When did recording studios switch to digital recording from tape?

http://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/fine_dawn-of-digital.pdf

 

In the mid-nineties the artists/studios I knew were something like this:

Low end and home studio Atari/Cubase/DAT stereo master
Middle ADAT/DAT stereo master or cheaper 8 and 16 track machines and DAT stereo master
High end 24 track 2"/ 1/4" and DAT stereo masters

Technology moved fast in the 1990s and there was all sorts of gear coming out, by the end of the 1990s a lot of people were using DAWs and I think Macs had become popular with some, though I have a recollection that I compiled an album in '99 of current recordings and had masters on: DAT, CD-R, 1/4 ", cassette and Mini Disc, nowadays everything is a high res file whether it started digitally or on 1/4"

 

I have definitely not done a ton of research - basically, I've just noticed SPARS codes in my CD collection. The earliest digital recording I'm aware of is the Stones' Steel Wheels - they had the budget and the desire to stay hip, so it's no surprise that they jumped to digital early. (And now that analog is the expensive and trendy thing, they've jumped back. If only they'd mastered it analog, too.)

Conversely, I have numerous CDs from 1992 and 1993 that are AAD. The Waterboys' Dream Harder is one, for instance. I would guess that digital recording became popular around '94 or '95. SPARS codes seemed to vanish around that time, if my CDs are anything to go by. Incidentally, that's also the period that mixing and mastering quality really took a nose-dive.

Would a SPARS code register ADAT as a digital recording or not? Based on my understanding, it was just a clumsy, less reliable version of regular tape that definitely doesn't stand the test of time and is now, twenty years on, almost unplayable due to its poor construction. As someone who's fairly new to audio and has never actually seen an ADAT, "digital tape" doesn't make much sense to me.

 

ADATs were based on video cassettes and were 100% digital even if tape was involved, tape is a proven reliable storage medium whether analogue or digital, so tape itself makes sense, it's just that the implementation of early digital tape formats was poor and they lack longevity, record a digital signal to 1/4" and as long as it can still be read it should last as long as an analogue signal, DAT tapes, ADAT tapes and some other early digital tape formats just weren't very robust.

 

The first mainstream digital rock recording that I’m aware of was Bop ‘Till You Drop by Ry Cooder. That was released in 1979. There’s something odd in the treble, I assume early ADC/DACs were to blame.

Decca released a digitally recorded 1979 New Year’s Day concert and I’d say that was the first mainstream digital classical recording - though they later released a Mendelssohn 4th Symphony that was recorded slightly earlier.

Denon had released their first digitally recorded LPs in 1971.

Some information in this PDF...

http://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/fine_dawn-of-digital.pdf

 

Thank you for the info. Dad said the same thing about Bop til you Drop.

 

Define "few". Smaller independent studios were using analog multitrack into the early-to-mid 90s.

 

All of this. This was pretty much my experience in the 90s. In 1992 we recorded on 1" 16-track and in 1994 or 1995 we were using ADAT or the equivalent.

 

You answered yourself.

 

Been speaking recently with an artist who has boxes full of ADATs that are no longer playing properly. In his words, "2/3 of the tapes are unplayable due to DATs sucking!" I ended up chasing down a rare Spanish magazine comp CD with one of his songs on it for him as his DAT of that track is unusable. (And now I have that rare Spanish magazine comp CD, which I wouldn't have found at the price that I did had I not picked that particular moment to offer to help - saved $60 on that thing compared to the Amazon price!)

I'd say I'm glad technology has advanced enough that tracks are no longer so prone to being lost... but then I remembered the months' worth of tracking I did for my friends and saved onto a hard drive, which then overheated and the motor literally exploded into pieces, before I could finish mixing. So...

 

I guess nothing unreleased is safe, these days my advice would be multiple hard drives in multiple locations and if you can afford it back everything up onto analogue tape, you know it will last 60+ years and no digital format has so far come even close to that, based on what I've come across there are going to be large gaps in the story of 1990s music outside of the really big bands, DATs, ADATs, floppy discs, all useless for long term storage and that's assuming somebody has even kept track of everything and looked after it which rarely happens. If you really want your music to stick around press it on vinyl, that really is a proven storage format regardless of it's limitations.

 

Especially not if you're a Universal Music artist.

Too soon?

I'm no authority, but these are my experiences: I recorded on 2" 16-track in 1981, 24-track in 1988-approximately 2006, and a combination of DA-88 and 1" 8-track(prosumer TASCAM) in 1993.

After that, we recorded basic tracks to 2" and dumped them into Pro Tools HD for further overdubs. In recent years, we began and completed an album on Pro Tools HD, mixed it completely "in the box"(within Pro Tools) and bounced to 1/2" before mastering.

My point is that there were no hard and fast rules regarding formats, and indeed, several lived(and continue to live) side-by-side.


Dan

 

Digital never completely took over. It was a transition which began in the mid 70s with some of Denon and Soundstream's early digital recorders, and it accelerated dramatically in the early 80s as several different digital recorders became commecially available. But then when CDs became commercially available, studios started replacing their analog gear as fast as they possibly could. But it never has completely replaced analog. Although it has almost certainly replaced over 99.8% of analog recording today.

Digital workstations didn't become a thing until the early 90s, if my memory is to be trusted.

 

Thank you for the info. I had never heard of soundstream til after some of ya'll mentioned it.

 

Most working commercial studios use analog and/or digital as a recording medium and never abandoned analog entirely. I don’t think I’ve worked in a studio that didn’t have a tape machine at the ready in the past 20 years.

Apropos of nothing, a great recording is a great recording no matter the medium. Tracking through a Neve or an API or a Trident console probably has a greater impact on the sound than if the tracks are going to tape or protools. And, of course, the players, the arrangement, the song, etc

 

Depends on the recording. Donald Fagen's The Nightfly might be the best sounding pop record of the decade, and it was recorded on a very early 3M digital multitrack recorder. So early they didn't even have 16-bit DACs yet - they had to use I think two 10-bit DACs, with the extra 4 bits used for error correction. And the converters had all sorts of linearity issues - to get a clean playback you pretty much had to use the same deck you'd recorded the material on. But it sounded perfect - glassy smooth, not harsh, transparent, rich bass, absolutely no noise. Christopher Cross was cut on the same machine, and has the same characteristic sound - clearly not analog, but nothing like most early digital recordings, either.

Sony became the early dominant force in digital recording, but I've never cared for the overall sound of most records cut on those early recorders. Tusk however sounded pretty good, although I think some of it was cut analog and maybe just mixed to digital (although even that could make some other records sound dodgy). Like A Virgin isn't awful either though - a bit too crisp but it doesn't suffer from the "fuzziness" of a lot of those early Sony digital recordings. I wonder if the engineers compensated with different EQ settings or other tricks?

By that point, it had been 10 years since digital pop/rock recordings started to be released. Tusk was probably the first big one in September '79. Christopher Cross was the biggest early all-digital recording, meaning that not only was the final mix to digital, but the multitracks themselves were digital as well. It came out in December '79.

Digital was plummeting in price and ubiquitous by 1989 when Steel Wheels came out. The Stones were very late to digital. Paul McCartney mixed Tug Of War to digital in 1982, as the SPARS code on this disc indicates...

 

The Nightfly always pops into my head when discussions on recording media quality come up. It’s so good.

 

Warner Bros. built their first all-digital recording room in 1978, in their Amigo studio facility in Burbank. Prior to that, they had to rent time at one of the few Sony studios in the U.S. (most were in Japan).

Obviously, this was before Compact Discs were available. Recording engineers were totally sold on digital because editing was so much easier than with analog tape, and with no generational loss. All the studios would have converted in the blink of an eye, but building a digital room was incredibly expensive back then.

 

Have your friend call this guy Welcome to Pro Digital Inc. - Powered Speaker Amplifier Repair Specialists
I worked at Alesis all through the 90’s and Paul at Pro Digital was the man. He will know how to transfer your friends’ tapes.

 

And went full on in 83

 

Funny how things can change.

I remember when CDs came and we were all looking for that "DDD" to get the "best quality."

These days with the vinyl revival, now lots of audiophiles are going back to looking for essentially "AAA"

(Though, frankly, that's not something I'm personally obsessive about).

 

Thank you for the heads-up. I've let him know.

 

If memory serves, the documentary Sound City by Dave Grohl speaks a lot about this topic and centers around Grohl purchasing their analog mixing board. Anyway it’s a great doc.

 

I think this is incorrect. A lot of POP was recorded during the TOW sessions. So, I believe not all of POP was recorded digitally.

 

Good possibility. Why SPARS can't always be trusted.
Think my local has it for dirt cheap, I was going to pick it up as a test- but 100% I can't be certain as it could of been entirely mixed to digital.