When Did Recording Go Digital?

The first commercially issued PCM recording I'm aware of goes back to 1972. That would be Jean Pierre Rampal's recording for Denon of Telemann Fantasies for Flute. It was issued in the states in the mid-seventies on Columbia's budget Classical Label Odyssey:

 

No, both are wrong, you and me. I don't know about the recording you cite in your post, but the first full digital soundtrack tracked, mixed and mastered to Digital was "The Black Hole".
Star Trek The Motion Picture was tracked to analog using TelCom (from Telefunken) noise reduction.

 

Remember DDD in the 80's/early '90s meant mixing down to digital tape, but through an analog console...

 

I remember the fuss over Bop til You Drop back in 1979, but I had assumed Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was one of the first digital recordings. I remember hearing songs from it on the radio and the way it just sounded so different than almost everything else-- smoother--and that bass just jumped out the speakers. Steely Dan's Aja was like that too. Maybe they were just recorded on the best analog equipment that was available.

 

Hotter than July and Secret Life of Plants are digital recordings. Does not mean parts weren't recorded analogue then mixed to digital. On vinyl I wouldn't call them flat sounding recordings but not as good sound as earlier SW recordings. Bop Till You Drop sounds surprisingly good on vinyl which suggests the early digital recorders were not as bad as some believe. Tusk is analogue digitally mixed. When I first bought the LP it did sound different and lacked the impact in the sound of the previous two albums (lightweight). However it got better with each TT upgrade and now think that it sounds great.

 

Brothers in Arms 1984' was a 24 tr Sony Digital recording and the one that launched cd worldwide
It was made at Air Monserrat and featured a custom analogue Neve 8078 desk
This combination produced of the most popular albums of all time with a particular sound signature few others have ever come close to.
The room was 20 x 25, the sound was the desk.

 

Aja and Rumours were both all-analog, and I've read that the studio master for Rumours don't sound so great - what you're hearing are the EQ choices made by the mastering engineer. That whole process got a lot more sophisticated in the mid-'70s and Rumours and a bunch of other records benefited from it tremendously.

Not quite. The whole TMP soundtrack was recorded analog and I believe that analog version is what was used on the actual film, but several cuts were also recorded digitally and those made it to the soundtrack LP and various CDs over the years, including the titles / Klingon battle sequence and the "Leaving Drydock" cue if memory serves.

 

The Beats I Just Can't Stop It from 1980 was digital - at the Roundhouse in Camden,
can't think of anything earlier in the UK , I also think Mirror In the Bathroom was the first digital hit single here.

 

Ornette Coleman claimed his album "Of Human Feelings" was the first jazz album recorded digitally. After a failed attempt in March, the album was recorded on April 25, 1979. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Human_Feelings#Recording

According to the liner notes, it was recorded on a Sony PCM 1600 digital 2-track recorder.