When did digital recording/mixing become predominant? *

In my head, the answer was always “the mid 80’s”. But, I’ve been digging deeper into recorded music technical standards recently, and that slowly torn apart my idea. There are some really early mainstream digitally recorded albums (like the 1979 Christopher Cross debut), but there are some really late all analog records as well (Nirvana’s Nevermind is a good example). When, exactly, can I draw the line and say “OK, going forward from this point, most music was recorded digitally”? When did most artists start using digital somewhere in their recording process, like analog recording combined with digital mixing, for example, and when did 100% digital, DDD albums become the norm?

 

Easy there, kids, if you read the OP it's not a question about sound quality at all.

 

Not sure what you mean "overcome" -- when did digital recording become the norm and analog recording a minority? When did CD overtake LP and cassette? I would say certainly not the mid 1980s, more like the late '80s or early 1990s. It was 1991 when CD became the leading music format on a revenue basis. Now ubiquitous industry standard digital audio workstation software Pro Tools wasn't released until 1989. Cheap portable digital recording formats like DAT didn't arrive until 1987. Digital audio equipment and storage was expense, PC scale computing equipment didn't have the kind of computing power we have today. We didn't have a non-classical, fully digital released until 1982, Like a Virgin was the first fully digitally produced album to top the US pop charts. It was still a commercially emerging technology in the mid 198os. I think you have to get into the 1990s, and mabye even past the 1990s into the DAW era of the early 2000s to get the the point where most recording was being done digitally.

Now, "using digital someone in the recording process"? Sure, by the mid 1980s, digital effects, for example were common, digital synthesis and midi, then digital mixing became more and more commone, etc. But if by "overtaken" you're aske when dig digital recording become the majority format, it certainly wasn't in the mid 1980s. It was much later.

 

The second it was born.

 

You might wanna add the word 'recording' in your title. Unless you want to get the usual 10.000 useless answers by the usual 'headline-readers' who didn't bother reading your OP.

 

OOPS.

 

Most vinyl records cut since the late 70s have a digital step, no?

 

Was listening to some New Led Zeppelin vinyl the other night.
The recording quality and mixing on most Zep albums is questionable - lots a drugs in the studio, obviously!

I was going back and forth between a Terminator DAC and my modified Rega for a while, different songs and albums.

Id be getting lots of WOW moments from the Vinyl and then switch to the DAC where I also get lots of wow moments.
Just when you think one of better than the other you realize its just about compromise.

The Vinyl has a seductive soundstage and rhythm that makes you sing along with Plant with enthusiasm. How can that be Beat?!

But the DAC then throws this insane level of detail, tight focus and Dynamic at you that knocks your socks off. You think, Wow this bets the vinyl.
Until you go back to the vinyl and think, oh No this is better. But it's not. Ot is it?

 

In answer to the OP's question - which has nothing to do with recording quality - it's a great question. I wonder how many studios went digital with the early-ish super expensive digital multitrack recorders vs. how many waited until the much less expensive ADATs (or ProTools). My guess is that that shift to less expensive digital recording was a real driver in the move from analog to digital. I think both ADATs and ProTools happened at the very beginning of the 90s, so maybe not long after that? Just a wild guess though.

 

100% Digital recording has never been the norm. It's not 100% even today. I would say a high percentage of albums were recorded analogue up until the end of the 90s. Probably digital became almost universal when large cheap computer hard discs hit the market along with Pro Tools and similar software reaching maturity. Ease of digital then trumped analog. Analog is still used widely in conjunction with digital processing with a few artists still producing AAA recordings such as Gillian Welch / David Rawlings. I think there will always be a niche analogue recording industry as there is for photography using film.

 

Obviously when my stepdaughter gave me a gift certificate for Best Buy, which I used to buy an Aiwa XC-RW700 double-deck CD-R. 1999?

 

Wasn't it the early 80s when Vinyl Pressing Plants moved to a Digital workflow? ADAT was responsible for that. And rather quickly pressing plans didn't use the master taps anymore and ALL analog masters were digitized for use and storage.

 

I'm not infinitely familiar with the professional music industry, but I've followed it for years and know quite a few people involved. I would tie the popularity of digital recording with the Alesis ADAT, a digital recorder that used SVHS tapes. The big digital reel-to-reel recorders were available and in use at the time, but the editing workflow was cumbersome unless you had a *lot* of money to burn on a digital editing suite. ADAT made editing digital much, much easier, at a relatively affordable price point. As an example of the popularity, to this day the ADAT optical digital interface is offered on most professional audio cards, even though the transports have been out of production for decades.

Anyways, this would put the digital audio recording boom into the mid 1990's, which sounds about right to me.

 

Although there were outliers into the 2000s, especially among artists with a certain "pull" and retro bent, the vast majority of major label recordings were already completely digital by the mid-1990s. I don't know that there was necessarily one recording or set of recordings that can be pointed to as a watershed, but it was a gradual process by which smaller studios replaced their analogue rigs with digital multi-track tape decks and mixing desks, and larger ones with DAWs. Certainly by the mid-'90s the major UK studios, and the in-house studios at US labels, all had Pro Tools setups. Some artists or producers continued to record on tape, or even record digitally but mix at an analogue desk, but those would be by special request.

 

I’d like to say thanks to the people that are giving real answers. The amount of folks who didn’t even read the OP is insane. This is not an “analog vs digital” sound quality thread, the subject doesn’t come even close to that. This is actually a “When did digital recording became more popular than analog?” discussion.

 

"recording quality and mixing" "questionable", really? You realize that Jimmy Page (the guy who signed off on the recording and mix)
is a perfectionist, and I do understand that some of these things are subjective, but come on. - Is your vinyl setup dialed in o.k.?

 

I'm understood your very interesting opening post, and I am interested in the answers. Rather than "popular" as in this post, which just invites more ambiguity (especially from when posted by "VinylMano", which sounds pretty analog), I'd use "predominant," as suggested in a post above mine. I'd say mid-1990s, but that's based on the old DDD SPARS stuff. I do think Classical was into D well before that, especially DG.

 

Then why? Please, Dont try to convince Me that they are well recorded and mixed. Jimmy was no recording engineer! F him. Play guitar Jimmy, thats what Im paying you for. I digress.
Im a BIG Zep Fan and i hate the fact that they along with others (Queen, Rush and Many others back then) just sound poor overall. Little depth, loads of unnecessary grit and sometimes clipping tracks - intentional or not, its terrible. The mushy Bass?!?!? I mean, I know guys that mix in their bedrooms that produce better sounding songs.
I know it was the 60/70's but there are plenty of other bads that just sound awesome.

Still, Im happy and glad I have some original early 70's Zep vinyl which I think are more natural sounding.
And early Zep digital (CD) was the worst!

Zep sounds best on a Mid-Fi with BIG Woofers and Subs. And Drugs.

and no my vinyl rig isn't broken nor does it have a stack of dimes on the head-shell. No really it doesn't.

... sorry for the outburst. Its a thing with me. sorry.

 

I think that @Maggie makes a good point. I agree that it was a slow move and on a studio by studio basis. I don't see any year as being the "light switch" for it, nor such event even being relevant if it were to have taken place suddenly. It was just a matter of cost effectiveness for the studios. Anything that saves time makes money. Anything that saves tape makes money. So even if there was no sonic advantage, studios would change over as they could budget to do so or had an equipment issue that made the decision easier for them. These days, I find that digital sounds so good that it has improved the audio quality of even the best analog studio efforts and enhances those operations going forward. It has just evolved to be really good.
- Bill

 

When I could finally afford a cdp and cds. 1993

 

Yup, ADAT and Pro Tools arrived in '92 and '91 respectively, though I dunno how ubiquitous Pro Tools became until the mark II software revision in '93. FWIW, the first all Pro Tools from start to finish #1 US hit apparently was "Livin' La Vida Loca" in 1999. Interesting contemporaneous article here from Mix magazine -- RECORDIN' "LA VIDA LOCA": THE MAKING OF A HARD DISK HIT (archive.org)

 

This is my honest answer: companies saw CDs as a way of selling music that people already owned over again. The companies at the forefront of digital recording were Sony and Polygram. People that were buying classical music wanted all DDD CDs and during early '80s they moved over to digital because people weren't buying analog recorded classical music. For example, Deutsch Grammaphone releases baroque and early music under the Archiv label. They had a perfectly good recording of the Brandenburg Concertos with The English Concert with Trevor Pinnock that was released around 1980. They re-recorded the same music and released all DDD CD's around '83 or '84.

 

The recent Tone Poet reissue of Scolohofo oh! was recorded to two-track 30ips analog tape in 2002.

 

You make the mistake of thinking Led Zeppelin should sound "audiophile," whatever that means at the moment. Same goes for Queen, Rush, ad nauseam. Old rock records were never an audiophile proposition to begin with.

It all sounds fine to me...no remixing needed. If it bothers you, listen to something else.

Oh, and Jimmy Page was never credited on an LZ album as a recording engineer.

 

I doubt it, though I don't know exactly what you mean by digital step.

Whatever your definition is, late '70s seems a bit early to make that assumption.