In recent years, the number of companies manufacturing analog recorders has dwindled to practically nothing, and now with the sudden close of Quantegy, a major supplier of tape, could it spell the death of analog?

It may seem like analog recording's days are numbered. Those numbers are ONES and ZEROS.

The long-running debate over which is better for recording: analog or digital (my opinion: analog sounds better, digital is capable of minor miracles. Both hold a place in my heart) seems like it's becoming moot. Many engineers have been desparately clinging onto their analog machines and have been kicking and screaming against the path of "progress": digital recording.

I will say that to my ears, a better sounding record hasn't been made in over thirty years. All the progress of the 70's and 80's recording technology boom of gazillion tracks and instant simulations of famous reverbs still sounds no better than "Penny Lane." I'd be shocked if anything ever does (though I'm still waiting for Smellovision!)

But as time has passed, the relatively small market for analog recording has dwindled and dwindled due to many factors. The main one I can see is the economy. Analog can be expensive. Expensive to buy the machines, expensive to buy the tape, expensive to repair and maintain the machines (all those moving parts and stuff to wear out!) not to mention that the machines as well as tape storage can take up a lot of room! On the other hand newer digital recording systems can be computer-based (and who doesn't already have a computer? Cost cut right there!), can provide you with virtually unlimited recording time and track count (depending on your hard drive space...and I just bought a 200Gb drive for $99). Digital is very convenient and allows you to visually edit tracks instantly.

Digital technology is also responsible for mostly everything that totally sucks about modern music as well.

Well, let me take that back. The opportunities that digital affords today's engineers and producers, and the fact that many folks just can't keep their mitts off of the mouse and have gotten so lazy because they know they can "fix it in the mix." They actually think they can turn SHIT into a HIT by erasing the S.

Truth be told, they have. I won't go too deep into the state of modern music, but the fact that Ashlee Simpson sells more records than American Music Club is proof of the above point. The Beatles were such an anamoly in my eyes. They were incredibly popular and successful AND just happened to be completely brilliant.

So here we are lamenting the (possibly and hopefully temporary) loss of a major supplier of tape: the lifeblood of analog recording. We might be looking at a pivotal moment in recording history. You can't put the brakes on time.

I'm personally caught in between with a lot of people. I love analog. I started on it many years ago. I love what it does to sounds. It is obvious. It may be better, it may be worse, but it's certainly different. It's like a living thing somehow. It takes what you give it and it gives you something else back. "Here, I think you'll like it better now..." After not working on an analog deck for awhile, I will thread a deck (it's like riding a bike - you never forget how to thread a reel onto a machine!) and hit fast-forward and soon smell the familiar scent of mylar and iron particles flying across the machine. I'm sure many other engineers know exactly what I'm talking about.

I am also firmly planted in the world of digital recording. I've been using DAT machines to mix to since the early 90s. That was the innocent start of it all. In the mid-90s I got my first taste of computer-based recording when I started mixing to a Mac with Sound Designer on it. Immediately, I was amazed at how easy it was to do edits and clean up pops and clicks. Being able to visually see the waveform - "oh, here's that snare hit.... those are the four clicks in the intro. Do you want to get rid of those?" was mind-blowing. Suddenly one could "see" the music.

Soon I was working with ADAT machines and then Protools and then Radar and the newest in ADAT technology: the Alesis HD-24 hard-disk recorder. With each system, I learn what it does, what it doesn't do, and I just make it work for me, no matter what.

I've been doing this for a relatively long time, starting as a professional engineer when I was 19. That was almost fifteen years ago and a lot has changed. Chances are that if I were a teenager today and started to learn recording, I would never touch an analog machine. Young engineers today already have a background in computers, so learning to use the interface with a recording program is just like learning to use Photoshop or Quicken. (You can compare software-based recording to software based photo and art manipulation. Almost anyone can design a flyer on a computer, but how many people understand Typesetting and Typography? Anyone can brighten and enhance a photo with Photoshop but how many truly know how to take a good photograph?)

So that fact has almost guaranteed that analog's future is in jeopardy. It may sound better. It may be a more reliable medium. It may be more "musical." Still, while some serious young recording engineers might lust after a 2" tape machine, some financially struggling large-room studios are looking at the clothes-dryer-sized paperweight in the corner that never gets used anymore as a liability...an albatross...an antique.

So it's possible that folks like me might someday be lucky enough to get a good deal on an old Studer 24-track from the Hit Factory, and we'll be like mad scientists, aligning and biasing and tweaking them like a precious vintage MG. And it's those studios who have an antique analog machine and a stockpile of once-used tape reels they bought off Ebay that will become boutique. Like visiting the crazy old kook with a wall of Moog synth modules patched together with vein-like cables making all sorts of bubbling bleeps and bloops. It's a wonderful thing to behold.

Then you go home and boot up your virtual Moog or call up the "Lucky Man" patch on your Triton and say "it's close enough." Then you just make some music.