Later, with the advent of modular digital tape machines such as the ADAT, identical backups could be made and artists, producers, and engineers alike sweated a little less each time before they hit that record button. Also, the concept of sending clone masters through the mail was now palatable, as the tape was relatively cheap, and there was no generation loss between copies.
At this time we weren’t yet using computers to record music, as the machines themselves weren’t fast enough for multi-track, and storage media was very expensive, but we did start to use them for editing stereo mixes – in 1989, I bought a “HUGE” 600 Megabyte drive for $3500 (and that’s 1989 dollars!) which wouldn’t even hold a full CD’s worth of material at one time – a 15 cent recordable CD these days holds more info than a ridiculously large hard drive of that era!
Why do I give you this history lesson, you ask? Partially to explain why I laugh at you all on the forums when you talk about complete recording packages for $500 as “expensive” – the average High Schooler with a laptop computer has more capability technically than a $1,000,000 recording studio of 2 decades ago. What you DO with this capability is a different thing, but I feel like one of those old guys who says they “rode a horse and buggy through the snow to school 5 miles uphill both ways” whenever I bring it up!
I’ll bring up other reasons in part II of this article, and hopefully have it be relevant to part I - as if I haven’t free-associated enough already! Give me a break - I’m on a much-needed vacation at the moment, and having to think of work!
By the way, feel free to ask questions and give me more topics to write about – let me know the things you find “mysterious” about recording, and I’ll try my best to clear it up for you! I can be reached at bill@casa.org
Click on the wrench in the upper left-hand corner to see what else you can do.