What was the last big selling album recorded fully analogue?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Kiko1974, Jan 9, 2020.

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  1. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    I don't know if this belongs to the music forums or Audio Hardware but I'm posting it here anyway.
    I wonder what was the last big selling album to be fully recorded with analogue equipment, old school analogue, tracked to an analogue multitrack tape deck and mixed down on an analogue mixing board and the end mix recorded to a two track analogue tape deck.
    Some digital processing like echo, reverb or chorusing are acceptable as this were being used for over 35 years even when most studios were analogue.
    I'm sure it had to be around the mid to late 1990's but I have no idea what album recorded like that can be, and again, a big selling album,not some indie, classical or "esoteric" recording project.
    Thanks in advance for your replies.
     
    head_unit likes this.
  2. arem

    arem Forum Resident

    I believe the White Stripes Elephant is an all analog recording.
     
  3. IllinoisCheesehead

    IllinoisCheesehead Forum Resident

    Location:
    Illinois
    Found this thread from a couple years ago. While not current beyond 2017, it has some good info. I'm sure there are folks here who can speak to 2018/2019.

    Modern albums recorded on analog?
     
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  4. In the thread that you linked to, was a post that said "Paul Rodgers did Memphis studio tribute album a few years ago and did it in analogue. Consequently, and not surprisingly, it is one of the best sounding albums you can own". I just want to second that information. I don't have the vinyl, if there is vinyl, but the CD sounds amazing. In fact, I've got a good mind to pull it out and play it tonight (the CD, that is).
     
    Phil Thien likes this.
  5. csgreene

    csgreene Forum Resident

    Location:
    Idaho, USA
    Didn't The Foo Fighters do some albums on tape?
     
  6. Morbius

    Morbius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookline, MA
    Eric Clapton - I Still Do.
     
    Kiko1974 likes this.
  7. Dennis Metz

    Dennis Metz Born In A Motor City south of Detroit

    Location:
    Fonthill, Ontario
    Big selling?
     
    jusbe, 2trackmind, Tullman and 2 others like this.
  8. detroit muscle

    detroit muscle MIA

    Location:
    UK
    Well, I bought it. :wave:
     
  9. ls35a

    ls35a Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eagle, Idaho
    'Big selling albums'.... is that still a thing?
     
  10. Davey

    Davey NP: Vanishing Twin ~ Life Drummer (2024)

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    Went platinum in the US in 2013 with over 2.1 million sales according to the source on the wiki page.
     
  11. Dennis Metz

    Dennis Metz Born In A Motor City south of Detroit

    Location:
    Fonthill, Ontario
    That’s big. :edthumbs::cheers:
     
  12. vinylontubes

    vinylontubes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Katy, TX
    Yes. Grohl bought the Sound City sound board and recorded Wasting Light with it in his garage in Virginia before he moved the console to the new studio in California. The next album was recorded on the road in various studios, but I'm pretty sure the Concrete and Gold was recorded in the new studio.
     
  13. Pythonman

    Pythonman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Florida
    A coworker of mine recently visited the Prince Museum, or whatever it’s called. Anyhow the tour involves going through Princes state of the art recording studio where they had several analog tape machines and it was explained that Prince recorded everything in analog for the sound quality where a digital studio could have simplified his methods greatly.
     
  14. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Sold way more copies than Eric Clapton's I Still Do, that's for certain.
     
  15. Tom Littlefield

    Tom Littlefield Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire, USA
    Everything Jack White does is completely analog..
     
  16. Aftermath

    Aftermath Senior Member

    Went platinum in the U.S. as well (1 million)
     
  17. ltusler

    ltusler Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minneapolis
    Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
     
  18. misterdecibel

    misterdecibel Bulbous Also Tapered

    "Prince" and "sound quality" in the same sentence?
     
    Nathan Z and c-eling like this.
  19. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    That's one thing I always liked about Prince, that he never recorded an album digitally. I think not only Prince but also his Paisley Park studio had a benchmark sound. One of my all times favourite sounding recordings is Prince's Sign O' The Times.
     
    jusbe, BluTorch and bever70 like this.
  20. violarules

    violarules Senior Member

    Location:
    Baltimore, MD
    Love them, but seriously doubt they qualify as "big selling".
     
  21. violarules

    violarules Senior Member

    Location:
    Baltimore, MD
    Brandi Carlile - The Story (2007) was produced by T-Bone Burnett and recorded all-analog. Certified Gold. Not huge, but significant enough?
     
    muskrat likes this.
  22. deeluxdx7

    deeluxdx7 Forum Resident

    You may be surprised at how many "Big" records (Or big artists rather) use tape.

    Pretty much any Rock band, so the last Stones record, Blue and Lonesome that would be all analog until a digital master was created.

    I mean, I RECORD to tape. A lot of people do, there's really no comparison, and once you've done it digital recording will never ever be the same...it will NEVER satisfy you.

    I don't think we are very far away from a resurrection of the tape industry, new machines for fully professional use (Which are still made actually) and I'm expecting a large wave of prosumer tape decks to hit the market at any time.

    I think we are at most 3 years away from 8 and 16 track 1/2" and 1" pro-sumer reel to reels becoming available.

    Tape won't go away, wherever recording is done or discussed you find "Tape emulation" devices and plugins everywhere...If Tape was obsolete this wouldn't be happening, but it WILL NOT DIE, because it is NOT THE SAME THING as digital recording, and I'll go out on a limb and say that with this many attempts to re-create what it does, it is OBJECTIVELY BETTER than digital.

    Tape is on it's way back, mark my words, it's like analog synths, for years it was "Virtual analog" this and "Analog sounding that" Every new synth was judged on how close it sounded to analog.

    So, one-day KORG just said "F%^ IT!!" And started spitting out the Monotrons, Monotribes and Volcas......Now, in 2020 there is a MASSIVE industry grown up just in the last decade since analog was re-introduced to electronic instruments. The growth has been exponential.

    Tape's day is coming soon.
     
    wrat, dom91932, Mark L. and 15 others like this.
  23. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Amen to that. Whoever created this world hears you and does it soon.
    I like analogue, I like the sound of analogue master recordings and I love the sound of LP records.
    I recently received a new La La Land release of the complete Stargate soundtrack as a 2-CD set. That's a full digital recording from 1994 that always amazed me on its two previous releases, the original 1994 CD and the Expanded Varese Sarabande 2006 CD as sounded so UNdigital, the only thing that revealed its true nature was it's low noise and its high dinamic range.
    All of a sudden this new La La Land 2-CD set is released in December 2019 and this new edition shouts out loud PCM 3324/3348 !!! I can't dislike more the sound of this release, this is the kind of digital sound I've always dispised. Terrible sounding recording that uses the actual film mixes (unlike many La La Land Records releases this one is not remixed) that I don't be playing much if anymore. It's been ripped to FLAC,transfered to a Toshiba SSD, also transfered to my three HDD's for safety copy and then the CD set put inside a resealable bag and shelved.
    In a nutshell,99.9 % of my favourite sounding recordings were recorded to analogue tape.
     
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  24. krisjay

    krisjay Psychedelic Wave Rider

    Location:
    Maine
    Paul Rodgers-The Royal Sessions, not sure how much it sold, but as far as the vinyl, which is the way you want this album, is outstanding. It is certainly one of the best sounding albums of the last couple decades easily. The performance is stellar as well, one I never hesitate suggesting. Should be in every collection, in my opinion.
     
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  25. deeluxdx7

    deeluxdx7 Forum Resident

    Yeah, I'll never forget in the '90s when CD's were "THE GREATEST THING EVER" and discovering that this was NOT the case at all.

    I was a kid, and at the time both tapes and CD's were still manufactured (LP's had been "Buried"..how funny, I remember what a big deal everyone made of it, and how glad everyone was that those big clunky records were "Gone forever"....now 30 years later the only way you can sell musical recordings, the only way to give them some intrinsic VALUE is to release them on Vinyl. It's hilarious, my local giant chain drugstore has a HUGE vinyl section!)

    I digress...the C.D's were more expensive and I never considered myself any kind of audiophile (funny, considering the career I ended up in) so I bought tapes exclusively (I always found the CD "Oooh the quality" gushing to be a bit douchey anyway)

    I had heard C.D's of course, but I never really analyzed what I was hearing, especially not being intimately familiar with the material in both formats...UNTIL....

    At some point in the 90's The New York Dolls two records for Mercury were re-issued on C.D. Now those are two records I know back to front, inside and out, both on vinyl and on cassette, I was intimately in tune with every sound on those records, and when a friend bought the first record on C.D I was curious to hear "The QUALITY"

    ....Oh....my.....GOD!!......Abomination is the only word I can think of to describe it.

    The legendary, Proto-Punk glory of the New York Dolls, two of the nastiest, most visceral, adrenaline-pumping records ever made......records that seemed to scream YOU CAN'T KILL US!! NA NA NA! *Middle finger*

    Were utterly Chemically-castrated, neutered....It sounded like someone had sucked the life right out of the music....which, I would discover..THEY HAD. Digital is a different universe, a place where only 1's and 0's exist, they form patterns to mimick our reality, but wha they give back are ALWAYS approximations, they are never REAL. When you hear an analog of the original sound waves created by the music, and that analog is reproduced by converting it into an electrical voltage, and that voltage is then converted back into the waves themselves, what you are hearing is is a TRUE ANALOG of the original recording (Not the music played live, but the recording) It also introduces "ear candy" that the human brain can't resist. Infinite variance. he harmonic content will ALWAYS be in flux when working with voltage, you may not be able to tell, but you can tell when it's NOT there.

    The human brain LOVES infinite variance, even on a subconscious level, it keeps us engaged. THIS is why people say digital sounds DEAD....because it IS. A living voltage is alive, random it interacts with it's environment, 1's and 0's do not.

    When I heard Johnny Thunders chainsaw guitar reduced to a buzzing hairdryer, from that moment on I KNEW digital wasn't for me.
     
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