The first song I heard that was "the most digital recording" was the first song I played on an iPod. The second most digital was the second song I heard on an iPod. The 3rd? You guessed it, the 3rd song I listened to on an iPod. By the 4th song I was maybe getting used to that weird chopped up packetized sound but the next day there was that glaring obvious digital sound. Yes, you could but your entire music collection onto an iPod, but the fatiguing harsh sound pushed me back to listening to that outdated technology of scratches on a vinyl disc played by a needle that scrapes more of the glorious peaks off the vinyl with each play. I thought I would never go back to that self destructive musical medium but digital music played on the height of musical technology, the iPod, drove me back to vinyl.
The Most Digital Recording You Ever Heard
You can generally tell them by weight. In the early days of the CD when they really had no idea of how to put music on a disk they also used to put a lot of plastic in the jewel cases. Sometimes I pick a CD I haven't listened to for a while, get a feel of it and think, "Oh, one of these." Any initial release year starting with "198" will give you a certain sense of trepidation. The question I put before the house is, what was the digital recording that your view epitomized everything that was wrong with digital. Some that come off the top of my head:
Any Proper box set.
Any Collector's Choice reissue.
The original issue of These Foolish Things by Bryan Ferry.
The Angel Broadway Classics series was particularly frustrating because on the one hand you finally escape from fake stereo but on the other the mastering was pretty sketchy.
Any Proper box set.
Any Collector's Choice reissue.
The original issue of These Foolish Things by Bryan Ferry.
The Angel Broadway Classics series was particularly frustrating because on the one hand you finally escape from fake stereo but on the other the mastering was pretty sketchy.
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I used to love Nightfly as a recording more than I do now. Now, it does sound too digital, in the ugly ways with which people may be familiar. This article has a great history of how and why The Nightfly was recorded in digital and why Fagen retreated from it. Key passage: "[Engineer] Scheiner says he wasn’t at Nichols’s A-B-C shootout, and if it were up to him The Nightfly would’ve been recorded on the 24-track Studer. In fact, when Scheiner recorded Steely Dan’s final album, Everything Must Go, in 2003, he dissuaded Becker and Fagen from using Pro Tools by setting up his own shootout between a PT-based digital system and a Studer A827 24-track. This time, Becker and Fagen picked the Studer. Explaining the retreat from digital to Sound on Sound in 2003, Fagen quipped, “Digital sound loosens the fillings in your teeth. I had a lot of work done on my teeth since I started working with digital.” Whatever Scheiner and Fagen’s later misgivings about digital recording — or its consequences for Fagen’s dental health — both the The Nightfly’s sound and its place in audio history would be shaped by use of the 3M Digital Audio Mastering System." https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/the-best-version-of/the-best-version-of-donald-fagen%E2%80%99s-the-ni... P.S. Fagen's Sunken Condos album is recorded in digital again -- Avid's Pro Tools -- but it does not have the same glare as Nightfly. Things evolve. |
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