What if digital had never happened

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Giacomo Belbo, Sep 12, 2017.

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  1. Giacomo Belbo

    Giacomo Belbo Journalist for Rolling Stone 1976-1979 Thread Starter

  2. Bubbamike

    Bubbamike Forum Resident

    Old man whinging about life passing him by. Hogwash
    from Old Steve.
     
    crooner, Dinstun, basie-fan and 8 others like this.
  3. TheVU

    TheVU Forum Resident

    I think we're going to tip back toward Analog, and I believe the companies responsible will be the oil companies.

    Eventually oil/gasoline will be gone/outlawed for transportation and other industries.

    Film and tape will return as the only means of selling their product. Either we run out of copper, lithium, silicone, or oil.

    I think film will return. Along with new magnetic technologies.
     
  4. Giacomo Belbo

    Giacomo Belbo Journalist for Rolling Stone 1976-1979 Thread Starter

    What if cars never existed and we could ride horses every day? ;-)
     
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  5. OnTheRoad

    OnTheRoad Not of this world

    For me...dunno.

    Back in late '83 I sold off my vinyl collection to do some extensive travel with an unknown 'return' time table. I had a few cassettes I took with me but had jettisoned my music collection. I can hardly believe it now as I've recollected and bought anew....thousands of cd's....and just don't know if I'd have done that...buying anew and recollecting all the vinyl albums I had. I spose I started getting cd's about 2 years after my mass sell off as I was fascinated with them and, of course, my love of music.

    But to have started over again with records, turntables etc.....I dunno.

    So really....as it were, digital renewed my active love for music and the gathering of physical product....NOT downloads and only files.

    Funny too, in that article, how one person was saying how people would be listening to music today, like days of yore, attentively and full album sides etc....

    Well, I do that with my cd's. Nothing for me changed, just the format.
     
  6. detroit muscle

    detroit muscle MIA

    Location:
    UK
    People always conveniently forget that when CD's came in cassette tapes were selling more than vinyl.
     
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  7. Schoolmaster Bones

    Schoolmaster Bones Poe's Lawyer

    Location:
    ‎The Midwest
    Spoiler alert: it's a Stereophile article by Steve Gutenberg.
     
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  8. Balthazar

    Balthazar Forum Resident

  9. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    This article has such a "get off my lawn" vibe. Also The loudness war has been going on since long before digital existed.

    No.
     
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  10. Daily Nightly

    Daily Nightly Well-Known Member

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    Forays into digital/PCM audio recording were well on their way by 1971...so, it was *bound* to find its way to the consumer marketplace eventually (which, in the MAJORITY of the C.E. "world": was always about CONVENIENCE and DOWNSIZING...that got rid of tubes; reel to reel; mainstream floorstander-size speakers; and records).
     
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  11. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    I read that yesterday while sitting on my throne. Can't remember reading an As We See It column and thinking, "what a waste of ink," every other paragraph. What's the point?

    I remember buying the Ry Cooder album, Bob Til You Drop, referenced in the article when it was releaesed. I thought it sounded clean and dynamic as heck in comparison to some other albums of the time. And yes, I'm sure I attributed the new recording format for it.
     
  12. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    This article has such a "get off my lawn" vibe. Also The loudness war has been going on since long before digital existed.

    No.

    Good thing we have digital technology so no ink was actually wasted
     
  13. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    Well I was reading the analog version.;)
     
  14. Otlset

    Otlset I think I am I think

    Location:
    Temecula, CA
    It would take the most polarizing and contentious topic away from the forum members here who like to argue! :p
     
    timind likes this.
  15. Balthazar

    Balthazar Forum Resident

    I have the printed copy but the online one is better because of the first comment from someone named "Anton."

    Submitted by Anton on September 12, 2017 - 11:59am
     
  16. triple

    triple Senior Member

    Location:
    Zagreb, Croatia
    Actually, it's Bop Till You Drop:
    Bop Till You Drop - Ry Cooder | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic
     
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  17. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    timztunz likes this.
  18. Giacomo Belbo

    Giacomo Belbo Journalist for Rolling Stone 1976-1979 Thread Starter

    This is brilliant!
     
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  19. Pinknik

    Pinknik Senior Member

    In an old Mix magazine, Stephen St. Croix had an article about what if digital had happened first. If it had had all the time to mature, would anyone be so gung-ho to use this new format that is noisy, doesn't measure as well, and each successive copy sounds worse?

    Ah well, what happened is what happened.
     
  20. ZenArcher

    ZenArcher Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham, NC
    That's the stupidest thing he's ever written, IMO. I've liked some of his columns and reviews, but this...this...is just pandering to ignoramuses.
     
  21. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    Can't wait for rickets to come back either...!
     
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  22. TheVU

    TheVU Forum Resident

    [​IMG] No your Blueness!
     
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  23. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    "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."

    That's why I returned to listening to vinyl records (mostly) 20+ years ago.

    But I've wondered the same thing as the author through the years not as much about the user's end but the music recording and production end. In my experience many or most of the best engineered, best sounding recordings came precisely at the end of the line, the era just before digital, beginning somewhere around 1972 and peaking in the late 1970s. Lush yet detailed, powerful with the kinds of bass and drum impact that wowed everyone with early CDs, but reproducing far more lifelike air in voices and acoustic and wind instruments than I ever hear in digital. Whenever I listen to some '70s Art Garfunkel or Paul Simon, Paul Samwell-Smith produced Cat Stevens, Steely Dan, Steeler's Wheel from the second or third album, superstar era Fleetwood Mac, I wonder what could have been.

    Now I'm sure recordings of that SQ caliber are being made today (or at least I hope they are), somewhere. I don't think they're emerging out of the big hit genres like they were in those days, however, but maybe in jazz / classical / folk and various niche recordings that I'm not finding out about.
     
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  24. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    What if math never happened?

    Digital sampling is math. Digital audio exists because math discovered sampling theory and the other mathematical theories to make it all work.
     
    nosliw likes this.
  25. tootull

    tootull Looking through a glass onion

    Location:
    Canada
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