Several companies around the world are designing, manufacturing and selling valve signal processors the purpose of which is to 'add warmth' to digital recordings!

In the November issue of ‘Sound on Sound’, there are articles and advertisements on this new breed of booby-hatch equipment. The ‘SPL Charisma 8 Channel Valve Signal Processor’, (an 8 channel valve signal processor) article begins like this: 'More and more people are choosing digital recording systems, which is creating a spin-off market for valve processors designed to lend a more comfortable warmth to the resulting recordings. Hugh Robjohns looks at an SPL unit being touted as the ideal partner for eight tracks of digital (£1409)'

We never once imagined that this level of complete madness would ever come to pass. People are switching to digital Hard Disc multitracking / DAT mastering, and then buying processors that cost the same as superior analogue machines to make their digital machines sound analogue!! Are they completely crazy?

Witness the advertisements of a manufacturer: ‘The new VTP-1 from Digi Tech offers a unique blend of essential components that can help you, the digital studio owner, add that missing warmth to your recordings.’ They go on to say that this box will, ‘Warm up your digitally recorded tracks’ and should be used for ‘stereo recording direct to DAT’ (oh please!)

Notice how the text says ‘add missing warmth’. If this warmth is missing from the recordings in the first place, the recording equipment should have been be rejected as inadequate in the first place. There is too much slavish adherence to the ‘new technology’ mantra which has defrauded millions of people and destroyed the work of artists all over the world. The skills involved in making a judgment and evaluating equipment seem to have atrophied in the past 20 years, and anyone who commits the heresy of demonstrating the weakness in the new generation of equipment is burned at the stake, the fire provided being the “white heat of technology”.

Boys and Girls, it is very simple; if you want recordings that sound good, you must go Analogue multitrack and Analogue master, it is as simple as that. It doesn’t matter what shiny new boxes the equipment manufacturers are offering; studios must stick to what works for music, not what looks good on a studio spec sheet. Everyone has heard the stories of how sessions have been ruined/lost because a hard disc crashed; 100% reliability is the only reliability that is acceptable, anything less is crazy. Digital recording, in its current incarnation, does not work. If you run a recording studio, you should not use it for multitrack recording and you should not use it for the mastering your recordings. You should use analogue multitrack recording only, with or without Dolby noise reduction. For mastering, you should use only reel to reel recorders or high quality cassettes. Those are the only options available to you.

Here are some facts about why HD/Digital recording sucks:

• It sounds bad
• It is subject to unrecoverable data loss
• Archiving is extremely dangerous

Here are some facts about why Analogue recording is superior:

• It sounds good
• Unrecoverable music loss occurs only upon the total destruction of the medium
• Archiving is excellent