Lady GaGa is making news with her latest album, just released. Oops, I mean “dropped.” Some of the new songs were recorded on analog equipment, on tape, as it was done way back when, before the 1s and 0s of digital recording took over in the nineteen-nineties. Digital recording has the advantage that a song can be pieced together from numerous takes, a few seconds from here, a section from there. The off-key parts, whether vocal or instrumental, can be corrected with a bit of digital wizardry called Auto-Tune.
Analog recording requires that a song be performed all the way through. Splicing pieces together means literally cutting the recording tape and taping it to another section.
Critics of compact discs claim the digital process results in a cold and sterile sound, as opposed to the fullness and warmth of sound reproduced by grooves cut into a vinyl disc, scratches and pops included. The demand for vinyl has kept alive record stores in the
face of declining CD sales, victims of digital downloading. Serious audiophiles take it further, playing their vinyl discs through amplifiers powered by no-longer-obsolete vacuum tubes. The old-style equipment does not come cheap, either.
More young artists are recording the old way, convinced that it results in a better product. Jack White’s Third Man Records is making its name with direct-to-vinyl recordings.
You still have your old turntable, don’t you?
