What if Digital Never Happened

Came across this a couple years ago and found it cleaning out some digital folders on my computer. Analog meant big and my stereo still represents big.

Digital audio forever disrupted the way music is recorded, mixed, and mastered and, to even greater extents, how music is distributed, sold, played, and consumed. Music unmolested by zeros and ones is now nearly extinct.

There's no going back, but what if, in 1983, the Compact Disc had bombed? What if music lovers worldwide had rejected the shiny new digital format because they thought LPs sounded so much better? And what if later attempts at digital formats with higher resolutions also shriveled and died, due to lack of interest by recording engineers and consumers? What if, to this day, music had remained blissfully all-analog?

The digital juggernaut laid waste to much of what had been that all analog world. Thanks to file sharing and streaming, recording production budgets are in free fall. It's no wonder we've already lost so many great studios: The Hit Factory, the Magic Shop, Record Plant NYC, RCA/BMG New York and Nashville, A&R Recording, Sony Music Studios all replaced by MacBooks and home studios. The remaining big studios with great-sounding rooms should be placed on the list of endangered species. The engineering knowhow that once passed from one generation to the next is fast being lost. I blame digital.

How much better might LPs sound today had analog technologies of recording, mixing, and mastering continued to advance? Who knows? Had digital been a nonstarter, the 300,000,000 folks (!) who bought Apple iPods might instead have bought 300,000,000 turntables and cartridges. Omigod with economies of scale, turntable design might have progressed so far that today's budget Pro-Ject turntables would sound like Döhmann models, and affordable cartridges surpass even the best Lyras.

Had the major record labels not pissed away the 1980s and 1990s by reselling their massively more profitable (zero recording costs) back catalogs on CD at artificially high prices that ignored the usual price lowering factors of ease of manufacturing and far lower volumes of returns for defects, might they have developed a lot more new talent? In short: Would music now be better off had digital never happened?

There's no way to know, but we can look back and see that pre-digital recording was simpler, with less of a fix-it-in-the-mix approach by engineers and bands. How much more solvent might the major and indie labels not to mention musicians be today were their music not streamed for free on YouTube, Pandora, or Spotify, or offered in low-cost subscriptions? After all, in our 21st-century digital dystopia, most bands see recorded music as loss leaders, promotions for gigs. And, last but not least had digital never happened, would we still have vast numbers of bricks-and-mortar stores selling new LPs?

Thanks to streaming, we can now hear more music than ever, but so much of that music is over-compressed and mixed to sound "right" in the car, or through earbuds while listening outdoors, or in trains, planes, and buses. The Loudness Wars, which have been so incredibly destructive to the sound of music, might never have happened had music remained analog and more people still sat down to listen at home. We might even have had time to read album liner notes. Remember liner notes? Another casualty of digital.

Digital is so dominant that few of today's young non-audiophiles, even those who buy LPs, have ever heard pure analog music. Most new vinyl is actually DDA or DAA i.e. recorded and/or mixed in the digital domain, because it's faster and cheaper to do so. Even the new stereo remix of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was done [gasp] digitally.

I asked my question of composer and big-band leader Maria Schneider: "What if digital had never happened?"

Her reply: "People would be listening more thoughtfully to music, as they wouldn't be gorging on an all-you-can-eat buffet of 'content' shoved in their face every morning, noon, and night. We'd all have a little more space in our lives for imaginations to flourish, because Internet companies wouldn't constantly be pushing ads at us and sucking us dry for information. We'd have a little peace and quiet again, and in between, we could all just go back to complaining about record companies. Ah, the good old days! I miss them."

Neal Sugarman, cofounder of Brooklyn's premier soul and R&B label, Daptone Records, had these answers to my question: "First thing that comes to mind would be that the Dap-Kings and others in the Daptone universe would possibly be rich. I still believe [that] listening to music in a physical format that people have invested time and money into makes it so much more likely that people would really listen to the whole album. If more people were purchasing records, that would bring in far more income to the artist and record label, so everyone would be earning more money, which might inspire more great records."

Amen!

John Schaefer, host of WNYC Radio's New Sounds program, took the opposite view: "Seems to me that digital had a leveling effect on the music industry. So if the industry [had] stayed analog, it would be hard to imagine the indie scene thriving the way it has. Even more, digital has meant easy access to all the music that's come before. A generation that thinks nothing of having Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Adele, Dick Dale, and Thelonious Monk on its playlists would probably be a lot more monochromatic in its sensibilities."

As it stands, digital audio has virtually obliterated analog as a recording medium. It's a done deal but billions of all analog LPs are still in circulation, and at home I have my share of them to play with my audio system: SME Model 15 turntable, Koetsu Urushi Sky Blue cartridge, and Parasound Halo JC 3+ phono preamplifier. I'm still not sure how or why, but for me, a stylus tracing a groove brings music back to life more completely than does even the very best DAC processing zeros and ones. It's a magic trick that never gets old.

If digital had never happened...

1) This month's Stereophile would be featuring a review of the 84,000-dollar Nakamichi 1000 mark IX.

2) Cassettes would still rule the waves. (We would be wishing for something like digital to be invented.)

3) Sony would have moved on from Elcaset to Emcaset, Encaset, etc. We might be up to 'Ewcaset' by now.

4) The Betamax/VHS war would still be going on. (Or, Sony would have invented other failed tape mediums by now.)

5) Records would still be pressed on 80-gram vinyl.

6) Thousands of basement dwelling Everquest addicts would instead be working in record and comic shops treating us in condescending fashion.

7) BSR would still be selling two thirds of the world's turntables.

8) We wouldn't be online having this discussion!

9) For hip vintage music source fads, we'd have to be talking 8-tracks or 78's instead of LP. Hipsters would be buying 200-gram shellacs and talking about the dynamics of Rudy Vallee box set releases.

10) Maxell, Kodak, TDK, 3M, Wollensack, Akai, Nakamichi, BASF, Revox, Dokoder, and Tandberg would still be jammin'!!!

11) There would be no Pro-Ject, Döhmann, Lyra, etc. The market would not be niche enough.

12) I would be stuck listening about how Jesus saves instead of listening to music on Sirius on trips through rural areas.

13) We would still all be trying to be caller number three to win concert tickets!

14) We'd still be able to buy record changers.

15) We'd have great arguments about storing tapes in 'played' or 'rewound' status.

16) We'd actually have something that does improve with demagnetization.

17) Kal would be writing about Music in the Round and telling us CD-4 still beats SQ or QS.

18) No digital no computer aided design....that might be better!

By Steve Guttenberg

 

Similar story about our reliance on computers:

I used to work for a very large engineering company that designed and built complex machines. They had some pretty serious design flaws in some products in the field and the root cause were errors made in the engineering and analysis of some parts of the design. They concluded that engineers were too reliant on computer analysis codes and didn’t understand some fundamental engineering and design principles.

So one day the VP of engineering gave every engineer a regular old fashioned wooden pencil to remind them to get back to basic fundamentals.

The digital age is great and brought a lot of great benefits - but we’ve also become too reliant on computers and digital technology in some respects too.

 

Even tho digital has killed analog for it's convenience, something to remember is vinyl NEVER went away. For years the vinyl market existed more in the underground and audiophiles but was always there. Now, you can buy records at fucking Walmart which is crazy. I think my local Walmart now has more vinyl than CDs. It's predicted vinyl will overtake CDs sales in the very near future. CDs at this point are a nearly dead format.
I've collected vinyl on and off for around 15+ years now, it's probably been over a decade since I bought a CD. But I usually buy a couple LPs every month.

Also, I get that the article is mostly about the recording of music, rather then the format. But I think the fact that vinyl never died speaks that analog will always have a place in the world.
Nothing beats Spotify as far as convenience, but Spotify will never sounds like a slab of wax on a turntable.

 

ENIAC where are you??

 

an interesting read on this is 'how music works' by david byrne.

 

I Design/Sell/Install and service Custom AV and have since before there was any V in the world.
Long before there was Digital from a practical perspective but I do remember pretty vividly when Digital Recording was pioneered by Denon using Video Tape as the Storage Medium and we all had "Digital Masters" in the store to be able to Demo the crazy new concept of "Perfect & Flawless" recording and playback.

Now my Nephew who is Graduating from College next Week, from Home and then going directly to work for Apple thinks that the best sound that he has ever heard comes from his fucking iPhone speakers.....really.

I have installed some insane systems over the years and my favorites are always those most faithful to the "Absolute Sound" as that was my upbringing and still the magic and elusive grail of system design but I will tell you that my bread and butter is barely Mid-Fi at best. Really expensive and complex Mid-Fi for sure but still crap sound,not that it really matters much to those who I sell it to.

I think my favorite story about perspective here is when I got a call from a major High End Speaker Maker who of course is no longer with us about a call they had gotten from the Conductor of a Symphony Orchestra near me of some renown who was interested in an upgrade to his personal playback system in his office at the Symphony Hall.
I made the appointment and went all prepared to tell him that anything he had in mind was on the table and all would be comped as the manufacturers all just wanted to claim that he used their gear to playback his music and that I could see all custom handmade speakers and cables and electronics.etc. and what he said to me was this.........

"Can I play my Nintendo through it?"

He went on to say that no one else would do this for him though he has asked a few others to make a system that he could Game through but thats all he really wanted in the end.

Naturally I was incredulous and he explained simply that if he wanted to listen to music then why would he listen to reproduced music?

He paid a hundred of the best musicians in the world to play live for him every day.
He Masters Records for Telarc into Lacquer in the Basement Studio under the main stage and that system sounds like shit as does ALL reproduced music so what use does he really have for that aside from listening to design and annotate his own scores for him to Conduct Live later on?

He already had a great system in the office for that and he just wanted to play his Games through it,thats all!

So I connected his Nintendo,showed him a few tricks about the system that he never knew about and then we went downstairs to listen to some Telarc Masters on his insane playback system in the basement that was setup by Telarc for him and then I hung around and he played the same thing Live that afternoon with the full Orchestra and he asked me what I thought?

Like my Logic Professor used to say in College "It is so simple,It is ALL in your point of view!" and he was right,it is.

 

I believe Vinyl did finally out sell CDs in 2019.

 

As long as we speak analog will survive.

Doesn't surprise me that vinyl will out sell CD soon, you can download music in the digital format so easy. As much as I love to play cassettes on my Nakamichi the small format and ease of use of digital while mobile is awesome.

 

I have not bought recorded music in so many years that I did not know vinyl was making a comeback. I have a good collection of vinyl from my younger years that I enjoy playing as well as a tall stack of CDs that I used to use in my vehicles, but these days I listen to Pandora or Sirius/XM more than anything else just because it is convenient and offers almost any style of music anyone could want. I preferred CDs over vinyl because I could play a full album without getting up to flip the record over, and because CDs are a lot more tolerant of rough handling. So, for me, although I agree that nothing beats a live performance, digital works just fine for every day listening.

 

Thumb drives, you can load a bunch of music on them. I've got around 6000 songs on the thumb drive in my truck.

 

57 years old, I went through those changes both as a hobbyist and as a employee in the industry, I watched the rebirth of vinyl some 15 or so years ago That started with A small manufacturer in the Midwest and wondered where it would go, but must confess I love and prefer CDs however the best reproduced recording I every heard was Dire Straits live on vinyl replayed through home speakers that were manufactured in the late 70’s that I could not afford if I wanted to! Without a doubt vinyl is best, the changes that happened in Digital and sound reproduction in the early 80’s were something to watch

 

My 15 year old daughter asks for new vinyl all the time. I’ve never heard her ask for a cd. Raise em right I still have 3 technic 1200 turntables in the house and I will never sell them.

 

I have a 1957 stromberg carlson sitting in my garage (not allowed in the house due to appearance). It’s 100 watts of pure mono bliss. I ditched the oem turntable because it was all gummed up and needles are next to impossible to come by. It’s the warmest and best sounding way I’ve ever listened to music. Even FM sounds better on it. And if you’re in SoCal and need someone to fix up your tube amp; go to lone wolf tube amps. The guy, Lyle, makes tube guitar amps from scratch but will work on your vintage home audio receiver as he has an appreciation for them. The guy knows his stuff and is worth the drive.

 

Similar story to this. My dad was the head town engineer and working with a guy who reported into him to flip a building 90 degrees in CAD. The guy said “no problem” and flipped it in a couple minutes. My dad said “great, now can you prove those measurements are correct with math” (pointing to the setback from the street and such). The guy couldn’t do it.

 

Time for some pix now:


My Cerwin-Vegas Model S1 'Bookshelf' speakers (late 70s), they've been refoamed I think twice. People either love or hate CV.


ADC SS-412X Equalizer (mid 80s)
Yamaha RX-V1050 Receiver (early 90s)
Sangean HDT1 HD Tuner (early teens)
Yamaha CDC-697 CD Player (early teens)
Nakamichi RX-505 Cassette Player (mid 80s)
Also on top of the you can barely make out a digital media player that I can play thumb drives loaded with music.

Oh, I've got a 30" flatscreen analog TV in the cabinet, it just won't quit and I can't see getting rid of it. We do have a HD upstairs though.

 

I worked at a record store in the late 70's - early 80's and sold truck loads of vinyl recordings as well as a good bit of cassette tapes & reel to reel. I never got into the equipment side of the business because I was too busy spending my money on muscle cars, but I have a great appreciation for the analog sound. I still have a couple receivers and turntables, and I love how analog sounds when there is a sub woofer in the mix, especially when I am spinning Dire Straights.

 

in the mid to late 80's my father had been ceo of cerwin vega. best. speakers. ever.

 

I am a recording engineer/mixer and am so glad I don't have to cut tape. Although, I would make a lot more money since it's so much slower to work with. Records have made a comeback, and believe it or not cassettes have a small following as well.