels. Engineers prefer using compression tastefully and sparingly to control unwieldy performance.

The advantage of digital has always been dynamic range. But digital technology was birthed and grew up when radio play and record sales was still relevant. The over limiting (not just compression, but brick wall limiting) jumped the shark in the 90's.

If your track wasn't maxed to zero and it was played on radio right after a track that was, your music sounded tiny and small in comparison. Labels wanted none of that. Before long, it was industry standard to squash the hell out of everything. Never recovered.

Analog recording, especially vinyl, is distortion. Pleasant distortion. That's where the warmth and apparent life comes from. People call it saturation, but it's in fact tiny distortion. And it's fucking great! Softens the edges like magic. There are digital emulators for this but it's not the same.

I jumped on the digital bandwagon right from the get in the late 80's. Never looked back really, because Zappa is right. There are things you can do with digital that you can't with analog, even if it sounds colder.

But if digital recordings weren't over compressed it would sound so much better. Problem is, you would need to listen in a relatively quiet environment. eg, If you were driving while listening to uncompressed recordings, the road noise would be irritating, drowning out softer passages. You'd be constantly adjusting the volume.

Oh I agree. The reason the engineers do it is to get work. I cant say I blame the engineers either.

One of the things that gets overlooked all to.often is you do not need to stick with one of the other. We record and in the mastering process will bounce it to.a tape.machine for the warmth that it adds.