Would you want to the era of vinyl records, mini cassettes, bouncing tracks and splicing 1/4" tape? I certainly don't.
Wow! There's a lot to unpack in your post but I'll do my best to address each of your points.
Do I want to go back to the old days of fully analog recording and mastering? Probably not. But the limitations weren't as insurmountable as they're made out to be. You needed to understand a little better how things worked, and you needed to be clever at times since there weren't programmers around being clever for you like they are today. But for the record, I'm digital like most everyone else these days. I use Harrison Console's Mixbus 32c DAW software and a Focusrite Scarlett interface for whatever more complex multitrack recording I'll occasionally do. For day to day stuff I'll often just go with a quiet room and a Zoom H4N Pro field recorder and do it all live. Interestingly enough, that sounds pretty good too. I wish I still had access to the old tape gear I learned on. But I'm not so gung-ho about it that I won't record digitally. I'd rather get something done than hold out for something I might prefer to use. I'd be silly to think any other way.
Digital gave consumers an option that was easier to use than vinyl; provided the same portability as cassettes with higher fidelity; and produced cleaner recordings. That was enough for CDs to win over consumers, despite the higher initial prices and "colder" sound. (And no, the industry didn't force anyone to switch; plenty of format changes have failed, including Laserdisc, SACD, HDCD, DAT, quad sound etc).
Got news. If you were a diehard cassette user you were forced to switch. The labels decided to stop releasing albums on cassette format. So if you wanted new music your choice was go over to CD or lump it. The industry cited rapidly declining sales. But that wasn't surprising since they began pulling titles from distribution on tape to retailers. Once the sales numbers were sufficiently low they cited that as "proof" consumers no longer wanted to buy cassettes and stopped making them altogether. Not that cassette quality was anything to mourn. But killing off the format led to a far more rapid adoption of CD than would have occurred otherwise.
The reasons why competing formats like Laserdisc, SACD, HDCD, and quadrophonic didn't fly are a bit more complex than most people realize. Laserdisc was
very expensive for the time and there was a huge amount of confusion due to a similarly named competing product that did what it could to muddy the waters with potential buyers. So between high cost and consumer confusion, it all eventually died. Which was a shame. Laserdisc was vastly superior in quality to the video tapes that came along later.
Betamax was technically superior to VHS. But Sony wanted to keep it all to itself whereas Victor Japan happily licensed their technology to anybody who wanted to build a player. The public generally doesn't like being single sourced for something like a movie player, so Betamax fell to the inferior but more affordable and widely available VHS format and players. Sony repeated the same mistake later on with their mini discs and that device suffered the same fate.
SACD (another thing Sony was involved with) got into a format war with DVD-Audio and forced record labels to choose sides. Because consumers didn't want to get into another format war like they did with Beta and VHS, nobody bought many of either and both those formats went the way of the dodo.
HDCD required a proprietary decoder on the playback device and most manufacturers elected not to license it because there wasn't sufficient public demand and the licensing fees were a little steep. So the combination of a high cost license plus public apathy doomed HDCD.
With quadraphonic a war broke out between two competing incompatible coding formats and consumers were worried about investing significant cash in quad receivers and turntables not knowing which of the two competing standards would win out. Most people decided standard two channel stereo would do just fine instead.
So...what emerges from all this is that mutually incompatible and proprietary formats and licensing have been the main impediments to getting new media technologies generally adopted. Not the technological merits. Many of the failed products and formats offered measurably superior user experiences. But nobody wants to get stuck with an orphan device no matter how good it is. Or own media that becomes unreadable because the playback devices are no longer available or repairable. Libraries that carry media assets are already very concerned about this.
Funny thing is how this all was a repeat of the lesson that was learned when records first became available. Each player (RCA, Edison, Victorola, etc.) could only play records specifically made for that player. And these companies began to compete by trying to lock in as many artists as possible on their in-house label. If you wanted Caruso, you either bought the record player and label he was on or you did without. And that practice slowed the adoption of records since most listeners weren't keen on buying three or four players to cover everything. However, once the universal 78 RPM record came out and was released as a cross industry standard, the market for recorded music exploded. And these companies wound up making far more money selling players for a universal standard than they ever did trying to own the whole thing. And the record labels sold far more records that they ever did before as well.
Takeaway: proprietary formats are the kiss of death in a world that wants universal formats.
DAT on the other hand was killed by a recording industry that didn't want a recording device that could duplicate a commercial tape or disk with fidelity as good as the original. They attempted to force restrictive licensing on DAT ownership, have the government asses a special tax on DAT media that would be directly paid to the major recording companies, conducted a massive disinformation campaign that pretended DAT decks were illegal in the United States (they weren't), etc. And it had its desired effect. The buying public was left confused and spooked about DAT and that was the end of it.
CDs didn't run into issues with the labels for awhile because there was no economical way to duplicate one early on. But once RW capable computer CD drives started becoming popular the screaming resumed once again. Ditto when RW DVD drives became broadly affordable.
Right now the industry's big emphasis is on streaming. And the motivation is control - although it's being marketed to consumers for it's convenience. The goal is to take all hard media out of the hands of consumers who could otherwise play it back on whatever they wanted wherever they wanted - or (god forbid!) loan it to a friend to use or (gasp!) possibly even duplicate. Satellite radio subscriptions like Sirius pointed the way to what they hope the future will be. Each playback device will require an annual subscription (like a Sirius radio does) - and is
licensed to the user rather than sold outright. Think you own you sat-radio or smartphone? Look at the customer agreement you blindly signed when you handed them your credit card. They still
own the device they "sold" you. They just granted you a right to
use it. Want to play something you subscribed to on your house system? Maybe you can and maybe you can't. Netflix allows five devices on one subscription. Acorn TV allows one. Sirius requires each of their radios have their own subscription. If you didn't buy a docking type unit forget about playing what you subscribed to for your car on the unit you just bought for the house - unless you want to subscribe on that unit as well.
Eventually hard media (disks, tapes, etc.) will be eliminated by industry fiat and everything will come down through metered and monitored streaming services. Even now there's a lot of movies that are only available via streaming. Want a DVD or BlueRay of some movie you love? Don't be so sure one is available. Or is ever going to be. On Amazon I'm seeing how more and more titles are now only available for streaming. The DVD and BlueRay versions are gradually disappearing from their website.
On the production side, digital dramatically improved the ability of recording engineers to edit audio, and gave musicians a huge range of effects.
It's also led to a lot of overproduced music and recordings, often also made by people who don't have the level of craft expertise many in the old guard did. Many of that clan could go in and just nail it. Today it often involves a lot of cut & try. A little dithering with this and a lot of tweaking with that, and trying this plug-in and that one and... Dunno. That's not knowing what you're doing to me.
Or at least so I think.
It is the best archive option, as there is no physical original which can deteriorate or get lost.
I've been in IT for over 35 years and I'm familiar with virtually any storage media and encoding format you can name. And I can categorically tell you stored digital information is
not immune to data loss or deterioration. In addition to a phenomena known as "bitrot" all information is ultimately stored on some physical device somewhere. And any device is subject to failure or degradation. As many businesses which have maintained years worth of meticulously made and stored backups on media sometimes learn when they needed to restore something. Optical and electronic storage is not the panacea it's made out to be. Anytime an IT professional needs to restore something from backup media that's more than a few years old, they take a deep breath and cross their fingers.
The unlimited replicability of digital has had both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, musical recordings can be distributed at low cost and on demand to a variety of devices (you will have to pry my Sonos and streaming services from my cold dead hands
). Financial incentives to mine back catalogs resulted in wide availability of more music than ever before. On the negative side, it has seriously harmed musicians' income from recordings in a variety of ways.
True enough. Especially how it didn't benefit the content creators.
Kinda sad in a way.
In the old days, the musicians had the pleasure of being robbed blind by their agents, their record labels, and broadcast industry.
With the advent of MP3 and the Internet they now have the added pleasure of being severely ripped off by many of their fans.
New wine in old bottles - but the same wine just the same.
I think that's what's called: "Business as usual."
As with almost every technological change, there are tradeoffs, not all understood in advance.
This! A thousand times this.
Esoteric changes in audio quality that most people don't even notice may be critical to you, but I don't even notice it anymore. Neither do the overwhelming majority of the audience.
It's hardly esoteric. But to your point it's a learned thing. If you don't care, or you've been reeducated to hear things in a different way, it absolutely won't matter. No argument there.
As far as the overwhelming majority goes, I think you need to proceed according to you own lights and standards. Maybe nobody else cares. But if it makes a difference to
you I think it's good for your own self and integrity to do it anyway.
Nobody cares? Do it anyway.
Hardly anybody can hear it besides you? Do it anyway.
It doesn't matter if you don't do it? Do it anyway.
A powerful mantra that is: Just do it anyway.
tl:dr - This whole post is way too long. Go practice your bass and don't waste your time with it.
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y quality. By itself (or in a different setting) the sound would be awful, but in proper context it is magic. So in this instance, "acceptable" is not absolute or universal; it is context based. In some respects, this is the opposite of bedroom tone that sounds awesome in isolation but doesn't work well in the mix.
