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Rolling Stone on the dangers of digital

Printed From: Top 40 Music on CD
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Topic: Rolling Stone on the dangers of digital

Posted By: Brian W.
Subject: Rolling Stone on the dangers of digital
Date Posted: 14 December 2010 at 11:46pm

This is interesting.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/17389/239965 - http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/17389/239965

The gist of the article is that record companies are finding that some master tapes of their digitally-recorded music, particuarly the mutlitrack session tapes, are no longer playable:

Smash Mouth had to go rerecord parts of their 1999 hit "All Star" for a TV ad when the digital master was missing tracks... The Wallflowers wanted to license one of their songs to Guitar Hero - but discovered that the drum track, recorded on a separate file, couldn't be found. Engineers at EMI have discovered that drums and percussion effects on some Eighties recordings are gone.

Replies:

Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 15 December 2010 at 9:39am

Thanks for sharing, Brian. It's not very good planning on the part of the record companies. This is not a new phenomenon. Even a decade ago, I would hear about digital tapes going bad. My (rhetorical) questions are:

1) If you knew 10, 15, or even 20 years ago that digital tapes have a tendency to not work after a short period of time, why would you not immediately start trying to preserve those assets?

2) If you are saving your master copies as digital multi-track files, why on Earth would you not "bounce" (save) each individual track down to a file format that you can preserve? And label the tracks properly? The comment about a plug-in not working and files just being named "Track 1," "Track 2," etc., that's just plain laziness and ignorance.

Anyone who has worked with Pro Tools extensively, which is the industry standard for recording and mastering audio, has at least a basic understanding how the program works. (They shouldn't be using it if they don't.) If you are not familiar, here's a brief example.

Let's say you have a vocal track, a guitar track, and a drum track in your Pro Tools session. Once each track is recorded, it's then up to the producers to decide to add some reverb or compression or any number of effects to each track. Those effects are often times added using plug-ins. The plug-in does not do anything to the actual recorded file. Instead, it just applies that effect in real time as the audio is playing back; therefore, the effect is never stored on a file.

Common sense says that in a few years, the software, operating system, and possibly even the audio files themselves could become obsolete. Why would you risk not being able to play back a master multi-track recording because of advances in technology? Plain stupidity.

Posted By: Nick2341
Date Posted: 15 December 2010 at 10:07am

Aaron, I completely agree. When I work on a remix I try to be mindful of what plug-ins I have
running and try to keep my work as future proof as possible. When I have everything set how I want
it, I'll bounce dry files (sometimes with EQ or compression added) and reapply FX like reverb or
delay in a second final session. This way if I ever need to reconstruct something it's just a matter of
putting the puzzle together again. Why these people never bounced full length stems of each part
eludes me. That seems to be a common sense thing to do. Then again, a lot of people who worked
on those albums probably didn't understand the whole digital deal as it was still emerging.

Posted By: The Hits Man
Date Posted: 16 December 2010 at 10:05pm

aaronk wrote:

Anyone who has worked with Pro Tools extensively, which
is the industry standard for recording and mastering
audio, has at least a basic understanding how the program
works. (They shouldn't be using it if they don't.) If
you are not familiar, here's a brief example.

Let's say you have a vocal track, a guitar track, and a
drum track in your Pro Tools session. Once each track is
recorded, it's then up to the producers to decide to add
some reverb or compression or any number of effects to
each track. Those effects are often times added using
plug-ins. The plug-in does not do anything to the actual
recorded file. Instead, it just applies that effect in
real time as the audio is playing back; therefore, the
effect is never stored on a file.

That tells me the engineer should have printed copies of
the processed track(s). Or, notes should have been made
to detail what settings were used for that plugin.

Though not cost effective today, it would be prudent to
print a copy of the multitracks to analog for backup.

It seems to me that the problem isn't exactly using
digital, but not ensuring that the data will be
recoverable.

The good thing for me is that people will be less tempted
or not able to remix things for the future, thereby not
being able to alter history. :)

The problem as I can tell, is that the industry is short-
sighted. They only think of the moment instead of the
future. It's always been that way.

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